8 Things You Didn’t Know About Judd Apatow, Book Lover

Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow Image by Getty Images

By Anne Cohen June 8, 2015

When one thinks of Judd Apatow, books aren’t the first thing that come to mind. Bro-medies? Sure. Seth Rogen? Definitely. Weed? Duh. But books?

And yet, the man behind “Pineapple Express” and “Knocked Up” apparently owns a lot of books. As he recently told : “I have actually convinced myself that buying books is the same as reading.”

Here are some fun facts involving Judd Apatow and books, per his New York Times interview:

1) Mike Nichols once recommended he read the Charlie Chaplin biography in Peter Ackroyd’s Brief Lives series. When he got home, the director had already sent it to his apartment.

2)His picks for the “world’s funniest writers — in print, TV, film” include: “David Simon (“The Wire”); David Chase (“The Sopranos”); Matthew Weiner (“Mad Men”); and David Milch (“Deadwood”). Garry Shandling’s work is unparalleled. James Brooks. Robert Smigel. Amy Schumer. Lena Dunham. Do you want even more?”

3) If he were to launch a book club, he would invite “Wes Anderson, Norman Lear, Paul Thomas Anderson, Naomi Klein, Dr. Oz, Joe Biden, Pete Townshend and the Barefoot Contessa” to join.

4) Like any self-respecting neurotic Jewish man, he loves self-help books: “I love self-help. I need self-help. I own them all. None are working. Short stories, because they are short. I usually look to see which are the shortest ones and read those first. I rarely get to the long short stories. I avoid romance novels because I generally get angry at handsome men. I don’t want to know how to make crafts, so no books about felting.”

Case in point:

You know you are gaining too much weight when your @nytimes caricature is of a fat faced Judd. It used to just be a big nose and puffy eyes

— Judd Apatow (@JuddApatow) June 8, 2015

5) As a kid, his favorite books were about the Marx Brothers.

6)“How to Talk Dirty and Influence People,” by Lenny Bruce, made him want to be a comedian, “but without the heroin and strippers. (The word “strippers” keeps autocorrecting to “strollers,” by the way.)”

7) His ideal dinner party guests include: “Pete Townshend, Steve Martin, Philip Roth and Lena Dunham.”

8) The book that has disappointed him most? “The Bible. It’s just not working for me.”

Anne Cohen was the Forward’s deputy digital media editor. When she’s not looking for the secret Jewish history of Voodoo in New Orleans, or making lists about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she writes for The Assimilator. She graduated from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism with an M.S. magazine concentration in 2012.

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