To paraphrase Judd Apatow interviewed on the just-released episode of Pete Holmes’ great “You Made It Weird” podcast, his work encompasses a lot of different key and core subjects: coming of age, high school, college, mortality, marriage and family, and to hear it from the writer/producer/director, he’s not entirely sure where to go next.
“Sometimes I think ‘Well, what else is there to cover??’,” he explained to Holmes jokingly. “And I realize there’s not much left. I could start writing about old age… or go back and talk divorce when my parents [split-up], or go back to youth, but I do really feel like I’ve made a pretty good high school show and a college show and a pretty good young adult show, [stories] about first sex, first relationship, marriage, older marriage, death and so I’ve covered most of my bases.”
Apatow said one of the benefits of working with Amy Schumer on “Trainwreck” is that he gets to work in her “shame” bin and this can rebuild reserves he’s depleted over the years. While the “This Is 40” and “Funny People” writer/director says presently he’s not sure what to write about, he already has found new creative veins to explore, seemingly prompted by the notion that he’s checked all the boxes in his milieu.
“Right now I’m like, ‘I’m not sure what to write about,’ although I’m trying to write a little bit about service, sacrifice, things like that,” he revealed. “I’m writing a screenplay with Phil Klay who wrote this great book "Redeployment" about soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, their time there and what happens when they come home.”
“We’ve been writing an original screenplay and that’s been a different experience a comedy with drama or a drama with comedy about those people and what they’ve gone through and hopefully in an entertaining way so it’s not one of these depressing movies you don’t want to see,” he explained. “But it’s just about: what happens to soldiers who return to a country that isn’t even that aware that we’re at war? And different issues that they face that people don’t think about too much.”
“So, that’s an interesting area to explore,” he continued. “And it’s outside of the box of what happens in this house….It takes a lot for me to write about things I haven’t personally experienced.”
It’s a pretty interesting two and half hour talk running the gamut of subjects like creativity, writing and what it means to be funny. Check out the entire podcast below. Apatow’s “Trainwreck,” starring Amy Schumer, opens on July 17th.