Marc
The thing about talking about this kind of stuff in an honest way is that not many people do it. There will be judgers, but there will also be people that are like, “Oh my God. No one ever says that. I feel exactly that way.” Conquering my fear of flying taught me a lot about conquering fears in life because it is really the core of that panic disorder. Because if you’re afraid of flying, you get onto that machine and you’ve got to fly somewhere. You have absolutely no control over any of it. It becomes a metaphor for life. You don’t know how to fly a plane; if something was to go wrong, there was nothing you can do. Literally, either you choose to live in the panic; which 99 percent of the time will turn out to be a waste of fucking time and energy, or you fucking let go and say, “You know, it’s out of my hands.”
JUDD APATOW
I enjoy therapy, but I know that I don’t do as much work by myself as I should to keep present. I’ve always known that if I meditated for fifteen minutes in the morning and fifteen minutes at the end of the day, my life would be completely transformed. I’ve never done it once. I can go ninety seconds, and I will feel better even on ninety seconds, but I won’t do it. The part of me that won’t allow me to do it is the part that wants to watch The Merv Griffin Show.
Marc
The part waiting for the punch, waiting for the knife.
Judd
I’m protecting myself. I’m saying to myself, “If you meditate, you’re going to think about how none of this shit makes sense.” I guess a Buddhist would say, “No, if you meditate long enough you would know that it all makes sense,” but there’s a part of you that’s like, “No, it doesn’t because no one said life was fair.”
You’re going to look into the dark abyss in your quiet meditation and realize there’s nothing fucking there.
BOB ODENKIRK—ACTOR, WRITER, DIRECTOR, COMEDIAN
I am pretty crazy too. I’ve got a lot of rage. Frustration, rage. It’s one of the things I’ve been facing up to, and I’ve always known this as true. So many things about yourself that you someday have to confront are things that you always knew. Then the day comes, and you’re like, “Argh! Damn it! I thought I wouldn’t have to!”
KEN JEONG—COMEDIAN, ACTOR, LICENSED PHYSICIAN
My dad told me I was a perfect person except for my anger, whether it was chemical or Korean. He goes, “Ken, you’re a good guy. You’re perfect except for you have temper.” He would always tell me that even when I was eight years old.
One of my best friends does a great impression of me being mad. I’ll be like, “THIS IS HORRIBLE! THIS IS HORRIBLE! THIS IS FUCKED-UP! I’m sorry, man, I’m so sorry.”
That is me in a nutshell. I’m the self-aware angry guy.
In med school I was really angry because I didn’t know if this was the right path for me. I think anger comes out of feeling trapped in life. I don’t know. This is based on my own experience. When you feel like you don’t have any other options, or this is your only way out. Maybe it’s out of anxiety or frustration, but I remember being very mad in med school a lot because I felt like, “Is this really the path for me?”
DAVE ANTHONY—COMEDIAN, WRITER, ACTOR
Do you know what emotional geography is? Maybe it’s just a fucking term I made up. My feelings until I was about thirty-two—until I got therapy and got my shit worked out—were only anger. Just different levels of anger. There was no happiness. I basically had no other feelings. Some people are happy, and then “I’m okay,” and then “I’m mad.” For me it was like, “I’m really not angry,” “I’m kind of angry,” “I’m very angry.” That was my range.
Marc
Have you ever had that anger where you’re trying to behave and own your anger, so you just shut down completely and tear yourself up on the inside?
Dave
Are you kidding? I call that “my twenties.”
I was living in New York and I took a trip out here with my girlfriend at the time, and we were driving. National parks, nature, I love that shit. We were driving to this place called Red Rock outside of Las Vegas, and you have to get there when the sun’s setting because that’s when the rocks are red. I misjudged the drive and so it was clear we were going to miss it by forty-five minutes. I will not say a word for like an hour and a half. I was fucking mad, for like an hour and a half, and she did nothing wrong and she thinks that I’m now going to kill her or something.
Then we get there and I’m still mad. We miss the sunset, then we go to Las Vegas, and then I’m like, “Well, I’m over being angry,” and she’s like, “Okay, well now I’m in a different place.” You don’t just turn it off for other people. That’s my whole fucking life. That’s what I always did. I’m like a psycho, and then I’m like, “Okay, I’m not angry anymore,” and she’s like, “Well, now I am, lunatic.” That’s everything, that’s my whole deal. When you get to a point where you realize how taxing it is and how exhausting it is, you don’t want to do it anymore.
Marc
And realize how much of it you make up.
Dave
You make up all of it, it’s all bullshit, because it’s all conversations in your head that haven’t happened. I went through a period where I had to realize it was all conversations in my head. It’s that thing where you’re having this argument in your head, and then the person knocks on the door and walks in, and you’re like, “What the fuck about Japan?” and they’re like, “I don’t know what’s happening.” “We’ve been talking about Japan for an hour!” I see people do it and I’m like, “You’re having a conversation in your head.” Once I realized I was doing it, I made a conscious effort to stop it. Once you stop it, you go, “Oh, this is so easy to not do it.” It is a choice.
The other thing was me being a victim. The classic time I remember I was at the gym, I was jogging, and there was some sort of poster about Nepal, and I was like, “Fuck, it would be so great to just go to Nepal and just check out that country and just see the Buddhist monks and just the mountains and everything,” and then I get to, “I’d probably get kidnapped by Muslim terrorists and they would hold me hostage and then they’d eventually just cut off my head.” Then I just stopped and I was like, “What the fuck just happened? Seriously I just took the most awesome fantasy and turned it into me getting my head cut off!” So crazy.
That was the minute when I was like, “Oh my God, I’m a victim.” It goes all the way back to your childhood of bullshit and it goes piling on top of itself and it became me.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN