What's up with kids today? Don't ask Freaks and Geeks creator Paul Feig and executive producer Judd Apatow. Although Feig is an honored graduate of the prestigious USC Film School, and Apatow is a prolific Emmy-winning writer-producer, when it comes to delineating the details of life in a modern-day high school, the two are kind of, well, clueless.
"The more we talked about it," says Apatow of developing Freaks and Geeks, "the more we realized that we don't know anything about what high school's like in 1999. If we tried to write it, it would certainly come across as false." To make an honest show, the producers chose to draw from their own youthful experiences. So welcome to suburban Michigan's McKinley High School, circa 1980, a world full of freaks and geeks that series creator Feig knows all too well.
"The world is definitely the world I'm from," notes Feig, a 1980 alumnus of Chippewa Valley High School in the suburbs east of Detroit. "The burnouts are into cars and rock-and-roll, and the geeks are into sci-fi and cartoons. Those are all my friends and people I knew." Adds Apatow, who went to high school on New York's Long Island. "I saw a lot of myself in the world he created. It was very easy for me to get inspired and say, 'Oh, I could tell you a thousand stories'."
The stories they tell are the ones shared by anybody who has lived through - or is living through - the teenage years, regardless of time or place. "The experience of people who went to school even in the '60s is very similar to this show," says Apatow. "High school is universal. I don't think it's much different today. It just might be a little worse."
Yet the '80s setting does affect the structure of Freaks and Geeks. Was there ever a time before e-mail and cell phones? Yes, there was. 1980. 'Back then there was no call waiting, there weren't answering machines, there was no Star 69," says Apatow. "So if you had a problem with someone, you were more likely to actually speak with them about it directly."
"I also wanted it to be pre-AIDS," Feig says, "because a lot of the show is about the politics of being afraid of the opposite sex, and dating and all that entails. If you were a kid who was afraid of sex in 1980, you were weird. If you're afraid of sex today, you're smart."
As for the day's national politics, the era of Reaganomics forms a backdrop for the show, as it did in Feig's youth. "In Detroit when I grew up, all the auto workers were being laid off like crazy," he recalls. "At the same time in our community there were people whose dads were lawyers or they were auto executives, so there were really the haves and the have-nots in the school. A lot of the outsider freaks and geeks were from the lower income families."
Even during the '80s, Feig admits he wasn't really tuned in to the '80s. "When I was in high school the hostages were going on and all that," recalls Feig. "You'd kind of see it on the news, but you were so much into your own world of being an adolescent." And adolescence, notes Feig, "is such an egocentric time of your life."
For Apatow and Feig, then, 1980 was less about Ronald Reagan and Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, and more about Wacky Packs, Pop Rocks, and a healthy fear of girls and gym class. Their points of reference are more personal, filtered into the show's look, characters and stories.
"Much of the detail work is very specific to our experience," says Apatow, who began finding his comic voice as the teen host of a high school radio show called "Club Comedy." His obsession with the rebellious comedians of the late '70s is reflected in the show. "Sam has this big Steve Martin poster in his room, and that love of people like that, who are very anti-establishment, whether it be Steve Martin or Groucho Marx, showed you another way of looking at the world. Because in high school you thought, 'This entire system sucks.'"
Lindsay Weir's conspicuous Army jacket showcased in the pilot episode is a personal reference for Feig, whose father ran an Army surplus store. He knew the look he wanted Lindsay to have, specifically instructing the costumers to get her a large "o.d. green" Army field jacket. "I wore that all the time when I got to college," recalls Feig.
Looking to his past growing up as an only child, it's the stories involving Lindsay's little brother Sam that best represent Feig's awkward teen years. "Lindsay is a total invention of mine," according to Feig. Her character represents what Feig confesses is "a big heaping dose of me today." On the other hand, Sam Weir "is definitely based on me when I was that age because I was a little less mature than all the other kids around me. My friends and I were that same way."
In Sam's stories, we get a glimpse of Feig's life in the late '70s and early '80s. Feig points to the Halloween episode involving Sam Weir's last outing as a trick-or-treater. "It's basically the nightmare of going out when really you shouldn't have gone out, which happened to me exactly. I remember gathering my next-door neighbors and saying, 'We gotta go out!' I dressed up like C3PO and went out, and it was a disaster. People were like, 'Aren't you guys too old?' And things starting ripping. It was just horrible. You end the night going, 'O.K. Now I'm not a kid anymore."'
Sam's budding love life, or lack thereof, is also inspired by Feig's experiences. "I hardly dated at all in high school, but the few that I had were fairly disastrous." He recounts taking a girl to a school dance. "She got drunk on beer and spent the evening in the bathroom throwing up. Then she wanted me to kiss her at the end of the night. And I said, 'You just threw up!"' For Sam Weir, the relationship with cheerleader Cindy Sanders is more indirectly nightmarish, but familiar to Feig. "He becomes her platonic best friend. He's trying to nail her down as his girlfriend, and he overcompensates by being the nice guy so much that she starts talking about guys she likes." Feig was always the nice guy.
Rummaging through the past is part of Apatow and Feig's method. "I was the funny kid who hung out with some of the football players," recalls Apatow. "So I'd like to write a storyline about Neal becoming friends with the jocks because he's funny, and how the geeks respond to that." He digs further back, too. "I had another group of friends in seventh grade and we all rode dirt bikes together. They slowly turned into the school potheads, and then I couldn't be friends with them anymore because I was terrified of drugs."
For young Feig and Apatow, sex, drugs and rock-and-roll were way more of a menace than the threat of the Soviet Union. Says Apatow, "There were some kids who not only didn't drink, they were terrified of drinking. There were kids who not only didn't have sex, they didn't want to have sex."
"Those are the stories you never hear," notes Apatow, who, with Feig, intends to tell them on Freaks and Geeks. After all, the show is about the truth of being a teen, whether it's the '80s, '70s, '60s or whenever. For the producers, looking back to their own youths is the only way they could be true to that common experience. "We all went through it, no matter how cool we think we are, or were," says Feig. "That's what I hope will be the universal appeal of the show. The number one thing I want to accomplish with this show is honesty. It just has to be an honest show."
Of course, we know what became of '80s guys Feig and Apatow, but what about their fictional counterparts on Freaks and Geeks? "I have very definite plans for what will happen with each kid in the future," says Feig. "Some kids are going to be successful. Somebody could end up in jail, somebody's going to end up laid off. Somebody's going to be on welfare." This just reflects reality, according to Feig.
Apatow has a slightly different take on the question of where are they now. "I think the geeks are doing very well," he says. Focusing on Sam Weir's geekiest buddy, Bill Haverchuck, Apatow concludes, "I think that Bill somehow got married and has several kids and lives in Orange, New Jersey ... He works as an analyst on Wall Street."
Geez, how '90s.
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