How did Judd Apatow learn comedy? He asked questions

Judd Apatow started interviewing comedians 30 years ago, when he was a teen comedy fanatic from Long Island. Armed with a bulky recorder and the media credentials of his high school radio station, Apatow talked with heroes such as Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno to discover the keys to the comedy kingdom. It worked: Apatow has become one of our most successful comedy writer-director-producers, responsible for, among others, “Knocked Up,” “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” “Anchorman” and “Freaks and Geeks.” Now he has sat down with more comedians (including Louis CK, Steve Martin, Jimmy Fallon and Amy Schumer) and collected all these conversations in a book called “Sick in the Head” (Random House: 512 pp., $27).

Apatow spoke to me by phone.

You recorded some of these interviews on cassette in the 1980s and have kept them all this time.

Oh, my gosh, I’m such a hoarder. I’m just the kind of person who would treat these cassette tapes like gold. I had them transferred digitally as soon as CDs were invented. I’m a nerd that way. They were always handled with care, although a few did disappear over the years. But for the most part, I treated them like the ark of the covenant.

When you started, you wanted to crack the code of these comedians. Did you?

So much of the advice that was given to me when I was 15 and 16 years old, I took. Everything from the logistics of how to get on at a comedy club to discipline and patience. A lot of what people talked about was that it took a really long time to become a good comedian. That was important to hear. It was good to know, “Oh, you’re not going to be good at this in six months; this is going to take about seven years.” … To set your clock at a slower pace was really healthy for me.

Did you edit down those early interviews? You never seem to ask any silly questions.

I was really serious about trying to do a good job. I didn’t want to embarrass myself, because I looked up to everybody; my nightmare would be to come across as some idiot kid. I did better in some than in others; a lot of those people were very intimidating. Some people were so nice that it became easy. Jerry Seinfeld was so easy to talk to and warm that I was able to have a great conversation about how to get into comedy and how to write jokes. That was my favorite one of the time.