Judd Apatow Quotes

Don't be a jerk. Try to love everyone. Give more than you take. And do it despite the fact that you only really like about seven out of 500 people.

College is the reward for surviving high school. Most people have great fun stories from college and nightmare stories from high school.

My way of dealing with the world has always been to make fun of it and observe it but not take part in it.That's how I became a writer. But when you have kids, suddenly you have to be part of things. It leads almost to a breakdown because your whole defense mechanism is now really destructive.

Eventually, the nerds and the geeks will have their day.

I used to scream at everybody at the beginning of my career. I'd get really emotional. I'd project all my issues about my parents and safety onto the executives, so every conversation where they gave a note was life or death and you don't love me.

I think the story should always determine the visual approach. There are situations where you want things to feel alive and like life, and there are situations that should have some magic and the separation with the grain.

For me, until I know that the audience really gets what I'm trying to communicate I'm not done.

I'm always surprised when you do something very different that people don't get behind you more, because you're always told, "Take chances! Stretch!" And when you do it, sometimes people get really supportive and excited, but sometimes people go at you because you've tossed out the formula.

In the writing, I'm just trying to go deeper, emotionally, and learn more about myself and reveal more and find a way to connect with people in new ways.

We are at this weird moment where there's an economic model that supports creativity. People are demanding something new and fresh.

Most people are really fighting to not be adults. And, when it happens, it's a big transition. And a lot of that is just awful. It's awful to have to get a job and really be responsible for other people. And it is funny, too. Like, we're all kind of little idiot kids trying to act like we know what we are doing.

I am always driven by the terror of humiliation.

Television is much more difficult because at every moment, the network can force you to change things based on their belief about what would make it popular. You’re in a constant debate with a gun to your head, and the gun is cancellation. So it’s hard to win the arguments.

Every joke is an experiment. When you sit, alone, and write a script, or just a joke, you really have no idea if it will succeed.

The only way you survive on all these services is if you're groundbreaking. There's pressure to be groundbreaking, which is the greatest thing that's ever happened. It's a bizarre aspect of what's happened with all of these subscription services is everyone is trying to outdo each other by doing great things.

I think that everything I do tends to root for the underdog.

You can work on a movie for years, and you won't know until you show it to an audience for the first time if it makes any sense to them at all, if they're touched, if they find it funny, so it's endlessly exciting, because failure is just right there all the time, and your chances of success don't rise that much based on the fact that you succeeded last time.

Deer are like dogs. Except for Bambi, they're pretty personality-less.

I've had movies bomb with terrible reviews, I've had movies make a lot of money with terrible reviews, I've had movies get good reviews and make money. And I like it best when the movies do well and the reviewers like them.

The audience doesn't care that most of happened. They just want a good movie.

In my beginnings, those nos were ever-present-even today, those nos are ever-present-and it's the workaround. I always found a workaround for people who turned their back to me. It's a way of being persistent that makes them take notice.

I think a lot of Hollywood is in retreat right now trying to figure out how to make money and make the safest bets.

There was definitely a period when I just felt out of sync with earth.

The moment you think of a joke is the best moment.

To me, I've never understood why there is any question about are women as funny as men.

If we really talked about what's wrong with you, you'd need a 7-1/2-hour movie and nobody would know what category to put it in!

People like the comedy more when they care about the characters.

People talk about universal intelligence ... I'm reticent to believe almost anything, just because my parents weren't religious at all, but that's when I feel it. People talk about being in the "flow."

I put on a big show when I write something I think is funny.

I didn't want to be a director for hire. It really just took me a long time to learn how to direct and to feel up to the job.

Everyone is wounded. No one is healthy enough to never screw up, when you're in combat. But, I like to show that, and I like to show how people get back from that. You have to forgive each other. When you're in the middle of a long-term commitment, the essence of it is that everyone is going to have good days and bad days, and it's about how you continue to rejoin forces.

I used to watch 10 hours of television a night, my entire childhood. And I don't think it did all good things to me. I certainly still have social problems that are a result of being in my room alone too much.

I think a lot of studios today are run by women, and we are entering a time when a lot of women have evolved in Second City and Upright Citizens Brigade and wanted to become writers and comedians.

So many people are in comedy because of difficult mothers or broken homes.

I always felt as a kid that I was underappreciated, invisible or weird, but I've always secretly thought people would one day appreciate what is different about me. I'm always putting that message out there.

Every day I live by only one rule, be a good guy.

I like to shoot scenes where I can see the beginning, middle and end of the entire scene. But, when you edit a movie together, you can just cut right into the middle. You don't need to see them walk into the room and put their jacket on the chair. There's always a lot of shoe leather that you can remove.

I think the world is changing and all that matters is that I'm creating things.

Nowadays, when kids decide they like an artist, they'll absorb everything that artist has ever done in a single night.

I think, there were probably problems with show business where producers and directors would try to get the writing credit also. So they created a rule where the bar, to get your name added to the writing credits, if you've done a revision, is very high if you're also the producer or director.

I have a four-and-a-half-year-old and, when she was two and a half, she would make my wife and I do voices, like Woody and Jessie the Cowgirl, or Elmo, or Yogi Bear and Booboo. If we didn't do it, she would scream at us. So, my wife and I would have adult conversations as Yogi Bear and Booboo. It was just a nightmare year.

My dad was a big fan of comedy. He wanted to be a stand-up. He loved Lenny [Bruce]. He also loved Lord Buckley and jazz and stuff. He was a hipster. My parents were kind of beatnik-y, you know, for Salt Lake City. But my humor, I think, came from wanting to disarm people before they hit me.

There's nothing more fun than debating and defending your taste in music.

You can do weird things on TV - there are happy stories, sad stories, dark stories. But with a movie, it always has to end satisfying. Unless you're the Coen brothers, and it ends with somebody getting shot in the head.

The only thing worse than a crappy TV show which Paddy Chayevsky couldn't have conceived in his worst nightmare is two megacorps fighting over who thought of the crappy show first.

I feel like it's a golden age for television.

It's so difficult to shock America these days.

I wanted to see how funny I could be without making the choice that every 10 minutes something big and visual had to happen.

I thought the idea Jim [Carrey] had, which was to do a comedic version of movies like The Hand That Rocks The Cradle and Unlawful Entry, was really funny. The movie was a little lighter when we first came on, a little more like What About Bob? or something.

All of my jokes were about not being able to meet anybody. I didn't have any insight into anything - even my own insecurities.