Why Judd Apatow Puts Himself in (Most of) His Documentaries

Right now, Netflix’s stock price (NFLX) is a joke — just not the funny, ha-ha kind. Simultaneously, the Netflix Is a Joke branding is bringing subscribers four documentaries on four comedy entities — Martin Mull (Oct. 7), Norm Macdonald (Oct. 16), Maria Bamford (Oct. 23) and SCTV (Oct. 30) — this month. Judd Apatow, a comedy legend in his own right, directed two of them: he made Norm’s solo and Maria’s with Neil Berkeley, who also co-directed Martin’s (with Bob Saget; Jason Hehir directed the SCTV documentary).

(To proactively clear any confusing, the Netflix Is a Joke festival is not happening this month. Robbie Praw, Netflix’s vice president of standup and comedy formats told THR that Netflix Is a Joke is “more than a festival — it’s an ecosystem and lens for how we think about stand-up comedy,” adding, “These documentaries are part of that and take it further: Honoring four comedy icons… and keeping the conversation going all year round.”)

The individual films are as different as the individuals they chronicle. Apatow (Knocked Up, The 40-Year-Old Virgin) often inserts himself as an on-screen supporting character in his documentaries — like his prior Mel Brooks and Garry Shandling films — as he does again with Paralyzed By Hope: The Maria Bamford Story. The first voice we hear after the Paralyzed by Hope title screen is Apatow’s. The first face we see in its present-day footage is Apatow’s. It’s not a vanity thing.

Apatow believes the camera following him is “a way to make [the film] more personal,” and in cases like the Shandling doc, to show “what it was like to be his friend and mentee,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. It’s a user-experience thing: as a viewer, Apatow likes to know to whom a documentary’s subjects are talking at any given time.

“Those conversations are very intimate, and the obsession with eliminating the idea that someone asks a question sometimes takes away a level that reveals something about the subject,” Apatow said. “If I’m talking to Mel Brooks, he’s talking in a specific way because it’s me… It’s being honest with the audience that this isn’t exactly normal.”

Neil Berkeley (Gilbert, Harmontown) is not famous, which can also work to one’s advantage. When making his Gilbert Gottfried doc, Berkeley just moved in with the comedian (a la Nathan Fielder in You Can See Everything — except, you know, nothing at all like what goes down in You Can See Everything).

“I’m not in my movies. I’ve always been very against that. Not for any other reason other than, who wants to see me in this movie?” Berkeley said. His Paralyzed By Hope colleague is “a known commodity,” Berkeley added, so Apatow being on screen “makes sense.”

The differing approaches, which converged somewhat in Paralyzed By Hope, are equally legit, Netflix’s vp of original documentaries Adam Del Deo, told THR. It is what we don’t see that makes for the best biographical documentaries, he said.

“What we(‘ve) found is this,” Del Deo explained. “To create this authenticity, it’s about filmmakers building trust and getting intimacy with the subjects. In doing that, there’s ability to dig deeper into their lives, what makes them tick, and it creates this relatability.”

Apatow made Norm: The Tale of Norm Macdonald the Berkeley way.

“The approach there was to do a found-footage documentary about Norm because he’s such an unreliable narrator. You don’t really know when he’s telling the truth or trying to be provocative or just making things up for fun in a very Bob Dylan-esque way,” Apatow said. “So, we made the decision to just arrange moments from his life and career, and let the audience decide what it all adds up to.”

Also: Norm died in 2021, so it necessitated a different format.

The “brilliance” of the Macdonald doc, Berkeley said, stems from his theory that “the best documentaries feel like their subjects … that movie feels like everyone these days’ experience with Norm Macdonald.”

If you don’t get that, just search Norm’s name on YouTube. You can easily spend hours spiraling down through a rabbit hole of material and stories, laughing the whole time. And when you finally come up for air, you still won’t know who was the real Norm Macdonald and what was one big joke on all of us.

No one will fault Apatow for switching his styles up — probably. When it’s your money financing the film, as Apatow says he did “for years” for the Bamford doc, pretty much anything goes. Paralyzed By Hope features two different scenes in which Apatow forks over some of that sweet, sweet Girls money to Bamford. At their on-screen meet cute, Apatow hands Bamford $500 cash just to pitch her on her own documentary. The scene was real, Apatow said.

“She did say to me, ‘Bring $500.’ I knew she wasn’t kidding,” Apatow said. “She’s very into talking about money. She’s very transparent… She’s been in Debtors Anonymous for decades even though she never went bankrupt.”

And she won’t for at least a few more years: the film effectively ends with Apatow handing Bamford a satchel full of cash. He’d eventually be reimbursed by Netflix. Knowing Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos’ strong affinity for Bamford’s comedy, Apatow figured that would happen.

“We thought somehow this is going to land at Netflix. I don’t know how, but,” Apatow said. “The whole roll of the dice was at the end of the day, will Ted [Sarandos] like this enough? And we showed it to him, and he loved it the way only a mega, mega Maria fan would love it.”

Who Is Martin Mull? wouldn’t have happened without Sarandos either.

“The only reason that got finished is we got through a sizzle [reel] and a deck, and Martin had died, and they sent it to Ted, and Ted called the producers and was like, ‘Why didn’t anyone tell me about this? Why didn’t Bob [Saget] tell me about this?’ And he was kind of upset. He said, ‘In case you didn’t know, my first date in high school was a Martin Mull concert,'” Berkeley told THR. “So really, Ted was like the reason that movie is in the world at all.” (Sarandos appears in both docs, and fun fact, owns a dozen Martin Mull paintings.)

Del Deo might take slight exception to that innocent statement.

“I’ve learned a lot from [Ted] around comedy,” Del Deo said of his final boss Sarandos. “He’s a student of it. But when it comes to programming, those decisions are left up to the documentary team, and these were just great stories.”

Three of the four great stories are available now on Netflix; the SCTV documentary premieres one week from today.