Paul Feig: And that’s when we did that day at the Museum of Television and Radio in L.A., where we showed the four episodes that hadn’t aired. That was the coolest thing ever, in a theater packed with fans, with every episode just rocking the house.
Samm Levine: Scott Sassa called me himself and said, “I loved the show. But at the end of the day, it’s a business.” I’ve been on a lot of canceled shows since then and I’ve never heard from the network president.
(Sassa had decided to cancel the show when he saw a rough cut for Paul’s final episode, in which Lindsay, apparently headed for a summer school program, instead runs off with Kim to follow the Grateful Dead.)
Scott Sassa: They show Lindsay traveling in the bus—I almost popped the tape out, because I thought I knew where they were going—and all of a sudden the bus goes by and the freaks are there in that van going to the Grateful Dead concert. And I thought, That’s not how this thing should end.
Judd: I only found out later that when Scott Sassa saw the cut of the finale and he saw them get in the van he realized we would never do the things that would make the show commercial. That doesn’t take away from the fact that Scott was the biggest supporter of the show; it’s only good because he gave us all this creative leeway. But that’s the funny thing about this work: You can do something you really like and someone else just looks at it and says, “I need to end this today.”
Paul Feig: There was a moment when we got canceled where I was like, Thank God—I can’t do this anymore, then immediately filled with regret: Oh, fuck! I love these characters! And I had so many things I wanted to do in the next season. It really is like losing your family. It’s very bizarre.
Judd: Whenever I see an opportunity to use any of the people from Freaks and Geeks, I do it. It’s a way of refusing to accept that the show was canceled. In my head, I can look at Knocked Up as just an episode of Seth’s character getting a girl pregnant. All of the movies relate in my mind in that way, as the continuous adventures of those characters. The show was the kids’ entire life. It was their high schooclass="underline" They’re literally going to school on the set. They’re falling in love on the set. It’s actually happening. And those relationships are still happening; they’re still close.
Paul Feig: I’m still very friendly with them all. Judd was the one who really kept on working with everybody; he brought them along to their next level. I’m like the mom who sits at home and watches the kids become successful and takes great joy in their accomplishments.
Judd: Part of the problem of the show was it should have been on HBO. Everything that’s popular now you might call “independent television.” Mad Men is a little like indie TV. But there was no home for us in 1999. It wasn’t niche television—you were competing against Regis Philbin hosting a game show.
Martin Starr: I can’t express how fortunate I feel to have been a part of something so appreciated and so loved. I’d feel so sorry for myself if I had done a teen movie and people were quoting the dumbest lines in the world everywhere I went. I feel so fortunate that it’s something I care so much about and that I can connect with the people that connect with it. I got really, really lucky.
This interview was originally published in Vanity Fair in January 2013 (Robert Lloyd/Vanity Fair; © Condé Nast).
GARRY SHANDLING (1984)
From the beginning, Garry Shandling was one of my favorite comedians. I used to watch him religiously when he was the guest host on The Tonight Show, in the seventies, and he was basically an unknown comedian filling in for the legendary Johnny Carson. He slaughtered every time. Unlike most of my high school interviews, this one was conducted over the phone. Garry was in a hotel room at Lake Tahoe, preparing for a show that night, but he took the time to talk to me and, in the process, to lay out every single thing he intended to do in the rest of his career. All these years later, I look at it and think: Everything the guy said he would do, he did. The lesson here, for me, was that you have to have a dream before you can execute it. That the people who succeed are the ones who think through what the next stages of their careers might be, and then work incredibly hard, day after day, to attain their goals. They don’t just flop around like fish. They have a vision, and they work their asses off to make it a reality.
Judd Apatow: So you guest-hosted The Tonight Show recently. That’s a pretty big step up. It was the talk of the town. How did that come about?
Garry Shandling: I think I had done the show eleven times. And I had done well, fortunately, just about every time. What happened was that Albert Brooks was supposed to guest-host, but he got sick the day before and so they called me, twenty-four hours ahead of when the show was being taped, and said we’d like you to guest-host tomorrow night. I had twenty-four hours to prepare.
Judd: Really?
Garry: Yeah. I mean, it was very weird. But The Tonight Show has always been supportive of me. And they said, if the opportunity ever arose, I could be used as a guest host. But you really don’t believe it until it happens. So I knew the opportunity existed, but I didn’t think it was gonna happen that fast.
Judd: What kind of preparation would you do for the show? I mean, you’re interviewing people, which is new to you. Plus, you have to have a ten-minute monologue okayed. How did you go about preparing all that?
Garry: It was interesting because I hadn’t worked in about twelve days—which is a long time for a comic to go without working. Because you don’t keep your chops up on the stage otherwise. So I assembled a monologue of material I had done before—there was nothing else to do. And I went out to two clubs that night, tried to figure out what I wanted to do for my monologue. And just try to get my feet back on the stage, because I hadn’t worked in two weeks.
Judd: And when you watched it, were you happy?
Garry: Pretty much. I mean, it’s hard for me to look at it and be objective. I can’t see it. But it seemed like it went well, for my first time. I don’t think it was, like, amazing or anything. Did you see it?
Judd: No, I didn’t. I was doing interviews that night at the Improv. But you must have been scared to death, right?
Garry: Well, I wasn’t real scared because I had mentally prepared for doing that all along. I mean, The Tonight Show has been so supportive of me. They made me feel comfortable, rather than putting me under pressure. They simply said, “We think you’re the guy for this and we don’t have any question that you can do a good job.” That kind of support made me feel comfortable instead of frightened. There were certainly nerves.
Judd: What kind of feedback did you get? Did you get offers afterwards?
Garry: My manager doesn’t tell me about all the offers. But I did get requests to do what we call personal appearance work, which is in clubs and stuff. And I guess there were some sitcom offers, but I’m just not that interested in that.
Judd: Acting is something you’re not interested in doing?
Garry: I’m interested in acting, I just don’t know in what vehicle yet. My immediate goal is to sell a show and get it on the air. A talk variety show. Something like The Tonight Show, I guess. Or David Letterman. I would like to do something more than a situation comedy. And I have a show in my mind that we’re actually going to pitch to the networks when I get back off the road, which will be the end of October.