"A lot of what formed some aspects of my personality was that there was an enormous amount of sports happening and I wasn't good-I would always choke and panic,"
""Imagine not being very good," he said, "and having to be picked close to last multiple times a day," and then being given a position "so far out in right field that I was almost in the middle of Jericho Turnpike.""
""I remember as a kid thinking, It doesn't matter if you're good at this," he said. "You become suspicious of how everything works-power structures; whatever the caste systems are-and then you're drawn to comedians who are always calling out the different parts in life that are bullshit.""
At 15, Judd Apatow discovered a musty Syosset High School basement room that became a formative space for his growing passion for comedy. Growing up on Long Island produced outward idyll and inner torment, exacerbated by persistent athletic failure and repeated social rejection in gym class and pickup games. Repeated placement at the periphery of sports teams fostered skepticism toward social hierarchies and an attraction to comedians who exposed social absurdities. Childhood reverence for Lenny Bruce, Steve Martin, Albert Brooks, Gilda Radner, George Carlin, and Martin Short provided models. Comedy remained uncool among peers, leaving Apatow isolated but deeply devoted.
Read at The Atlantic
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]