Producer and director Judd Apatow has been really politically engaged for the past few years. While I rarely covered him, he was often tweeting or speaking out against Donald Trump and GOP policies. He was obviously a big Hillary Clinton supporter and contributor, but it was more than that – Apatow really tried to use his platform to speak up for women’s rights and more, all while acknowledging his own privilege. He grew on me a lot over the past year. Anyway, over the weekend, the New York Times published an interesting interview with Apatow now that Emperor Baby Fists’ inauguration is upon us. You can read the full piece here. Some highlights:
Whether he’s going to lose his mind when Trump comes into office: “There’s a danger on the internet that you think you’re accomplishing something. So you see an article about a disease and retweet it and think ‘It’s cured now!’ And you’ve fooled yourself into thinking that you’ve done something productive.”
He doesn’t feel battered by Trump trolls: “I’ll get insecure and go, I don’t think my career’s going that well because nobody is saying anti-Semitic things to me today.”
Losing weight in the Trump Era: “It’s very hard to lose weight in the Trump era…I’m trying so hard to have it not turn into 30 pounds. I think it tests our ability to not want to numb out. There’s so many things that are hard to hear every day that you do want to have some Oreos. Like people say, what do you invest in during the Trump era? I feel like, Hostess Cakes. Most of us are just scared and eating ice cream.”
He believes the funnier candidate always wins: “I said it as a joke, but I think there’s something to it. Reagan was funny. Bill Clinton was funny. Bush was funnier than Gore. Obama was funnier than probably anybody who’s ever run for office.” Even though the president-elect rarely laughs, Apatow says, and “has a demented sense of humor, Trump is way funnier than Hillary Clinton.”
He thinks HRC made mistakes: “Clearly Hillary Clinton made a few enormous mistakes. One of those mistakes, to me, was that you can’t get paid that much for speeches and go back into politics. That has to be your victory lap — you cash in, you do the speeches and you’re done.”
Meeting Donald Trump as a young comedian: “I was performing in Atlantic City, and at the time, Donald Trump was in a casino war with Merv Griffin. There’s no one he can’t get in a war with. He was in a war with Merv Griffin. Who’s Merv Griffin ever been in a war with? And I think on some level, he thinks Putin’s Merv Griffin. He thinks you fight it out and you kick it around and two powerful men just decide what to do alone in a room.”
Pres. Trump will run the country like he ran The Apprentice: “Donald Trump sits in his office. He sends his kids to watch the teams do their missions. Then they come back and tell him what they think of it and then he makes an impulsive decision based on the information that Donald Jr. or Ivanka give him. That’s how he’s running the country.”
He has a soft spot for Melania: “Of course. She lives with him. She made a major miscalculation she has to live with.”
What he thinks about the ‘stop-normalizing-Trump’ argument: “I don’t think it serves a purpose to be against him. It only serves a purpose to fight issue by issue. I’m trying to transition from making comments on social media to choosing one or two organizations to work with and support so that I feel like I’m actually being a positive part of the process. You don’t want to be a crank.”
[From The NYT]
Personally, I never cared that Hillary Clinton made speeches and got paid. What bugged me about that issue was that she should have just released the text of those speeches right away. The narrative about “Hillary got money for speeches” was stupid, but the narrative about “Hillary Clinton keeps secrets” is the one that stuck and really damaged her. When you’re running for office, there should be no secrets. Although now that the dust has settled, the fact that HRC was a wee bit too secretive about some things seems almost quaint compared to the incoming authoritarian rule of Emperor Baby Fists. And where are those tax returns after all?
As for what Judd says about comfort-eating … I’ve actually been working out a lot since the election and I lose my appetite whenever Baby Fists is on TV. But that’s part of a conscious choice I’ve made to disconnect as a way to cope – if I was absorbing 24-hour cable news non-stop, I would have put on 30 pounds by now.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
Source: celebitchy.com
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