Judd Apatow on Please Don’t Destroy, documentaries, nepo babies and streaming

By Joshua Encinias

Judd Apatow had a strong sense of déjà vu while on the set of “Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain.”

“We would be out in the woods, kicking around ideas for a weird scene, and I would remember having similar conversations decades ago with Tim Herlihy on ‘Happy Gilmore,’” says Apatow. Except now he was having the conversation with Martin, Tim Herlihy’s son, a member of the New York comedy group and “Saturday Night Life” staple Please Don’t Destroy.

The trio is made up of of Martin, John Higgins (son of Saturday Night Live producer Steve Higgins) and Ben Marshall, who formed the group while attending NYU.

Please Don’t Destroy was hired by SNL in 2021 to make short films. Like The Lonely Island before them, PPD’s shorts went quickly viral, which in turn has created new opportunities — like making their first movie. It also doesn’t hurt that Jimmy Miller represents them and Apatow.

“Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure Of Foggy Mountain” follows the adventure of Ben, Martin and John to find a priceless treasure. But first, they have to fend off desperate park rangers (Meg Stalter and X Mayo) and a cult leader (Bowen Yang) in a story narrated by John Goodman. Oh, and Conan O’Brien plays Ben’s dad.

“Conan being on the set of this movie is like if Steve Martin was hanging out on the sets of my early movies,” says Apatow. “He’s the reason why some of these actors got into comedy.”

Brooklyn Magazine spoke with Flushing-born Judd Apatow about producing the film for Peacock, where it will debut on November 17.

The comedy kingmaker also talks about his foray into documentary filmmaking and shares his opinion of Hollywood’s nepo babies.

Apatow at the film’s premier (Photo by: Noam Galai/Peacock)

Were you introduced to Please Don’t Destroy like most of us through their SNL shorts?
I’d seen their SNL videos, and my manager Jimmy Miller started representing them. They were developing the script for a little while, and they got on SNL. It’s a real battle to get screen time and sometimes it takes years to get on, but they got on instantly and had these giant comedy shorts that went viral. Suddenly it was a real possibility that we could make this movie.

Did you approach the movie differently from how they make their weekly SNL shorts?
We didn’t really talk about differentiating them. That happened naturally because you have to go much deeper for a movie. Their shorts take place in a very absurd world. And while the world of the movie is absurd, it’s not as much because you need understandable human behavior when you tell a 90-minute story.

John Higgins and Martin Herlihy have ties to SNL. When did you first meet them?
I met John Higgins a bunch of times over the years. I was at Saturday Night Live one year and Jay-Z was the musical guest and John was very excited to see him perform. It’s fun to see how strong he’s gotten at what he does, and I’ve worked with Tim Herlihy a long time. So it’s very special for me to work with their sons.

How do you feel about your daughter Maude being name-checked in New York Magazine’s nepo baby story?
To me, the whole conversation is so understandable on every level, so I try to take it for what it is. We also have to do our work and do a good job and that’s all that matters. Obviously, in all fields, there are people who have access. Ultimately it’s about understanding and acknowledging it, and then trying to do work that you’re proud of.

It’s hard to believe this is the first time Conan’s playing a character in a movie.
Yeah, why did it take this long? Very early on, the Please Don’t Destroy guys said, “Wouldn’t it be amazing if Conan could play Ben Marshall’s dad?” And I started to think, “What movie has Conan been in?” And you realize he hasn’t. He’s been dedicated to his TV shows, which makes it even more exciting, because we have him doing something that people haven’t seen before. He’s always been an amazing comic actor, and he started out in The Groundlings. So it’s an underserved part of his career. We need more Conan acting performances because he really was hilarious and fun for everyone to work with.

In the last five years, you’ve made documentaries about The Avett Brothers, George Carlin and Gary Shandling. Do you see yourself continuing to make docs?
Yeah! I really enjoy that medium. I think all the work you do is just trying to get to the more truthful place, and with documentaries, you have the ability to go all the way. When something comes up that I want to spend years investigating, then I dive into it. I love documentaries, and I’ve probably watched documentaries more than any other type of movie or television show. Right now, I’m in the middle a documentary about Maria Bamford that I’m co-directing with Neil Berkeley, who made the Gilbert Godfrey documentary.

Your 2020 movie “The King of Staten Island” was forced to stream instead of play in theaters because of Covid, which makes 2015’s “Trainwreck” your most recent theatrical feature. Do you care where your movies are seen?
The best case scenario is they get seen on everything, right? You would have a movie in the theater and then they would go to streaming. That’s what’s happened with a lot of our movies. Some that didn’t do amazing in the theater then exploded on streaming. I love having the crowd there to laugh, but I think that there’s a lot of opportunities in streaming to make comedies. I think streaming is a little more friendly to comedies right now than theaters.

For reasons which I understand, when studios green light movies, they really are looking for a movie that might make a billion dollars. Sometimes that’s not what comedies are shooting for. So, as long as we can get them made, I’m happy.

Last year, you produced Billy Eichner’s movie “Bros.” What was it like to see it pilloried online?
All that matters to me is that we’ve made something that we’re really proud of. I think eventually everyone sees it for what it is. That kind of thing has happened over and over again. One of the movies that people talk about with me the most is “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story,” which didn’t have a big box office. I’m really proud of “Bros,” and it’s one of the best movies I’ve ever worked on. You can debate forever why it wasn’t a success in the theaters. It’s already a giant success online and on streaming. So, we just move on to the next thing that makes us excited to tell a story.

Why do you think some movies click when they’re released and some find their audience later?
You never know why things pop or don’t pop. But the one thing I’ve learned over time is you don’t know how well your movie actually did for a long time. Will your movie survive? When “The Cable Guy” came out in 1996, we were devastated by the box office and thought it didn’t work out. But people watch it all the time, and it became a lot of people’s weird favorite movie. I’ve got to have a larger view on all of it because just the fact it exists is what’s most important, and that we like it.