January 9, 2013 | 9:27 am

What Judd Apatow thinks of the Jewish Journal

Posted by Naomi Pfefferman

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Judd Apatow

“It’s an honor to be insulted by you,” I told Judd Apatow during an interview about his new comedy-drama, “This is 40,” about the midlife angst suffered by record label owner Pete (Paul Rudd) and his wife, Debbie (Leslie Mann). 

“Yes, exactly!” Apatow replied.

I’d interviewed the comedy mogul several times  over the years, most recently about his flick “Funny People,” starring Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen, and about his book “I Found This Funny: My Favorite Pieces of Humor and Some that Might Not be Funny at All.”  He’d opened up to me about how his Jewish childhood with atheist parents instilled in him a “frightening, empty” view of the universe that “certainly did more damage than they were aware of at the time.”   Whenever I’d asked him if he read the Journal, he’d responded with an enthusiastic, “Oh, yeah!”

So I was thrilled – and initially a tad mortified – to see that “This is 40” actually had a scene with a Journal reporter, which is played for laughs:  A schlumpy journalist wearing a yarmulke turns up to interview Pete’s star client, Graham Parker, asking him, “Why is this album different from all other albums.”  “It isn’t,” Parker retorts.

Yes, parody is a form of flattery, but is that what Judd really thought of the Journal?  Can we possibly appear less hip?  And is this what he thought of me?   “Well, I insult myself all the time in my films, so why not you?” he quipped when I asked him that question.

Q:  Where did the idea for the Journal scene come from?

A:  What I wanted to write about is that Pete feels like maybe he’s slipping.  He’s in the music business but he kind of likes the older bands, not the newer bands, and it’s a symbol that his taste is not keeping up with what’s happening in the world and it terrifies him.  He has this business model he thinks will work, which is, he’ll take these older artists, and he will have very little overhead; they don’t need to sell that many records and that’s enough, but then he’s not even going to be able to sell that many.  So when it came to, who’s interested in talking to Graham, we thought, the only people who want to talk to Graham is the Jewish Journal.  And we have our friend David Wilde, who writes for Rolling Stone magazine, playing the reporter from the Journal.  And then the joke in the movie is that the old people who still buy hard copies of records are older Jews because they don’t download; they don’t understand what that means. (Laughs.)  Which is probably because of the fact that my dad probably wouldn’t know how do download; he doesn’t have an iTunes music library.  I’m sure this makes no sense to the reality of the Jewish Journal, or who reads it or the ages or any of it; it’s just a general, we didn’t get Rolling stone to cover this.

Q: Does the character reflect any of your impressions of the Journal?

A:  No, not at all.  But when you think of like the cutting edge of the music scene, you don’t think of the Jewish Journal. I don’t mean to insult your readers, but they are not going to find out the next hot band in the Jewish Journal.

Q:  You never know.

A:  Well, you should change that.  If you find them, then you will prove my joke incorrect.  You and I have done a bunch of interviews over the years, for a long time, but the joke is literally coming from the fact that it just sounds funny.  Comedy is so much like a rhythm idea.  And to me, although there’s been many great Jewish rockers over the years, you don’t instantly think that our people are rocking that hard, although the truth is that they probably are (laughs). 

Q:  Someone on our staff was thinking of doing a videotaped response to your Journal scene.

A:  Yes!  That’s right.  You could, and it would be a great video for every person who doesn’t realize that the guy from that punk band is Jewish, or that the guy in that great rock ‘n’ roll band of all time is Jewish.  You could show all of them.  We could even get Adam Sandler to record it.

“This is 40” is now in theaters.