Johnny Mingione ’s guest on the phone this week needs no intro; Judd Apatow has directed some of the most monumental comedies of all time, including 40-Year-Old Virgin , Knocked Up , and the list goes on.
LISTEN NOW: On The Phone With John Mingione | Judd Apatow
Photo credit On The Phone With John Mingione/Audacy As one of his inspirations since the age of 16, Johnny was thrilled to have Judd on the line now that they share a hometown as Long Islanders. Getting right into the serious questions, Johnny needed to know where the best pizza on the island could be found. Judd, who lives in Syosset, says that when he was a kid he used to go to a restaurant called Christiano's, explaining how “Every Italian restaurant in New York thought that Billy Joel ’s song ‘Scenes from an Italian Restaurant’ was about their Italian restaurant, of course, but we're still pretty sure it was Christiano's.”
Judd got his start in entertainment by interviewing celebrities for his high school radio station, never actually airing the conversations, simply banking all of the knowledge he gained. “I would call the comedians, I wouldn't say I was from a high school radio station,” he explains. “I would just say I was from a radio station, and I interviewed Howard Stern and John Candy and [Father] Guido Sarducci . I did about 50 interviews when I was about 15 or 16 -- that was how I educated myself even more than college.” Apatow continues, “I learned most of what I knew at the time about comedy from these 50 interviews where I just would say to people like [Jerry] Seinfeld , ‘How do you write a joke? How do you get on stage? What does it feel like?’ And it actually came in handy.”
As an aspiring director, Johnny wanted to know if Judd had any advice for him as he continues on his path. “I think the thing that's different today from when I was young is it's really cheap to shoot things,” Apatow says. “I mean, Steven Soderbergh makes movies on iPhones, so there really isn't an obstacle to just go out on the street and make something -- and showing people your point of view and your style. I always just encourage people to make stuff. It's always obvious when someone is interesting and is good at what they do or even have potential. I just say, just start doing it.”
” Lena Dunham made her movie for like $50,000 -- ‘Tiny Furniture’ -- and it looks like it cost a million dollars,” he adds, “and she got a TV series off of it -- I think that it requires that.”
Touching on the advent of streaming, Judd has advocated in the past against listening to podcasts and watching films at double-speed to save time. “They want to have this button that Apple has for podcasts where you could listen to podcasts at double speed or different speeds and YouTube, I guess has a button somewhere where you can do that. Netflix started experimenting with that and I just said, you know, ‘Do whatever you want, but you should ask the permission of the creators if they want that button to work on their movie.’ I'm sure Francis Ford Coppola doesn't want there to be a button to watch ‘The Godfather’ at double speed on Netflix. Just because people want to watch stuff faster doesn't mean they should be allowed to, and it's very offensive to the filmmakers and the creators of all these TV shows.”
Switching gears to an icon who has been an inspiration and mentor throughout his career, actor and comedian Garry Shandling -- who unfortunately passed away in 2016 -- Judd says gave him his first writing jobs. “I wrote the GRAMMY Awards a couple of times for him in the early nineties,” he explains. “So, when I was a kid, I wrote a bunch of jokes to try to get the job and he took me to New York and it was amazing. Bob Dylan came on at the beginning of the first Gulf War and he sang ‘Masters of War’ in this Punk Rock style and no one could understand a word he was saying. [Jack] Nicholson was on and [Frank] Sinatra and [ U2 ''s] Bono and it was the most exciting thing that ever happened to me. Then he had me write for his TV show, he let me direct ‘The Larry Sanders Show,’ and he was always there as a spiritual and comedy mentor.”
“I wanted to let people learn all the lessons I learned from him and I did that by putting this book together,” says Apatow. It's Garry Shandling's Book , available now on Amazon, expands on his Emmy Award winning HBO documentary The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling with tons of extras not seen in the documentary.
“I found just thousands of pages of jokes,” Judd says. “It's fun to read pages of jokes as Garry is trying to crack a premise and then there's 30 years of journals. In the documentary, the journal pages fly by pretty quick, but in the book, you can read a lot of them and see how he approached his life. He was very into Buddhism and a lot of the journals is him reminding himself to let go of his ego, and to drop the story of his life, and just be open and kind. That was something that he was always reminding himself of. The book’s both funny and inspirational, and it's an oral history of his life.”
Listen to Johnny’s full conversation with Judd Apatow above.
Follow the new Audacy podcast On The Phone with John Mingione , featuring hilariously riveting conversations from A-List celebs, chatting on the phone with Z-List radio host and TikTok star -- NEW 102.7 's John 'Johnny' Mingione.
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