Original subtitles

- [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.