From the pages of the Saturday Bonnaroo Beacon…

Bonnaroo 2016 not only marks the first Bonnaroo appearance of Judd Apatow, it marks the first festival appearance of Judd Apatow. The writer/director/producer—who has worked on such films as 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Trainwreck, Funny People and This is 40, while his TV credits include The Larry Sanders Show, Freaks and Geeks, Girls, and most recently Netflix’s Love—recently returned to stand-up comedy after 20 years and will host two sessions of Judd Apatow & Friends from 4:45-6:15 and then at 6:45-8:15 at the Comedy Theater.

“Not only have I never performed at a festival,” Apatow says, “I have never been to a festival, so I’m excited to have the experience. It’s completely new to me. I have a bunch of friends on these shows and hopefully there will be some surprises as well.”

Even though this will be his maiden festival voyage, Apatow is a music enthusiast of broad tastes. He identifies The Who as his favorite band—“I saw them twice last week—once at Staples and once at a teen cancer benefit. There’s an entire episode of Freaks and Geeks with nothing but Who music. Quadrophenia defined my childhood and helped me get through it. These days I am also a big Wilco fan, I use their music in a lot of my projects. I also love the Avett Brothers and Loudon Wainwright. I’m a big folk music fan. I’m pretty open to everything. I have two daughters so there’s no pop music that I haven’t heard 10,000 times. I know every word to Lemonade already.”

As for the top stand-ups working today, he suggests, “Chris Rock is the best comedian we have, by far. I just think he’s the most insightful, the most fun to watch and he makes me laugh out loud the hardest. But I’m also a giant fan of Maria Bamford, who has a new TV show called Lady Dynamite. I think she’s the most inventive comedian working today and everything she does is really fascinating and hilarious and bizarre.”

Bamford is one of the new interviewees in the paperback version of Apatow’s book, Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy. The book is a collection of insightful conversations with comedians that spans his days working for his high school radio station on through the present. He explains, “I did all the interviews as a kid as a way of educating myself. It was great to get a chance to do it again because I have just as many questions now about how to do all this as I did when I was 16.” Along with Bamford, his new interview subjects include Eric Idle, David Milch and David Sedaris.

One of Apatow’s early gigs was as a writer, producer, and eventually director of the Larry Sanders Show, starring the late Garry Shandling. When asked to describe Sanders to people who may have never have seen it, he explains, “The Larry Sanders Show was about people in show business and how their egos got in the way of their relationships. It was the show that inspired much that came afterwards. David Chase said the reason why he was inspired to do The Sopranos is he saw the Larry Sanders Show and he realized what was possible. I think the show had that effect on a lot of people because it was so experimental and new and it went so deep emotionally that it just broke down the door for a whole new generation of more thoughtful shows.”

Numerous critics and performers attribute a similar legacy to Freaks and Geeks. Thus it is fitting that Dead and Company will appear at Apatow’s first Bonnaroo, as that show ended with the character of Lindsay Weir (Linda Cardellini), blowing off an academic summit at the University of Michigan to head out on Dead tour.

Apatow reveals, “We always thought the second season would be about her having major drug problems. So it was the beginning of what would have been a problematic year for her. Paul [Feig] talks a lot about how back then when you became a drug addict people didn’t really understand about rehab—that was a very new idea—and how confused her parents would be because they wouldn’t know how to handle it. So that was the idea—What do you do if Lindsay’s on acid?” He laughs.

Alas, this didn’t happen because the show was cancelled after one season, a fate that was not altogether unanticipated. Apatow recalls, “The final episode was filmed out of order. We shot it a few episodes before the final episode because we wanted to make sure that we had an ending to the series. In a very paranoid way we shot it in the middle of the season so if they pulled the plug we’d still have a finale.”

With all of that windup, here’s the pitch, as Judd Apatow plays our favorite party game, Bon or Oo…

The world would be a better place if everyone listened to…
The Dalai Lama


Name a song you sing in the shower or your car but never in public?
All songs.


What song would you be happy never to hear again?
“Everybody Dance Now.” I don’t want to dance now or ever.


What song could you hear again and again?
Wilco “You and I.”


The one thing nobody knows about me is…
How sexy I am.


Greatest TV show ever?
The Sopranos.


Greatest book?
Catcher in the Rye.


Who is the nicest person in the entertainment community?
Lena Dunham.


Who is the worst dressed?
Me.


The most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen from the stage is
People on their phones who forget there’s a show going on.

True or false comedians are under appreciated?
False.


True or false film stars are over appreciated?
False.


If I weren’t a writer/director/comedian I’d be a….
Singer/songwriter


% of professional comics you know about whom you’d say hey that guy/gal’s pretty cool?
65%.


What’s your problem with the other 35%?
Complete narcissism.


If you could invite any three people living or dead to join you in a sumptuous pre-show meal who would they be?
W.C. Fields, my grandfather Bobby Shad,who was a jazz producer but died before I could really ask him a lot about it, and Buddha.

[Bobby Shad’s credits as a producer include Lightnin’ Hopkins, Sarah Vaughan, Cannonball Adderley, Dinah Washington, Max Roach and Roy Haynes. Shad’s 1973 album Bobby Shad and the Bad Men, “A 65 piece rock workshop” includes instrumental orchestral covers of such songs as the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back,” Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” and his grandson’s favorite band, a cover of The Who’s “Pinball Wizard”

At Bonnaroo I’m looking forward to seeing…
Pearl Jam.


Bon or oo?
Bon.