17 - Lacking Warmth

January 14, 2021·51 min·3 clips

Judd Apatow's casting advice: walk in and say you want to do it twice because you are not good the first time, and they will always say yes.

A hectic night becomes a small favor. The guest jokes that everyone else has vanished, so they will come through for Connor in the way Tom Hanks did not. Then Connor brings up Judd Apatow. He was doing warm-up for a taping of The Chris Gethard Show, looked out, and saw Apatow sitting there. Suddenly the room had the weight of a career Connor had watched from a distance. The name lands gently. Connor runs through the comedies and productions tied to Apatow, less like a press kit than like someone explaining why one person in the audience can change the temperature of the whole night. A simple sighting turns into a talk about failure, judgment, and the tiny verdicts performers keep carrying after everyone else has gone home. The guest gives him something he can use. They talk about how show business often feels less like triumph than a string of brief reprieves, those little gaps when the bad news pauses and you can breathe. Freaks and Geeks becomes the example. On the day it premiered, the reviews were apparently glowing, and Apatow told the guest to enjoy that day instead of sprinting ahead to ratings and worry. That advice still has some bite. The guest remembers being unable to take in the good news, already braced for whatever the business might take back next. Connor mostly listens. The conversation keeps returning to one small mercy: when a win appears, you have to notice it, because most of the road is rejection. There is no big fix waiting at the end. The guest says that if someone can be talked out of entering the business, maybe they should be talked out of it. The stubborn ones stay anyway. That stubbornness can be ego, sometimes useful and sometimes not, but it helps when someone says you are wrong, not right, or somehow lacking. The phrase circles back. A bad moment can be your fault, or it can just be somebody else's cold read. The hard part is knowing which pain you are holding.

As heard by us

A quiet showbiz conversation about rejection, ego, and learning to enjoy the wins.

Dead Eyes opens with a late-night thank-you and then settles into the kind of territory the show knows well: showbiz frustration, small wins, and the awkward work of keeping going.

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Why you'd press play

A showbiz survival talk built around Judd Apatow, Freaks and Geeks, and getting through rejection.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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