A review by hikemogan
Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy by Judd Apatow

4.0

When Judd Apatow was 15 years old he began doing interviews with comedians he admired. He'd tell their publicists that he was "from a radio station in New York," which was technically true but the station was a 10-watt high school station. He'd grill them about how the business worked, how they worked on their sets, and set about preparing himself for doing it too. Apatow dropped stand-up for a career in writing and then directing/producing films, but he continued to interview funny people all the while. This book functions partly as a set of interviews with tons of hilarious people but partly as an autobiography of Apatow through those interviews. Some conversations are all business (older comedians in particular seem to have a very walled-off style) and then some are so intimate and revealing about Apatow and the interviewees' lives that they read like private conversations. Each interview includes the year it was conducted (some people like Jerry Seinfeld, appear twice, first in 1983 and then again in the 2010s). Clocking in at nearly 500 pages, it might seem daunting but keep in mind these are transcribed interviews with some lines being simple one or two-word responses, so you'll fly through it.