Chris: You should go to Eddie Murphy’s house on the next fight night. You’ll be entertained by the funniest man on earth. He has amazing fight parties. There’s lots of people there, every black comedian imaginable—and he’s funnier than everybody there. But I’ve given up asking him. I don’t even bring it up anymore.
Judd: As you’re preparing your new act, do you begin by thinking about what’s important, what really needs to be said right now?
Chris: A little bit, yeah. Some of it’s for the crowd, and some of it’s for you. There’s definitely a part of you that goes like, Okay, there’s a lot of this police brutality going on. I got to look over this and figure out what my take is because people want to hear about it. I’m going to have to find a real, original take on it—not just, you know, “Hey, stay away from football players!” I’m going to have to dig deep, regardless of what else I want to talk about. You have no choice. You’ve got an obligation because people are paying to hear that. But again, it also depends on what kind of comedian you are. If you’re Demetri Martin, you probably don’t have to do that. Jerry Seinfeld doesn’t have that pressure, either.
Judd: Jerry doesn’t have any pressure, apparently.
Chris: Jerry’s got no fucking pressure. God bless him. Jerry Seinfeld, one of the greatest comedians of all time and one of the cockiest bastards to ever live.
Judd: How did he get that cocky? If you’re neurotic in any way—like, in a normal way—he looks at you like you’re insane for not getting it.
Chris: To his credit, he writes some of the best jokes ever. He really does. I mean, they’re like Billy Joel songs, you know what I mean?
Judd: Yeah.
Chris: There’s a lot of hip guys in the world, but who can follow Billy Joel in America, you know what I mean? I don’t give a fuck who you are, I don’t give a fuck if you’re Sting or Bono—if you’re onstage in America, there’s a part of you that just hopes Billy Joel doesn’t walk in. I remember going to see Billy and Elton John in concert. I kind of wanted to see Elton a little more, and I came out of it thinking, Billy Joel is actually more American than Bruce Springsteen, you know what I mean? Bruce Springsteen’s a fucking Russian soldier compared to fucking Billy Joel, man. That shit’s American. Everybody likes those records. And Jerry Seinfeld writes jokes like that. Everybody gets those fucking jokes. I’ve seen that guy work fucking Mexican crowds, black crowds, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. He’s fucking cocky and kills every night.
Judd: I sometimes think it seems everyone in our circle had their kids at the same time. You, me, Seinfeld, Sandler—it’s a real shared experience.
Chris: It’s weird. Our kids are all the same age. And we’re all kind of married to the same woman.
Judd: We all have the same issues in our lives. Several decades in, everybody’s kind of in the same place, trying to figure out the next phase. When people have had success and they’ve made money and they have families—and they’re not dying to be accepted anymore, with a long career ahead of them—they’re still trying to figure it out.
Chris: We’re going to be old for a long fucking time, dude.
Judd: Then you see certain people, like Martin Scorsese, who just go on a tear, a late game tear. And that makes you wonder, Who am I going to be when I’m not a young punk?
Chris: You’ve got to make yourself scared. When I did that play not too long ago, it was like, Oh, this shit is scary. I’m out of my comfort zone. I’m the low man on the totem pole. I could really suck at this. But it’s in moments like that that you are going to learn the most. Directing, too: What the fuck was I ever doing directing anything, you know what I mean? It scared me and I did some things that sucked. But you learn more from fucking up than you do from success, unfortunately. And failure, if you don’t let it defeat you, is what fuels your future success.
Judd: What made you realize it was time to make Top Five, which is such a personal film?
Chris: Doing that play, a few years ago, inspired me. It showed me what work is again. The thing about the play was, it wasn’t a revival. It was an original play. If you’re doing a revival, you can rehearse it at your house—the lines aren’t going to change or whatever. But when you do an original play, when you’re in previews, you get new pages, new lines, every day. “I’m going to get rid of that scene and we’re going to do this scene instead.” What? But being around actors really helped me. Being around creative people that had talents I didn’t helped me. It opened my eyes. I don’t know, I mean, I had directed two other movies in my life, but I haven’t had a hit in a long time. There was a part of me that was like, Okay, if this one doesn’t work, I’m kind of done. There was a part of me that was pushed against the wall, but there was also a part of me—there’s a part of Top Five that’s really personal, and it works. It plays like my stand-up. I did stand-up for fifteen years before I broke, you know.
Judd: So then you make this more personal movie. You show it in Toronto and the place goes crazy and you sell it to a big studio. That’s the weird thing about creativity, right? When you get real, you have your biggest success.
Chris: It’s the smallest movie I’ve ever written. Actually, it’s the first time I wrote a movie. It’s the first time I’ve written by myself.
Judd: I just finished a movie with Amy Schumer. At first, she wanted to write it with someone else, but I said to her, “I think, in ways that are hard to describe, your point of view will shift because you’re going to make all sorts of concessions that are destructive to—”
Chris: You’re going to have a consensus. You’re not going to have a vision. That’s what happens. So I wrote this movie by myself. Every other movie I’ve done—Head of State or whatever—was like, I wasn’t even writing a movie. I was writing a poster. I was thinking about the pitch meeting before I was done with the movie.
Judd: I feel like, for a lot of people, there’s that moment when you go personal with your work and everything changes. Look at Louis C.K. When he revealed himself, the whole world connected with him. I felt that way with The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up and Freaks and Geeks—that’s when I realized that if I just come clean, people connect in a completely different way.
Chris: I mean, there was an episode of Louis—the one where Melissa Leo gives him a blowjob in the car. And then she says, you know, “Now you’re going to eat my pussy.” And that blew my mind. I watched that episode, and it was like the first time I heard NWA. It was like, Oh shit, you can do this?
Judd: Yeah.
Chris: And I thought, So why am I so scared? Why do I give a fuck about testing? All the nonsense I spent so long giving a shit about. And then there was the fact Louis C.K. is a guy who literally used to—you know, I hired him on my writing staff and here he is, doing this. It was like, Oh shit. Okay, whatever I do next has to be this honest.
EDDIE VEDDER (2013)
I am aware that Eddie Vedder is not a comedian or a comic actor. Yes, he was hilarious in Walk Hard, but I think most people still see him as a musician, not a funny person. I was thrilled to be asked to interview Eddie Vedder—and all of the members of Pearl Jam—to help them promote their last record, Lightning Bolt. Even though Eddie is way nicer and cooler than I am, and has the kind of artistic accomplishments I can only dream about, I have always felt like we are on a similar journey. We are about the same age. We have used our lives and experiences, our joy and pain, to create personal work that we can stand behind. We have tried, above all, to keep our careers going with our integrity and humanity intact. Plus, I am fanatical about his music.