“It really blew my mind”: Judd Apatow on being too intimidated to make a movie with Warren Zevon
When you think about the films that Judd Apatow has either written, directed or produced, you’re immediately led down a path of remembering all of the goofy characters he’s overseen over the years, and how despite their seemingly tragic lives, you’re rooting for them to overcome their misfortunes and prove themselves as the unlikely heroes. Whether it’s the dorky teens played by Jonah Hill and Michael Cera in Superbad or the hapless middle-aged Steve Carell in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, you want these misfit characters to somehow triumph in the face of adversity.
Given the awkwardness of the humour in his films and of the characters featured in them, you’re hardly going to want a serious orchestral score soundtracking their every move. You want to add a little bit of whimsy – a bit of joviality – to fit with the strange scenarios that these characters have to dig their way out of. There’s very little in the way of suspense in Apatow’s films, and the lighthearted nature of the soundtracks has always helped hammer home the point that things don’t need to always be solemn or contemplative.
Frequent musical collaborators on Apatow’s films are Lyle Workman and Jon Brion, who have managed to fit into this brief wonderfully over the years of working together, but there have been times when more contemporary songwriters have worked on his films. He’s managed to bring in Loudon Wainwright III for Knocked Up, and Andrew Bird for his most recent fictionalised directorial effort, The Bubble. Their soundtracks can do serious well if they need to, but they’ve always managed to keep it light, and it works a treat for Apatow’s vision.
However, there’s one musician whom Apatow was obsessed with for a period of his life that he desperately wanted to work alongside, but an unfortunate meeting with the individual meant that all chances of it coming to fruition were scuppered from the outset.
Speaking to KCRW about some of his favourite music of all time, one of his selections was the Warren Zevon track, ‘The French Inhaler’, and he revealed to host Raul Campos that he had really wanted to get Zevon to contribute a score to a film he was planning to make in the past. Having been introduced to his work while he was a member of the crew on The Larry Sanders Show in the ‘90s, he was blown away by his rendition of the aforementioned track, and his obsession with the track turned into an obsession with the artist.
However, years later, when he was working on a script for a film, he had the bright idea of asking Zevon to contribute the score, and decided to invite him for lunch to discuss ideas. “At the lunch, I was talking about the script and I said that I was waiting for notes from the studio on the script,” Apatow explained on the broadcast. “He looked at me and he said, ‘Why would you take notes from anybody? So you would change it for someone else?’”
This encounter made him reconsider not only his collaboration with Zevon, but also the way he approached filmmaking and picking the right people to work with. “I was so embarrassed,” Apatow continued, “And it really blew my mind that I thought, ‘Oh this is an artist.’ He writes a song and that’s it. He’s not checking with anyone to see if it’s okay. It really changed a lot of my philosophy about my work and got me into a lot of trouble as I fought off notes in the years that followed.”
