“By my 15th birthday, my obsession was full-blown. I needed to become one of them. The question was, how to do that?”
What follows is a slightly edited version of Judd Apatow's introduction to his new book, Sick in the Head, which is now in stores.
Maritsa Patrinos / BuzzFeed
I was always a fan of comedy and... OK, I have been completely obsessed with comedy for about as long as I can remember. I blame my dad. My dad was not a comedian, but he may have secretly longed to be one. When I was a kid, he would play us Bill Cosby records and even took me to see him perform at Hofstra University for my birthday when I was in fifth grade. (Note: In this essay, I was going to talk at length about Bill Cosby, but I can't, in good conscience, because he has more sexual accusers than I have had partners.) From there I discovered Dickie Goodman, George Carlin, and Lenny Bruce, and then, when Steve Martin hit, I completely lost my mind. I bought every album he put out — and couldn't stop doing an impression of him for the next five years. The biggest fight I ever got into with my parents was when we were at an Italian restaurant for dinner and I was trying to rush them out so we could get home in time to see Steve Martin on The Carol Burnett Show. They refused to hurry through their chicken parmesan and, as a result, I never got to see it. I remain furious.
The mid- to late '70s was a golden age in comedy. You had Richard Pryor, Saturday Night Live, Monty Python, SCTV — all in their prime. The club scene was beginning to explode, too. In my room at night, I would circle the names of all the comedians in the TV Guide who were going to perform on talk shows that week so I wouldn't miss any. When I was in fifth grade, I produced a 30-page report on the life and career of the Marx Brothers and paid my friend Brande Eigen $30 to write it out for me, longhand, because he had better handwriting than I did. This, by the way, was not for school. I wrote it for my own personal use.
A comedy freak was born.
Maritsa Patrinos / BuzzFeed
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Judd Apatow: Why I Chose Comedy