Cultureshock (2018–…): Season 1, Episode 4 - Freaks and Geeks - full transcript
A profile of the cult classic series and original dramedy, "Freaks and Geeks" that captured the sad yet humorous difficulties of teenage life, and for the first time, offered protagonists that weren't "jocks and brains"
- [Jason] High school is where
yyou kinda become who you are.
- [Linda] Those years
are tough years.
Your emotions and your hormones
and everything runs so high
in a way that you've never
experienced them before.
- [Judd] All of those
things are universal
and will never change.
- You grow up, you
get different clothes
and become more confident
in your guesses.
- In high school, I wasn't like
at the bottom of the totem pole
and I wasn't at the
top of the totem pole,
but kinda somewhere
in the middle.
- When I was a kid,
I always thought
nobody understands
what's special about me.
I felt very alone.
- Childhood sucks and
adolescence sucks,
so I was like I want to
be anything but myself.
- Wait, does everyone's
life suck in high school?
Yeah, kinda.
- Those are growing pains.
You think you know so much
but you're just so relatively
small in the world, you're
just so young in the world.
- I'm so glad that the most
awkward moments in my childhood
were actually captured on film
in the context of a
really great show.
- This tiny little show, that
only lasted a couple months
from '99 to 2000 has
found so many people.
- They've all gone on not
only to be famous actors
but they're amazing writers,
producers, directors.
- And we all have,
I certainly do,
have a little freak and
a little geek in me.
- Did you ever go
to high school?
Yeah.
Okay, then it's about you.
And then 18 episodes later
they go that dude was right.
Dumbledore at the
mall was right.
♪ I don't give a damn
about my reputation ♪
♪ You're livin' in the past,
it's a new generation ♪
♪ A girl can do what
she wants to do ♪
♪ That's what I'm gonna do
♪ And I don't give a damn
about my bad reputation ♪
♪ Oh no
♪ Not me
♪ Oh no
♪ Not me
(electronic pop music)
(dramatic music)
- The Ranch was the place
where we all kinda converged.
It was just a really
shitty ranch house
in North Hollywood that
we trashed, of course.
- You know, it was a
bunch of lazy fat guys
hanging around mostly.
- Among the people
who went there
was Feig and Judd Apatow.
- We'd all go do stand-up
and then we'd come back
at the end of the
night every night
and we would just stay up and
play poker and drink coffee.
- [Judd] No drugs at all,
just Pepsis and cigarettes.
- [Steve] Judd was
younger than all of us.
- He had a really
funny stand-up act.
He does this thing
with his forehead.
Have you ever seen that one?
You should ask him
about that one.
(squeaking)
- That was as good
as my stand-up got.
It was just a lot of dreaming
of what we hoped we could do.
I didn't really
have a sense that
any of us would pull it off.
(soft music)
(typing)
- [Paul Feig] I had the
idea for a while
of wanting to do something
about high school.
It really came out
of just the fact that
I hadn't seen myself or the
people we went to school with
represented properly in
any high school show.
Everything at that time
you watched on television
was either about LA or New York.
The middle of the country
was just treated
sorta despairingly.
- Michigan in winter.
The late '70s.
All that stuff made
for an odd show.
- [Paul] It's based on
the town I grew up in,
which is Mount
Clemens, Michigan.
I need to be an advocate
for the Midwest.
I want to be an advocate
for real people.
It's where most of us grew up.
And so, I really started writing
and it just really
poured out of me.
I was in love with
the head cheerleader.
- [Cindy] Hi Sam.
- [Sam] Oh, hi Cindy.
- [Cindy] So, um,
what are you doing?
- [Sam] Just going home.
How about you?
- I'm cheering at the game.
- Oh, (chuckles) well
you're dressed for it.
- I wanted to ask her
to the homecoming dance
but I just kept putting it off
and the day of I asked her,
which is ridiculous but
she was really nice,
oh thanks, I have a date.
- I'm already going
with Dan Lewis,
he asked me two weeks ago.
- [Paul] So, I thought,
okay we can make that
the story for the geeks.
- Oh okay, I mean yeah
just thought I would ask
just in case you didn't
have anyone to go with.
- I wanted it to be about
a brother and sister
because I was an only child,
and I always wanted
an older sister.
What would Lindsey's story be?
And I just remembering think
well she's such a rebel,
what if she decided
she was gonna ask
the mentally challenged kid,
kinda an act of screw you
to the rest of the school.
- Hey Eli,
do you want to go to the
homecoming dance with me?
- Yes, yes, I do!
Yep, please.
- Good.
- We used to call the
burnouts, we called them Freaks
and so I was like, geeks
that rhymes with freaks.
Let's call it Freaks and Geeks.
My wife put her hand up and
she goes give me a hand five
and like, high fived me,
and goes like this is
the one you send to Judd.
- I did a deal with DreamWorks.
Very early on in the
deal, I said to Feig,
"Hey if you ever have any ideas
for anything, let me know."
Not necessarily
thinking he would.
He didn't talk to me about
it while he was doing it,
he just laid it on me
and it was impressive.
- [Paul] He goes, I love
it, were going to buy it
and it was just like oh
my god this is happening.
- I was the president of
DreamWorks Television.
Justin came into my
office one day and said
Judd has this spec script
written by this guy Paul Feig,
and I'm like who's Paul Feig?
You know, "I said
what's it about?"
And he said well, "Well,
it's set in a high school
"in the Midwest
in the late '80s"
and I was like, "We'll
never sell that,
"we'll never sell it."
- [Judd] The '99 shows
weren't as challenging.
(upbeat jazz music)
- [Jake] It was also a time
when network television
was still most of television.
- [Steve] NBC had
been a really dominate
number one in young viewers.
- Boy, those were the days, huh?
- [Shelley] Must See TV
was like a really big deal.
- [Busy] There was like the
proliferation of teen TV
in part due to the massive
success of Dawson's Creek.
- [Seth] WB was popular.
- [Garth] Charmed,
and 7th Heaven,
and Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
- [Scott] Frasier,
Will & Grace, Friends.
- [Joe] What was that other one?
Uh, Malcolm in the Middle.
- A really great
show but you know,
a very heightened version of
childhood and the teen years.
- It was wish-fulfillment
television.
You know, soap opera type shows
but I think what we
were trying to do
was some sort of alternative.
- At that point,
there was really
four places you
could sell the show.
Fox, NBC, ABC and CBS.
We collectively thought the
place where we could sell this
is Fox and we're
going to sell it
as the next
iteration of a 90210.
Immediately, Fox passed.
We're going to have a harder
time with this than I thought.
Then of course, CBS passed
and then ABC had passed, too.
We didn't hear anything
from NBC on Monday
and then on Tuesday
we got a call.
- I don't even remember
why they brought
it to us because it
didn't really seem like
an NBC show at the time.
- I know.
- So, Shelley called and
said, "This is unbelievable."
It spoke to her.
- And her famous line was
"If we don't make this show,
"I'm quitting the
television business."
Nobody says that, you know,
everybody is in the ass
protecting business.
- They so perfectly
captured that aching,
awkward pain of teenage years.
- It was a weird moment at
NBC because the president
of NBC programming
had just stepped down.
So, Scott Sassa, who
was the guy above
the head of programming, he
really wasn't the creative guy.
- It was the first
show when I read
the script that
really spoke to me
because it was how I
grew up in high school.
- It happened very fast,
NBC was super enthusiastic
and they were ready to go.
- They were like "We don't
even have any notes,"
which you're like "Oh my
god, I can't believe that."
- We just said we'll make it.
We don't want to touch it,
we just want to shoot it.
Yeah.
- Yeah.
- It was such a whirlwind from
writing this thing on spec,
not knowing what to do
with it and suddenly,
oh my god we're going
into production.
(soft music)
(people chattering)
- [Judd] A lot of the work
was figuring out who would
play these characters.
- I wanted an
awkward, normal cast,
who were going to come
in and bring their
personality and bring
their weirdness.
- I said, "Let's
find amazing kids."
- I seem to drawn to projects
where I don't have to
cast beautiful people.
Not interesting.
- [Jake] Allison started
setting up sessions.
- [Paul] Throw the doors open
wide, I want to see everybody.
Don't weed anybody out
if they don't even sound
like the description
of the kids.
- [Judd] Let's let
anybody show up.
- [Allison] Everybody's
niece and nephew.
- [Judd] Let's do
open call auditions.
- We sit down with the network,
alright this is the vision.
They're going to
make us cast a bunch
of handsome models
and call them nerds
and put tape on their glasses
but they're all super hot.
- Anybody who read
it, it was obvious,
you didn't want
those kind of kids.
You needed the kids
who got picked on.
- A thousand people
would show up.
1500 people would show up.
Given a line or two
and if someone was good
maybe we'd give
them a page to do.
- [Allison] Franco must have
been one of the first kids
that I brought in
for that because
he was so clearly that kid.
- Judd said just be you
and I was like, "Okay."
- and I didn't even think
James Franco was handsome.
We just thought he was
a weird looking dude.
He had this big
mouth and an attitude
and then people started looking
at the tape at the office
and seeing his headshot,
all the women were swooning
and we were like "Really?"
- Oh no!
Now I don't want him on the
show, I didn't know he was hot.
I thought he was goofy looking.
- My wife said,
"He's the kinda guy
"who works at the newsstand
who you make out with."
- It was me and James
Franco next to each
other in the waiting room
to go into the screen test.
James went in and then I
went in and did my thing
and then we waited
and then they told us
that we both got cast.
We were walking back to
the parking lot together
and I was so excited and
was trying to figure out
how it was going to work.
And I said, "Well I guess
maybe I'll be the goofy one
"and you'll be the cool one?"
And he went, "Yeah."
- [Allison] Seth
opened his mouth
and I'm sure they like him.
- I have a super
thick Canadian accent
that I don't really have
any more, in my audition.
Yeah, but who
cares, it's church.
The whole place is
full of paintings
of a bleeding guy on a cross.
That's way nastier than
any album cover I have.
I was doing stand-up
comedy at the time
I'd done that
since I was like 13
and it was like clear
I was just like
not going to graduate
high school.
- [Jake] It's just
this crazy story, right?
The kid walks into
an audition in Vancouver
and six years later
or whatever is one of
the biggest comedy
stars in the world
and he kinda never went home.
- I think what a lot
of people attribute
to some character choices
is literally just me
not quite understanding
what the hell I'm doing.
I had never acted,
ever, in anything.
- We didn't know what it was,
we just thought "That is
a weird. hilarious dude."
- What Paul had written
was very specific.
A smart, young woman who had sat
with her grandmother
while she died.
- She's questioning everything
and that leads her to
hang out with the freaks
instead of the smart kids.
So, you needed a girl that
looked like she could
straddle both worlds.
- I had concocted this image
of this girl in my head
who I didn't know, and
so when Linda walked in,
it was exactly the person
who I had envisioned.
- All the other
characters I had read were
rebelling against
their parents in a way
where you couldn't
actually still feel love.
The thing that separated
Lindsay is that she really
loved her parents, but there
were still those battles in
herself to rebel.
It's a great role.
- [Jake] Originally, Kim
was not in the pilot.
The character was supposed to
enter in the second episode.
- [Judd] We realized
that she was very special
and would need to be a
big part of the show.
- I wasn't outwardly
Kim Kelly in high school
but that's like, that
was my soul, like,
that's who I was, was that girl.
- Sam Levine, radio.
- Sam had sent in a video
of himself auditioning.
Not a great audition.
- [Woman] Uh oh, Incoming.
- [Woman] Hi, is
this your jacket?
- [Woman] You left
it in science.
I didn't want it
to get all dirty.
- [Judd] The worst
audition, ever.
- The sides I was reading
said he likes doing
impressions with his friends,
so I finished the read and say
I'm talking like this because
my girdle is killing me.
And that is the William
Shatner impression
that got me on Freaks and Geeks.
- I remember walking out
into the waiting room
and Martin was sitting
there with suspenders on,
looking like such a goober.
I was, like, "Oh please,
oh please, be good."
- I fell in love with
Martin immediately,
because he was so
much like the kid
I had based this on, which
was, he was a friend of ours.
He was in special ed
some of his classes,
but he wasn't in others.
- He was so authentic in
that role that everybody just
figured that was him,
which is what everybody
assumed for years.
- So many like, weird
characters that couldn't exist
if you were casting
anything else.
All these pieces fit
so well together.
It's very rare.
Think about it, that's
the future, death.
-All right, no boarders,
all right...
- I could actually audition
as a gym teacher in my sleep.
- Well they based Harris
on their impression of me.
- Watch this, ready?
Gruber.
- Oh hey, how's it going?
Ah, Mr. Rosso.
- [Allison] Lizzy Caplan
was great right away.
- [Paul] Rashida Jones
was just a young actress.
- [Allison] Ben Foster
is so great in it too.
- [Jake] Shia was a trip,
even when he was twelve.
- I was so envious
of all those actors
and I wanted to be a regular
on that show, so badly.
You know, I totally forgot
what my character's name was.
- Within the first
week, we had, like,
half of the principle cast.
The one character who
we were really sort
of struggling to find was Sam.
- [Judd] We were watching
the tapes from New York,
and there's John Francis Daly.
- [Judd] He was really
young, I think he was 13.
- Producers only want to use
kids who are 18 to look 13.
- (laughs) I sounded
totally like a girl,
so I didn't think that I had
a chance because of that.
- [Judd] And as I'm watching,
I go, like, "Oh my God."
- [Judd] It almost
didn't feel like it was
an actor doing it.
- He has like a glass head.
Because you look in those eyes,
you see everything
he is thinking,
you know everything that
kid is going through.
This is what was great
about high school
and terrible about
high school is everyone
went in at a different
maturity level.
He's the kid that's kind of
too young to be in school.
- [Jake] Finding John was
kind of a definitive moment.
We were very comprehensive,
we were very thorough,
but we found this,
just astounding group of people.
(soft music)
- [Director] Quiet please.
- We had a really unique
and unusual experience
making that pilot.
- There was like,
jokes about doing
shrooms and stuff like that.
There was a Hitler joke.
And I remember being like, "Oh
this is actually very funny."
(yelling)
(laughing)
(yelling)
- [Paul] We shot the pilot,
and it was like shooting
a little indie movie.
- The whole process, to
me, of making the show,
had the naivety of youth.
Like, we had no reason
to believe we couldn't
do the coolest thing ever.
- Paul was very set
on having a family
that liked each other.
Not everyone's fighting, and I
thought, "Yeah, that's great.
"That's something that
didn't exist in my house."
- [Jake] The Weir
family is so solid.
- The Weirs are hopeful.
Sam.
Did Mom and Dad
ever tell you that
I was the only one with
Grandma when she died?
- No.
- Yeah.
- I was surprised
that the network had
no issue with the
conceit of the show.
A girl who's now questioning
her spirituality,
discovering God does not exist.
- If you're brought up
religiously, there's like,
always a safety net, of
kind of like, something
and the minute you break
that, you're free falling
and like, oh
my god, you know?
We're just organisms on
this world and you know,
is there anything after death?
So, I said like, you
know, can you see God
or Heaven or a
light or anything?
What did she say?
- "No.
"There's nothing."
- It's a really
sad, heavy scene.
It's a true loss of innocence.
But no one mentioned it, ever.
Compassion.
Kindness.
Trying to figure
out how to grow up.
Paul did so many
things to that pilot
that should not work
that don't sound like
an appealing pilot concept.
Girl loses faith in God and
becomes a pot head, you know.
A mentally challenged kid
falls and breaks his arm.
The dance sequence just found
a way to put it all together.
♪ Carry on
(soft music)
♪ I look to the sea
- Hi, Cindy.
- Hey Sam.
- I was wondering, um,
you said you'd save a dance
for me, so, can I have it now?
- First of all, it's
not what you see
all the time in television.
You don't see that
cheerleader say
yes to giving the
dance to that guy.
And then you don't see her
being so sweet about it.
♪ We lived happily forever
- I was standing behind
the camera just watching,
and it was just like,
goosebumps, goosebumps,
goosebumps, goosebumps.
- And having that Styx song.
♪ Best as we can
- And he gets up the nerve
to dance with the girl,
I said "Son, Styx
is not dance music."
- [Paul] And then suddenly,
it becomes a fast dance song.
- [Dennis] The minute
the rock part comes in,
the look on his face.
It's like he's been betrayed
by the Gods of the universe.
Just this look of, like,
like he wants to die.
- You know, his life is
flashing in front of him.
- But he just does it, and
as he starts having fun.
What seems like is not a
victory, is actually a victory.
And that's really what
the show's all about.
- I was at the school
dance in 11th grade
and I was in love
with this girl,
but I was so scared
to walk up to her that
it took three
quarters of the song.
So, we start having to slow
dance which was my dream,
and then, like having to
dance, but I don't really
know how to dance.
And then it just
ended really fast.
I remember sitting in
editing and just crying.
Just feeling like oh
this completely works.
This is beautiful.
And I could cry every
single time I watch it.
Because it's kids reaching
out to each other,
and it's so hard to do as a kid.
It's so hard to
offer your heart.
It's so hard to try to connect.
- We all have inside
of us this deep
insecurity about
life and things,
but particularly in adolescence.
Even if you're one of the
kids that thinks they're cool,
you're still putting
on airs that you've
got it all together out here,
but in here, you know the
ducks, they're runnin' around.
(people chattering)
(piano playing)
- As soon as we started
cutting the show,
we felt pretty confident
that it was gonna be
a really good pilot.
My thought was this doesn't
really seem like a TV show.
And it'll be interesting
to see whether
anyone wants to put it on NBC.
- The pilot, you know,
it didn't blow me away.
So, at that point, I wasn't
sure whether this was just
something that resonated
to me that I liked
in my personal ear or
it really was something
that everybody else
would relate to.
- We got a new
network president.
We started having
like a new network
president every couple of years.
And I think, like,
Freaks and Geeks came
at really the beginning
of the revolving door.
- You hope you have
an executive that says
I so believe in what
you're doing creatively.
You pray that you
get that champion.
- We had Garth Ancier come in.
I don't think it's a secret.
He did not like it.
It was a hard way
to meet somebody.
I'll tell you that.
(laughing)
It was not the best
way to be introduced.
- Other than Freak
and Geeks at the time,
there was very few
single camera comedies.
It wasn't a genre
that was popular.
You weren't a sitcom.
And you weren't an hour drama.
You were right in the middle.
And right now, everything
is in the middle.
That's what modern
television is.
- Comedy's gotten more
behavioral and it was always
what myself and Judd and all
our actors found the funniest.
It's not jokes.
- You were used to
seeing joke, joke, joke.
And this was a little different.
It had story, it had drama,
it had a little
bit of heart in it.
I think people relate
to the underdogs.
- They ordered 12 episodes,
so that plus the pilot brought
us to 13 episodes total.
(upbeat rock music)
- [Paul] And then suddenly,
you're flying to New York.
They make that decision
at the last minute
then you fly to the up fronts,
where they present to
all the advertisers.
- [Narrator] Freaks and geeks.
- Dad, are any of
your friends alive?
-[Narrator] Coming
this fall to NBC.
- [Paul] There you are
in these giant parties
and you're glad handing
and you're doing
presentations of
your show and there's
your cast up on stage,
and you're up on stage.
- It wasn't easy to tell
Sam Levine he's a geek.
He'd never heard it before.
(audience laughing)
- People were so
pumped about the future
of Freaks and Geeks.
- We really hoped
it would be a hit.
It didn't have any of the early
indications that it
would be a big hit.
- They're picking us up.
Yay, for eight
o'clock on Saturday.
Oh no, what?
What the hell was that?
Anybody who would watch
our show would be out.
- [Narrator] NBC
Saturday at 8/7 central.
- [Jake] Saturday night
is essentially dead air.
Nobody programs Saturday night
with their great material.
We thought maybe we
could do well there
and they'll move us off
that night and put us
into a better time period.
(rock music)
- [Paul] Okay!
Welcome back everybody.
Yay.
- The Freaks and Geeks
pilot got picked up.
We put our staff
together and said,
"Let's get as many amazing
stories as we can."
We wanted people who
had lived a little bit.
People who'd done things.
People who'd done bad things.
- And basically, the first two
weeks of us getting together
was just this weird
group therapy session
where all of us just plumbed
the depths of our humiliating
and gut-wrenching
experiences from high school.
- We never wanted to leave.
Like I'm, I'm serious.
- We were there all the time.
- [Paul] I wrote up a
questionnaire of 20 questions.
Like, "What's the worst
thing that ever happened
to you in high school?"
"What's the best thing?"
- The most you ever got in
trouble with your parents.
What's your best
drug experience?
What's your worst
drug experience?
- Who did you fall in love with?
Who did you hate?
Blah, blah, blah.
And everyone had to fill
it out in great detail.
- [Judd] And there were
hundreds of amazing stories,
or just moments.
- [Judd] These people were
sharing really painful
parts of their lives.
If the show was successful,
it would vindicate the
things that happened to them.
- Everybody involved
was digging down
to expose who they really were.
- You would say the
most embarrassing thing.
Everyone groaned
at the same time,
they'd go, "Okay let's do that."
And then Paul would go,
"Um, I have another story."
And then it would top it!
- My favorite personal
story from the show
was the Parisian night suit
which truly happened to me.
I was really into disco
and there was a store
in the mall called Silvermens.
One day, the guy's like,
"Hey, check it out.
"We just got it in, man.
"It's a disco jumpsuit."
I was like, "That's
gonna be awesome."
So, I put this
thing on and thought
I just rock in front of
the mirror of my bedroom,
just like, "You are the king."
And wear it to school, and
the second I walk through
the doors, realize I made the
biggest mistake of my life.
People start laughing, other
people are just like "What?"
And you're trapped.
You wanna go home, you just
wanna get out of there.
And you couldn't.
So, I had to spend
all day walking around
in this disco jumpsuit.
- What was funny about
Paul was he would tell
a story of childhood
humiliation,
someone would say, "How old
were you when that happened?
"12, 13?"
And he would always say, "17."
(laughs) It was always
much later than we thought.
- [Sarah Hagan] Sometimes they
would even change lines
based on the table read.
I heard about what she does
in the yearbook darkroom.
- What she does?
- I eventually tell her
that she fornicates.
- What?
When I read it, I was like,
that doesn't make any sense.
She fornicates it, okay?
(laughing)
But I also didn't know
what fornicated means.
- Fornicating it.
Oh, it was so cute.
- Oh yeah.
(laughing)
She fornicates, okay?
I was so confused.
Like, why everyone was
like busting out laughing.
And so, anyway, they
kept it like that.
- [Woman] Okay, we're rolling.
(buzzer sounds)
- I heard about what she
does in yearbook dark room.
She fornicates it, okay?
- [Director] And that's a cut.
(all laughing)
- [Gabe] Paul was looking
to tell the stories
of the group of kids
that were simply
not represented on
television at that time.
- [Linda] It was pretty obvious
that this was not
about the people
that you'd been watching
typically on television.
It kinda zooms
past them and goes
to the stoners
under the bleachers.
- Real characters who could
be called freaks and geeks.
- [Judd] Everybody made
these giant contributions,
'cause everyone was being brave
about what they
had been through.
- So I told my mom I was
eating at your house,
and Bill told his mom.
- My parents separated
and my dad moved away,
and he wouldn't tell
us where he lived,
so I went to go find him.
I knew that it had to
be on the south side,
so I went over there, and
I took the garage clicker
out of his car, and I
drove around looking.
- Clicking these
doors, and opened up,
and there was his dad's car
in another woman's house.
- [Jeff] Just watching
the door go up,
I would never have though when
I did this at 15-years-old,
something that happened
to you that you wrote,
and then here it is happening.
- We just were like,
oh my god, like
Jeff, that's horrible that
happened to you,
and we so have to
use that on the show.
- You're about to film the
wonderful bike walking scene
where I get all angry and pissy
that they're about to leave.
- I was always trying
to inject stories
of divorce into the show,
because that's something
that I had been through.
Martin Starr's mom.
We kind of implied that
she stripped at some point,
but she's a waitress
and single mom,
and we see that he's a
bit of a latchkey kid.
He comes home from school
and he's by himself,
and then he did
what I did as a kid,
which is he made grilled
cheese sandwiches
and ate Entenmann's
Cake and would watch
comedians on The
Dinah Shore Show.
And the comedian that he
watches is Garry Shandling.
(lively music)
Jake Kasdan said, "That's
the most personal thing
you've ever done, and it's the
best thing you've ever done,"
and that made me realize
that that was the direction
I needed to go in
for my entire career,
that I should just go
deeper and more personal,
and that's where
the good stuff was.
We weren't sure what it
was in the beginning.
We were figuring
it out as we went,
and if you watch the episodes,
you can feel us finding it.
- We were a dramedy.
For every moment where a freak
or a geek made you laugh,
they were gonna have a moment
where they made you cry.
- [Director] Cut, that was nice.
- [Crew Member]
Great, very nice.
- [Samm] And I think
that that's real life.
- That's the only way
that comedy really works,
is if there's such a strong
element of truth in it,
it will invariably
have pain in it.
The things that are
incredibly painful are funny,
ultimately, or we don't
survive them in a way.
- There was always this
kind of low-level depression
right underneath the
surface of the stories.
By and large, they're more
about failure than success.
People are humiliated,
or find themselves
in some mortifying situation.
- Watch it, Romeo,
you're on my hair!
- Hey we're busy here.
- Sorry.
- Oh, hey Lindsay.
(Kim laughs)
- It's easy to say, oh, in 1979
people were more innocent.
The truth is is that
everyone at a certain point
is really just
uncomfortable about sex.
- All these other shows
seemed kind of cool with sex,
and they were just so mature.
- In most high school
shows, they'd show sex
being scary a little
bit, but not awkward.
And it's awkward.
Having a kiss for the
first time is awkward.
Which way do you turn your face?
- Boys are supposed
to know what to do.
How?
Based on what?
- That was just
not my experience.
We were so terrified
of everything.
- [John] The porno that I
was given by Daniel Desario.
I remember all of that vividly.
- It's a naked woman.
- What's she doing?
- Who cares what she's doing?
She's naked.
- [John] It was an actual porno,
and I looked at it
as much as I could.
(John laughs)
- Those were the first
kisses of our, mine at least.
- Joe and I even have a big
sex scene in one episode.
- We had just finished lunch
and I was walking
back to the trailer.
James, he was down on the curb
and he said, "Hey, did you
see next week's script?
"Oh, you got a hot love
scene with your wife, Becky."
And I said, "No, get out."
"Yeah, I'm tellin' ya."
I looked at script, whoa!
We gotta make out.
- I had gotten a
little bronchitis.
I was really husky and
it was kind of perfect.
It sounded like I was having
really great, husky sex.
- Where's mom and dad?
- In their room.
- Are they fighting?
- No.
- [John] The television press
was quick to embrace the show.
- [Judd] The reviews
were incredible.
It was the best
reviews you could get.
- Critics loved the show.
They loved Freaks And Geeks.
- The top new T.V. show in Time
magazine before we came out.
- Is Freaks And Geeks too
good for television, you know?
- Our launch was coming up,
Saturday night at 8 o'clock,
which we knew was
in a good spot,
but we're still, we're
about to come out
and it was so exciting,
and we did a party.
They had it up on
this big screen.
God, we're just standing there
just choking up and just like,
"Oh my god, my dreams
are coming true."
And the ratings were
actually pretty good.
We were shooting on that Monday
and I remember coming
into the cafeteria set
with this piece of paper
and getting up on the table
and announcing to everyone,
gathered everyone around,
and I read out our ratings.
Yay, this big cheer.
- [Karey Burke] In those
days at NBC, we could
hit a share in the mid-20's.
Friends was a 30-share.
That was the bar.
- The first episode
ratings were okay.
I think we got an 11-share.
- Our ratings hit the halfway
point of the pilot dropped,
'cause it's right around
when Eli falls off
the bleachers and
breaks his arm.
- I'm not retarded, I'm special!
I don't wanna go to
the dance with you.
- [Lindsay] Please, I'm sorry!
(Eli yells in pain)
- So there's a poor
mentally-challenged kid
screaming in pain, and you just
heard America go like nope,
and turning the channel.
Next week our
ratings just go boom.
Into the toilet.
- After the show first
show it just, whoo.
- Joe Flaherty at
one point goes,
"Yeah, Paul never came
into the cafeteria
and announced the ratings again.
Yeah, we're doing terrible.
I don't know what to tell ya.
- In fact, he was
pretty hard to find
for a few weeks after that.
kind of went from
we got it made,
Hollywood here we come, before
the first episodes came out,
to like wow, we're on this
show and nobody's watching us.
Nothing has really changed.
- NBC held a party.
Garth Ancier, who was
running the network,
was out there
talking to some guy,
and I just go, "Hey, Garth."
And he goes like,
"Deliver the goods.
"Deliver the goods.
"Don't be like this guy."
And he pointed at the other guy.
The other guy kinda
had this sheepish look,
and I just walked away
like, "What is happening?"
So you immediately
go like, oh god.
We gotta suddenly dealing
with network politics.
- He really studied the
metered market ratings,
and he would come in and show me
how much the show dropped
off from Jeopardy,
and that meant it
was doomed to fail.
- What a name, Garth.
I'd be so curious to hear
his perspective on this.
- I now ask, I'm
not your editor,
but cut directly to
that interview now.
- Certain shows shouldn't really
be on broadcast television.
I, It was a quirky show.
Everyone knew it
was a quirky show.
They told me that going in.
The term in the industry
is three jokes a page.
Freaks and Geeks is a
little slower than that.
- Even though, look, we had
7 million loyal viewers.
- The amount of people who were
watching would be
a huge hit today,
but back then it was
like, you dropped a point.
We may have to cancel you.
And that's
terrifying, and really
bad for creativity I think,
'cause you're making stuff
with a gun to your head.
I couldn't live in the
reality of the show,
and the fun of shooting
it, because part of my day
was the nuts and
bolts of our survival.
- Together we would
go call and say,
"They didn't love
the rough cut,"
or "Can you make these changes?"
- [Paul] I was so mad at
the network that I thought,
no let's go farther.
Lets challenge ourselves.
You want us to be safer?
Well then we're gonna be bolder.
- The first show I did was
called Kim Kelly is My Friend.
And action!
- I just remember
reading it going wow!
- It's a really difficult
episode to watch.
- The network was
terrified of it.
I was kind of terrified of it.
- You are a lying brat.
- Knew it.
I told ya.
- I'm not lying, you
guys just can't believe
that I can make a friend
who's rich and smart.
Oh, I knew Kim Kelly
in high school.
Oh my god, I could tell
her life just was dark.
It allowed me to put
forth this other side
of myself on camera that
was really inside me,
and was really
wanting to get out.
You have to always look
at the impetus for why
someone is behaving the
way that they're behaving.
You got to see
behind the curtain
of this kind of
horrible girl. (laughs)
'Cause you are a slut, you slut.
- It was jarring to be in
there during those scenes.
- Did you call me?
What did you call me?
- [Busy Voiceover] Yeah,
I hit him really hard.
- Hey, calm down!
- Just don't lie to me!
- I'm not lying.
- And his face was turning red
and then everyone was concerned.
James was such a badass like,
"I don't care, would
Marlon Brando get hit?"
- All right, this is like
Brando stuff, you know.
I had these ideas about
being a young actor,
and I was like I need to look
cool and tough or whatever.
And Busy's tougher than I am,
and so she kept punching me.
- It really captures the sex
and violence of
being a teenager.
- The network got
scared of that episode,
because it was as
bold as anything
that I'd seen in a network show.
- My memory of it
is Garth coming down
to our offices and
being just like
what the hell is this?
What is this?
- That's what happened.
- What's happening?
This is not funny!
- They didn't wanna air it,
and we realized, oh
they're just scared.
They're scared of what this is.
- [Linda] There was always
some note of changing
something to make
it more palatable.
- The language they
would always use
to describe that
was more victories.
- Which was their way of
saying that the show was sad,
but it was build into the
DNA of the show that it was
about failing and how
you survive failure,
and it was about
how your friends
support you in difficult times.
So it didn't really
make sense to us
to have everything go great.
- He wasn't thrilled
about that note.
I didn't know if that
was the answer or not, I...
but I certainly said can you
give 'em some more victories?
- There was an episode where
we tried to take that note.
Bill was playing baseball.
The ball comes to him
and he catches it,
and Rocky music plays.
("Overture" by Conti)
But then he doesn't realize
that people are tagging up,
and so everybody just scores.
That was a close as we
could get to a victory.
(phone rings)
(busy signal beeping)
- I would engage in
discussions with Judd
about why are we not
connecting with the audience?
- I was the person
on the phone saying,
"I'm not gonna change anything."
- I'd hear just
screaming off in a field,
and there'd be
Judd on a cellphone
just screaming into the phone.
- Paul and I agreed
on something early on,
which is we're not
gonna screw this up.
We're not gonna sell it out.
- This was clearly
very important to Judd.
- There is magic happening here,
and I am not letting
anybody (beep) with this.
- Maybe give a little
more James Franco
because it was very
clear James Franco
had real star quality about him.
Maybe a happy ending now and
then, maybe would be good.
- I've almost never seen a show
that wasn't doing
very well suddenly
become a huge hit
because the network
executives gave
really good notes.
Let's have happy endings?
That's trying to change
your tires on the freeway
when you're rolling
75 miles an hour.
You can't do it.
- Well, when's Sam
gonna get the girl?
It's episode three,
when's he gonna get her?
We're like, when he's 30?
What was the other one?
When's Franco gonna
take his shirt off?
Right, right,right.
It's like, he's not.
- People tend to wanna
walk away from a T.V. show
or a movie like something
good has happened.
- But isn't it
better to have a show
that affirms that the
life that they're living
is not so terrible,
and that other people
are going through the
same kind of struggles,
and sometimes it doesn't
end the way you want it to,
and you kinda have to
make the most of it?
- [Shelley Mccory] Surviving
is the victory.
When this thing happens to you,
and at the end of the
episode you're still alive,
that's the victory.
- The show's also about dreams.
Will your dreams come true?
Do you have the
courage to dream?
Those episodes about Jason Segel
playing the drums
are really tough.
He wants to be as good
as the guy in Rush,
and he realizes that he's
not, and it's heartbreaking.
(sighs)
- Sometimes I go
down into my basement
and I put on a live album.
I can see myself on the stage,
do you understand what I mean?
I can see it, and I'm
play a 10-minute solo.
Oh, man.
(sighs)
I'm not gonna be that guy.
I'm never gonna be that guy.
- We all have to decide
what we wanna do.
How hard do we wanna
work to get it?
Are we gonna give up?
And you hope that in your life,
if you're strong
and you work hard
that you get to
have your moment,
and I always like to think
that a lot of these characters,
after this period,
had their moment.
- See ya.
- It's on.
- When a broadcast network
launches your show,
the audience has one
opportunity to see it.
- Freaks and Geeks
didn't get a lotta luck.
- The show would
be on for two weeks
and then off for two weeks.
And then on for one week,
and then off for three weeks.
And that is a textbook way,
in that era, to kill a show.
The most important
thing that you can get
when a network
show is launched is
just a straight run of original
episodes, uninterrupted.
- Well the show was
on 13 out of 26 weeks,
so it was just off the air
as much as it was on the air.
- So there were just
weekends where they'd
shovel three episodes
off on a Sunday,
'cause they were like, "We
gotta air 'em somewhere."
- We got a order for 13
episodes, then they'll
give you the back 9
so you go up to 22.
This they gave us like two,
then they gave us like one more.
- We'd been on Saturday nights,
and then they announced
they were moving us Mondays.
- [T.V. Announcer] An
all-new Freaks and Geeks.
NBC Monday at 8/7 central.
- There's more
available audience.
- But also more competition.
- Right.
- The big story
in T.V. around that time
was Who Wants to
Be a Millionaire?
That show had come
out that fall also,
and it was such a
ratings monster.
- [Judd] It was like
a Destructo Machine,
rolling around television.
And they started putting it
on three, four times a week.
- [Paul] They're knocking off
scripted original programming
to broadcast Regis Philbin
trying to give away
a million dollars to
a couple of idiots.
- And there would a guy waiting
to figure out an answer,
and he'd be like this and
thinking and thinking.
That 15 seconds on an episode
that we were writing
would be so important.
- Finally, they put
it on against us
and just wiped us out.
(static)
- [Jeff] Suddenly it
did feel like there was
a ticking clock on
the life of our show.
- Everyone was doing CPR, trying
to get people to watch it.
Trying to get the
network to promote it.
The New York Times did
a big piece saying,
"Please everyone,
watch this show.
"The ship is sinking
but it's great.
"You really should watch this."
But you know, no one did.
(crew chattering)
- When you work on a
T.V. show or a movie,
there's an area
called craft service.
This craft service
table is filled
with lavish baked
goods and cold cuts,
and then slowly as
the show went on,
it became reduced to a box of
Corn Puffs and some creamer,
at which point we realized
we were in trouble.
- And I remember Judd coming
up to me and saying like,
"You should write
the final episode."
We always had a
sense that the show
was not going to survive.
If there's anything I hated more
than a show getting
canceled in the middle
and not having a
conclusion to the story,
that's how nervous
and paranoid we were.
- We gotta do it.
This might be the last episode.
- We'll have a season
no matter what.
(jocks yelling)
(gentle music)
- You get called geeks,
girls don't even look at ya.
What?
I'm accepted at an
Ivy League college?
Hey, chicks dig smart guys.
Who knew?
And yes, Mr. Jock
who cleaned me out?
I will have fries with that.
(all laughing)
- I don't want a story
to go on forever.
I just wanna go like, "Oh good.
"We've sent them
off into the world."
(gentle music)
- [Judd] Paul and I
were sitting around,
and we said, "What
happens to this girl?"
And we realize, I think
she becomes a deadhead.
That's where she would go.
- [Linda] I'm so happy that they
managed to sneak in the ending.
- [Judd] It's hard to even
understand why it worked so well
because it doesn't
end any storyline,
but yet it does
feel like the end.
- I'm left, when I
watch that last episode,
feeling a little like
I wanna cry. (laughs)
A little like I wanna
have some hot tea.
Maybe that's just me.
Maybe I have other
stuff going on.(laughs)
- [Seth Rogan] We kinda
did everything right,
and it still just didn't work.
- [Samm Levine] They said,
well we're gonna
reevaluate it in May
and everybody sort
of knows that there's
not a prayer in hell they're
gonna order the show.
- It was a decision that I
kinda knew was gonna happen
months in advance but
things had to just play out.
- There are two things
that a show needs
to survive and become
a hit and that is
creators who know
what they're doing,
and then a network
that believes in it
and will put everything
they have behind it.
- There were conference calls
that we arranged because Garth
felt like it was too dark,
it wasn't interesting,
I don't like these kids,
they're not attractive.
When that happens
you stop getting
promos on Thursday nights.
You're not getting
a promo on Friends
saying "Watch Freaks
and Geeks this weekend",
and once that starts
it's just a slow slide.
- When we were heading for
cancellation I was like,
just dreading it, it's the
toughest thing to cancel a show
when it's not just
a piece of business,
it's something from their soul.
- I believe that it
was open and shut
that we needed to cancel it.
Personally I felt really
invested in the show working.
But hope is not a business plan.
We all wanted it to
succeed but there's a point
you kinda have to give it up.
- If you can't see signs
of life in the show
that you can't articulate
to your management
you will be fired if
you don't do that.
- [Busy Philipps]
You're gonna be right
in the television business
more often than not
if you say "no" or you
bet against something.
Most things fail.
- No one ever has seconds
thoughts about canceling a show
that's creatively failing,
but they certainly have
second thoughts about a show
that is creatively working
and is unique and different
and fulfilling it's promises.
And I have often thought,
what could I have done to
get this to work?
- [Paul Feig] So
for like the person
who gets it the least
to be the guy that
can say "yay" or "nay" had to
be so heartbreaking for Judd.
- For me it was like a
complete nervous breakdown.
It tapped into all my
issues from when I was a kid
about families separating, like
my childhood divorce issues.
Like, oh no, we must keep
this together at all costs.
The sadness and depression and
rage of a family breaking up,
of potential being incinerated.
No, we can't do this.
What, we can't do this?
Never make anymore
again and don't talk
to each other ever again, you're
allowed to say that to me?
You have the power
to make that happen?
It was very hard for
me to accept that
that's how show business worked.
- I felt like we let them down.
It was our job to
protect it and keep it on
and let it grow and we
didn't, we couldn't.
(clapping)
- Final day of shooting
we're all breaking down,
I mean Linda and I especially
were just disasters.
- [Linda Cardellini] It hurt.
- [Camera Man] You upset?
You gonna be okay?
- [John Francis Daley] Yeah.
(dramatic, sad music)
- [Judd Apatow] You
guys are on fire!
- [Steve Bannos]
Judd gives a speech
and Paul gives a speech
and you could just feel it
and everyone's trying
to keep it together.
- I'm kind of flustered right
now because I didn't think
the last day was gonna
hit me this hard.
That's gonna be the
hardest part is not
getting to see
everybody every day.
(applause)
- There was a wrap party
that was pretty crazy.
That was kind of
the last goodbyes.
(emotional rhythmic music)
- Everyone came.
When you got to the party
you knew it was over with.
- It felt like the
last day of high school
which I didn't have because
I didn't finish high school
but it felt like what I imagine
the last day of high
school feeling like.
- [Judd Apatow] Three of
the cast members on our show
have just graduated
from high school.
- As it may be, this
is the only graduation
I will ever have so, uh...
(laughter)
I'd like to thank y'all for
coming down and ah,
I don't know, every
rose has it's thorn and ah
all that junk.
- So, we would like to present
these gents with their diplomas.
(cheering)
- [Martin Starr] This was
a better high school than I
could have ever hoped
for or imagined.
Learning on this show and
growing up on this show.
(mellow music)
- I don't have super clear
memories of high school.
I was very poorly treated by
everybody else in my peer group,
I was weird, our
family was poor,
my clothes were shoddy,
I had no social skills.
That time on set was
the very first time
in my whole life
that I was surrounded
by people who were
treating me with respect,
and listening to
what I had to say.
So much of who I
am was formed by
the experience of
Freaks and Geeks.
- If you're on a show and
you're young and it hits
there's a catapult into
a different stratosphere.
And that didn't happen to us.
- There was like years
I was unemployed.
It made me angry
for years and years.
I was probably a pretty
unpleasant person to be around.
- It is a weird thing for
someone at the age of 14
to feel like, where do I go now?
Cause that's generally,
for most people,
the starting point
in their lives.
- When you start out with
a really high standard
you sort of are comparing
everything after that.
- I didn't know
how great I had it
or how lucky I was, really, to
be working with those people.
- Where television has gone now,
it's because of
Freaks and Geeks.
- You look at Freaks
and Geeks and it's like,
well, it's a single
camera sitcom,
that happens all the
time now, you know.
It's got antiheroes in it,
that happens all the time.
What these guys did
was brought a show
that broke a lot of conventions.
Without Freaks and
Geeks you wouldn't have
the style of real dramadies,
it just wouldn't of happened.
- It was the birth
of the antihero
and it served as, I
think, a cautionary tale
about shows that had a small
but devoted fan base that would
scream from the mountaintops
how good this show was.
- To be able to
have done that show
on a network at that
time, I'm just so happy
that it still exists
so people can see it
and it can still have
this life beyond itself.
- Otherwise it would have just
disappeared forever
in some dark library
in the bottom of the NBC
dungeon, I don't know.
- Judd and I both went
aside and went like,
are we about to ruin
these kids lives?
I didn't want anybody to turn,
we loved these kids so much.
- I remember Judd saying,
look, we're not on the air,
and at some point, at some time,
people are gonna watch
these, so just keep working.
- In my head I was trying
to keep this group together.
Even though we were canceled
I was trying to think
we should all be doing stuff,
we can't let them
shut this down.
If we want to we should try to
control our creative destiny.
It felt like a very special
thing that I didn't want
to go away and it
hasn't gone away.
It's like a tree with a lot
of branches, reaching out.
This show led to a lot
of good stuff coming out.
And that's something
that I'm very proud of.
- Judd's a real teacher.
If he sees that talent he
really loves to nurture it.
I really credit Judd for giving
those guys a launch
pad in movies.
- I just did everything I
could to fight against it.
Oh, you think this show is over?
And that we're never
gonna work together again?
Well then I'm gonna make a
show that's very similar.
- Undeclared
definitely we saw as
sort of a sequel to
Freaks and Geeks.
- [Judd Apatow] A lot of people
were in the cast like Seth and
Jason, and then other people
like Martin came on
and did guest spots.
- Judd and Paul are two big ones
that constantly use
the same people.
Very loyal, yeah.
- It's almost like hoarding.
You're not gonna throw
away my bottle of piss
and my 1978 Newsweek,
I'm keeping it forever
because I may need it.
I kept working with
a lot of the writers,
and directors, and actors,
and actresses in movies.
But in my head I
would always think,
this is just an episode
of Freaks and Geeks.
- Judd had done an amazing run.
Anchorman, 40 Year Old
Virgin, Knocked Up.
- [Judd Apatow] What is
the 40 year old virgin,
it's a guy that's just
afraid to ask out the girl.
Which is all the geeks
are on Freaks and Geeks,
it's just now they're 40.
- I wouldn't be acting
now I don't think
if I hadn't been able
to do Knocked Up.
- [Karey Burke] It's super cool.
- [Shelley McCory] It is
super cool.
- Especially
because we were told
they would never be
big stars. (laughs)
- Yeah.
They don't have this, they
don't have this, they don't
have this, they don't have
this, it's not gonna work.
- There was another
thing that was at play,
a Count of Monte Cristo style
revenge mission on Judd's part.
And that I will
systematically make
every one of these
people a star.
You're wrong, Seth's a
star, Jason's a star, watch.
- Part of me thinks the only
reason I was in Knocked Up
and 40 Year Old Virgin
is so Judd could
prove some NBC executive wrong.
Which is totally okay with me,
it doesn't diminish
it in my eye.
I'm totally okay
to have a career
that's based on
vengeance and rage.
- [Judd Apatow] It sounds
kind of demented, but it was
the driving force of a lot
of my approach to my career.
- [Woman] Judd is
fearless, he started
doing a project with Seth Rogan.
- Superbad is like the dream
of Freaks and Geeks as a movie,
edgier where you don't have
to keep it clean for NBC.
It's the perfect
version of that.
- [Paul Feig] Forgetting
Sarah Marshall was coming out
and I ran into Judd
and he said, "I did it".
What did you do?
And he said, "I promised
myself I wasn't gonna stop
until Jason became
a huge movie star."
- Judd said to me
after Freaks and Geeks
look, the only way
you're gonna make it
is if you write
your own material.
"You're kind of a weird
dude", was specifically
what he said to me
and then he literally
showed me how to write and it
felt like an apprenticeship.
- [Judd Apatow] It feels like
what I always thought
they could do,
and I didn't want it to
happen without me around.
- [Seth Rogan] We started
writing Pineapple Express
after Freaks and
Geeks was canceled.
- I would only realized like
years later when I came back
and did Pineapple with
Judd and Seth like, oh,
I kinda do need those guys,
they are my family, you know?
- I helped launch
the show The Office.
Brought along certain Freaks
and Geeks ideas to that work.
- The kind of story telling
that we're interested in
all of it traces back
to Freaks and Geeks.
- Jake directed Bad
Teacher. What did I play?
A math teacher.
- I love that Becky Ann Baker is
leading them as well on Girls.
- [Dave Allen] Why
don't these two guys
be the nutty neighbors on Love?
- [Judd Apatow]
Busy Phillips wrote
the story for Blades of Glory.
John Daley directed Vacation
and wrote Spider Man.
- We made a movie
about animated food
grounding every scene in a
relatable, real life scenario.
And that's all from Judd.
- [Shelley McCory] Paul Feig
is doing female comedies.
- [Karey Burke] Bridesmaids was
so special, wasn't it?
- He did that
Ghostbusters thing, right?
That female Ghostbusters,
yeah, what the hell.
Why should I worry about
these guys? (laughs)
(uplifting music)
- [Dennis Deyoung] Even
though Freaks and Geeks died
the family behind it
continued to live and prosper.
- It survives just in
the work of everybody
who was a part of it.
I just acted in a movie
that James Franco directed.
And that's the end of
all the permutations.
When I'm acting in the
movies they've directed.
They become your kids,
and so when suddenly
they're doing well that
must be what you feel like
when you have
successful children.
So I have successful
kids, it worked out.
And I didn't have to send
any of them to college.
(piano music)
Styx, "Come Sail Ayay"
- Once in a while the universe
has gotta spin in
your direction.
And when it's
spinning towards you
you better stand
up and take notice.
Freaks and Geeks was not a
success and they let it go.
But all the things had to come
together in the right way.
As they say, the
cream goes to the top.
It doesn't always, but
it did in these cases
and so I say, hot diggity dog.
♪ I'm sailing away
♪ Set an open course
for the virgin seas ♪
- Wow, what would
it have been like
if the show went on for
five years and we were all,
and then was a big
hit or something.
- Maybe there's actually
something pretty special
about getting it as
just this little slice
of their life, as one
year in their life.
- You know, shows
often get terrible.
- I don't wanna see
sad, old Kim Kelly.
- It's just kind of exactly
what we wanted it to be.
I miss it and yet I don't
want to do any more of them.
♪ To carry on
- We could do some big
high school reunion
where everybody comes back.
- Reunion shows, I don't know,
I don't know how you do it.
- I have no idea.
- Like a reboot?
- I hate reunion shows, I
gotta be honest with you.
They bum me the (beep) out.
- You don't think that's it?
That probably is it.
yyou kinda become who you are.
- [Linda] Those years
are tough years.
Your emotions and your hormones
and everything runs so high
in a way that you've never
experienced them before.
- [Judd] All of those
things are universal
and will never change.
- You grow up, you
get different clothes
and become more confident
in your guesses.
- In high school, I wasn't like
at the bottom of the totem pole
and I wasn't at the
top of the totem pole,
but kinda somewhere
in the middle.
- When I was a kid,
I always thought
nobody understands
what's special about me.
I felt very alone.
- Childhood sucks and
adolescence sucks,
so I was like I want to
be anything but myself.
- Wait, does everyone's
life suck in high school?
Yeah, kinda.
- Those are growing pains.
You think you know so much
but you're just so relatively
small in the world, you're
just so young in the world.
- I'm so glad that the most
awkward moments in my childhood
were actually captured on film
in the context of a
really great show.
- This tiny little show, that
only lasted a couple months
from '99 to 2000 has
found so many people.
- They've all gone on not
only to be famous actors
but they're amazing writers,
producers, directors.
- And we all have,
I certainly do,
have a little freak and
a little geek in me.
- Did you ever go
to high school?
Yeah.
Okay, then it's about you.
And then 18 episodes later
they go that dude was right.
Dumbledore at the
mall was right.
♪ I don't give a damn
about my reputation ♪
♪ You're livin' in the past,
it's a new generation ♪
♪ A girl can do what
she wants to do ♪
♪ That's what I'm gonna do
♪ And I don't give a damn
about my bad reputation ♪
♪ Oh no
♪ Not me
♪ Oh no
♪ Not me
(electronic pop music)
(dramatic music)
- The Ranch was the place
where we all kinda converged.
It was just a really
shitty ranch house
in North Hollywood that
we trashed, of course.
- You know, it was a
bunch of lazy fat guys
hanging around mostly.
- Among the people
who went there
was Feig and Judd Apatow.
- We'd all go do stand-up
and then we'd come back
at the end of the
night every night
and we would just stay up and
play poker and drink coffee.
- [Judd] No drugs at all,
just Pepsis and cigarettes.
- [Steve] Judd was
younger than all of us.
- He had a really
funny stand-up act.
He does this thing
with his forehead.
Have you ever seen that one?
You should ask him
about that one.
(squeaking)
- That was as good
as my stand-up got.
It was just a lot of dreaming
of what we hoped we could do.
I didn't really
have a sense that
any of us would pull it off.
(soft music)
(typing)
- [Paul Feig] I had the
idea for a while
of wanting to do something
about high school.
It really came out
of just the fact that
I hadn't seen myself or the
people we went to school with
represented properly in
any high school show.
Everything at that time
you watched on television
was either about LA or New York.
The middle of the country
was just treated
sorta despairingly.
- Michigan in winter.
The late '70s.
All that stuff made
for an odd show.
- [Paul] It's based on
the town I grew up in,
which is Mount
Clemens, Michigan.
I need to be an advocate
for the Midwest.
I want to be an advocate
for real people.
It's where most of us grew up.
And so, I really started writing
and it just really
poured out of me.
I was in love with
the head cheerleader.
- [Cindy] Hi Sam.
- [Sam] Oh, hi Cindy.
- [Cindy] So, um,
what are you doing?
- [Sam] Just going home.
How about you?
- I'm cheering at the game.
- Oh, (chuckles) well
you're dressed for it.
- I wanted to ask her
to the homecoming dance
but I just kept putting it off
and the day of I asked her,
which is ridiculous but
she was really nice,
oh thanks, I have a date.
- I'm already going
with Dan Lewis,
he asked me two weeks ago.
- [Paul] So, I thought,
okay we can make that
the story for the geeks.
- Oh okay, I mean yeah
just thought I would ask
just in case you didn't
have anyone to go with.
- I wanted it to be about
a brother and sister
because I was an only child,
and I always wanted
an older sister.
What would Lindsey's story be?
And I just remembering think
well she's such a rebel,
what if she decided
she was gonna ask
the mentally challenged kid,
kinda an act of screw you
to the rest of the school.
- Hey Eli,
do you want to go to the
homecoming dance with me?
- Yes, yes, I do!
Yep, please.
- Good.
- We used to call the
burnouts, we called them Freaks
and so I was like, geeks
that rhymes with freaks.
Let's call it Freaks and Geeks.
My wife put her hand up and
she goes give me a hand five
and like, high fived me,
and goes like this is
the one you send to Judd.
- I did a deal with DreamWorks.
Very early on in the
deal, I said to Feig,
"Hey if you ever have any ideas
for anything, let me know."
Not necessarily
thinking he would.
He didn't talk to me about
it while he was doing it,
he just laid it on me
and it was impressive.
- [Paul] He goes, I love
it, were going to buy it
and it was just like oh
my god this is happening.
- I was the president of
DreamWorks Television.
Justin came into my
office one day and said
Judd has this spec script
written by this guy Paul Feig,
and I'm like who's Paul Feig?
You know, "I said
what's it about?"
And he said well, "Well,
it's set in a high school
"in the Midwest
in the late '80s"
and I was like, "We'll
never sell that,
"we'll never sell it."
- [Judd] The '99 shows
weren't as challenging.
(upbeat jazz music)
- [Jake] It was also a time
when network television
was still most of television.
- [Steve] NBC had
been a really dominate
number one in young viewers.
- Boy, those were the days, huh?
- [Shelley] Must See TV
was like a really big deal.
- [Busy] There was like the
proliferation of teen TV
in part due to the massive
success of Dawson's Creek.
- [Seth] WB was popular.
- [Garth] Charmed,
and 7th Heaven,
and Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
- [Scott] Frasier,
Will & Grace, Friends.
- [Joe] What was that other one?
Uh, Malcolm in the Middle.
- A really great
show but you know,
a very heightened version of
childhood and the teen years.
- It was wish-fulfillment
television.
You know, soap opera type shows
but I think what we
were trying to do
was some sort of alternative.
- At that point,
there was really
four places you
could sell the show.
Fox, NBC, ABC and CBS.
We collectively thought the
place where we could sell this
is Fox and we're
going to sell it
as the next
iteration of a 90210.
Immediately, Fox passed.
We're going to have a harder
time with this than I thought.
Then of course, CBS passed
and then ABC had passed, too.
We didn't hear anything
from NBC on Monday
and then on Tuesday
we got a call.
- I don't even remember
why they brought
it to us because it
didn't really seem like
an NBC show at the time.
- I know.
- So, Shelley called and
said, "This is unbelievable."
It spoke to her.
- And her famous line was
"If we don't make this show,
"I'm quitting the
television business."
Nobody says that, you know,
everybody is in the ass
protecting business.
- They so perfectly
captured that aching,
awkward pain of teenage years.
- It was a weird moment at
NBC because the president
of NBC programming
had just stepped down.
So, Scott Sassa, who
was the guy above
the head of programming, he
really wasn't the creative guy.
- It was the first
show when I read
the script that
really spoke to me
because it was how I
grew up in high school.
- It happened very fast,
NBC was super enthusiastic
and they were ready to go.
- They were like "We don't
even have any notes,"
which you're like "Oh my
god, I can't believe that."
- We just said we'll make it.
We don't want to touch it,
we just want to shoot it.
Yeah.
- Yeah.
- It was such a whirlwind from
writing this thing on spec,
not knowing what to do
with it and suddenly,
oh my god we're going
into production.
(soft music)
(people chattering)
- [Judd] A lot of the work
was figuring out who would
play these characters.
- I wanted an
awkward, normal cast,
who were going to come
in and bring their
personality and bring
their weirdness.
- I said, "Let's
find amazing kids."
- I seem to drawn to projects
where I don't have to
cast beautiful people.
Not interesting.
- [Jake] Allison started
setting up sessions.
- [Paul] Throw the doors open
wide, I want to see everybody.
Don't weed anybody out
if they don't even sound
like the description
of the kids.
- [Judd] Let's let
anybody show up.
- [Allison] Everybody's
niece and nephew.
- [Judd] Let's do
open call auditions.
- We sit down with the network,
alright this is the vision.
They're going to
make us cast a bunch
of handsome models
and call them nerds
and put tape on their glasses
but they're all super hot.
- Anybody who read
it, it was obvious,
you didn't want
those kind of kids.
You needed the kids
who got picked on.
- A thousand people
would show up.
1500 people would show up.
Given a line or two
and if someone was good
maybe we'd give
them a page to do.
- [Allison] Franco must have
been one of the first kids
that I brought in
for that because
he was so clearly that kid.
- Judd said just be you
and I was like, "Okay."
- and I didn't even think
James Franco was handsome.
We just thought he was
a weird looking dude.
He had this big
mouth and an attitude
and then people started looking
at the tape at the office
and seeing his headshot,
all the women were swooning
and we were like "Really?"
- Oh no!
Now I don't want him on the
show, I didn't know he was hot.
I thought he was goofy looking.
- My wife said,
"He's the kinda guy
"who works at the newsstand
who you make out with."
- It was me and James
Franco next to each
other in the waiting room
to go into the screen test.
James went in and then I
went in and did my thing
and then we waited
and then they told us
that we both got cast.
We were walking back to
the parking lot together
and I was so excited and
was trying to figure out
how it was going to work.
And I said, "Well I guess
maybe I'll be the goofy one
"and you'll be the cool one?"
And he went, "Yeah."
- [Allison] Seth
opened his mouth
and I'm sure they like him.
- I have a super
thick Canadian accent
that I don't really have
any more, in my audition.
Yeah, but who
cares, it's church.
The whole place is
full of paintings
of a bleeding guy on a cross.
That's way nastier than
any album cover I have.
I was doing stand-up
comedy at the time
I'd done that
since I was like 13
and it was like clear
I was just like
not going to graduate
high school.
- [Jake] It's just
this crazy story, right?
The kid walks into
an audition in Vancouver
and six years later
or whatever is one of
the biggest comedy
stars in the world
and he kinda never went home.
- I think what a lot
of people attribute
to some character choices
is literally just me
not quite understanding
what the hell I'm doing.
I had never acted,
ever, in anything.
- We didn't know what it was,
we just thought "That is
a weird. hilarious dude."
- What Paul had written
was very specific.
A smart, young woman who had sat
with her grandmother
while she died.
- She's questioning everything
and that leads her to
hang out with the freaks
instead of the smart kids.
So, you needed a girl that
looked like she could
straddle both worlds.
- I had concocted this image
of this girl in my head
who I didn't know, and
so when Linda walked in,
it was exactly the person
who I had envisioned.
- All the other
characters I had read were
rebelling against
their parents in a way
where you couldn't
actually still feel love.
The thing that separated
Lindsay is that she really
loved her parents, but there
were still those battles in
herself to rebel.
It's a great role.
- [Jake] Originally, Kim
was not in the pilot.
The character was supposed to
enter in the second episode.
- [Judd] We realized
that she was very special
and would need to be a
big part of the show.
- I wasn't outwardly
Kim Kelly in high school
but that's like, that
was my soul, like,
that's who I was, was that girl.
- Sam Levine, radio.
- Sam had sent in a video
of himself auditioning.
Not a great audition.
- [Woman] Uh oh, Incoming.
- [Woman] Hi, is
this your jacket?
- [Woman] You left
it in science.
I didn't want it
to get all dirty.
- [Judd] The worst
audition, ever.
- The sides I was reading
said he likes doing
impressions with his friends,
so I finished the read and say
I'm talking like this because
my girdle is killing me.
And that is the William
Shatner impression
that got me on Freaks and Geeks.
- I remember walking out
into the waiting room
and Martin was sitting
there with suspenders on,
looking like such a goober.
I was, like, "Oh please,
oh please, be good."
- I fell in love with
Martin immediately,
because he was so
much like the kid
I had based this on, which
was, he was a friend of ours.
He was in special ed
some of his classes,
but he wasn't in others.
- He was so authentic in
that role that everybody just
figured that was him,
which is what everybody
assumed for years.
- So many like, weird
characters that couldn't exist
if you were casting
anything else.
All these pieces fit
so well together.
It's very rare.
Think about it, that's
the future, death.
-All right, no boarders,
all right...
- I could actually audition
as a gym teacher in my sleep.
- Well they based Harris
on their impression of me.
- Watch this, ready?
Gruber.
- Oh hey, how's it going?
Ah, Mr. Rosso.
- [Allison] Lizzy Caplan
was great right away.
- [Paul] Rashida Jones
was just a young actress.
- [Allison] Ben Foster
is so great in it too.
- [Jake] Shia was a trip,
even when he was twelve.
- I was so envious
of all those actors
and I wanted to be a regular
on that show, so badly.
You know, I totally forgot
what my character's name was.
- Within the first
week, we had, like,
half of the principle cast.
The one character who
we were really sort
of struggling to find was Sam.
- [Judd] We were watching
the tapes from New York,
and there's John Francis Daly.
- [Judd] He was really
young, I think he was 13.
- Producers only want to use
kids who are 18 to look 13.
- (laughs) I sounded
totally like a girl,
so I didn't think that I had
a chance because of that.
- [Judd] And as I'm watching,
I go, like, "Oh my God."
- [Judd] It almost
didn't feel like it was
an actor doing it.
- He has like a glass head.
Because you look in those eyes,
you see everything
he is thinking,
you know everything that
kid is going through.
This is what was great
about high school
and terrible about
high school is everyone
went in at a different
maturity level.
He's the kid that's kind of
too young to be in school.
- [Jake] Finding John was
kind of a definitive moment.
We were very comprehensive,
we were very thorough,
but we found this,
just astounding group of people.
(soft music)
- [Director] Quiet please.
- We had a really unique
and unusual experience
making that pilot.
- There was like,
jokes about doing
shrooms and stuff like that.
There was a Hitler joke.
And I remember being like, "Oh
this is actually very funny."
(yelling)
(laughing)
(yelling)
- [Paul] We shot the pilot,
and it was like shooting
a little indie movie.
- The whole process, to
me, of making the show,
had the naivety of youth.
Like, we had no reason
to believe we couldn't
do the coolest thing ever.
- Paul was very set
on having a family
that liked each other.
Not everyone's fighting, and I
thought, "Yeah, that's great.
"That's something that
didn't exist in my house."
- [Jake] The Weir
family is so solid.
- The Weirs are hopeful.
Sam.
Did Mom and Dad
ever tell you that
I was the only one with
Grandma when she died?
- No.
- Yeah.
- I was surprised
that the network had
no issue with the
conceit of the show.
A girl who's now questioning
her spirituality,
discovering God does not exist.
- If you're brought up
religiously, there's like,
always a safety net, of
kind of like, something
and the minute you break
that, you're free falling
and like, oh
my god, you know?
We're just organisms on
this world and you know,
is there anything after death?
So, I said like, you
know, can you see God
or Heaven or a
light or anything?
What did she say?
- "No.
"There's nothing."
- It's a really
sad, heavy scene.
It's a true loss of innocence.
But no one mentioned it, ever.
Compassion.
Kindness.
Trying to figure
out how to grow up.
Paul did so many
things to that pilot
that should not work
that don't sound like
an appealing pilot concept.
Girl loses faith in God and
becomes a pot head, you know.
A mentally challenged kid
falls and breaks his arm.
The dance sequence just found
a way to put it all together.
♪ Carry on
(soft music)
♪ I look to the sea
- Hi, Cindy.
- Hey Sam.
- I was wondering, um,
you said you'd save a dance
for me, so, can I have it now?
- First of all, it's
not what you see
all the time in television.
You don't see that
cheerleader say
yes to giving the
dance to that guy.
And then you don't see her
being so sweet about it.
♪ We lived happily forever
- I was standing behind
the camera just watching,
and it was just like,
goosebumps, goosebumps,
goosebumps, goosebumps.
- And having that Styx song.
♪ Best as we can
- And he gets up the nerve
to dance with the girl,
I said "Son, Styx
is not dance music."
- [Paul] And then suddenly,
it becomes a fast dance song.
- [Dennis] The minute
the rock part comes in,
the look on his face.
It's like he's been betrayed
by the Gods of the universe.
Just this look of, like,
like he wants to die.
- You know, his life is
flashing in front of him.
- But he just does it, and
as he starts having fun.
What seems like is not a
victory, is actually a victory.
And that's really what
the show's all about.
- I was at the school
dance in 11th grade
and I was in love
with this girl,
but I was so scared
to walk up to her that
it took three
quarters of the song.
So, we start having to slow
dance which was my dream,
and then, like having to
dance, but I don't really
know how to dance.
And then it just
ended really fast.
I remember sitting in
editing and just crying.
Just feeling like oh
this completely works.
This is beautiful.
And I could cry every
single time I watch it.
Because it's kids reaching
out to each other,
and it's so hard to do as a kid.
It's so hard to
offer your heart.
It's so hard to try to connect.
- We all have inside
of us this deep
insecurity about
life and things,
but particularly in adolescence.
Even if you're one of the
kids that thinks they're cool,
you're still putting
on airs that you've
got it all together out here,
but in here, you know the
ducks, they're runnin' around.
(people chattering)
(piano playing)
- As soon as we started
cutting the show,
we felt pretty confident
that it was gonna be
a really good pilot.
My thought was this doesn't
really seem like a TV show.
And it'll be interesting
to see whether
anyone wants to put it on NBC.
- The pilot, you know,
it didn't blow me away.
So, at that point, I wasn't
sure whether this was just
something that resonated
to me that I liked
in my personal ear or
it really was something
that everybody else
would relate to.
- We got a new
network president.
We started having
like a new network
president every couple of years.
And I think, like,
Freaks and Geeks came
at really the beginning
of the revolving door.
- You hope you have
an executive that says
I so believe in what
you're doing creatively.
You pray that you
get that champion.
- We had Garth Ancier come in.
I don't think it's a secret.
He did not like it.
It was a hard way
to meet somebody.
I'll tell you that.
(laughing)
It was not the best
way to be introduced.
- Other than Freak
and Geeks at the time,
there was very few
single camera comedies.
It wasn't a genre
that was popular.
You weren't a sitcom.
And you weren't an hour drama.
You were right in the middle.
And right now, everything
is in the middle.
That's what modern
television is.
- Comedy's gotten more
behavioral and it was always
what myself and Judd and all
our actors found the funniest.
It's not jokes.
- You were used to
seeing joke, joke, joke.
And this was a little different.
It had story, it had drama,
it had a little
bit of heart in it.
I think people relate
to the underdogs.
- They ordered 12 episodes,
so that plus the pilot brought
us to 13 episodes total.
(upbeat rock music)
- [Paul] And then suddenly,
you're flying to New York.
They make that decision
at the last minute
then you fly to the up fronts,
where they present to
all the advertisers.
- [Narrator] Freaks and geeks.
- Dad, are any of
your friends alive?
-[Narrator] Coming
this fall to NBC.
- [Paul] There you are
in these giant parties
and you're glad handing
and you're doing
presentations of
your show and there's
your cast up on stage,
and you're up on stage.
- It wasn't easy to tell
Sam Levine he's a geek.
He'd never heard it before.
(audience laughing)
- People were so
pumped about the future
of Freaks and Geeks.
- We really hoped
it would be a hit.
It didn't have any of the early
indications that it
would be a big hit.
- They're picking us up.
Yay, for eight
o'clock on Saturday.
Oh no, what?
What the hell was that?
Anybody who would watch
our show would be out.
- [Narrator] NBC
Saturday at 8/7 central.
- [Jake] Saturday night
is essentially dead air.
Nobody programs Saturday night
with their great material.
We thought maybe we
could do well there
and they'll move us off
that night and put us
into a better time period.
(rock music)
- [Paul] Okay!
Welcome back everybody.
Yay.
- The Freaks and Geeks
pilot got picked up.
We put our staff
together and said,
"Let's get as many amazing
stories as we can."
We wanted people who
had lived a little bit.
People who'd done things.
People who'd done bad things.
- And basically, the first two
weeks of us getting together
was just this weird
group therapy session
where all of us just plumbed
the depths of our humiliating
and gut-wrenching
experiences from high school.
- We never wanted to leave.
Like I'm, I'm serious.
- We were there all the time.
- [Paul] I wrote up a
questionnaire of 20 questions.
Like, "What's the worst
thing that ever happened
to you in high school?"
"What's the best thing?"
- The most you ever got in
trouble with your parents.
What's your best
drug experience?
What's your worst
drug experience?
- Who did you fall in love with?
Who did you hate?
Blah, blah, blah.
And everyone had to fill
it out in great detail.
- [Judd] And there were
hundreds of amazing stories,
or just moments.
- [Judd] These people were
sharing really painful
parts of their lives.
If the show was successful,
it would vindicate the
things that happened to them.
- Everybody involved
was digging down
to expose who they really were.
- You would say the
most embarrassing thing.
Everyone groaned
at the same time,
they'd go, "Okay let's do that."
And then Paul would go,
"Um, I have another story."
And then it would top it!
- My favorite personal
story from the show
was the Parisian night suit
which truly happened to me.
I was really into disco
and there was a store
in the mall called Silvermens.
One day, the guy's like,
"Hey, check it out.
"We just got it in, man.
"It's a disco jumpsuit."
I was like, "That's
gonna be awesome."
So, I put this
thing on and thought
I just rock in front of
the mirror of my bedroom,
just like, "You are the king."
And wear it to school, and
the second I walk through
the doors, realize I made the
biggest mistake of my life.
People start laughing, other
people are just like "What?"
And you're trapped.
You wanna go home, you just
wanna get out of there.
And you couldn't.
So, I had to spend
all day walking around
in this disco jumpsuit.
- What was funny about
Paul was he would tell
a story of childhood
humiliation,
someone would say, "How old
were you when that happened?
"12, 13?"
And he would always say, "17."
(laughs) It was always
much later than we thought.
- [Sarah Hagan] Sometimes they
would even change lines
based on the table read.
I heard about what she does
in the yearbook darkroom.
- What she does?
- I eventually tell her
that she fornicates.
- What?
When I read it, I was like,
that doesn't make any sense.
She fornicates it, okay?
(laughing)
But I also didn't know
what fornicated means.
- Fornicating it.
Oh, it was so cute.
- Oh yeah.
(laughing)
She fornicates, okay?
I was so confused.
Like, why everyone was
like busting out laughing.
And so, anyway, they
kept it like that.
- [Woman] Okay, we're rolling.
(buzzer sounds)
- I heard about what she
does in yearbook dark room.
She fornicates it, okay?
- [Director] And that's a cut.
(all laughing)
- [Gabe] Paul was looking
to tell the stories
of the group of kids
that were simply
not represented on
television at that time.
- [Linda] It was pretty obvious
that this was not
about the people
that you'd been watching
typically on television.
It kinda zooms
past them and goes
to the stoners
under the bleachers.
- Real characters who could
be called freaks and geeks.
- [Judd] Everybody made
these giant contributions,
'cause everyone was being brave
about what they
had been through.
- So I told my mom I was
eating at your house,
and Bill told his mom.
- My parents separated
and my dad moved away,
and he wouldn't tell
us where he lived,
so I went to go find him.
I knew that it had to
be on the south side,
so I went over there, and
I took the garage clicker
out of his car, and I
drove around looking.
- Clicking these
doors, and opened up,
and there was his dad's car
in another woman's house.
- [Jeff] Just watching
the door go up,
I would never have though when
I did this at 15-years-old,
something that happened
to you that you wrote,
and then here it is happening.
- We just were like,
oh my god, like
Jeff, that's horrible that
happened to you,
and we so have to
use that on the show.
- You're about to film the
wonderful bike walking scene
where I get all angry and pissy
that they're about to leave.
- I was always trying
to inject stories
of divorce into the show,
because that's something
that I had been through.
Martin Starr's mom.
We kind of implied that
she stripped at some point,
but she's a waitress
and single mom,
and we see that he's a
bit of a latchkey kid.
He comes home from school
and he's by himself,
and then he did
what I did as a kid,
which is he made grilled
cheese sandwiches
and ate Entenmann's
Cake and would watch
comedians on The
Dinah Shore Show.
And the comedian that he
watches is Garry Shandling.
(lively music)
Jake Kasdan said, "That's
the most personal thing
you've ever done, and it's the
best thing you've ever done,"
and that made me realize
that that was the direction
I needed to go in
for my entire career,
that I should just go
deeper and more personal,
and that's where
the good stuff was.
We weren't sure what it
was in the beginning.
We were figuring
it out as we went,
and if you watch the episodes,
you can feel us finding it.
- We were a dramedy.
For every moment where a freak
or a geek made you laugh,
they were gonna have a moment
where they made you cry.
- [Director] Cut, that was nice.
- [Crew Member]
Great, very nice.
- [Samm] And I think
that that's real life.
- That's the only way
that comedy really works,
is if there's such a strong
element of truth in it,
it will invariably
have pain in it.
The things that are
incredibly painful are funny,
ultimately, or we don't
survive them in a way.
- There was always this
kind of low-level depression
right underneath the
surface of the stories.
By and large, they're more
about failure than success.
People are humiliated,
or find themselves
in some mortifying situation.
- Watch it, Romeo,
you're on my hair!
- Hey we're busy here.
- Sorry.
- Oh, hey Lindsay.
(Kim laughs)
- It's easy to say, oh, in 1979
people were more innocent.
The truth is is that
everyone at a certain point
is really just
uncomfortable about sex.
- All these other shows
seemed kind of cool with sex,
and they were just so mature.
- In most high school
shows, they'd show sex
being scary a little
bit, but not awkward.
And it's awkward.
Having a kiss for the
first time is awkward.
Which way do you turn your face?
- Boys are supposed
to know what to do.
How?
Based on what?
- That was just
not my experience.
We were so terrified
of everything.
- [John] The porno that I
was given by Daniel Desario.
I remember all of that vividly.
- It's a naked woman.
- What's she doing?
- Who cares what she's doing?
She's naked.
- [John] It was an actual porno,
and I looked at it
as much as I could.
(John laughs)
- Those were the first
kisses of our, mine at least.
- Joe and I even have a big
sex scene in one episode.
- We had just finished lunch
and I was walking
back to the trailer.
James, he was down on the curb
and he said, "Hey, did you
see next week's script?
"Oh, you got a hot love
scene with your wife, Becky."
And I said, "No, get out."
"Yeah, I'm tellin' ya."
I looked at script, whoa!
We gotta make out.
- I had gotten a
little bronchitis.
I was really husky and
it was kind of perfect.
It sounded like I was having
really great, husky sex.
- Where's mom and dad?
- In their room.
- Are they fighting?
- No.
- [John] The television press
was quick to embrace the show.
- [Judd] The reviews
were incredible.
It was the best
reviews you could get.
- Critics loved the show.
They loved Freaks And Geeks.
- The top new T.V. show in Time
magazine before we came out.
- Is Freaks And Geeks too
good for television, you know?
- Our launch was coming up,
Saturday night at 8 o'clock,
which we knew was
in a good spot,
but we're still, we're
about to come out
and it was so exciting,
and we did a party.
They had it up on
this big screen.
God, we're just standing there
just choking up and just like,
"Oh my god, my dreams
are coming true."
And the ratings were
actually pretty good.
We were shooting on that Monday
and I remember coming
into the cafeteria set
with this piece of paper
and getting up on the table
and announcing to everyone,
gathered everyone around,
and I read out our ratings.
Yay, this big cheer.
- [Karey Burke] In those
days at NBC, we could
hit a share in the mid-20's.
Friends was a 30-share.
That was the bar.
- The first episode
ratings were okay.
I think we got an 11-share.
- Our ratings hit the halfway
point of the pilot dropped,
'cause it's right around
when Eli falls off
the bleachers and
breaks his arm.
- I'm not retarded, I'm special!
I don't wanna go to
the dance with you.
- [Lindsay] Please, I'm sorry!
(Eli yells in pain)
- So there's a poor
mentally-challenged kid
screaming in pain, and you just
heard America go like nope,
and turning the channel.
Next week our
ratings just go boom.
Into the toilet.
- After the show first
show it just, whoo.
- Joe Flaherty at
one point goes,
"Yeah, Paul never came
into the cafeteria
and announced the ratings again.
Yeah, we're doing terrible.
I don't know what to tell ya.
- In fact, he was
pretty hard to find
for a few weeks after that.
kind of went from
we got it made,
Hollywood here we come, before
the first episodes came out,
to like wow, we're on this
show and nobody's watching us.
Nothing has really changed.
- NBC held a party.
Garth Ancier, who was
running the network,
was out there
talking to some guy,
and I just go, "Hey, Garth."
And he goes like,
"Deliver the goods.
"Deliver the goods.
"Don't be like this guy."
And he pointed at the other guy.
The other guy kinda
had this sheepish look,
and I just walked away
like, "What is happening?"
So you immediately
go like, oh god.
We gotta suddenly dealing
with network politics.
- He really studied the
metered market ratings,
and he would come in and show me
how much the show dropped
off from Jeopardy,
and that meant it
was doomed to fail.
- What a name, Garth.
I'd be so curious to hear
his perspective on this.
- I now ask, I'm
not your editor,
but cut directly to
that interview now.
- Certain shows shouldn't really
be on broadcast television.
I, It was a quirky show.
Everyone knew it
was a quirky show.
They told me that going in.
The term in the industry
is three jokes a page.
Freaks and Geeks is a
little slower than that.
- Even though, look, we had
7 million loyal viewers.
- The amount of people who were
watching would be
a huge hit today,
but back then it was
like, you dropped a point.
We may have to cancel you.
And that's
terrifying, and really
bad for creativity I think,
'cause you're making stuff
with a gun to your head.
I couldn't live in the
reality of the show,
and the fun of shooting
it, because part of my day
was the nuts and
bolts of our survival.
- Together we would
go call and say,
"They didn't love
the rough cut,"
or "Can you make these changes?"
- [Paul] I was so mad at
the network that I thought,
no let's go farther.
Lets challenge ourselves.
You want us to be safer?
Well then we're gonna be bolder.
- The first show I did was
called Kim Kelly is My Friend.
And action!
- I just remember
reading it going wow!
- It's a really difficult
episode to watch.
- The network was
terrified of it.
I was kind of terrified of it.
- You are a lying brat.
- Knew it.
I told ya.
- I'm not lying, you
guys just can't believe
that I can make a friend
who's rich and smart.
Oh, I knew Kim Kelly
in high school.
Oh my god, I could tell
her life just was dark.
It allowed me to put
forth this other side
of myself on camera that
was really inside me,
and was really
wanting to get out.
You have to always look
at the impetus for why
someone is behaving the
way that they're behaving.
You got to see
behind the curtain
of this kind of
horrible girl. (laughs)
'Cause you are a slut, you slut.
- It was jarring to be in
there during those scenes.
- Did you call me?
What did you call me?
- [Busy Voiceover] Yeah,
I hit him really hard.
- Hey, calm down!
- Just don't lie to me!
- I'm not lying.
- And his face was turning red
and then everyone was concerned.
James was such a badass like,
"I don't care, would
Marlon Brando get hit?"
- All right, this is like
Brando stuff, you know.
I had these ideas about
being a young actor,
and I was like I need to look
cool and tough or whatever.
And Busy's tougher than I am,
and so she kept punching me.
- It really captures the sex
and violence of
being a teenager.
- The network got
scared of that episode,
because it was as
bold as anything
that I'd seen in a network show.
- My memory of it
is Garth coming down
to our offices and
being just like
what the hell is this?
What is this?
- That's what happened.
- What's happening?
This is not funny!
- They didn't wanna air it,
and we realized, oh
they're just scared.
They're scared of what this is.
- [Linda] There was always
some note of changing
something to make
it more palatable.
- The language they
would always use
to describe that
was more victories.
- Which was their way of
saying that the show was sad,
but it was build into the
DNA of the show that it was
about failing and how
you survive failure,
and it was about
how your friends
support you in difficult times.
So it didn't really
make sense to us
to have everything go great.
- He wasn't thrilled
about that note.
I didn't know if that
was the answer or not, I...
but I certainly said can you
give 'em some more victories?
- There was an episode where
we tried to take that note.
Bill was playing baseball.
The ball comes to him
and he catches it,
and Rocky music plays.
("Overture" by Conti)
But then he doesn't realize
that people are tagging up,
and so everybody just scores.
That was a close as we
could get to a victory.
(phone rings)
(busy signal beeping)
- I would engage in
discussions with Judd
about why are we not
connecting with the audience?
- I was the person
on the phone saying,
"I'm not gonna change anything."
- I'd hear just
screaming off in a field,
and there'd be
Judd on a cellphone
just screaming into the phone.
- Paul and I agreed
on something early on,
which is we're not
gonna screw this up.
We're not gonna sell it out.
- This was clearly
very important to Judd.
- There is magic happening here,
and I am not letting
anybody (beep) with this.
- Maybe give a little
more James Franco
because it was very
clear James Franco
had real star quality about him.
Maybe a happy ending now and
then, maybe would be good.
- I've almost never seen a show
that wasn't doing
very well suddenly
become a huge hit
because the network
executives gave
really good notes.
Let's have happy endings?
That's trying to change
your tires on the freeway
when you're rolling
75 miles an hour.
You can't do it.
- Well, when's Sam
gonna get the girl?
It's episode three,
when's he gonna get her?
We're like, when he's 30?
What was the other one?
When's Franco gonna
take his shirt off?
Right, right,right.
It's like, he's not.
- People tend to wanna
walk away from a T.V. show
or a movie like something
good has happened.
- But isn't it
better to have a show
that affirms that the
life that they're living
is not so terrible,
and that other people
are going through the
same kind of struggles,
and sometimes it doesn't
end the way you want it to,
and you kinda have to
make the most of it?
- [Shelley Mccory] Surviving
is the victory.
When this thing happens to you,
and at the end of the
episode you're still alive,
that's the victory.
- The show's also about dreams.
Will your dreams come true?
Do you have the
courage to dream?
Those episodes about Jason Segel
playing the drums
are really tough.
He wants to be as good
as the guy in Rush,
and he realizes that he's
not, and it's heartbreaking.
(sighs)
- Sometimes I go
down into my basement
and I put on a live album.
I can see myself on the stage,
do you understand what I mean?
I can see it, and I'm
play a 10-minute solo.
Oh, man.
(sighs)
I'm not gonna be that guy.
I'm never gonna be that guy.
- We all have to decide
what we wanna do.
How hard do we wanna
work to get it?
Are we gonna give up?
And you hope that in your life,
if you're strong
and you work hard
that you get to
have your moment,
and I always like to think
that a lot of these characters,
after this period,
had their moment.
- See ya.
- It's on.
- When a broadcast network
launches your show,
the audience has one
opportunity to see it.
- Freaks and Geeks
didn't get a lotta luck.
- The show would
be on for two weeks
and then off for two weeks.
And then on for one week,
and then off for three weeks.
And that is a textbook way,
in that era, to kill a show.
The most important
thing that you can get
when a network
show is launched is
just a straight run of original
episodes, uninterrupted.
- Well the show was
on 13 out of 26 weeks,
so it was just off the air
as much as it was on the air.
- So there were just
weekends where they'd
shovel three episodes
off on a Sunday,
'cause they were like, "We
gotta air 'em somewhere."
- We got a order for 13
episodes, then they'll
give you the back 9
so you go up to 22.
This they gave us like two,
then they gave us like one more.
- We'd been on Saturday nights,
and then they announced
they were moving us Mondays.
- [T.V. Announcer] An
all-new Freaks and Geeks.
NBC Monday at 8/7 central.
- There's more
available audience.
- But also more competition.
- Right.
- The big story
in T.V. around that time
was Who Wants to
Be a Millionaire?
That show had come
out that fall also,
and it was such a
ratings monster.
- [Judd] It was like
a Destructo Machine,
rolling around television.
And they started putting it
on three, four times a week.
- [Paul] They're knocking off
scripted original programming
to broadcast Regis Philbin
trying to give away
a million dollars to
a couple of idiots.
- And there would a guy waiting
to figure out an answer,
and he'd be like this and
thinking and thinking.
That 15 seconds on an episode
that we were writing
would be so important.
- Finally, they put
it on against us
and just wiped us out.
(static)
- [Jeff] Suddenly it
did feel like there was
a ticking clock on
the life of our show.
- Everyone was doing CPR, trying
to get people to watch it.
Trying to get the
network to promote it.
The New York Times did
a big piece saying,
"Please everyone,
watch this show.
"The ship is sinking
but it's great.
"You really should watch this."
But you know, no one did.
(crew chattering)
- When you work on a
T.V. show or a movie,
there's an area
called craft service.
This craft service
table is filled
with lavish baked
goods and cold cuts,
and then slowly as
the show went on,
it became reduced to a box of
Corn Puffs and some creamer,
at which point we realized
we were in trouble.
- And I remember Judd coming
up to me and saying like,
"You should write
the final episode."
We always had a
sense that the show
was not going to survive.
If there's anything I hated more
than a show getting
canceled in the middle
and not having a
conclusion to the story,
that's how nervous
and paranoid we were.
- We gotta do it.
This might be the last episode.
- We'll have a season
no matter what.
(jocks yelling)
(gentle music)
- You get called geeks,
girls don't even look at ya.
What?
I'm accepted at an
Ivy League college?
Hey, chicks dig smart guys.
Who knew?
And yes, Mr. Jock
who cleaned me out?
I will have fries with that.
(all laughing)
- I don't want a story
to go on forever.
I just wanna go like, "Oh good.
"We've sent them
off into the world."
(gentle music)
- [Judd] Paul and I
were sitting around,
and we said, "What
happens to this girl?"
And we realize, I think
she becomes a deadhead.
That's where she would go.
- [Linda] I'm so happy that they
managed to sneak in the ending.
- [Judd] It's hard to even
understand why it worked so well
because it doesn't
end any storyline,
but yet it does
feel like the end.
- I'm left, when I
watch that last episode,
feeling a little like
I wanna cry. (laughs)
A little like I wanna
have some hot tea.
Maybe that's just me.
Maybe I have other
stuff going on.(laughs)
- [Seth Rogan] We kinda
did everything right,
and it still just didn't work.
- [Samm Levine] They said,
well we're gonna
reevaluate it in May
and everybody sort
of knows that there's
not a prayer in hell they're
gonna order the show.
- It was a decision that I
kinda knew was gonna happen
months in advance but
things had to just play out.
- There are two things
that a show needs
to survive and become
a hit and that is
creators who know
what they're doing,
and then a network
that believes in it
and will put everything
they have behind it.
- There were conference calls
that we arranged because Garth
felt like it was too dark,
it wasn't interesting,
I don't like these kids,
they're not attractive.
When that happens
you stop getting
promos on Thursday nights.
You're not getting
a promo on Friends
saying "Watch Freaks
and Geeks this weekend",
and once that starts
it's just a slow slide.
- When we were heading for
cancellation I was like,
just dreading it, it's the
toughest thing to cancel a show
when it's not just
a piece of business,
it's something from their soul.
- I believe that it
was open and shut
that we needed to cancel it.
Personally I felt really
invested in the show working.
But hope is not a business plan.
We all wanted it to
succeed but there's a point
you kinda have to give it up.
- If you can't see signs
of life in the show
that you can't articulate
to your management
you will be fired if
you don't do that.
- [Busy Philipps]
You're gonna be right
in the television business
more often than not
if you say "no" or you
bet against something.
Most things fail.
- No one ever has seconds
thoughts about canceling a show
that's creatively failing,
but they certainly have
second thoughts about a show
that is creatively working
and is unique and different
and fulfilling it's promises.
And I have often thought,
what could I have done to
get this to work?
- [Paul Feig] So
for like the person
who gets it the least
to be the guy that
can say "yay" or "nay" had to
be so heartbreaking for Judd.
- For me it was like a
complete nervous breakdown.
It tapped into all my
issues from when I was a kid
about families separating, like
my childhood divorce issues.
Like, oh no, we must keep
this together at all costs.
The sadness and depression and
rage of a family breaking up,
of potential being incinerated.
No, we can't do this.
What, we can't do this?
Never make anymore
again and don't talk
to each other ever again, you're
allowed to say that to me?
You have the power
to make that happen?
It was very hard for
me to accept that
that's how show business worked.
- I felt like we let them down.
It was our job to
protect it and keep it on
and let it grow and we
didn't, we couldn't.
(clapping)
- Final day of shooting
we're all breaking down,
I mean Linda and I especially
were just disasters.
- [Linda Cardellini] It hurt.
- [Camera Man] You upset?
You gonna be okay?
- [John Francis Daley] Yeah.
(dramatic, sad music)
- [Judd Apatow] You
guys are on fire!
- [Steve Bannos]
Judd gives a speech
and Paul gives a speech
and you could just feel it
and everyone's trying
to keep it together.
- I'm kind of flustered right
now because I didn't think
the last day was gonna
hit me this hard.
That's gonna be the
hardest part is not
getting to see
everybody every day.
(applause)
- There was a wrap party
that was pretty crazy.
That was kind of
the last goodbyes.
(emotional rhythmic music)
- Everyone came.
When you got to the party
you knew it was over with.
- It felt like the
last day of high school
which I didn't have because
I didn't finish high school
but it felt like what I imagine
the last day of high
school feeling like.
- [Judd Apatow] Three of
the cast members on our show
have just graduated
from high school.
- As it may be, this
is the only graduation
I will ever have so, uh...
(laughter)
I'd like to thank y'all for
coming down and ah,
I don't know, every
rose has it's thorn and ah
all that junk.
- So, we would like to present
these gents with their diplomas.
(cheering)
- [Martin Starr] This was
a better high school than I
could have ever hoped
for or imagined.
Learning on this show and
growing up on this show.
(mellow music)
- I don't have super clear
memories of high school.
I was very poorly treated by
everybody else in my peer group,
I was weird, our
family was poor,
my clothes were shoddy,
I had no social skills.
That time on set was
the very first time
in my whole life
that I was surrounded
by people who were
treating me with respect,
and listening to
what I had to say.
So much of who I
am was formed by
the experience of
Freaks and Geeks.
- If you're on a show and
you're young and it hits
there's a catapult into
a different stratosphere.
And that didn't happen to us.
- There was like years
I was unemployed.
It made me angry
for years and years.
I was probably a pretty
unpleasant person to be around.
- It is a weird thing for
someone at the age of 14
to feel like, where do I go now?
Cause that's generally,
for most people,
the starting point
in their lives.
- When you start out with
a really high standard
you sort of are comparing
everything after that.
- I didn't know
how great I had it
or how lucky I was, really, to
be working with those people.
- Where television has gone now,
it's because of
Freaks and Geeks.
- You look at Freaks
and Geeks and it's like,
well, it's a single
camera sitcom,
that happens all the
time now, you know.
It's got antiheroes in it,
that happens all the time.
What these guys did
was brought a show
that broke a lot of conventions.
Without Freaks and
Geeks you wouldn't have
the style of real dramadies,
it just wouldn't of happened.
- It was the birth
of the antihero
and it served as, I
think, a cautionary tale
about shows that had a small
but devoted fan base that would
scream from the mountaintops
how good this show was.
- To be able to
have done that show
on a network at that
time, I'm just so happy
that it still exists
so people can see it
and it can still have
this life beyond itself.
- Otherwise it would have just
disappeared forever
in some dark library
in the bottom of the NBC
dungeon, I don't know.
- Judd and I both went
aside and went like,
are we about to ruin
these kids lives?
I didn't want anybody to turn,
we loved these kids so much.
- I remember Judd saying,
look, we're not on the air,
and at some point, at some time,
people are gonna watch
these, so just keep working.
- In my head I was trying
to keep this group together.
Even though we were canceled
I was trying to think
we should all be doing stuff,
we can't let them
shut this down.
If we want to we should try to
control our creative destiny.
It felt like a very special
thing that I didn't want
to go away and it
hasn't gone away.
It's like a tree with a lot
of branches, reaching out.
This show led to a lot
of good stuff coming out.
And that's something
that I'm very proud of.
- Judd's a real teacher.
If he sees that talent he
really loves to nurture it.
I really credit Judd for giving
those guys a launch
pad in movies.
- I just did everything I
could to fight against it.
Oh, you think this show is over?
And that we're never
gonna work together again?
Well then I'm gonna make a
show that's very similar.
- Undeclared
definitely we saw as
sort of a sequel to
Freaks and Geeks.
- [Judd Apatow] A lot of people
were in the cast like Seth and
Jason, and then other people
like Martin came on
and did guest spots.
- Judd and Paul are two big ones
that constantly use
the same people.
Very loyal, yeah.
- It's almost like hoarding.
You're not gonna throw
away my bottle of piss
and my 1978 Newsweek,
I'm keeping it forever
because I may need it.
I kept working with
a lot of the writers,
and directors, and actors,
and actresses in movies.
But in my head I
would always think,
this is just an episode
of Freaks and Geeks.
- Judd had done an amazing run.
Anchorman, 40 Year Old
Virgin, Knocked Up.
- [Judd Apatow] What is
the 40 year old virgin,
it's a guy that's just
afraid to ask out the girl.
Which is all the geeks
are on Freaks and Geeks,
it's just now they're 40.
- I wouldn't be acting
now I don't think
if I hadn't been able
to do Knocked Up.
- [Karey Burke] It's super cool.
- [Shelley McCory] It is
super cool.
- Especially
because we were told
they would never be
big stars. (laughs)
- Yeah.
They don't have this, they
don't have this, they don't
have this, they don't have
this, it's not gonna work.
- There was another
thing that was at play,
a Count of Monte Cristo style
revenge mission on Judd's part.
And that I will
systematically make
every one of these
people a star.
You're wrong, Seth's a
star, Jason's a star, watch.
- Part of me thinks the only
reason I was in Knocked Up
and 40 Year Old Virgin
is so Judd could
prove some NBC executive wrong.
Which is totally okay with me,
it doesn't diminish
it in my eye.
I'm totally okay
to have a career
that's based on
vengeance and rage.
- [Judd Apatow] It sounds
kind of demented, but it was
the driving force of a lot
of my approach to my career.
- [Woman] Judd is
fearless, he started
doing a project with Seth Rogan.
- Superbad is like the dream
of Freaks and Geeks as a movie,
edgier where you don't have
to keep it clean for NBC.
It's the perfect
version of that.
- [Paul Feig] Forgetting
Sarah Marshall was coming out
and I ran into Judd
and he said, "I did it".
What did you do?
And he said, "I promised
myself I wasn't gonna stop
until Jason became
a huge movie star."
- Judd said to me
after Freaks and Geeks
look, the only way
you're gonna make it
is if you write
your own material.
"You're kind of a weird
dude", was specifically
what he said to me
and then he literally
showed me how to write and it
felt like an apprenticeship.
- [Judd Apatow] It feels like
what I always thought
they could do,
and I didn't want it to
happen without me around.
- [Seth Rogan] We started
writing Pineapple Express
after Freaks and
Geeks was canceled.
- I would only realized like
years later when I came back
and did Pineapple with
Judd and Seth like, oh,
I kinda do need those guys,
they are my family, you know?
- I helped launch
the show The Office.
Brought along certain Freaks
and Geeks ideas to that work.
- The kind of story telling
that we're interested in
all of it traces back
to Freaks and Geeks.
- Jake directed Bad
Teacher. What did I play?
A math teacher.
- I love that Becky Ann Baker is
leading them as well on Girls.
- [Dave Allen] Why
don't these two guys
be the nutty neighbors on Love?
- [Judd Apatow]
Busy Phillips wrote
the story for Blades of Glory.
John Daley directed Vacation
and wrote Spider Man.
- We made a movie
about animated food
grounding every scene in a
relatable, real life scenario.
And that's all from Judd.
- [Shelley McCory] Paul Feig
is doing female comedies.
- [Karey Burke] Bridesmaids was
so special, wasn't it?
- He did that
Ghostbusters thing, right?
That female Ghostbusters,
yeah, what the hell.
Why should I worry about
these guys? (laughs)
(uplifting music)
- [Dennis Deyoung] Even
though Freaks and Geeks died
the family behind it
continued to live and prosper.
- It survives just in
the work of everybody
who was a part of it.
I just acted in a movie
that James Franco directed.
And that's the end of
all the permutations.
When I'm acting in the
movies they've directed.
They become your kids,
and so when suddenly
they're doing well that
must be what you feel like
when you have
successful children.
So I have successful
kids, it worked out.
And I didn't have to send
any of them to college.
(piano music)
Styx, "Come Sail Ayay"
- Once in a while the universe
has gotta spin in
your direction.
And when it's
spinning towards you
you better stand
up and take notice.
Freaks and Geeks was not a
success and they let it go.
But all the things had to come
together in the right way.
As they say, the
cream goes to the top.
It doesn't always, but
it did in these cases
and so I say, hot diggity dog.
♪ I'm sailing away
♪ Set an open course
for the virgin seas ♪
- Wow, what would
it have been like
if the show went on for
five years and we were all,
and then was a big
hit or something.
- Maybe there's actually
something pretty special
about getting it as
just this little slice
of their life, as one
year in their life.
- You know, shows
often get terrible.
- I don't wanna see
sad, old Kim Kelly.
- It's just kind of exactly
what we wanted it to be.
I miss it and yet I don't
want to do any more of them.
♪ To carry on
- We could do some big
high school reunion
where everybody comes back.
- Reunion shows, I don't know,
I don't know how you do it.
- I have no idea.
- Like a reboot?
- I hate reunion shows, I
gotta be honest with you.
They bum me the (beep) out.
- You don't think that's it?
That probably is it.