The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
His back pages
Judd Apatow opens ‘The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling’ on HBO, shedding light on life of often private late comedian
The late Garry Shandling once gave Judd Apatow a copy of “Transforming Problems Into Happiness,” a book written by a Buddhist monk.
“It was about how when bad things happen to you, you should rejoice because it’s an opportunity to work on yourself and to find out where your blocks are,” Apatow explains.
While Shandling was known for his neurotic brand of humor, his brilliance was in how he could take these neuroses to comic places others wouldn’t go. That sense of daring came, in part, from the spirituality in his own life, something that audiences never got to see.
The comedian, who died two years ago at age 66, is the subject of Apatow’s two-part HBO documentary “The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling.”
At 16, Apatow had a Long Island high school radio show where he interviewed Shandling by phone.
“I really only did it because I just wanted to talk to comedians — because I wanted to be a comedian,” he says.
Some eight years later, Apatow, by then a young comic in Los Angeles, met up with Shandling, who asked him to write some jokes for the Grammy Awards show he was hosting. Shandling brought Apatow on as a writer for “The Larry Sanders Show,” and then later had him direct the show.
“Which was crazy, because I never asked him. He just had an instinct that I would be good at it,” says Apatow, who would go on to make “The Forty-Year-Old Virgin,” “Knocked Up” and “Funny People,” among other films.
Though Apatow knew Shandling for 25 years and called him “a great friend,” he realized he didn’t know him all that well.
“There was a lot we never talked about,” says Apatow.
Shandling, however, left 30 years worth of diaries behind, which gave insights into the comedian’s personality and thinking. Reading the journals proved emotional and cathartic for Apatow.
“We all try to do our best to evolve and do better and grow, and to see that with Garry was very powerful for me,” he says.
Apatow offers glimpses of the diaries as he tells Shandling’s story in the documentary.
“I cannot be unhappy like this any longer,” one line reads.
“To hold the mind still is an enormous discipline — one which must be faced with the greatest commitment of your life — even a deeper commitment than to your stand-up,” he writes about meditation.
“When you sit next to Johnny, just let go completely, and trust that when the time comes, you will think of the right joke.”
The last is about Johnny Carson, of course. A 1981 appearance on “The Tonight Show” helped propel Shandling’s career, and Carson became a huge backer. By 1987, he and Jay Leno were named as permanent guest hosts.
Shandling seemed to have it made, but he was a restless soul. By then, he already had developed his first series, Showtime’s “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show.” The concept was that it was a sitcom that knew it was a sitcom, with Shandling directly talking to the audience about plot points and a theme song explaining that it was a theme song. (A number of writers on the show went on to work on “The Simpsons.”)
Eventually, Shandling bowed out of being a permanent “Tonight” guest host and missed the circus of trying to take over Carson’s spot. Instead, the comedian created one of the most brilliant, insightful and funny shows ever on television.
HBO’s “The Larry Sanders Show,” which ran from 1992 to 1998, skewered late-night industry along with the flaws and foibles of those who were part of it. Shandling played the title character, an insecure and mediocre talk show host, who — if nothing else — is aware of his shortcomings, including the way his rearend looked.
Rip Torn was his competent but cynical producer, and Jeffrey Tambor played his petty, dim-witted sidekick, Hank “Hey Now” Kingsley, who’s too dumb to recognize his own stupidity. It was impossible to watch the show and not wonder how much of it was inspired by reality. Celebrities portrayed unflattering versions of themselves, and Larry and Garry’s names were only one letter apart.
During the first season, Larry’s marriage is falling apart, which is not helped by his insistence on watching himself in bed every night on TV instead of paying attention to his frustrated wife.
In the meantime, Shandling’s relationship with his own fiancée, Linda Doucett, was faltering. She played Hank’s ditzy assistant on the show, and the comedian was building a house for them. As a number of his friends interviewed in the documentary suggest, Shandling kept making changes to the plans as if he never wanted it finished. The pair broke up in 1994, and Shandling then fired her from the show. She later sued him for sex discrimination and sexual harassment and the case was later settled out of court. (She wrote about her experience in The Hollywood Reporter last year.)
Yet Doucett is one of those interviewed for Apatow’s documentary. In the years before his death, they reconciled. While “Zen Diaries” is very much a loving tribute to Shandling, those Apatow talked to also acknowledge how the comedian could be thorny and aloof at times.
Still, a real appreciation of him comes through in the words of colleagues like Jim Carrey, Alan Zweibel, Conan O’Brien, Kevin Nealon, James L. Brooks, Jon Favreau, Sacha Baron Cohen, Bob Saget, Jerry Seinfeld, Sarah Silverman, and Leno.
When I talked to Shandling in 2010 for “Iron Man 2,” he seemed genuinely surprised and delighted when I said “The Larry Sanders Show” was the gold standard of sitcoms. In the years since the series had ended, he had become something of a recluse, and you got the feeling he wasn’t sure how people remembered him.
His underestimated film “What Planet Are You From?” (2000) didn’t do that well at the box office, and he never seemed to recover from a lawsuit involving his late manager Brad Grey, whom he accused of cheating him out of profits from the HBO show. The case was later settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.
“He was very trusting, and when he felt he got taken advantage of, it really rocked his world,” notes Apatow.
Later, it was reported during the trial of private detective Anthony Pellicano that Grey had had Shandling’s phones tapped.
“So all of his paranoia about show business and about how dark it could be actually turned out to be way worse than even his paranoid fantasies about it,” says Apatow.
His role in “Ironman 2,” a Favreau film, was his first since voicing a turtle in the 2006 animated movie “Over the Hedge.” His final role would be as a voice in Favreau’s 2016 “The Jungle Book.”
So much of the last 16 years of his life was out of the public’s eye. Yet Shandling stayed in the lives of many of his friends. Apatow and Favreau talk about how they would run their movies by them and how invaluable his insights were.
Occasionally, he would pop up and do a set at a comedy club, or he and Apatow would do a talk session at Largo in Los Angeles.
In his appearance on Jerry Seinfeld’s “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” shortly before his death, Shandling told his old friend Seinfeld that he had suffered for years from undiagnosed hyperparathyroidism.
Then he joked to Seinfeld that the reason it went undiagnosed was that symptoms of the disease mirrored the symptoms of being an older Jewish man. “You get lethargic and puffy. You get heavy. You kind of feel you want a divorce — and I’m not even married.”
Shandling never married, but he was loved and Apatow clearly wants to honor his friend with “Zen Diaries.”
In a lot of the diaries, Apatow says, Shandling was talking to himself in his higher voice, reminding himself how he wanted to feel and act.
“So much of it is ‘Learn to let go. This is all a dream. Don’t take it so seriously. Learn to mentor. Grow old gracefully.’ It’s a lot of stuff that he needed to remind himself of.”
“He was very trusting, and when he felt he got taken advantage of, it really rocked his world.”
— Judd Apatow, on Garry Shandling