Freaks and Geeks DVD?

[Stefen]

Puberty is funny.

[cine]

You would know.

[Stefen]

You would know.

When you hit puberty so will you.

[modage]

i LOVE LOVE LOVE this show.  like i mentioned a page or two back i had not seen any of it when it originally aired but caught about 30 minutes once and 10 minutes another time on the Family Channel reruns.  i really had no idea.  THIS IS THE GREATEST SHOW this side of twin peaks!  (not that they're related at all but, i'm having a similar obsessive compulsion to just burn through all the episodes but having to use restraint to not watch more than 1 a day).  

i'm only 5 episodes in, but the show is so good, so incredibly real and funny i cant believe it.  during every episode atleast once i find myself stopping just to nudge my girlfriend and go 'god, that is so true.'  or 'i did that.'  or 'i knew somebody just like that'.  but even more than thousands of little touches that make it ring so true to adolescent life, the way the show goes out of its way to steer away from conventional sitcom traps.  

parents go out of town and kids throw a party.  okay, i've seen this before.  but WAIT!  mom and dad dont call to say theyre coming home early and kids scramble to pick up the house and get it done just in the nick of time and they dont get caught, and exchange 'whew' glance after theyre off the hook, except for the one lamp that got broken as you hear mom yell offscreen and credits roll!  NO!  the fucking episode ENDS before you see any of that!   BRILLIANT!  why?  because you've seen it before!  and WHY?  because ITS NOT IMPORTANT.  and really WHY?  cause thats not real life.  

kids get caught cheating and are in teachers office with parents.  if only troubled kid can answer ONE question right, they'll be off the hook.  you SO WANT him to just know this ONE question and start inventing excuses in your head.  he could've learned it when he got tutored, he might've known it all along, somehow he could just guess it!  but NO!  denied, THATS not real life!  the way that episode ends before you get the 'outcome' of that meeting is BRILLIANT!  it ends in the fucking office with lindsey in hysterical laughter.  brilliant.

i love this show.  theres more, but thats enough for now.  i hope its ALL as good as this.  cause its SO GOOD.

[Stefen]

It gets better. Watching it for the first time is like getting goatsed for the first time, but in a good way.

[modage]

It gets better.

you werent kidding.  well, i finished Freaks and Geeks tonight and now i'm incredibly depressed.  something happened during the course of this show i wasnt ready for.  it was always great, the way it was written, how true to life it was without any BS, but somewhere along the way you really REALLY begin to care for the characters.  the storylines start getting more serious and the stakes/friendships are higher and then they've really got you.  

during the course of the show i kept thinking 'if twin peaks 00-14 is an A+, this is probably an A.' but no, this is an A+ and possibly/probably my favorite show of all time.  its not that its neccesarily a better show than twin peaks, its just that i can relate to this more and selfishly in music/movies/etc. is what i usually prefer most of the time: something that hits me on an emotional level.  when i was a few episodes from the end, knowing i wouldnt get to spend much more time with these characters i'd grown to love was devastating.  i mean, just crushing.  especially in the last few episodes, and now...... nothing.  

even more depressing, its not like any of these actors, who are all so fantastic in these roles i cant believe it, with the exception of james franco have really gone on to do a whole lot.  most of them probably can hardly get work, and thats terrible.  

the only thing i have to look forward to now is the rumored SPRING 2005 release of the Undeclared DVD which is supposedly getting loaded with tons of extras right now being prepped for release.  now that i've seen F&G the episodes, which are a dim memory at this point anyways will take on a whole new meaning with all the F&G cameo's etc.  

also:not sure how old or how wild a rumor this is but....

Well Paul Feig (spelling?), the guy who worked with Judd Apatow on Freaks and Geeks...is set to start a brand new show about young twenty something's...I'm guessing they're gonna be nerds...but the type of nerds that most cool people are (I know that makes sense to someone out there) well anyway...it's gonna be on a cable station like HBO so it might have a better chance of survival then Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared...

I'm not sure if Judd Apatow is involved with the project but I'm pretty sure that many of the mainstay actors (Seth Rogan, Jason Segel, etc.) will be on the show...so I'm guessing it'll be awesome... .

this would be the greatest thing on the planet.  has anybody heard anything about this?

[MacGuffin]

'Virgin' Marks First Time for TV Veteran Apatow

Judd Apatow, who created the college comedy "Undeclared" and executive produced "Freaks and Geeks," will make his feature directorial debut on "The 40 Year-Old Virgin."

Apatow co-wrote the script for the Universal Pictures project with actor Steve Carell ("Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy"), who will star in the comedy.

Apatow and Carell came up with the idea for a middle-age coming-of-age tale while working on DreamWorks' "Anchorman," on which Apatow was a producer.

"I was constantly amazed how funny Steve was on the set of 'Anchorman' and wanted to create an opportunity where he was the lead," Apatow said.

Apatow pitched the idea to Universal, and the duo spent the summer writing. Apatow already has several other projects at Universal. He is executive producing the Will Ferrell starrer "Kicking and Screaming" and also has an untitled college-themed comedy set up at the studio.

The film will go into production early next year in Los Angeles.

Apatow directed episodes of both "Undeclared" and "Freaks and Geeks." He wrote "Fun With Dick and Jane" with Nicholas Stoller, which is in production at Sony with Jim Carrey starring. Carell was a correspondent on "The Daily Show" and appeared opposite Carrey in "Bruce Almighty." He is attached to star as agent Maxwell Smart in "Get Smart" at Warner Bros.

[godardian]

There is a loose connection between Mike White, Miguel Arteta (who directs many F&G episodes) and Apatow... I think White would be the one I'd single out as the most identifiable creative force, so if you enjoy Freaks and Geeks, I'd absolutely suggest the White/Arteta feature collaborations: Chuck and Buck, The Good Girl. Arteta's Star Maps is very worthy, too. He's directed episodes of Six Feet Under, as have many fine directors.

I have yet to see School of Rock, but it's on my list for the White connection alone...

Oh, I should mention I think Freaks and Geeks was brilliant. I cherish my DVD set and have been through it twice over the summer, exposing my other half and a friend to its brilliance.

...I wish they would release Undeclared on DVD...

[modage]

yeah i saw The Good Girl in the theatre and liked it and i just watched Chuck and Buck recently on IFC and it kind of weirded me out.  undeclared is coming in the spring!

[godardian]

i just watched Chuck and Buck recently on IFC and it kind of weirded me out.  

But in a good way, right? I loved the ambiguity of that movie, and also how generous it was with every one of the characters while still remaining irreverently funny. White is obviously much more of an optimist and a humanist than, say, Todd Solondz. I guess the subject matter and the discussions of childhood sexual experimentation might make some uncomfortable... but as much as movies can make us feel good by falsely presenting characters in tidy categories, I appreciate it more when they're inscrutable the way Mike White's character is, or the friendship that's seen in such completely disparate ways by the two protagonists. You could say White's character is slightly autistic or mentally/emotionally stunted, and you could also say he's gay... but the film doesn't bother to make a big deal of those things, because they're much less important than the fact that he's a human being learning how to cope with some difficult emotions (a rather singular human being, but that's all the better, really, isn't it?). The fact that they made such a genuinely kind, good-hearted movie, happy ending and all, without being sappy for a single second really amazes me every time I see it. Very, very few of the films I love could be described as those things. I find the same qualities in Freaks and Geeks... they eventually undermine that easy audience impulse to hate the "bad" characters, to show how complicated and contradictory people can be, and to both acknowledge the pain it can cause and celebrate the good (or funny) surprises that can spring from that kind of human fallibility and unpredictability.

[modage]

according to amazon and dvdaficionado this will be out on Aug 16th.

SWEET.  

[modage]

Judd Apatow: The Undeclared creator discusses his new DVD, The 40 Year-Old Virgin, and his future in films and television.
by Todd Gilchrist

August 12, 2005 - Judd Apatow might just be Hollywood's most successful failure. Like few other TV writers and producers working today, he has seen more projects canceled than continued (think The Ben Stiller Show, The Critic, Freaks and Geeks among others), and yet maintains a position as one of the industry's most acclaimed, respected and sought-after artists. Thankfully, DVD has offered him a second chance to find appreciative audience for his programs: Freaks and Geeks was released last year with a flurry of attention, vindicating the show as a great chronicle of teen angst; and now he's hoping that the same mania will claim viewers again with the release of Undeclared.

IGN recently caught with Apatow via phone to discuss the release of Undeclared on DVD. In addition to his comments about the celebrated, ratings-deficient show, he reveals a few secrets about the forthcoming 40 Year-Old Virgin DVD, and explains how the making of Anchorman gave birth to not one but two full-length feature films.

IGN DVD: How's everything today, Judd?
Judd Apatow: Good, good. We've got the [40 Year-Old Virgin] movie coming out next week. It's one of those ones that oddly fell into place and came out well, and isn't a nightmare.

How much are you having to juggle that and the promotion for the Undeclared DVD set?
Apatow: Well, I timed Undeclared to come out the week before the movie came out so every time anyone asks me about Virgin, I can push the Undeclared DVD. I'm doing press junkets this weekend, and we're trying to get some people to pay attention.

IGN DVD: When you first started Undeclared, did you approach the show any differently given the fact that Freaks and Geeks, your other, similarly-themed series, was ultimately cancelled?
Apatow: Well, we thought if we did a show that was half and hour instead of an hour and was more of a comedy than a drama... actually, we used to say that Freaks and Geeks was a drama that had comedy in it, and we said that this was a comedy that had some drama in it! Flip the 60-40 percentages, with more comedy than drama, and we could do something fun because high school is inherently painful for a lot of people, but college is the reward for having survived. So we thought this was a way to do something that would be different because the setting is different but our approach to the work would be the same, to be honest and truthful and revealing.

IGN DVD: When you went back to revisit the material, was there anything you insisted be included to make sure that audiences understood the show better, or could appreciate it more?
Apatow: Well, there was this episode that never aired called "God Visits, which was about Steven getting approached by one of the Christian groups and getting really into it, and at the same time, Charlie Hunnam's character Lloyd gets flipped out by a philosophy professor who's teaching existentialism. It was a fun episode that never aired - of course they promised us it would air - because I thought, 'how could you not air an episode? You paid for it! How would it be better not to air it?' But apparently there was some financial motivation for not airing an episode they paid for. So it's great that's on the DVD, and there's also an episode that we shot two versions of.

What happened was we shot six episodes because at the time, Fox was in dire straits and didn't have any hit shows. So they ordered six episodes before even seeing a pilot, and by the time we finished the six, they had a bunch of hit shows. They didn't need us, so they didn't air the first episode until almost ten or eleven months after we shot it. But in that time, everyone was sitting around thinking a little too much about how the episodes were, and they asked for some adjustments in some of the episodes, and one of the episodes was about taking the girl he likes, Lizzie, to a Ted Nugent lecture. I guess maybe they found that a little too obscure a concept, so we shot another version of the date where they go see American Pie outside. We liked both of them equally, but it was one of those things where we said 'well, if the network will like us more and not cancel us as quickly if we listen to some of their thoughts, then let's do it.' Of course, that didn't work at all and they canceled us one episode quicker than Freaks and Geeks, after promising that they would never do that to us, and that NBC was a bunch of fools, and then they do the exact same thing.

So that I'm excited about, and then there's a Loudon Wainwright concert on the DVD that we videotaped in Los Angeles that I think is amazing and is worth the price of the DVD right there. It has a lot of funny, bitter, sweet songs that have inspired my work for a long time.

IGN DVD: So what ultimately do you think led to the demise of the show?
Apatow: Well, when I'm working I just try to do what I think is truthful and funny and I don't pay too much attention to the trends. We did experiment with different types of episodes - some were broader than others, some had more dramatic moments than others - but I think it's really hard to launch a show three weeks after 9/11. It made us feel foolish talking about our little show after that happened. We were supposed to air I think the 26th of September, and then 9/11 happened, and it definitely knocks out all of your press, because no one's talking about new TV shows, but you do end up airing mid-October, and I don't know if people are in the mood to laugh at some silly new show.

I think a lot of people went back to their old favorites; when you're terrified, you go back to your old friends - you're not in an experimental mode - and it also messed up all of the networks' schedules. It changed when the World Series was, it had a lot of effects on the schedule that year, and at the same time it was real hard to try to be funny after that. It was difficult writing and producing the show in the shadow of that. But then as I say in the liner notes on the DVD, I saw Garry Trudeau on Nightline, and he was talking about how hard it was to write Doonesbury after 9/11, and about how he wasn't sure if there was any purpose to what he does for a living.

He slowly realized that he does make an important contribution to society even if it's only making people happy for a very brief moment during the day and making them think a little bit, and that was inspiring to me and helped us get our groove back. But it affected our ability to launch the show, and they give you very little time to get traction, so it's hard to say why we didn't. I've always felt most good shows take a little while to find their audience, especially comedies.

IGN DVD: What did you learn from the experiences of making Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared that you took to future projects?
Apatow: It taught me to make movies (laughs). It made me to make Anchorman and The 40 Year-Old Virgin - that's what it led me to - or make shows for basic cable or HBO or Showtime. That's how I would do it next time, because I don't want to change what I do or how I see things. It's also a sad fact that these shows are getting shorter and shorter because they're adding more commercials and promos, and a 'half hour' show is about 21 minutes of story, and over the years for five or six minutes of story to disappear, it changes the whole idea of a half-hour comedy. It's hard to take your time with that limitation. It was much easier on Freaks and Geeks to just sit there and have three kids talking on a street corner for like three or four minutes. You can't do that in a half-hour show; it rushes you a little bit.

What's your favorite of the Undeclared episodes, or the one that you're proudest of?
Apatow: I'm proud of the fact that the pilot is so strong. It has a lot of personal ideas in it; I had a long distance relationship during college, and it's got some funny, honest jokes about that, and I think it's a pretty good pilot where there's a kid coming to school and his parents decide to get divorced the second he leaves, as if they've been waiting for that moment his whole childhood, and then a girl who has a long-distance boyfriend has sex with him in spite of her boyfriend back home (laughs). It's an idea I'm proud of, and I think it launched a funny relationship of trying to get that girl to ever do it with you again.

I like the episode with Will Ferrell where he plays a speed freak who will write your term paper for fifty bucks. Will did that when he was finishing up his last season on Saturday Night Live, and it was fun to do an episode with him and have fun with him as an actor, because at that point it was before Old School or Elf or any of those things. We were just very lucky to have fun and play with him before he got big.

I also think that the Truth or Dare episode that Seth Rogen wrote. It's just a great, funny episode where they try to plan everything they're going to say in advance in a Truth or Dare game with the girls they like. It just works really well, and any time something really comes together and all of the pieces fit it's pretty exciting.

IGN DVD: How much has DVD become sort of a second chance for your shows to find an audience after their network runs have ended?
Apatow: I've always loved the DVD format and I look forward to getting anything I do out on DVD. Right now we're working on the 40 Year-Old Virgin DVD, and I'll work for months with an editor just for the DVD of The 40 Year-Old Virgin just cutting great versions of deleted scenes and gag reels and footage. There's nothing worse than when you create something and it just disappears never to be seen again, so I worked really hard to get Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared out there.

Luckily, Shout! Factory is the type of place that is willing to take a chance and put us out because we're not cheap to put out; they have to clear a lot of music and they do their best to get everything. It was a real risk for them to put out Freaks and Geeks; they paid for a million dollars' worth of music for a show that got canceled after thirteen or fourteen episodes aired. There was certainly no great evidence that they would climb out of that hole so the fact that it did well and allowed us to do Undeclared was really gratifying.

IGN DVD: Do you have any plans for an Undeclared soundtrack like the one released for Freaks and Geeks?
Apatow: We never talked about doing an Undeclared soundtrack. I don't know; we'd have to see how well the DVD does. But there was great music on the show, and the score was done by Joey Santiago, the lead guitarist for the Pixies, and it's an amazing score. It's just way too good for the show. It's like a lost Pixies album. We put it on all of the menus so any time you hit a menu it plays a different Joey Santiago cue.

IGN DVD: So your next project is finishing up the DVD for 40 Year-Old Virgin?
Apatow: We're finishing that up and the movie comes out on the 19th, and it came out really well. I'm just excited for people to see it; sometimes I refer to it as the best episode ever of Undeclared, because when I shot it I tried to shoot it with the same approach that we took when we made Undeclared: the visuals are somewhat simple, but we allowed the actors to take their time and improvise and really own their characters.

[Also,] when we were casting Undeclared, I just looked for funny kids and then I wrote the show after I found them, and that's how we did 40 Year-Old Virgin; we looked for funny friends for the virgin to help him in his cause, and one of them was Seth Rogen, who was also a co-producer on the movie, and he's just so funny that it's great to force him to come to the set every day and pitch jokes to everybody.

I'm producing a movie - I'm going to North Carolina next week - and it's called High, Wide and Handsome and it's the follow-up to Anchorman. it was written by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay and directed by Adam McKay and it's about a NASCAR legend.

IGN DVD: Is that the same thing as Talladega Nights?
Apatow: The name has changed. We're about to shoot that in September.

Is it the same kind of immersive, comic world that made up Anchorman, or is it more realistic in its depiction of NASCAR?
Apatow: I'm sure we will think it's going to be more real-world based and then it will come out in like an Anchorman world.

Speaking of Anchorman, how did the idea for a separate DVD-release movie come about?
Apatow: That was the original plot and we tested it and it didn't test well; but we thought it was hilarious but maybe a little too sophisticated compared to other aspects of the movie; I mean, it was making fun of the SLA (Symbionese Liberation Army), and not many people are thinking about the SLA these days (laughs).

So we shot some different scenes where she falls in the bear cage at the zoo. And then we just had so many scenes we couldn't put in the movie, Adam said, 'what if we just cut all of these scenes together and make another movie and use crazy Bill Curtis voiceover to force it to make some kind of sense. It's al alternate universe version of the movie. Although, none of the jokes are the same; even though the chronology is the same, nothing is identical - we made a point of doing that.

Actually, we had some scenes that are among our favorites and some that we like better than in the real movie, that are just so odd and self-indulgent that you couldn't put them in the real movie. But you could put a five-minute scene of how much Dave Koechner loves Will Farrell and wants to marry him and what he wants to do with him sexually, and you could put that in an alternate movie.

[killafilm]

Apatow: That was the original plot and we tested it and it didn't test well...

...But you could put a five-minute scene of how much Dave Koechner loves Will Farrell and wants to marry him and what he wants to do with him sexually, and you could put that in an alternate movie.[/size]

That scene had me crying.  Too funny.  

Back to F&G, I caught maybe two episodes when it was first on the air.  Then a friend had me watch a couple more about a year or so ago.  I really liked them all.  For whatever reason I've just now Netflixed all of the discs.  I've finished the first three discs, and so far my favorite episode has been Carded and Discarded.  I do and don't look forward to finishing the series up.  Man the show is great so far.

Said friend also had me watch some episodes of Undeclared, one of her friends had taped all of them, which I also liked, guess I have something else to look forward to now.

related to ???

[Ravi]

Started watching this yesterday, and I'm enjoying it a lot.  It's a very relatable show that's not goofy fluff (Saved by the Bell) or overly melodramatic (Degrassi, at least the current one, I haven't seen the earlier ones).  Just a low-key show that wonderfully captures what its like to be an insecure teen trying to struggle with lots of things.

I really like how they use the younger Sam and older Lindsay to show two different stages of teenager-hood.  Sam is on the edge between childhood and adulthood, and Lindsay is older but she too is going through her own period of discovery.

[modage]

Feig cares for 'Minors' at Warners
Source: Hollywood Reporter

Paul Feig, the creator of "Freaks and Geeks," has been hired to polish and direct "Unaccompanied Minors" for Warner Bros. Pictures. "Minors" is based on a Jan. 6, 2001, segment of "This American Life." In a nine-minute radio essay, Susan Burton recounted her childhood experience of being snowed in at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport the day after Christmas, stranded with other kids from divorced families who spent the holidays flying from one parent to the other. The kids end up bonding and create a makeshift holiday for one another. The project is being described as "The Breakfast Club" at an airport.   The project is slated to shoot in February.