INTERVIEW: JUDD APATOW, SETH ROGEN, AND ROMANY MALCO (THE 40 YEAR-OLD VIRGIN)

40 Year-Old Virgin director Judd Apatow (he’s not really a 40 year-old virgin – at least he couldn’t be since he’s only 37… and married with kids) has been behind a rather large number of great properties from both television and film over the years. Here’s a breakdown:

The Larry Sanders Show
The Ben Stiller Show
The Critic
The Cable Guy
Freaks and Geeks
Undeclared
Anchorman

The 40 Year-Old Virgin does the deed this Friday, August 19th.

Q: The music selection in the movie was great. Can you talk about that process as far as choosing what fits and what’s most appropriate?

Apatow: Well I always enjoy that process of selecting music and it was always a pick part of Freaks and Geeks and all the other things that I’ve done. I was trying to think of what the sound would be and we thought that maybe there’d be two types of music in the movie. One type would be really disgusting rap and just terrifying sexualized world music with titles I can’t say… like in the nightclub, some of the stuff is pretty strong. And then where it’s his life, the idea is that his musical taste never changed. That if he had sex, maybe his musical taste might have grown up. So none of the music for him comes after 1984. So that’s why it’s like Asia – Heat of the Moment or JoBoxers – Just Got Lucky… that was the basic idea. I made this huge tape of what I called Bad Eighties Music… not like the good stuff from The Wedding Singer. And it’s hard to call it bad because I really like it, but I don’t think it’s a lot of people’s favorite stuff.

Q: What were the challenges for you to do a hard R-rated comedy, for you to keep true to that, and how were you successfully able to get it off the page once you started shooting?

Apatow: Well, when you do a movie about a guy trying to have sex, immediately you realize it has to be R or else you can’t talk about any of this or you can’t show anything. But in order to do an R-rated movie for a studio, you really have to make it an R. And the phrase they use is, "You have to earn your R." Like, why are we an R is we don’t go for it a little bit? And so for the many years that Seth Rogen and I have worked together he’s always said, "We have got to do a movie where people speak the way they actually speak."

Rogen: The way I actually speak. [Laughter]

Apatow: And people would really like it. He was a great influence on this style of conversation and we just let it fly. We always shot options, because I knew there was a chance that people would say, "You can’t say that! You can’t talk about blankity blank on a pedestal!" But we shot it all, and I’m really happy with how it came out. I hadn’t done anything R-rated before. I worked on The Larry Sanders Show for many years and we had a lot of fun with our F curses there, but it was a lot of fun to try to come up with creative ways to do things that were kinda dirty. But I just saw Wedding Crashers the other day, which I really enjoyed, but I did walk out thinking, "We’re like 100 times dirtier than that." [Laughter] Like if that’s an R-rated comedy, then people have no idea what’s coming. It’s just a different level of dirty. And Romany… just talks that way!

Malco: That’s not true. [Laughter]

Apatow: And there was a lot of improvisations when we did the movie, but to just let Romany go… I mean, I can’t write the way Romany and Seth talk. These weird phrases, just the color and language. I… I can’t do it and I’d be embarrassed to try. So it’s fun to let everyone say it the way they would say it.

Malco: And I’ve always felt very misrepresented when I watch television. Even in some of the people we’ve considered self-appointed leaders or whatever, at least in the communities where I’ve come from, I’ve always found to be misrepresented there in one extreme or another. And given the opportunity to actually have that realistic banter and the thoughts that go on and the soliloquies are said out loud, it’s kind of a luxury.

Apatow: Like you can be dirty and a nice guy. I mean, the character can be a good guy who talks in a filthy way… that was the fun of it! [Romany’s] character is a good guy, he has problems with women, and you like him the whole time no matter how horrifying the things are that he says.

Q: How’s your game with women?

Rogen: [Pause] I come to press junkets. [Laughter]

Apatow: That’s a 5 hour answer for Romany.

Rogen: Yeah, exactly. He doesn’t need to go anywhere. Women come to Romany’s home. They knock on his door.

Malco: Naw, I’ll admit actually that I’m still a virgin. This is actually my life story. [Laughter] You know, dude… straight up and down… that whole character you saw is nothing like me, for the record. If I’m attracted to a woman, I have the hardest time saying my name. And I usually just try and do my best not to be on the prowl or anything because I just wind up getting myself into trouble. I choose horribly!

Apatow: I’m married and have 2 kids. [Laughter] But it is sad that I understand this world so well.

Q: It would’ve been so much easier to make Steve’s character kind of the stereotypical virgin, living in his mother’s basement, overweight, whatever. Yet, he’s fairly normal… sociable and so forth. Can you talk a bit about making him a just a "normal" guy?

Apatow: Well, in my first conversations with Steve about writing this, we talked about how broad the movie would be. My favorite experiences have been when you can really be funny and broad with a grounded character, like some of the sequences in Freaks and Geeks. So I thought of it as Freaks and Geeks 20 years later if one of them never had sex. And that was my secret thought if I made the movie. There was some concern that it could become a Pee-Wee Herman type character and so we always had our eye on the ball. And our executive producer, Mary Parent, at Universal was very smart about making sure we didn’t do that. We had to make him a real guy and have people care for him. And early on, we had this joke where he worked out a lot because he had all of this extra energy. [Laughter] And Steve took it very seriously. He lost 30 pounds and got ripped and I was like, "Oh my God, I’m working with Joe Piscopo!" [Laughter] And I was nervous about it because I don’t think comedians wanting to look good is ever good for the comedy. But, it actually makes it work much better because there’s no reason why he’s a virgin other than the fact that he’s shy, nervous, and just let it get past him. I think that we learned that in our research when we read a lot of blogs on the internet from virgins that they’re all just nice shy people. They weren’t odd and there wasn’t some big joke to it. We did want to respect that in the topic.

Rogen: It’s funny because he’s the kind of the guy you just don’t notice really. And if he’s too extreme in any way, then you would notice him. But I think that part of the idea is that he’s one of those guys that could be in a room with you alone and you would never really pay that close attention to him.

Apatow: I think that’s a tribute to Steve’s performance.

Malco: I agree.

Apatow: I mean, he is underplaying this part and tearing down the house at the same time and he’s able to be a real person, not like a comic character itself like if he were doing Inspector Clouseau, but a character created to be very reactive. I’m really amazed at what he accomplished in this part because he’s never done anything like this. He’s never been the lead in a movie. He’s played really obnoxious guys or really dumb guys, and he’s brilliant at it, but there’s no real precedent for his work here. I think it’s really exciting, and if it’s the emergence of a major comedy star who can do all of it, it’s really quite remarkable. Especially from someone who’s a real journeyman/actor who never even thought this would happen to him. So I’m really excited.

Q: With all the improv that takes place, how challenging is it to put all this together in the editing room?

Apatow: You know, it’s not that challenging, in fact it’s actually really fun. We started this process of improving on film a long time ago when we did The Ben Stiller Show, and Ben showed me how to do it. We would do these sketches and Ben would play an agent for Howie Mandel. And Howie would be there, and Ben would pitch bad career moves to Howie. But then Howie would leave and we’d do Ben’s close-up. And for like 2 hours, Ben would rip even more offensive pitches that you couldn’t even say to Howie Mandel. Ben’s in his clean shot and you’ve got a clean shot of Howie and he looks annoyed and you can really cut to anything from that if you’re aware of how it’s going to cut. And so we did that on Freaks and Geeks a fair amount with the kids because they were really good at it, especially Seth. And I brought Seth on as a writer and an actor on Undeclared because of how funny his improvs were. And then on Undeclared… which comes out this week on DVD [Laughter]… we did a ton of improv. And Will Ferrell did an episode where he was an amphetamine addict who will write your term paper for 50 bucks. So I pushed really hard with Anchorman as a producer to have that type of production where we were really set up for Will to go. But what was different for this was that we were trying to these improvs but with more of a grounded story. And I would literally put one camera on Jane [Lynch] and one camera on Steve and shoot their conversation and let them go for 2 hours. And the crew seemed really annoyed because no one knew that this could cut together. But if you’re paying attention to what they’re saying and you keep going, "Say that line without having him step on you," and cut it in your head, it’s not too hard. And then things come out that I would never have thought of in a million years, especially everything that Romany says.

Q: With this being your first feature film directing experience, how did it help to have people you’ve worked with before there with you?

Apatow: I’ve waited a long time to direct because I wanted it to be a situation that I felt comfortable in and I felt I could express myself. And I wanted to work with people that I understood what they did comedically. Plus, I was also scared to death of doing a bad job and never being able to do it again. But the first thing I did was to hire Seth as a co-producer, and he was invaluable… just coming to Seth every day when he wasn’t performing and pitching jokes to everybody. Carla Gallo is hilarious, anyone who will come and suck on Steve’s toe for two hours and be hilarious is a genius. [Laughter] So I like to have all these people. Loudon Wainwright III is one of my biggest influences. As a kid, I started listening to him and he always had these really bitter, funny, truthful songs about breakups, and as the years have gone by, I realized he had inspired me more than anyone that you can be funny and dark and sweet at the same time. So it was fun to have him play the priest at the end of the movie.

Q: Which do you prefer, movies or television?

Apatow: Well, they can’t cancel you in movies. [Laughter]

Rogen: I think they might! I wouldn’t say that.

Apatow: What I always do, if you look at the arc of my career: The Ben Stiller Show, cancelled after 12 episodes… I run to make a movie… the movie doesn’t do well… I run back to TV. So I’m just a scared dog. [Laughter] But I like television better because I like having a writing staff and I like having the actors there. And it’s been very sad that these shows have been cancelled in the first season because everybody bonds and we figure out what we’re doing and right when we know what we’re doing they tell you to stop. So I miss that experience, and I’m sure one day I’ll go back and do something for HBO or someplace like that. But this is heartbreaking to stop. This has been the greatest TV cast of all time, and that’s kind of sad. But I’m a bit lazy in that I keep trying to use some of the same people in all the projects, so as soon as it ends, I start thinking of what else I can do with these people in movies or television.

Q: What can we expect from the DVD?

Apatow: I literally have to finish the DVD when I finish the movie, so I’ve been doing that for the last month. I’m a big fan of comedy DVDs, so I always want everything. And I’m a big nerd, so I sit at home and think, "When are they going to put The Mike Douglas Show on DVD?" [Laughter] So there’s a lot of funny things. You have Seth and Rudd and all their improvs on "how I know you’re gay" and this thing called Line-O-Rama where it’s just a montage of one-line jokes from every scene in the movie that were cut out. And I like to put raw footage from the movie. Just uncut so that you can see how it works. So we put an 8-minute version of speed dating on that’s so dirty. We also shot an extended version of the movie. We added like 15-17 minutes to it for the extended DVD. We debated if it makes the movie unbearably long, but then we thought it’s more value for your dollar. [Laughter]

Malco: I think the DVD will give the movie a run for its money.

Q: How hard was it to find all the collectible action figures and dolls like Aquaman that filled Andy’s apartment?

Apatow: Our set dresser K.C. looked for months. I said to my production designer and set dresser, "Go to a real store that sells comic books and ask them who the biggest comic fans are, and go to their houses or apartments and take pictures of them." And then we looked at the pictures and made the apartment look like these people’s apartments. And it was hard to clear everything, especially when you’re doing a movie called The 40 Year-Old Virgin. They wonder where you’re going to stick their action figures.

Q: So what other projects are you going to be working on next?

Apatow: Seth and I wrote another script for Universal that we’re hoping to do next year about a high school couple trying to survive going to two different colleges, which is another R-rated comedy that we’re excited about. [Laughter] I’m also leaving for North Carolina in two weeks to produce the follow-up to Anchorman called High, Wide, and Handsome. It’s about NASCAR written and starring Will Ferrell and written/directed by Adam McKay.