Judd: Yeah.
Jim: Directing is a different story.
Judd: It is.
Jim: But I think of it as an extension of writing. And it’s fun to discover that when you leave the movie you had in your mind when the process began, that’s always—I think Mike Nichols said it best. He said, “Every day there’s a surprise, something you didn’t expect. And that’s the joy of making movies.”
Judd: But do you feel the work, for you, comes from a healthy place or—
Jim: I think everything is great. Any kind of movie you make is great, you know. It’s wonderful, wherever it takes you. But to me, the golden ring is when you get to do a movie and self-express. More and more, the process of making a movie has become: Don’t you dare complain.
Judd: Yeah.
Jim: If you have that going for you, don’t you breathe.
Judd: If they don’t throw a superhero in it, you’ve won.
Jim: Yeah.
Judd: Do you notice common themes or things you’re trying to work out, when you look back at what you’ve done?
Jim: You know, I mean there’s—I guess self-consciousness. People use the word ego all the time, but self-consciousness kills. You can’t do your best work when you’re self-conscious, when you’re conscious of yourself. So the most I get is every once in a while I’ll read over something, and I’ll recognize, That’s my shit. That’s what I do.
Judd: That’s me.
Jim: Right. And then I try not to feel good about that, but I do.
Judd: Sometimes I think that’s as close as I get to a spiritual moment. The moment of creation is the closest I feel to a godlike experience of connecting with something larger.
Jim: I think the whole thing with writing—generally, you push and push and push and then, come on already, when do you pull? At a certain point, it pulls.
Judd: It comes together?
Jim: No, I mean it’s pulling you forward and you’re not working so hard. You’re not laboring. You’re serving. Laboring becomes serving.
Judd: I remember hearing you talk once about serving the characters and honoring the characters, and I had never thought about it in that sense before. As if your characters were real people and you were trying to do right by them, as the writer.
Jim: And the constituency they represent.
Judd: Yeah, that was the first time I heard it framed that way, and that had a big impact on me. Like, Oh, wow, this stuff is important. I think a lot about your work, and what I connected to when I was young, because I was born in ’67. What year did Mary Tyler Moore come out?
Jim: Nineteen-seventy.
Judd: And what year was Room 222?
Jim: Two years earlier.
Judd: Did they overlap?
Jim: Yes. Room 222 was running the first three years Mary was on.
Judd: Wow. For me, those shows—and this was at a time when the whole country was watching ten or twelve shows—they programmed my mind. Your shows and Norman Lear’s shows, Larry Gelbart: Those shows, those characters, had a big effect. They were a part of your day, the struggles of those people, and the humanity of those shows. It’s like building neuropathways for morality and compassion. I remembered when Rhoda—was that the first show that had a gay character on it?
Jim: No, we did an episode of Mary, and we made one of the characters gay, and it was a big deal. I had a thing where one of our jobs was, you know—we were doing this during the feminist revolution, which everything seemed to be centered on, and everybody wanted us to say this, or say that, and you’re just slapping hands off the wheel. I’m very much against proselytizing, unless it comes from the characters as an expression of who they are. I mean, Norman Lear did it—that’s who he is—but that’s not who I am. He broke down barriers. Things were so tightass then.
Judd: Yeah.
Jim: And we followed his show, which was the best thing that happened to us.
Judd: You were on right after. So that night on TV was All in the Family and Mary Tyler Moore, M*A*S*H, The Bob Newhart Show, and then Carol Burnett?
Jim: It was a great night.
Judd: A perfect night.
Jim: The last big Saturday night.
Judd: It’s completely different now, because no one’s watching any show in those kinds of numbers. The biggest night of Breaking Bad is half of what The Mary Tyler Moore Show would get.
Jim: I had a show canceled with a thirty-five share. (Laughs)
Judd: How do you think that changes the culture, the fact that we’re not watching the same things together anymore?
Jim: Well, it’s changed it enormously. Look at sports. Or American Idol, a few years ago. These are the only kinds of things that bring people to the watering hole now, you know? We all come and talk about it the next day. We’re all bound together. We all had a common experience. All of that is changing. There’s a price to that.
Judd: Yeah.
Jim: But television is still the greatest job. We agree on that, right? Television is the greatest job?
Judd: Yes. Yes. So, was Mary Tyler Moore eight seasons?
Jim: Seven.
Judd: Seven seasons, and it went right into Lou Grant.
Jim: Yes.
Judd: That was one of the great transitions of all time.
Jim: Yeah. When is a spin-off not a spin-off?
Judd: I used to love that show.
Jim: You know what was so great about that? We got our stories from the newspapers, literally.
Judd: And so after Mary Tyler Moore, you went into Taxi?
Jim: Mm-hmm.
Judd: What was that like, working with Andy Kaufman?
Jim: He’d always be in character. He was great. I tell Andy stories all the time. How can you resist Andy stories? He invented performance art, just amazing, bizarre stuff. But when you gave him notes, he’d be in that character, and you’d give him notes and it would be like he was Latka with an American talking fast at him. And then he’d do the note. He’d always do the note.
Judd: But he was in character the whole time he was on set?
Jim: Yes.
Judd: Did you have private moments with him when he wasn’t in character?
Jim: My favorite private moment with him was when he was hospitalized after the wrestling match, and I found out it was all a fake.
Judd: Who told you?
Jim: We had been really scared. We were running the tape and then we froze up and we saw—he did a very difficult physical stunt, a brilliant physical stunt. There’s no way a stuntman could do that stunt better than he did. That’s how good Andy was. And I was pissed off because—
Judd: Because he scared everyone?
Jim: This was on front pages! Yeah. And I said, “Do you know what it’s like to think you were seriously injured?” And he says, “Do you know what it’s like to be in traction for a few days?” (Laughs)
Judd: (Laughs) For no reason. Where were you when you had that conversation?
Jim: I was in my office and I think he was still in the hospital. I don’t know.
Judd: And so when he would make a joke like that, what was his tone like? Did he ever talk about what the purpose of it was?
Jim: He’d talk like a guy who just came up with a good bit.