Judd Apatow believes that Americans need to “think long-term, get involved, and make sacrifices” to survive the turbulent state of the world.
The director, at the Sundance Film Festival for the documentary “Paralyzed by Hope: The Maria Bamford Story,” elaborated on the sentiment he shared while presenting at the Golden Globes earlier this month, where he told viewers that the country is “in a dictatorship right now.”
“I’m not sure I can solve all the problems of the world right now,” he cracked at the Variety Studio presented by Audible. “But everybody has to get involved and wake up and look for ways to be positive and stand up for what this country is truly about. What’s happening right now is completely heinous and goes against all the values of the country.”
Apatow is alluding to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who fatally shot an American citizen, Renee Good, in Minneapolis on Jan. 7, as well as the ICE raids that have been proliferating throughout the country.
“There is a weird, hypo-normalization right now where it’s like, ‘Hey, we’re going skiing today so I guess ICE isn’t terrorizing everybody,’” Apatow said. “People need to do something — what Americans don’t do very often — which is think long-term, get involved and make sacrifices for the country.”
Apatow was joined at the Variety Studio by co-director Neil Berkeley and comedian Maria Bamford, who gets candid about her mental health struggles and career challenges in “Paralyzed by Hope,” which premiered at Park City’s Ray Theater on Thursday night.
Apatow, who recently directed “Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man” and documentaries on other comedians including George Carlin and Garry Shandling, believes the ideal subject is “someone who is willing to be completely honest.” He said, “Your goal is to get to the core of their life. You need someone who is game to share that. Sharing that is a real gift.”
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Bamford, who has dramatized her life on the Netflix comedy “Lady Dynamite” and has been candid about her experiences with depression, OCD and suicidal ideation, is familiar with mining her life experiences for material and felt that no topic was off limits for the documentary.
“Everything is fair game. We’re in the last inning of life,” she said. “There is no reason to keep things under wraps.”
From Variety US