I have gotten to know Jay a bit in the years since our interview, and he’s been nothing but nice to me, for reasons I still do not understand. He did this interview with me when I was in high school, first of all. Then, when I was in college, I sent him a whole list of jokes to see if he’d buy them for his Tonight Show monologues. And one night, not long after, my grandmother knocked on my door and said, “Jay Leno’s on the phone.” I didn’t believe her. But I went to the phone anyway, and this voice said, “Hi, Judd. I read your jokes. They’re not quite there yet. They’re close, but they’re not quite there,” and then he proceeded to explain to me what, exactly, was wrong with my jokes in the kindest possible terms. He was so generous and encouraging, I didn’t even realize that I was being rejected. That’s not easy to do, to call a kid and tell him that his jokes aren’t good, and the way he did it just made me want to work harder. It also made me want to treat people kindly, the way Jay treated me.
Then, much later, when I started directing my own movies, Jay would always book me as a guest on The Tonight Show. I never told him that one of the main reasons why I started making movies in the first place—why, from as early as I can remember, I wanted to get into this business—was so that I could one day become successful enough to be a guest on The Tonight Show. For me, The Tonight Show was the endgame, period. Sometimes I think movies were just a way to get there.
Jay Leno: Is there an interview, or am I just talking?
Judd Apatow: Well, yeah, you’re talking to me. That kinda thing. Okay, um—I know it’s hard to get going, but once you get going—
Jay: Okay.
Judd: Where are you right now in your career, if you had to describe it?
Jay: Ah, about twenty-five miles outside of New Jers—outside of New York. I guess I’m in Jersey right now. Where am I? I have no idea. I mean, the last two years or so I’ve been doing the Letterman show a lot and that seems to have helped an awful lot. You know, the clubs are kind of full on Wednesday now, instead of just the weekends, so that’s nice. But I don’t know, I’m too close to it. I can’t tell.
Judd: You’re a draw, but you’re not pulling like Universal Amphitheatre or anything.
Jay: (Laughs) No, but—I really can’t tell. I mean, I like this stage of my career. Because I’m at the point where I know if the stuff is still funny. The audience is still at the point where, unless it’s funny, they don’t laugh. They might like you going in, but if it’s not funny, they don’t laugh. Sometimes when you get real big, they laugh at stuff that’s really not that funny and you don’t know anymore.
Judd: Are you happy doing the clubs or would you like to play the larger audiences?
Jay: I like doing the clubs. Two hundred to four hundred seats is about the maximum for ideal comedy, where you play with the crowd and all. I mean, obviously the big rooms are nice because there’s more money. But performance-wise, the smaller rooms are more fun to do. I mean, it’s like anything else. I like this. I’m happy where I am now, and—you know, the whole idea is if you keep coming up with new ideas and new material, everything else just falls into place.
Judd: Who are the people that you’ve opened up for?
Jay: Oh, everybody. Everybody from Stan Getz, Mose Allison, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Chick Corea, all the way to like John Denver, Tom Jones, Perry Como, Kris Kristofferson. All kinds of people.
Judd: I thought I saw you once on Laverne & Shirley.
Jay: Oh!
Judd: What is the point of doing that show at this stage in your career?
Jay: Well, the point of doing that show is the same point of doing this show. Somebody asks you to do it, and you go, Well, why not? I like Penny and Cindy and all those people, they’re good friends. People ask you to do the show, and it’s nice. I mean, okay, the show is not exactly King Lear, but that’s all right.
Judd: But it’s the kind of thing you make fun of in your act.
Jay: It is. Sure it is. But I’m not above doing something I make fun of in my act. I also eat at McDonald’s and all those other things I make fun of. That’s all a part of the business, you know. I do Hollywood Squares. I do whatever people ask me to do. Unless it’s something which is just totally, oh, I don’t know, I mean, sexist or racist or something of that nature. But when you do those kinds of shows it just helps, you know. When I’m on TV, I’m either on The Tonight Show or the Letterman show, which is on after eleven-thirty at night in most parts of the country. Consequently, there’s a whole generation of people that never see you or know who you are. So when you do a show like Laverne & Shirley, it gives my relatives a chance to see me on television.
Judd: Would you want more people knowing you? Is that something you want?
Jay: That’s something every performer tries to get. It’s like anything else: You do your work and the more people you can please with it, the better it makes you feel.
Judd: What prompted you to go into this?
Jay: Oh, I don’t know, it seemed like a fun way to make money at the time. I was in college, and I used to do ah—all those college shows, you know, like in Boston there are two hundred or three hundred colleges. So consequently every Saturday the cafeteria would become the Two Toke Café or something like this. And there would be nineteen-year-old folksingers with guitars ODing on the stage, and I used to emcee some of this stuff. And I would ah—you know, I would say, “That was so-and-so.” Boo, get off the stage, man you stink, get outta here. The audience was terrible, I was terrible, the acts were terrible. But it was fun being onstage and screwing around and—I started going around other coffeehouses and things like that and getting onstage. I was making five bucks, six bucks a night, which is what friends of mine who were waiters and waitresses were making at the time.
Judd: When you were in college?
Jay: Yeah. Colleges. I used to work strip joints. All kinds of places like that.
Judd: Strip joints? How did that work out?
Jay: Oh, your eyes light up, huh? Well, there were no comedy clubs.
Judd: What year is this?
Jay: Seventy-three, ’74. Most of the comedy clubs didn’t come along until about ’77, so the only place you could work was strip joints. You know, I had read Lenny Bruce and Milton Berle and all those people, and they all seem to have gotten their start in strip joints. So I used to go in and do strip joints. They were terrible. I was like nineteen, with long hair. It was terrible. But I thought it was fun.
Judd: What kind of reactions did you get?
Jay: Terrible. “Get off the stage, you stink.” I had a guy jump me with a Heinz ketchup bottle once. Split my head open. I got eight stitches on that one.
Judd: Why’d he do that?
Jay: (Laughs) Why? Why did he do that? I don’t know. Why do people beat up grandmothers and rob their purses? You want a rational explanation for why a guy came onstage and hit me on the head, and knocked me out? I don’t know. If I knew why, I wouldn’t have done it.