"Cultureshock" Freaks and Geeks - The Documentary (2018)
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TVTranscription
00:00:00 [VIDEO PLAYBACK]
00:00:07 - High school is where you kind of become who you are.
00:00:13 - Those years are tough years.
00:00:15 Your emotions and your hormones and everything
00:00:18 runs so high in a way that you've never
00:00:21 experienced them before.
00:00:24 - All of those things are universal
00:00:25 and will never change.
00:00:28 - You grow up, you get different clothes,
00:00:30 and you become more confident in your guesses.
00:00:32 - In high school, I wasn't at the bottom of the totem pole,
00:00:36 and I wasn't at the top of the totem pole.
00:00:38 We were kind of somewhere in the middle.
00:00:39 - Because when I was a kid, I always
00:00:41 thought nobody understands what's special about me.
00:00:45 I felt very alone.
00:00:46 - Childhood sucks, and adolescence sucks.
00:00:50 So I was like, I want to be anything but myself.
00:00:52 - Wait, does everyone's life suck?
00:00:54 In high school, yeah, kind of.
00:00:58 - Those are growing pains.
00:00:59 You think you know so much, and you're just
00:01:01 so relatively small in the world.
00:01:03 You're so young in the world.
00:01:05 - I am so glad that the most awkward moments in my childhood
00:01:10 were actually captured on film in the context
00:01:12 of a really great show.
00:01:14 - This tiny little show that only lasted a couple months
00:01:17 from '99 to 2000 has found so many people
00:01:22 - They've all gone on not only to be famous actors,
00:01:24 but they're amazing writers, producers, directors.
00:01:28 - And we all have--
00:01:29 I certainly do have a little freak and a little geek in me.
00:01:33 - Did you ever go to high school?
00:01:34 Yeah?
00:01:35 OK, then it's about you.
00:01:38 And then 18 episodes later, they go, that dude was right.
00:01:41 Dumbledore at the mall was right.
00:01:45 - I don't give a damn about my reputation.
00:01:49 I don't give a damn about my reputation.
00:01:53 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:01:55 You're living in the past.
00:01:57 It's a new generation.
00:01:59 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:02:03 A girl can do what she wants to do.
00:02:07 That's what I'm gonna do.
00:02:11 And I don't give a damn about my bad reputation.
00:02:14 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:02:18 I'm new.
00:02:19 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:02:22 Not me.
00:02:23 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:02:26 I'm new.
00:02:27 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:02:32 I'm new.
00:02:33 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:02:36 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:02:40 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:02:43 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:02:46 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:02:51 - The ranch was the place where we all kind of converged.
00:02:55 It was just a really shitty ranch house in North Hollywood
00:02:58 that we trashed, of course.
00:03:01 - You know, it was a bunch of lazy, fat guys
00:03:03 hanging around mostly.
00:03:06 Among the people who went there was
00:03:07 Paul Feig and Judd Apatow.
00:03:10 - We'd all go do stand-up, and then we'd
00:03:12 come back at the end of the night every night,
00:03:14 and we would just stay up and play poker and drink coffee.
00:03:17 - No drugs at all, just Pepsis and cigarettes.
00:03:21 - Judd was younger than all of us.
00:03:23 - He had a really funny stand-up act.
00:03:24 Does this thing with his forehead.
00:03:26 Have you ever seen that one?
00:03:27 Should ask him about that one.
00:03:28 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:03:31 - That was as good as my stand-up got.
00:03:34 - It was just a lot of dreaming of what we hoped we could do.
00:03:37 I didn't have a real sense that any of us would pull it off.
00:03:40 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:03:44 [TAPPING]
00:03:47 [TAPPING]
00:03:50 - I had the idea for a while of wanting to do
00:03:53 something about high school.
00:03:55 It really came out of just the fact
00:03:56 that I hadn't seen myself and the people
00:03:59 I went to school with represented properly
00:04:01 in any high school show.
00:04:03 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:04:04 Everything at that time you watched on television
00:04:07 was either about LA or New York.
00:04:09 The middle of the country was just
00:04:11 treated sort of disparagingly.
00:04:13 - Michigan in winter, the late '70s, all this stuff
00:04:17 made for an odd show.
00:04:20 - It's based on the town I grew up in,
00:04:21 which is Mount Clemens, Michigan.
00:04:23 I need to be an advocate for the Midwest.
00:04:28 I want to be an advocate for real people.
00:04:32 It's where most of us grew up.
00:04:34 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:04:38 And so I really started writing and just really poured out
00:04:41 of it.
00:04:42 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:04:44 I was in love with that cheerleader.
00:04:47 - Hi, Sam.
00:04:48 - Oh, hi, Cindy.
00:04:50 - So what are you doing?
00:04:52 - Just going home.
00:04:53 How about you?
00:04:54 - I'm cheering up the game.
00:04:57 - Oh.
00:04:59 Well, you're dressed for it.
00:05:02 - I wanted to ask her to the homecoming dance,
00:05:04 but I just kept putting it off.
00:05:05 And then the day of, I asked her, which is ridiculous.
00:05:07 But she was really nice.
00:05:08 Oh, thanks.
00:05:09 You know, I have a date.
00:05:09 - I'm already going with Dan Lewis.
00:05:11 He asked me two weeks ago.
00:05:13 - So I thought, OK, we can make that the story for the geeks.
00:05:16 - Oh, OK.
00:05:17 I mean, yeah.
00:05:18 I just thought I would ask, just in case he
00:05:21 didn't have anyone to go with.
00:05:22 - I wanted to be about a brother and sister,
00:05:23 because I was an only child.
00:05:25 And I always wanted an older sister.
00:05:28 What would Lindsay's story be?
00:05:29 And then I just remember thinking, like,
00:05:30 she's such a rebel.
00:05:32 What if she decided she was going
00:05:33 to ask the mentally challenged kid, kind of an act of screw
00:05:36 you to the rest of the school?
00:05:38 - Hey, Eli, do you want to go to the homecoming dance with me?
00:05:42 - Yes.
00:05:42 Yes, I do.
00:05:43 We are fleas.
00:05:45 - Good.
00:05:47 - We used to call burnouts, we called them freaks.
00:05:50 And so I was like, geeks, that rhymes with freaks.
00:05:53 Let's call freaks and geeks.
00:05:54 My wife put her hand up.
00:05:55 She goes, like, give me a high five.
00:05:56 And she, like, high five me.
00:05:57 And she goes, like, this is the one you send to Judd.
00:06:00 I did a deal with DreamWorks.
00:06:02 Very early on in the deal, I said to Paul Feig, hey,
00:06:06 if you ever have any ideas for anything, let me know.
00:06:10 Not necessarily thinking he would.
00:06:13 He didn't talk about it with me while he was doing it.
00:06:16 He just laid it on me.
00:06:18 And it was impressive.
00:06:20 He goes, like, I love it.
00:06:21 We're going to buy it.
00:06:22 And it was just like, oh my god, this is happening.
00:06:27 - I was the president of DreamWorks Television.
00:06:29 Justin came into my office one day and said,
00:06:33 Judd has this spec script written by this guy, Paul Feig.
00:06:38 And I'm like, who's Paul Feig now?
00:06:41 I said, what's it about?
00:06:42 And he said, well, it's set in a high school
00:06:44 in the Midwest in the late '80s.
00:06:45 And I was like, we'll never sell that.
00:06:48 We'll never sell it.
00:06:49 - The '99 shows weren't as challenging.
00:06:53 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:06:58 - It was also a time when network television was
00:07:01 still most of television.
00:07:03 - NBC had been the really dominant number
00:07:05 one in young viewers.
00:07:07 - Boy, those were the days, huh?
00:07:08 - Musty TV was like a really big deal.
00:07:11 - There was like a proliferation of teen TV,
00:07:14 in part due to the massive success of Dawson's Creek.
00:07:18 - WB was popular.
00:07:21 Charmed and Seventh Heaven and Bobby the Vampire Slayer.
00:07:25 - Frasier, Will and Grace, Friends.
00:07:27 What was that other one?
00:07:28 Malcolm in the Middle.
00:07:29 - Really great show, but a very heightened version
00:07:33 of childhood and teen years.
00:07:36 - Wish fulfillment television, soap opera type shows.
00:07:40 But I think what we were trying to do
00:07:42 was some sort of alternative.
00:07:43 - At that point, there was really four places
00:07:45 you could sell the show.
00:07:46 Fox, NBC, ABC, and CBS.
00:07:49 We collectively thought, the place we can sell this is Fox,
00:07:52 and we're going to sell it as the next iteration of a 90210.
00:07:57 Immediately, Fox passed.
00:07:59 We're going to have a harder time with this than I thought.
00:08:01 And then of course, CBS passed.
00:08:03 And then ABC had passed too.
00:08:05 We didn't hear anything from NBC on Monday.
00:08:07 And then on Tuesday, we got a call.
00:08:09 - I don't even remember why they brought it to us.
00:08:10 - I know.
00:08:11 - Because it didn't really seem like an NBC show at the time.
00:08:13 - I know.
00:08:14 - So Shelly called and said, "This is unbelievable."
00:08:17 It spoke to her.
00:08:19 - Her famous line was, "If we don't make this show,
00:08:22 I'm quitting the television business."
00:08:24 Nobody says that.
00:08:26 You know, I mean, everybody is in the ass-protecting business.
00:08:29 - They so perfectly captured that aching, awkward pain
00:08:34 of teenage years.
00:08:37 - It was a weird moment at NBC because the president of NBC
00:08:40 programming had just stepped down.
00:08:42 So Scott Sassa, who was the guy above the head of programming,
00:08:47 he really wasn't the creative guy.
00:08:49 - It was the first show when I read the script that really
00:08:53 spoke to me because it was how I grew up in high school.
00:08:56 - It happened very fast.
00:08:57 NBC was super enthusiastic.
00:08:59 They were ready to go.
00:09:00 - They were like, "We don't even have any notes."
00:09:02 Which is like, "Oh my God, I can't believe that."
00:09:04 - We just said, "We'll make it."
00:09:06 - Yeah.
00:09:06 - "We don't want to touch it.
00:09:07 We just want to shoot it."
00:09:08 - Yeah.
00:09:09 - Yeah.
00:09:10 - It was such a whirlwind from writing this thing on spec,
00:09:12 not knowing what to do with it, and suddenly, "Oh my God,
00:09:14 we're like, we're going into production."
00:09:20 - A lot of the work was figuring out
00:09:23 who would play these characters.
00:09:25 I wanted an awkward, normal cast who are going to come in
00:09:31 and bring a personality and bring their weirdness.
00:09:34 I said, "Let's find amazing kids."
00:09:37 - I seem to be drawn to projects where I can,
00:09:39 I don't have to cast beautiful people.
00:09:41 Not interesting.
00:09:43 - Allison started setting up sessions.
00:09:47 - Throw the doors open wide.
00:09:48 I want to see everybody.
00:09:49 Don't weed anybody out if they don't even sound
00:09:51 like the description of the kids.
00:09:52 Let's let anybody show up.
00:09:54 - Everybody's niece and nephew.
00:09:56 - Let's do open call auditions.
00:09:58 We sit down with the network.
00:09:59 All right, this is the vision.
00:10:01 They're going to make us cast like a bunch of handsome models
00:10:03 you know, and call them nerds, put tape on their glasses,
00:10:05 but they're all super hot.
00:10:06 - Anybody who read it, it was obvious.
00:10:08 You didn't want those kinds of kids.
00:10:09 You needed the kids who got picked on.
00:10:11 - A thousand people would show up.
00:10:12 1,500 people would show up, give them a line or two.
00:10:15 And then if someone was good,
00:10:16 maybe we'd give them a page to do.
00:10:18 (upbeat music)
00:10:21 - Franco must've been one of the first kids
00:10:23 I brought in for that, 'cause he was so clearly that kid.
00:10:26 - Judd said, "Just be you."
00:10:29 I was like, "Okay."
00:10:30 - Check it out.
00:10:33 14 mounted toms, six floor toms, 10 cowbells,
00:10:37 four rides, five snares, and a Roto Tom rack.
00:10:40 And it is all mounted on the patented
00:10:42 Nick Berry quadruple kick drum system.
00:10:46 - Paul and I didn't think James Franco was even handsome.
00:10:49 We just thought he was a weird looking dude.
00:10:51 He had a big mouth and he had this like attitude.
00:10:54 And then people started looking at the tape at the office
00:10:58 and seeing his headshot.
00:10:59 All the women were swooning and we were like, "Really?"
00:11:02 - Oh no, now I don't want him on the show.
00:11:05 I didn't know he was hot.
00:11:05 I thought he was goofy looking.
00:11:07 - My wife said, "He's the kind of guy
00:11:10 "who works at the newsstand who you make out with."
00:11:13 (Paul laughs)
00:11:16 - All right, this is it.
00:11:19 14 mounted toms, six floor toms, 10 cowbells,
00:11:24 four rides, five snares, and a Roto Tom system.
00:11:29 - It was me and James Franco next to each other
00:11:32 in the waiting room to go into the screen test.
00:11:35 James went in and then I went in and did my thing
00:11:37 and then we waited.
00:11:39 And then they told us that we both got cast.
00:11:41 We were walking back to the parking lot together
00:11:43 and I was so excited.
00:11:44 I was trying to figure out how it was gonna work.
00:11:46 And I said, "Well, I guess maybe I'll be like
00:11:49 "the goofy one and you'll be the cool one."
00:11:52 And he went, "Yeah."
00:11:54 - Seth opened his mouth and I'm sure they liked him.
00:12:02 - I have a super thick Canadian accent
00:12:03 that I don't really have anymore in my audition.
00:12:06 Yeah, but who cares?
00:12:07 It's church.
00:12:09 A place that's filled with paintings
00:12:10 of a bleeding guy and a cross.
00:12:12 It's way nastier than any album cover I have.
00:12:15 - I was doing standup comedy at the time.
00:12:17 I had done that since I was like 13.
00:12:19 And it was like clear I was just like
00:12:21 not gonna graduate high school.
00:12:23 - It's just this crazy story, right?
00:12:26 Your kid walks into an audition in Vancouver
00:12:28 and six years later or whatever
00:12:30 is one of the biggest comedy stars in the world.
00:12:33 And he kind of never went home.
00:12:35 - I think of what a lot of people attribute
00:12:37 to like some character choices,
00:12:38 literally just me like not quite understanding
00:12:40 what the hell I'm doing.
00:12:42 I had never acted ever in anything.
00:12:45 - We didn't know what it was.
00:12:47 We just thought that is a weird, hilarious dude.
00:12:49 - Lady card on the E for Lindsay.
00:12:56 - What Paul had written was very specific.
00:12:58 A smart young woman who had sat
00:13:02 with her grandmother while she died.
00:13:05 - She looks so scared.
00:13:08 - She's questioning everything
00:13:09 and that leads her to hang out with the freaks
00:13:11 instead of the smart kids.
00:13:13 So you needed a girl who looked like
00:13:14 she could straddle both worlds.
00:13:16 - I had concocted this image of this girl in my head
00:13:20 who I didn't know.
00:13:21 And so when Linda walked in,
00:13:22 it was exactly the person I had envisioned.
00:13:26 - All the other characters that I had read
00:13:27 were rebelling against their parents
00:13:29 in a way where you couldn't actually still feel the love.
00:13:33 The thing that separated Lindsay
00:13:33 was that she really loved her parents,
00:13:35 but there was still this battle within herself to rebel.
00:13:38 It's a great role.
00:13:39 - Yeah, great.
00:13:43 Why don't you blow your nose in some bread
00:13:45 and make me a sandwich too?
00:13:46 - Originally, Kim was not in the pilot.
00:13:49 The character was supposed to enter in the second episode.
00:13:52 - She ain't your friend, she's Sloan.
00:13:54 - We realized that she was very special
00:13:57 and would need to be a big part of the show.
00:14:00 - I wasn't outwardly Kim Kelly in high school,
00:14:02 but that's like, that was my soul.
00:14:04 Like that's who I was, was that girl.
00:14:06 - Sam Levine.
00:14:09 - Sam had sent in a video of himself auditioning.
00:14:13 Not a great audition.
00:14:15 - Uh-oh, incoming.
00:14:16 - Oh my God.
00:14:18 - Hi, is this your jacket?
00:14:22 - Yeah.
00:14:24 - You left it in science.
00:14:26 I didn't want it to get all dirty.
00:14:27 - Oh, awful.
00:14:28 Thanks, Cindy.
00:14:30 - The worst audition ever.
00:14:33 - The sides I was reading said
00:14:34 he likes doing impressions with his friends.
00:14:37 And so I finished the read and say.
00:14:39 - I do William Shatner.
00:14:41 - Okay.
00:14:42 - Can I stand up to do it?
00:14:43 Hello, I'm William Shatner.
00:14:47 Tonight on Rescue 911,
00:14:51 my toupee flies off into the face of a small girl.
00:14:55 - I'm talking like this because my girdle is killing me.
00:15:03 And that is the William Shatner impression
00:15:06 that got me on Freaks and Geeks.
00:15:09 - I remember walking out into the waiting room
00:15:14 and Martin was sitting there with suspenders on
00:15:16 looking such a goober.
00:15:18 I was like, oh please, oh please be good.
00:15:20 - And if a guy hits you in the nose hard enough,
00:15:23 your nose will only go into your head
00:15:25 and then your whole nervous system will shut down
00:15:28 and then you'll pee in your pants and die.
00:15:30 - I fell in love with Martin immediately
00:15:32 'cause he was so much like the kid I had based this on,
00:15:35 which was, it was a friend of ours.
00:15:37 He was in special ed some of his classes,
00:15:39 but he wasn't in others.
00:15:41 - He was so authentic in that role
00:15:42 that everybody just figured that was him,
00:15:44 which is what everybody assumed for years.
00:15:48 - So many like weird characters that couldn't exist
00:15:51 if you were casting anything else.
00:15:52 All these pieces fit so well together.
00:15:56 It's very rare.
00:15:57 - Hi Sam.
00:15:58 I once had a friend who smoked.
00:16:00 You know what he's doing today?
00:16:02 He's dead.
00:16:03 - Think about it.
00:16:04 That's the future, death.
00:16:06 - All right, no borders, all right?
00:16:09 - I could actually audition as a gym teacher in my sleep.
00:16:12 - Well, they based Harris on their impression of me.
00:16:15 - Did you know that some karate guys are so fast
00:16:17 they can pull your heart out
00:16:18 and show it to you before you die?
00:16:19 - You can tell me.
00:16:20 - Watch this, ready, grubber.
00:16:22 Oh hey, how's it going?
00:16:23 Oh, Mr. Rosso.
00:16:24 - Lizzie Kaplan was great right away.
00:16:27 Rashida Jones was just a young actress.
00:16:30 - Ben Foster's so great in it too.
00:16:32 - Chai was a trip, even when he was 12.
00:16:35 - I was so envious of all those actors
00:16:37 and I wanted to be a regular on that show so badly.
00:16:40 You know, I totally forgot what my character's name was.
00:16:44 - Within the first week,
00:16:48 we had like half of the principal cast.
00:16:51 The one character that we were really sort of struggling
00:16:55 to find was Sam.
00:16:58 - We're watching the tapes from New York
00:17:00 and there's John Francis Daly.
00:17:02 - Mr. Konchevsky, Alan smashed my Twinkies.
00:17:06 - He was really young, I think he was 13.
00:17:09 - Producers only wanna use kids who are 18 to look 13.
00:17:13 - I sounded totally like a girl,
00:17:15 so I didn't think that I had a chance because of that.
00:17:18 - And as I'm watching, I go like, oh my God.
00:17:20 - So that means she had sex.
00:17:23 - It almost didn't feel like there was an actor doing it.
00:17:26 - She's in 12th grade.
00:17:28 - He has like a glass head
00:17:29 because you look in those eyes,
00:17:30 you see everything he's thinking,
00:17:32 you know, everything that kid's going through.
00:17:34 This is what was great about high school
00:17:38 and terrible about high school
00:17:39 is everyone went in at a different maturity level.
00:17:41 He's the kid who's kind of too young to be in school.
00:17:45 - Finding John was kind of a definitive moment.
00:17:48 We were very comprehensive, we were very thorough,
00:17:50 but we found this just astounding group of people.
00:17:54 - Right, please.
00:18:11 - We had a really unusual, unique experience
00:18:15 making that pilot.
00:18:16 - There was like jokes about doing shrooms
00:18:18 and stuff like that.
00:18:19 There was a Hitler joke.
00:18:20 And I remember being like, oh, this is actually very funny.
00:18:23 - We shot the pilot
00:18:38 and it was like shooting a little indie movie.
00:18:41 - The whole process to me of making the show
00:18:44 had the naivety of youth.
00:18:47 Like we had no reason to believe
00:18:49 we couldn't do the coolest thing ever.
00:18:51 - Paul was very set on having a family
00:18:57 that liked each other.
00:18:58 Not everyone's fighting.
00:19:00 And I thought, yeah, that's great.
00:19:01 That's something that, you know, didn't exist in my house.
00:19:05 - The Weir family is so solid.
00:19:10 - The Weirs are hopeful.
00:19:13 Sam.
00:19:15 - Did mom and dad ever tell you
00:19:16 that I was the only one with grandma when she died?
00:19:18 - No.
00:19:20 - Yeah.
00:19:23 - I was surprised that the network
00:19:27 had no issue with the conceit of the show.
00:19:30 A girl who's now questioning her spirituality,
00:19:35 discovering God does not exist.
00:19:38 - If you're brought up religiously,
00:19:39 there's like always a safety net of kind of like something.
00:19:41 And the minute you get to the point
00:19:42 of kind of like something, and the minute you break that,
00:19:45 like you're free falling and like, oh my God,
00:19:47 you know, it's just, we're just organisms on this world.
00:19:49 And you know, is there anything after death?
00:19:51 - So I said, well, you know, can you see God
00:19:54 or heaven or a light or anything?
00:19:58 - What did she say?
00:20:00 - No.
00:20:02 There's nothing.
00:20:06 - It's a really sad, heavy scene.
00:20:08 It's a true loss of innocence.
00:20:11 But no one mentioned it ever.
00:20:15 Compassion, kindness, trying to figure out how to grow up.
00:20:20 Paul did so many things in that pilot that should not work,
00:20:23 that don't sound like an appealing pilot concept.
00:20:26 Girl loses faith in God and becomes a pothead.
00:20:29 You know, a mentally challenged kid falls and breaks his arm.
00:20:34 The dance sequence found a way to put it all together.
00:20:39 (gentle music)
00:20:42 - Hi, Cindy.
00:20:59 - Hey, Sam.
00:21:00 - I was wondering, you said you'd save a dance for me.
00:21:07 So can I have it now?
00:21:10 - First of all, it's not what you see
00:21:11 all the time in television.
00:21:12 You don't see that cheerleader say yes
00:21:17 to giving a dance to that guy.
00:21:19 And then you don't see her being so sweet about it.
00:21:22 - I was standing behind the camera just watching
00:21:27 and it was just like goosebumps, goosebumps,
00:21:29 goosebumps, goosebumps.
00:21:30 - And having that stick song.
00:21:36 - And he gets up the nerve to dance with the girl.
00:21:39 He said, "Son, sticks is not dance music."
00:21:43 And then suddenly it becomes a fast dance song.
00:21:46 The minute the rock part comes in, the look on his face,
00:21:50 it's like he has been betrayed by the gods of the universe.
00:21:54 - It's just this look of like, like he wants to die.
00:21:57 - You know, his life is flashing in front of him.
00:22:01 - But he just does it.
00:22:02 And then he starts having fun.
00:22:04 - What seems like it's not a victory is actually a victory.
00:22:07 That's really what the show is all about.
00:22:10 - I was at the school dance in 11th grade
00:22:12 and I was in love with this girl,
00:22:14 but I was so scared to walk up to her
00:22:17 that it took three quarters of the song.
00:22:20 So we started having to slow dance, which was my dream.
00:22:22 And like having to dance when I don't really know
00:22:25 how to dance.
00:22:26 And then it just ended really fast.
00:22:28 I remember sitting and editing and just crying,
00:22:32 just feeling like, oh, this completely works.
00:22:34 This is beautiful.
00:22:36 And I could cry every single time I watch it
00:22:38 because it's kids reaching out to each other.
00:22:40 And it's so hard to do as a kid.
00:22:41 It's so hard to offer your heart.
00:22:44 It's so hard to try to connect.
00:22:46 - We all have inside of us this deep insecurity
00:22:50 about life and things, but particularly in adolescence.
00:22:55 Even if you're one of the kids that thinks they're cool,
00:22:59 you're still putting on ears
00:23:01 that you've got it all together out here,
00:23:03 but in here, the ducks, they're running around.
00:23:06 (upbeat music)
00:23:13 - As soon as we started cutting the show,
00:23:19 we felt pretty confident that it was gonna be
00:23:22 a really good pilot.
00:23:23 My thought was, this doesn't really seem like a TV show.
00:23:27 And it'll be interesting to see
00:23:29 whether anyone wants to put it on NBC.
00:23:31 - The pilot, you know, didn't blow me away.
00:23:38 So at that point, I wasn't sure
00:23:40 whether this was just something that resonated to me
00:23:43 and I liked in my personal ear,
00:23:45 or it really was something
00:23:47 that everybody else would relate to.
00:23:49 - We got a new network president.
00:23:53 We started having like a new network president
00:23:55 every couple of years.
00:23:56 And I think Freaks and Geeks came at really
00:24:00 the beginning of the revolving door.
00:24:02 - You hope you have an executive that says,
00:24:04 I so believe in what you're doing creatively.
00:24:06 You pray that you get that champion.
00:24:08 - We had Garth Ancier come in.
00:24:13 I don't think it's a secret.
00:24:15 He did not like it.
00:24:16 It was a hard way to meet somebody.
00:24:18 I'll tell you that.
00:24:19 It was not the best way to be introduced.
00:24:22 - Other than Freaks and Geeks,
00:24:26 at the time there was very few single camera comedies.
00:24:29 It wasn't a genre that was popular.
00:24:32 You weren't a sitcom and you weren't an hour drama.
00:24:35 You were right in the middle.
00:24:36 And right now everything is in the middle.
00:24:38 That's what modern television is.
00:24:39 - Comedy has gotten more behavioral
00:24:41 and it was always what myself and Judd
00:24:44 and all our actors found the funniest.
00:24:46 It's not jokes.
00:24:47 - You were used to seeing joke, joke, joke.
00:24:50 And this was a little different.
00:24:52 It had story, it had drama, it had a little bit of heart in it.
00:24:55 - How many people relate to the underdogs?
00:24:57 - They ordered 12 episodes.
00:24:59 So that plus the pilot brought us to 13 episodes total.
00:25:02 - And then suddenly you're flying to New York.
00:25:14 They make that decision at the last minute
00:25:16 and then you fly to the upfronts
00:25:17 where they present to all the advertisers.
00:25:19 - Freaks and Geeks.
00:25:21 - Dad, are any of your friends alive?
00:25:23 - Coming this fall to NBC.
00:25:25 - There you are in these giant parties
00:25:30 and you're glad handing
00:25:31 and they're doing presentations of your show
00:25:33 and there's the cast up on stage and you're up on stage.
00:25:35 - It wasn't easy to tell Sam Levine he was a geek.
00:25:37 He'd never heard it before.
00:25:39 - People were so pumped about the future of Freaks and Geeks.
00:25:43 - We really hoped it would be a hit.
00:25:45 It didn't have any of the early indications
00:25:48 that it would be a big hit.
00:25:50 - They're picking us up, yay, for eight o'clock on Saturday.
00:25:53 - Oh, no, what?
00:25:55 What the hell was that?
00:25:56 Anybody who would watch our show would be out.
00:25:58 - NBC Saturday at eight, seven central.
00:26:01 - Saturday night is essentially dead air.
00:26:04 Nobody programs Saturday night with their great material.
00:26:07 We thought maybe we could do well there
00:26:09 and they'll move us off that night
00:26:11 and put us into a better time period.
00:26:13 - Okay, welcome back everybody.
00:26:23 Yay.
00:26:24 - The Freaks and Geeks pilot got picked up.
00:26:28 We put our staff together and said,
00:26:30 let's get as many amazing stories as we can.
00:26:33 We wanted people who had lived a little bit.
00:26:38 You know, people had done things,
00:26:39 people had done bad things.
00:26:41 - And basically the first two weeks of us getting together
00:26:43 was just this weird group therapy session
00:26:46 where all of us just plumbed the depth
00:26:49 of our humiliating and gut-wrenching experiences
00:26:53 from high school.
00:26:54 - We never wanted to leave.
00:26:55 Like, I'm serious.
00:26:56 - We're there all the time.
00:26:57 - I wrote up a questionnaire of 20 questions.
00:27:00 Like, what's the worst thing
00:27:01 that ever happened to you in high school?
00:27:02 What's the best thing?
00:27:03 - The most you ever got in trouble with your parents.
00:27:05 What's your best drug experience?
00:27:06 What's your worst drug experience?
00:27:07 - Who did you fall in love with?
00:27:08 Who did you hate?
00:27:09 And everybody had to fill it out in great detail.
00:27:12 - And they were hundreds of amazing stories or just moments.
00:27:18 - These people were sharing
00:27:19 really painful parts of their lives.
00:27:21 If this show was successful,
00:27:23 it would vindicate the things that happened to them.
00:27:26 - Everybody involved was digging down
00:27:30 to expose who they really were.
00:27:32 - He would say the most embarrassing thing
00:27:34 and everyone groaned at the same time.
00:27:36 And they go, "Okay, let's do that."
00:27:37 And then Paul would go, "Um, I have another story."
00:27:41 And then it would top it.
00:27:44 - My favorite personal story from the show
00:27:45 was the Parisian night suit,
00:27:47 which truly happened to me.
00:27:49 I was really into disco
00:27:50 and there's a store at this mall called Silverman's.
00:27:53 One day the guy's like, "Hey, check it out.
00:27:55 "We just got in, man.
00:27:56 "It's a disco jumpsuit."
00:27:58 I was like, "That's gonna be awesome."
00:27:59 So put this thing on,
00:28:00 thought I'd just rock in front of the mirror in my bedroom,
00:28:03 just like you're the king.
00:28:04 ♪ Playin' for the night ♪
00:28:08 And wear it to school.
00:28:10 And the second I walked through the doors,
00:28:15 I realized I'd made the biggest mistake of my life.
00:28:17 Some people started laughing,
00:28:18 other people was just like, "What?"
00:28:20 And you're trapped.
00:28:21 You just wanna go home.
00:28:22 You just wanna get out of there.
00:28:23 And you couldn't, so I had to spend all day
00:28:25 walking around in this disco jumpsuit.
00:28:28 - What was funny about Paul
00:28:29 is he would tell a story of childhood humiliation.
00:28:33 Someone would say, "How old were you when that happened?"
00:28:35 Like 12, 13?
00:28:36 And he would always say, "17."
00:28:38 (laughs)
00:28:39 It was always much later than we thought.
00:28:43 Sometimes they would even change lines
00:28:45 based on the table read.
00:28:47 I heard about what she does in the yearbook darkroom.
00:28:49 - What she does?
00:28:51 - I eventually tell her that she fornicates.
00:28:53 - What?
00:28:54 - When I read it, I was like, "That doesn't make any sense."
00:28:57 - She fornicates it, okay?
00:28:59 (laughs)
00:29:01 - But I also didn't know what fornicated means.
00:29:08 - Fornicating it.
00:29:09 Oh, it was so cute.
00:29:11 (laughs)
00:29:13 - I was so confused,
00:29:20 like why everyone was like busting out laughing.
00:29:22 And so anyway, they kept it like that.
00:29:24 - Okay, we're rolling.
00:29:37 (buzzer)
00:29:40 - I heard about what she does in the yearbook darkroom.
00:29:43 She fornicates it, okay?
00:29:46 (laughs)
00:29:48 - Paul was looking to tell the stories
00:29:53 of the group of kids that were just simply
00:29:54 not represented on television at that time.
00:29:58 - It was pretty obvious that this was not about
00:30:00 the people that you'd been watching,
00:30:01 typically on television.
00:30:03 It kind of zooms past them and goes to the stoners
00:30:05 under the bleachers.
00:30:07 - Real characters who could be called freaks and geeks.
00:30:11 - Everybody made these giant contributions
00:30:16 'cause everyone was being brave
00:30:17 about what they had been through.
00:30:19 - So I told my mom I was eating at your house
00:30:21 and Bill told his mom.
00:30:22 - My parents separated and my dad moved away
00:30:24 and he wouldn't tell us where he lived.
00:30:27 So I went to go find him.
00:30:30 I knew it had to be on the South side.
00:30:33 So I went over there and I took the garage clicker
00:30:36 out of his car and I drove around looking.
00:30:39 - Clicking these doors and opened up
00:30:40 and there was his dad's car in another woman's house.
00:30:43 - Just watching the door go up,
00:30:48 I would never have thought when I did this at 15 years old,
00:30:51 something had happened to you that you wrote
00:30:54 and then here it is happening.
00:30:56 - We just were like, oh my God, like Jeff,
00:31:02 that's horrible that happened to you
00:31:03 and we so have to use that on the show.
00:31:06 - We're about to film a wonderful bike walking scene
00:31:09 where I get all angry and pissy and they're about to leave.
00:31:14 - I was always trying to inject stories of divorce
00:31:17 into the show because that's something
00:31:19 that I had been through.
00:31:20 Martin Starr's mom, we kind of implied
00:31:24 that she stripped at some point
00:31:25 when she's a waitress and a single mom
00:31:28 and we see that he's a bit of a latchkey kid.
00:31:31 He comes home from school and he's by himself
00:31:33 and then he did what I did as a kid,
00:31:35 which is he made grilled cheese sandwiches
00:31:38 and ate Entenmann's cake and would watch comedians
00:31:41 on the Dinah Shore Show.
00:31:43 And the comedian that he watches is Gary Shanlin.
00:31:45 (upbeat music)
00:31:48 Jake Hasen said, that's the most personal thing
00:32:02 you've ever done and it's the best thing you've ever done.
00:32:04 And that made me realize that that was a direction
00:32:06 I needed to go in for my entire career,
00:32:09 that I should just go deeper and more personal
00:32:12 and that's where the good stuff was.
00:32:14 We weren't sure what it was in the beginning.
00:32:17 We were figuring it out as we went
00:32:18 and if you watch the episodes, you can feel us finding it.
00:32:21 - We were a dramedy.
00:32:23 For every moment where a freak or a geek made you laugh,
00:32:28 they were gonna have a moment where they made you cry.
00:32:31 (upbeat music)
00:32:34 And I think that that's real life.
00:32:39 - That's the only way that comedy really works
00:32:42 is if there's such a strong element of truth in it,
00:32:46 it will invariably have pain in it.
00:32:48 The things that are incredibly painful are funny ultimately
00:32:52 or we don't survive them in a way.
00:32:54 - There was always this kind of low level depression
00:32:58 right underneath the surface of the stories.
00:33:01 - By and large are more about failure than success.
00:33:04 People are humiliated or find themselves
00:33:07 in some mortifying situation.
00:33:10 - Watch it, Romeo, you're on my hair.
00:33:12 - Hey, we're busy here.
00:33:14 - I'm sorry.
00:33:15 - Oh, hey, Lindsay.
00:33:17 It's easy to say, oh, in 1979, people were more innocent.
00:33:24 The truth is, is that everyone at a certain point
00:33:26 is really just uncomfortable about sex.
00:33:29 All these other shows seem kind of cool with sex
00:33:31 and they were just so mature.
00:33:33 - In most high school shows,
00:33:36 they'd show sex being like scary a little bit,
00:33:40 but like not awkward.
00:33:42 And it's awkward.
00:33:44 Like having a kiss for the first time is awkward.
00:33:46 Like, which way do you turn your face?
00:33:49 - Boys are supposed to know what to do.
00:33:52 How? You know, based on what?
00:33:55 - That was just not my experience.
00:33:56 We were so terrified of everything.
00:33:58 (soft music)
00:34:01 - The porno that I was given by Daniel DeSario,
00:34:03 I remember all of that vividly.
00:34:06 - It's a naked woman.
00:34:07 - What's she doing?
00:34:09 - Who cares what she's doing?
00:34:10 She's naked.
00:34:11 - It was an actual porno.
00:34:12 And I looked at it as much as I could.
00:34:17 - Those were the first kisses of our, mine at least.
00:34:27 - Joe and I even have a big sex scene in one episode.
00:34:31 - We had just finished lunch
00:34:32 and I was walking back to the trailer.
00:34:34 James, he was down on the curb and he said,
00:34:35 "Hey, did you see next week's script?
00:34:37 Oh, you got a hot love scene with your wife, Becky."
00:34:40 And I said, "No, get out."
00:34:41 "Yeah, I'm telling you."
00:34:42 I looked at the script, "Whoa, we got to make up."
00:34:44 - I had gotten a little bronchitis.
00:34:48 I was really husky and it was kind of perfect.
00:34:51 It sounded like I was having really great husky sex.
00:34:54 - Where's mom and dad?
00:34:56 - In their room.
00:34:57 Are they fighting?
00:34:59 - No.
00:35:01 - The television press was quick to embrace the show.
00:35:14 - The reviews were incredible.
00:35:15 It was the best reviews you could get.
00:35:16 - Critics loved the show though.
00:35:17 - They loved Freaks and Geeks.
00:35:19 - The top new TV show in Time Magazine before we came out.
00:35:22 - It's Freaks and Geeks too good for television, you know?
00:35:26 - Our launch was coming up Saturday night at eight o'clock,
00:35:29 which we knew wasn't a good spot,
00:35:30 but still we're about to come out and it was so exciting.
00:35:32 And we did a party.
00:35:33 They had it up on this big screen
00:35:35 and I remember just standing there, just like choking up
00:35:37 and just like, "Oh my God, my dreams are coming true."
00:35:39 And the ratings were actually pretty good.
00:35:43 We're shooting on that Monday
00:35:46 and I remember coming into the cafeteria set
00:35:48 with this piece of paper and getting up on the table,
00:35:50 announcing to gather everybody around.
00:35:52 And I read out our ratings.
00:35:54 Yay, this big cheer.
00:35:56 - In those days at NBC, we could hit a share in the mid-twenties.
00:36:00 Friends was a 30 share.
00:36:01 You know, that was the bar.
00:36:03 - The first episode ratings were okay.
00:36:04 I think we got an 11 share.
00:36:06 Our ratings at the halfway point of the pilot dropped
00:36:10 because it's right around when Eli falls off
00:36:12 the bleachers and breaks his arm.
00:36:14 - I'm not retarded, I'm special.
00:36:17 I don't want to go to dance with you.
00:36:18 No!
00:36:19 - Sorry.
00:36:20 (footsteps)
00:36:23 (screaming)
00:36:25 - So there's a poor mentally challenged kid
00:36:27 screaming in pain.
00:36:28 And you just heard America go like, "Nope."
00:36:31 And turning the channel.
00:36:32 Next week, our ratings just go boom, into the toilet.
00:36:35 (crying)
00:36:36 Right after the first show, just woo.
00:36:38 Joe Flaherty at one point goes,
00:36:40 "Yeah, Paul never came into the cafeteria
00:36:42 and announced the ratings again."
00:36:44 I was like, "Yeah, we're doing terrible.
00:36:46 I don't know what to tell you."
00:36:47 In fact, he was pretty hard to find
00:36:49 for a few weeks after that.
00:36:51 - Seth and Jason and my attitudes kind of went from,
00:36:56 "We've got it made, Hollywood, here we come."
00:36:58 You know, before the first episodes came out
00:37:00 to like, "Wow, we're on this show
00:37:01 and nobody's watching us.
00:37:03 Like, nothing has really changed."
00:37:06 - NBC held a party.
00:37:08 Garth Ansear, who was running the network,
00:37:10 was out there talking to some guy.
00:37:12 And I just go, "Oh, hey Garth."
00:37:13 And he goes like, "Deliver the goods.
00:37:15 Deliver the goods.
00:37:17 Don't be like this guy."
00:37:18 And he pointed at the other guy,
00:37:19 the other guy kind of looked at him
00:37:20 and he was like, "Oh, what's up with this guy?"
00:37:21 The other guy kind of had this like, sheepish look.
00:37:23 And I was just like, walked away like,
00:37:24 "What does that mean?"
00:37:26 So you immediately go like, "Oh God,
00:37:27 we're kind of suddenly dealing with network politics."
00:37:30 - He really studied the metered market ratings
00:37:32 and he would come in and show me
00:37:33 how much the show dropped off from "Jeopardy."
00:37:36 And that meant it was doomed to fail.
00:37:38 - What a name, Garth.
00:37:39 I'd be so curious to hear his perspective on this.
00:37:43 - I now ask, I'm not your editor,
00:37:45 but cut directly to that interview now.
00:37:49 - "Freak Showcase" shouldn't really be
00:37:50 on broadcast television.
00:37:52 I, it was a quirky show.
00:37:55 Everyone knew it was a quirky show.
00:37:56 They told me that going in.
00:37:58 The term in the industry is three jokes a page.
00:38:00 "Freak Showcase" is a little slower than that.
00:38:04 - You know, even though, look,
00:38:05 we had 7 million loyal viewers.
00:38:08 - The amount of people who were watching
00:38:09 would be a huge hit today.
00:38:11 But back then it was like, you dropped a point,
00:38:15 we may have to cancel you.
00:38:16 And that's terrifying
00:38:17 for creativity, I think.
00:38:18 'Cause you're making stuff with a gun to your head.
00:38:21 I couldn't live in the reality of the show
00:38:25 and the fun of shooting it
00:38:27 because a part of my day
00:38:29 was the nuts and bolts of our survival.
00:38:32 - Together we would go call and say,
00:38:35 they didn't love the rough cut,
00:38:36 or can you make these changes?
00:38:39 - I was so mad at the network that I thought,
00:38:41 no, let's go farther.
00:38:42 Let's challenge ourselves.
00:38:44 You want us to be safer?
00:38:45 Well, then we're gonna be bolder.
00:38:47 - Rolling.
00:38:48 - South speed.
00:38:51 - The first show I did
00:38:52 was called "Kim Kelly is My Friend."
00:38:56 - And action!
00:38:57 - I just remember reading it going, wow.
00:38:59 - It's a really difficult episode to watch.
00:39:01 - The network was terrified of it.
00:39:03 I was kind of terrified of it.
00:39:05 - You are a lying brat.
00:39:07 - Knew it.
00:39:07 I told you.
00:39:08 - I'm not lying.
00:39:09 You guys just can't believe
00:39:10 that I can make a friend who's rich and smart.
00:39:12 - Oh, I knew Kim Kelly in high school.
00:39:14 Oh my God.
00:39:15 - I could tell her life just like,
00:39:17 was dark.
00:39:19 It allowed me to put forth this other side of myself
00:39:23 on camera that was really inside me
00:39:26 and was really wanting to get out.
00:39:28 You have to always look at the impetus
00:39:31 for why someone is behaving the way that they're behaving.
00:39:34 You got to see behind the curtain
00:39:37 of this kind of horrible girl.
00:39:39 - 'Cause you are a slut.
00:39:42 Slut.
00:39:44 It was jarring to be in there during those scenes.
00:39:46 - Did you call me?
00:39:48 What, did you call me?
00:39:49 - Yeah, I hit him really hard.
00:39:50 - Call me? - Hey, calm down.
00:39:51 - Just don't lie to me.
00:39:52 - I'm not lying.
00:39:53 - And his face was turning red
00:39:54 and then everyone was concerned.
00:39:56 James was just like such a badass.
00:39:58 Like, I don't care.
00:39:59 Would Marlon Brando get hit?
00:40:00 - All right, this is like Brando stuff, you know?
00:40:03 I had these ideas about being a young actor
00:40:06 and I was like, I need to look cool and tough or whatever.
00:40:10 And Bizzy's tougher than I am.
00:40:12 And so she like kept punching me.
00:40:15 - It really captures like the sex and violence
00:40:18 of being like a teenager.
00:40:19 - The network got scared of that episode
00:40:22 because it was as bold as anything
00:40:24 that I'd seen in a network show.
00:40:27 - My memory of it is like Garth coming down to our offices
00:40:29 and being just like, what the hell is this?
00:40:32 What is this?
00:40:33 - That's what happened.
00:40:33 - What's happening?
00:40:34 - That's what happened.
00:40:35 - This is not funny.
00:40:36 - They just didn't want to air it.
00:40:38 And we realized, oh, they're just scared.
00:40:40 They're just scared of what this is.
00:40:43 - There was always some note of changing something
00:40:45 to make it more palatable.
00:40:47 - Language they would always use
00:40:49 to describe that was more victories.
00:40:51 - Which was their way of saying that the show was sad,
00:40:53 but it was built into the DNA of the show
00:40:55 that it was about failing and how you survive failure.
00:40:58 And it was about how your friends support you
00:41:01 in difficult times.
00:41:02 So it didn't really make sense to us
00:41:05 to have everything go great.
00:41:07 - He wasn't thrilled about that note.
00:41:09 I didn't know if that was the answer or not.
00:41:12 But I certainly said, can you give him some more victories?
00:41:16 - There was an episode where we tried to take that note.
00:41:22 Bill was playing baseball.
00:41:27 The ball comes to him and he catches it
00:41:31 and Rocky music plays.
00:41:33 (upbeat music)
00:41:36 But then he doesn't realize that people are tagging up.
00:41:43 And so everybody just scores.
00:41:46 That was as close as we could get to a victory.
00:41:51 (phone ringing)
00:42:01 - I would engage in discussions with Judd
00:42:04 about why are we not connecting with the audience?
00:42:07 - I was the person on the phone saying,
00:42:09 I'm not gonna change anything.
00:42:11 I'd hear just screaming off in like a field
00:42:14 and there'd be Judd on the cell phone
00:42:15 just screaming into the phone.
00:42:17 Paul and I agreed on something early on,
00:42:20 which is we're not gonna screw this up.
00:42:21 We're not gonna sell it out.
00:42:23 - This is clearly very important to Judd.
00:42:27 - There is magic happening here
00:42:29 and I've not let anybody (beep) with this.
00:42:31 - Maybe give a little more to James Franco
00:42:33 because it was very clear James Franco
00:42:35 had a real star quality about him.
00:42:37 Maybe a happy ending now and then maybe would be good.
00:42:40 - I've almost never seen a show that wasn't doing very well
00:42:43 suddenly become a huge hit
00:42:45 because the network executives gave really good notes.
00:42:49 Let's have happy endings?
00:42:51 That's trying to change your tires on the freeway
00:42:53 when you're rolling 75 miles an hour.
00:42:55 You know, you can't do it.
00:42:56 - Well, when's Sam gonna get the girl?
00:42:59 It's episode three.
00:43:00 When's he gonna get her?
00:43:01 We're like, when he's 30?
00:43:02 When's Franco gonna take his shirt off?
00:43:05 It's like, he's not.
00:43:07 - People tend to wanna walk away from a TV show or a movie
00:43:11 like that something good has happened.
00:43:15 - But isn't it better to have a show that affirms
00:43:19 that the life that they're living is not so terrible
00:43:23 and that other people are going through
00:43:24 the same kind of struggles
00:43:26 and sometimes it doesn't end the way you want it to
00:43:28 and you kind of have to make the most of it.
00:43:31 - Surviving is the victory.
00:43:33 You know, when this thing happens to you
00:43:35 and at the end of the episode, you're still alive,
00:43:37 that's the victory.
00:43:39 - Well, the show's also about dreams.
00:43:40 Like, will your dreams come true?
00:43:42 Do you have the courage to dream?
00:43:43 Those episodes about Jason Segel playing the drums
00:43:47 are really tough.
00:43:48 He wants to be as good as the guy in "Rush"
00:43:50 and he realizes that he's not and it's heartbreaking.
00:43:55 - Sometimes I go down into my basement
00:43:57 and I put on a live album, I can see myself on the stage.
00:44:02 Do you understand what I mean?
00:44:03 I can see it and I'm playing a 10 minute solo.
00:44:06 Oh man.
00:44:08 I'm not gonna be that guy.
00:44:15 I'm never gonna be that guy.
00:44:17 - We all have to decide what we wanna do.
00:44:20 How hard do we wanna work to get it?
00:44:21 Are we gonna give up?
00:44:23 And you hope that in your life,
00:44:25 if you're strong and you work hard,
00:44:27 that you get to have your moment.
00:44:28 And I always like to think that a lot of these characters,
00:44:32 after this period, had their moment.
00:44:35 - See ya.
00:44:44 - It's on.
00:44:52 - When a broadcast network launches your show,
00:44:55 the audience has one opportunity to see it.
00:44:57 - Freaks and Geeks didn't get a lot of luck.
00:45:00 - The show would be on for two weeks
00:45:01 and then off for two weeks,
00:45:02 then on for one week and then off for three weeks.
00:45:04 And that is a textbook way in that era to kill a show.
00:45:09 - The most important thing that you can get
00:45:12 when a network show is launched is
00:45:14 just a straight run of original episodes uninterrupted.
00:45:18 - Well, the show was on 13 out of 26 weeks.
00:45:22 So it was just off the air as much as it was on the air.
00:45:25 - So there were just like weekends
00:45:26 where they'd like shovel three episodes off on a Sunday.
00:45:29 So like, we gotta air 'em somewhere.
00:45:31 We've got an order for 13 episodes.
00:45:33 Then they'll give you the back nine.
00:45:34 So you'd go up to 22.
00:45:35 This, they gave us like two.
00:45:38 And then they gave us like one more.
00:45:41 - We'd been on Saturday nights
00:45:42 and then they announced they were moving us to Mondays.
00:45:44 - And all new Freaks and Geeks, NBC Monday, 8/7 Central.
00:45:48 - There's more available audience,
00:45:50 but also more competition.
00:45:51 - Right, yeah.
00:45:52 - The big story in TV around that time
00:45:54 was "Who Wants to Be a Movie Negro?"
00:45:56 That show had come out that fall also.
00:46:01 And it was such a ratings monster.
00:46:05 - It was like a Destructo machine rolling around television.
00:46:09 And they started putting it on three, four times a week.
00:46:12 - They're knocking off scripted original programming
00:46:19 to broadcast Regis Philbin trying to give away
00:46:22 a million dollars to a couple of idiots.
00:46:25 - And there would be a guy waiting to figure out an answer.
00:46:27 And he'd be like this and thinking and thinking.
00:46:29 That 15 seconds on an episode
00:46:32 that we're writing would be so important.
00:46:34 - Finally, they put it on against us and just wiped us out.
00:46:37 - Suddenly it did feel like there was a ticking clock
00:46:44 on the life of our show.
00:46:46 - Everyone was doing CPR, trying to get people to watch it,
00:46:50 trying to get the network to promote it.
00:46:52 The New York Times did a big piece saying,
00:46:55 please everyone watch the show.
00:46:58 The ship is sinking, but it's great.
00:47:00 You really should watch this.
00:47:02 But no one did.
00:47:03 - When you work on a TV show or a movie,
00:47:10 there's an area called craft service.
00:47:13 This craft service table is filled with lavish
00:47:16 baked goods and cold cuts.
00:47:19 And then slowly as the show went on,
00:47:21 it became reduced to like a box of corn pops
00:47:24 and some creamer.
00:47:25 At which point we realized we were in trouble.
00:47:28 - And I remember Judd come up to me and saying like,
00:47:31 you should write the final episode.
00:47:33 We always had a sense that the show
00:47:37 was not going to survive.
00:47:40 There's nothing I hated more than the show
00:47:41 getting canceled in the middle.
00:47:42 And not having a conclusion to the story.
00:47:45 That's how nervous and paranoid we were.
00:47:48 - We got to do it.
00:47:49 This might be the last episode.
00:47:52 - We'll have a season no matter what.
00:47:54 - You get called geeks.
00:48:05 Girls don't even look at you.
00:48:07 What?
00:48:08 I'm accepted at an Ivy League college?
00:48:11 Hey, chicks dig smart guys, who knew?
00:48:13 And yes, Mr. Jock who cleaned me out,
00:48:17 I will have fries with that.
00:48:18 - I don't want a story to go on forever.
00:48:22 I just want to go like, oh good,
00:48:24 we've sent them off into the world.
00:48:40 - Paul and I were sitting around
00:48:42 and we said, what happens to this girl?
00:48:44 Then we realized, I think she becomes a dead head.
00:48:48 That's where she would go.
00:48:52 - I'm so happy that they managed to sneak in the ending.
00:48:57 - It's hard to even understand why it works so well
00:49:01 because it doesn't end any storyline,
00:49:04 but yet it does feel like the end.
00:49:06 (upbeat music)
00:49:09 - I'm left when I watched that last episode
00:49:15 feeling a little like I want to cry,
00:49:18 a little like I want to have some hot tea.
00:49:20 Maybe that's just me.
00:49:22 Maybe I have other stuff going on.
00:49:23 - We kind of did everything right
00:49:30 and it still just didn't work.
00:49:31 - They say, well, we're going to reevaluate it in May
00:49:35 and everybody sort of knows that there's not a prayer
00:49:37 in hell they're going to order the show.
00:49:39 - It was a decision that I kind of knew
00:49:41 was going to happen months in advance,
00:49:42 but things had to like just play out.
00:49:44 - There are two things that a show needs to survive
00:49:47 and become a hit.
00:49:48 And that is creators who know what they're doing
00:49:51 and then a network that believes in it
00:49:54 and will put everything they have behind it.
00:49:57 - There were conference calls that we arranged
00:49:58 because Garth felt like it was too dark.
00:50:01 It wasn't interesting.
00:50:02 I don't like these kids.
00:50:03 They're not attractive.
00:50:05 When it happens, you stop getting promos on Thursday nights.
00:50:09 You're not getting a promo on "Friends"
00:50:10 saying watch "Freaks and Geeks" this weekend.
00:50:13 And once that starts, it's just a slow slide.
00:50:16 - When we were heading toward cancellation,
00:50:19 I was like, kind of like just dreading it.
00:50:22 It's the toughest thing to cancel a show
00:50:25 when it's not just a piece of business,
00:50:27 it's something from their soul.
00:50:30 - I believe it was open and shut
00:50:32 that we needed to cancel it.
00:50:34 Personally, I felt really invested in the show working,
00:50:38 but hope is not a business plan.
00:50:40 We all wanted to succeed,
00:50:46 but there's a point you kind of have to give it up.
00:50:48 - If you can't see signs of life in the show
00:50:54 that you can articulate to your management,
00:50:56 you will be fired if you don't do that.
00:51:01 You're gonna be right in the television business
00:51:03 more often than not if you say no
00:51:05 or you bet against something.
00:51:07 Most things fail.
00:51:08 - No one ever has second thoughts about canceling a show
00:51:13 that is creatively failing,
00:51:15 but they certainly have second thoughts
00:51:17 about a show that is creatively working
00:51:21 and is unique and different and fulfilling its promises.
00:51:24 And I have often thought,
00:51:27 what could I have done to get this to work?
00:51:32 - So for like the person who gets it the least
00:51:36 to be the guy that can say yay or nay
00:51:38 had to be so heartbreaking for Judd.
00:51:41 - For me, it was like a complete nervous breakdown.
00:51:46 It tapped into all my issues
00:51:48 from when I was a kid about family separating,
00:51:52 like my childhood divorce issues.
00:51:54 Like, oh no, we must keep this together at all costs.
00:51:58 The sadness and depression and rage of a family breaking up,
00:52:02 of potential being incinerated.
00:52:06 Oh, we can't do this.
00:52:08 What, we can't do this?
00:52:10 Never make any more again
00:52:12 and don't talk to each other ever again.
00:52:15 You're allowed to say that to me?
00:52:17 Like you have the power to make that happen.
00:52:18 It was very hard for me to accept
00:52:21 that that's how show business worked.
00:52:24 - I felt like we let them down.
00:52:31 It was our job to protect it and keep it on and let it grow.
00:52:36 And we didn't, we couldn't.
00:52:39 (audience applauding)
00:52:42 - Final day of shooting, we were all breaking down.
00:52:47 I mean, Linda and I especially were just disastrous.
00:52:51 It hurt.
00:52:52 - You upset?
00:52:53 - No, I'm great, I'm so scared.
00:52:55 - You're gonna be okay?
00:52:56 - Yeah.
00:52:57 - Attention everybody!
00:53:09 - Judd gives a speech and Paul gives a speech
00:53:13 and you could just feel it.
00:53:15 And everyone's trying to keep it together.
00:53:17 - Kind of a cluster right now
00:53:19 because I didn't think the last day
00:53:21 was gonna hit me this hard.
00:53:22 That's gonna be the hardest part
00:53:23 is not getting to see everybody every day.
00:53:25 - There was a wrap party that was pretty crazy.
00:53:33 And that was kind of the last goodbyes.
00:53:35 (upbeat music)
00:53:38 - Everyone came.
00:53:59 We got to the party, you knew it was over with.
00:54:04 - It felt like the last day of high school,
00:54:05 which I didn't have because I didn't finish high school,
00:54:08 but it felt like what I would imagine
00:54:09 the last day of high school feeling like.
00:54:11 - Three of the cast members on our show
00:54:15 have just graduated from high school.
00:54:17 - As it may be, this is the only graduation
00:54:22 I will ever have.
00:54:23 (audience laughing)
00:54:26 I'd like to thank you all for coming down.
00:54:29 (audience laughing)
00:54:31 I don't know.
00:54:33 Every rose has its thorn and a...
00:54:35 (audience laughing)
00:54:37 All right, jokes.
00:54:38 - We would like to present these gents
00:54:40 with their diplomas.
00:54:41 (audience cheering)
00:54:44 - This was a better high school
00:54:47 than I could have ever hoped for or imagined
00:54:50 learning on this show and growing up on this show.
00:54:52 (soft music)
00:54:57 - I don't have super clear memories of high school.
00:55:00 I was very poorly treated by everybody else
00:55:03 in my peer group.
00:55:04 I was weird, our family was poor,
00:55:08 my clothes were shoddy.
00:55:09 I had no social skills.
00:55:11 That time on set was the very first time
00:55:14 in my whole life that I was surrounded by people
00:55:16 who were treating me with respect
00:55:18 and listening to what I had to say.
00:55:20 So much of who I am was formed by the experience
00:55:23 of Freaks and Geeks.
00:55:24 - If you're on a show and you're young and it hits,
00:55:26 there's a catapult into a different stratosphere.
00:55:29 And that didn't happen to us.
00:55:32 - There was like years I was unemployed.
00:55:34 It made me angry for years and years.
00:55:36 I was probably a pretty unpleasant person to be around.
00:55:39 - It is a weird thing for someone at the age of 14
00:55:43 to feel like, where do I go now?
00:55:46 'Cause that's generally for most people
00:55:48 the starting point in their lives.
00:55:50 - When you start out with a really high standard,
00:55:53 you sort of are comparing everything after that.
00:55:57 - I didn't know how great I had it
00:56:00 or how lucky I was really to be working with those people.
00:56:03 - Where television has gone now,
00:56:06 it's because of Freaks and Geeks.
00:56:08 - You look at Freaks and Geeks and it's like,
00:56:11 well, it's a single camera sitcom.
00:56:13 That happens all the time now.
00:56:15 It's got anti-heroes in it.
00:56:17 That happens all the time.
00:56:18 What these guys did was brought a show
00:56:20 that broke a lot of conventions.
00:56:22 Without Freaks and Geeks,
00:56:24 you wouldn't have the style of real dramedies.
00:56:28 It just wouldn't have happened.
00:56:30 - It was the birth of the anti-hero
00:56:32 and it served as, I think, a cautionary tale
00:56:36 about shows that had a small but devoted fan base
00:56:41 that would scream from the mountaintops
00:56:44 how good the show was.
00:56:46 - To be able to have done that show
00:56:48 on a network at that time,
00:56:51 I'm just so happy that it still exists
00:56:53 so people can see it and that it can still have this life
00:56:55 beyond itself.
00:56:57 - Otherwise, it would have just disappeared forever
00:56:59 in some dark library in the bottom of the NBC dungeon.
00:57:03 I don't know.
00:57:04 - Judd and I, we both went aside and went like,
00:57:08 are we about to ruin these kids' lives?
00:57:11 I didn't want anybody to turn.
00:57:13 We love these kids so much.
00:57:14 - I remember Judd saying, look, we're not on the air
00:57:18 and at some point, at some time,
00:57:21 people are gonna watch these.
00:57:22 So just keep working.
00:57:25 - In my head, I was trying to keep this group together.
00:57:28 Even though we were canceled,
00:57:29 I was trying to think we should all be doing stuff.
00:57:32 We can't let them shut this down.
00:57:35 If we want to, we should try to control
00:57:37 our creative destiny.
00:57:38 (upbeat music)
00:57:41 It felt like a very special thing
00:57:45 that I didn't want to go away and hasn't gone away.
00:57:49 It's like a tree with a lot of branches reaching out.
00:57:52 The show led to a lot of good stuff coming out
00:57:55 and that's something that I'm very proud of.
00:57:57 - Judd's a real teacher.
00:57:59 If he sees that talent, he really wants to nurture it.
00:58:03 I really credit Judd for giving those guys
00:58:05 a launch pad in movies.
00:58:07 - I just did everything I could to fight against it.
00:58:10 Oh, you think the show is over
00:58:12 and that we're never gonna work together again?
00:58:14 Oh, well, then I'm gonna make a show that's very similar.
00:58:17 - "Undeclared" definitely we saw as sort of a sequel
00:58:20 to "Freaks and Geeks."
00:58:21 - A lot of people were in the cast like Seth and Jason
00:58:24 and then other people like Martin came on
00:58:26 and did guest spots.
00:58:27 - Judd and Paul are two big ones
00:58:30 who constantly use the same people.
00:58:32 Very loyal, yeah.
00:58:34 - It's almost like a hoarding.
00:58:36 You're not gonna throw away my bottle of piss
00:58:40 in my 1978 news week.
00:58:42 I'm keeping it forever 'cause I may need it.
00:58:46 - I kept working with a lot of the writers and directors
00:58:49 and actors and actresses in movies.
00:58:51 But in my head, I would always think,
00:58:53 this is just an episode of "Freaks and Geeks."
00:58:56 - Judd had done an amazing run, "Anchorman,"
00:58:58 "40-Year-Old Virgin," "Knocked Up."
00:59:01 - What is the "40-Year-Old Virgin?"
00:59:02 It's a guy who's just afraid to ask out the girl,
00:59:04 which is all the geeks are on "Freaks and Geeks."
00:59:07 It's just now they're 40.
00:59:09 - I wouldn't be acting now, I don't think,
00:59:12 if I hadn't been able to do "Knocked Up."
00:59:16 - It's super cool.
00:59:17 - It is super cool.
00:59:18 - Especially 'cause we were told
00:59:19 they would never be big stars.
00:59:21 - Yeah.
00:59:22 - They don't have this, they don't have this,
00:59:23 they don't have this, they don't have this.
00:59:24 It's not gonna work.
00:59:26 - There is another thing that was at play,
00:59:28 a "Count of Monte Cristo" style revenge mission
00:59:31 on Judd's part, and that I will systematically
00:59:35 make every one of these people a star.
00:59:38 You're wrong.
00:59:38 Seth's a star.
00:59:40 Jason's a star.
00:59:41 Watch.
00:59:42 - Part of me thinks like,
00:59:42 the only reason I was in "Knocked Up" and "40-Year-Old Virgin"
00:59:45 is so Judd can prove some NBC executive wrong,
00:59:48 which is totally okay with me.
00:59:49 It doesn't diminish it in my eye.
00:59:50 I'm totally okay to have a career
00:59:52 that's based on vengeance and rage.
00:59:55 - Sounds kind of demented, but it was the driving force
00:59:59 of a lot of my approach to my career.
01:00:02 - Judd is fearless.
01:00:03 He started doing a project with Seth Rogen.
01:00:06 - "2 Red" is like the dream of freaks and geeks
01:00:08 as a movie, edgier where you don't have
01:00:10 to keep it clean for NBC.
01:00:12 It's the perfect version of that.
01:00:15 - "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" was coming out,
01:00:18 and I ran into Judd, and he said, "I did it."
01:00:22 "What did you do?"
01:00:23 And he said, "I promised myself I was not gonna stop
01:00:25 "until Jason became a huge movie star."
01:00:29 - Judd said to me after "Freaks and Geeks,"
01:00:31 "Look, the only way you're gonna make it
01:00:32 "is if you write your own material.
01:00:34 "Like, you're kind of a weird dude,"
01:00:36 was specifically what he said to me.
01:00:37 And then he literally showed me how to write,
01:00:39 and it felt like an apprenticeship.
01:00:41 It feels like what I always thought they could do.
01:00:45 And I didn't want it to happen without me around.
01:00:48 - We started writing "Pineapple Express"
01:00:49 after "Freaks and Geeks" was canceled.
01:00:51 - I would only realize, like, years later
01:00:54 when I came back and did "Pineapple" with Judd and Seth,
01:00:56 like, oh, I kind of do need those guys.
01:00:59 Like, they are my family, you know?
01:01:03 - I helped launch the show "The Office,"
01:01:05 brought along certain freaks and geeks' ideas to that work.
01:01:09 - The kind of storytelling that we're interested in,
01:01:12 all of it traces back to "Freaks and Geeks."
01:01:15 - Jake directed "Bad Teacher."
01:01:17 What did I play? A math teacher.
01:01:19 I love that Becky Ann Baker is Lena Dunham's mom on "Girls."
01:01:24 Why don't these two guys be the nutty neighbors on "Love?"
01:01:27 Izzy Phillips wrote the story for "Blades of Glory."
01:01:30 John Daly directed "Vacation" and wrote "Spider-Man."
01:01:34 - We made a movie about animated food,
01:01:37 grounding every scene in a relatable, real-life scenario.
01:01:42 And that's all from Judd.
01:01:43 - Paul Feig is doing female comedies.
01:01:46 - "Bridesmaids" was so special, wasn't it?
01:01:48 - He did that "Ghostbusters" thing, right?
01:01:50 That female "Ghostbusters."
01:01:52 Yeah, what the hell?
01:01:53 Why should I worry about these guys?
01:01:57 - Even though "Freaks and Geeks" died,
01:02:05 the family behind it continued to live and prosper.
01:02:09 - It survives just in the work of everybody
01:02:14 who was a part of it.
01:02:16 I just acted in a movie that James Franco directed.
01:02:20 And that's the end of all the permutations,
01:02:22 when I'm acting in the movies they've directed.
01:02:26 - They become your kids.
01:02:27 And so when suddenly they're doing well,
01:02:29 that must be what you feel like
01:02:31 when you have successful children.
01:02:33 So I have successful kids, it worked out.
01:02:35 I didn't have to send any of them to college.
01:02:38 - Once in a while,
01:02:45 the universe has got to spin in your direction.
01:02:48 And when it's spinning toward you,
01:02:49 you better stand up and take notice.
01:02:51 "Freaks and Geeks" was not a success, and they let it go.
01:02:56 But all the things had to come together in the right way.
01:03:00 As they say, the cream roast at the top.
01:03:03 Doesn't always, but it did in these cases.
01:03:06 And so I say, hot diggity dog.
01:03:08 ♪ I'm selling away ♪
01:03:13 ♪ Set an open course for the virgin sea ♪
01:03:22 - Wow, what would it have been like
01:03:25 if the show went on for five years
01:03:27 and we were all, you know,
01:03:28 and it was a big hit or something?
01:03:30 - Maybe there's actually something pretty special
01:03:34 about getting it as just this little slice of their life,
01:03:37 as one year in their life.
01:03:39 - You know, like shows often get terrible.
01:03:41 - I don't want to see sad old Kim Kelly.
01:03:43 - It's just kind of exactly what we wanted it to be.
01:03:47 I miss it.
01:03:48 And yet I don't want to do any more of them.
01:03:50 ♪ To carry on ♪
01:03:53 - We could do some big high school reunion
01:03:58 where everybody comes back.
01:04:00 - Like reunion shows?
01:04:02 I don't know.
01:04:03 I don't know how you do it.
01:04:05 - I have no idea.
01:04:06 Like a reboot?
01:04:08 - I hate reunion shows.
01:04:09 I gotta be honest with you.
01:04:10 They bum me the (beep) out.
01:04:12 - You don't think that's it?
01:04:14 That probably is it.
01:04:17 you