From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to the treatment, which you can also hear at KCRW.com.

My guest, writer-director, Jed Appetow, and just three movies as a writer-director, has made quite an impact for himself.

His newest, of course, is funny people, but in the interim, he's produced movies.

Thanks so much for coming back.

My pleasure.

Great to be here.

It's interesting because the movies you made as a writer-director are almost like two different movies.

There's the kind of the setup,

and the punchline is really kind of serious,

and that's the last third of movie,

the pictures become almost more melodramatic than comedic.

And I wonder where that comes from for you.

I'm always drawn to movies that make me laugh,

but it leads to some sort of emotional punch, whether it's Harold and Maude or being there. I mean, they did that and, you know, all the James Brooks

movies and the Cameron Crow movies, those are, you know are some of my favorite films.

And when people pull it off, I love, you know, I love that.

I love and I love, I love for them, and they make me laugh hysterically.

But I like that it ends on something thoughtful and usually something hopeful.

I just saw Harold and Maud recently.

They did a tribute to Hal Ashby. They

showed the movie. And beforehand, Yusuf came out and played the songs from the movie, which

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