I’m reading a book, from the safety of the elliptical at the gym, and I love it. It’s Judd Apatow’s Sick in the Head, in which he interviewed dozens of comedians about their lives and their trade. There’s also a chapter in which he talked to many of the people involved with “Freaks and Geeks”, Judd’s first TV show. I love the incite from Judd, which could apply to any writer or musician:
There’s a moment early in your career when you will work harder than any other point afterward. And you can see that in “Freaks and Geeks”. Just total commitment in every frame of the series.While the show was really well written and directed and acted (it launched James Franco and Seth Rogen), NBC never gave it a fair shake, yanking it on and off the air. Judd talks about trying to save the show, mentioning something I’d forgotten about: during the infancy of the Internet, networks were confused:
We started a website, but NBC refused to let us put the address on any of our ads because they didn’t want people to know the Internet existed. They were worried about losing viewers to it.Becky Ann Baker, an actress from the show, chimed in:
They sent four of us to the Thanksgiving Day Parade. It was a really cold, windy, icy day, and at one point we were on a street corner and the float was stopped and someone yelled up to us, “Who are you?!”
