Jason Segel on The Evolution of His Career

(upbeat instrumental music)

What is, in the Venn diagram of Muppets,

David Foster Wallace, what is the overlap?

Well there's not an overlap between the two of them,

but there's an overlap in my life where,

it really, I really had a moment, at the end of the movie,

I danced down Hollywood Boulevard with the Muppets.

And it was my birthday that day.

Also they were doing a Jim Henson exhibit

at a museum in town, and so there were big banners

of Jim Henson's face looking down at us.

It was a cartoonish example of the best moment of your life.

(audience giggles)

And I remember going home that night

and the halo of the achievement, of the joy,

lasted, like I don't know, a few days.

And then I was on to, like, what's next?

Which is a really scary way to feel.

Um, and, I was on How I Met Your Mother for almost a decade,

and that show was now coming to an end.

And also, I had done this cycle of comedies,

and I think the Nancy Meyers quote is applicable.

I think there was a window where it was, you know,

like, think about the old Adam Sandler movies,

that's exactly what those were.

But there was a cycle of comedy

that was coming to an end too,

right all around the same time.

And I really felt like, oh boy.

If I'm lucky, I have 50 years of this left.

And the way I'm feeling, doesn't feel sustainable to me.

Like, I don't know if I want to continue doing this.

And then I got the David Foster Wallace script,

and there's a line in,

there's a line in the script

at the end of the Infinite Jest book tour, where he says,

Now I have to face the reality that I'm 34 years old,

alone in the room with a piece of paper.

And I was 34 years old at the time, and I just felt like,

yup, that is exactly how I feel right now.

As someone who's written their own material, I'm like,

it's just me alone in a room with a piece of paper now.

And it made me honestly need to do the movie.

The movie is very much about this moment.

Like, what happens when everything goes

the way you hope it's gonna go, and you still feel the same.

That's just a really tricky thing.

That's what he explores in Infinite Jest to some extent.

And I wanted to do something

that sort of addressed those feelings.

If Forgetting Sarah Marshall is reflective

of where I was at 24, which it was,

this movie was reflective of where I was when I made it.