USA TODAY International Edition
Apatow recalls friend in ‘ Shandling’s Book’
For Judd Apatow, Garry Shandling was a mentor and a matchstick.
“He gave me most of the big breaks of my career,” the filmmaker, who directed comedies including “Trainwreck,” “Knocked Up” and “The 40- Year- Old Virgin,” says of his former colleague and friend who died in 2016. Shandling selected Apatow to write jokes for him when he hosted the Grammys multiple times in the early ’ 90s. They also worked together on “The Larry Sanders Show,” a satirical look at latenight TV that ran on HBO from 1992 to 1998.
Their latest collaboration comes more than three years after Shandling died at 66 from a blood clot. “It’s Garry Shandling’s Book,” available Tuesday, which Apatow edited and wrote an introduction for, is part scrapbook, part biography. It contains pictures, scripts, journal entries and letters telling the story of Shandling’s career. In the intro, Apatow describes it as “the ultimate hoarding of Garry.”
Though a lack of visible mementos made Apatow believe his friend “wasn’t nostalgic for the past,” he stood corrected after sorting through Shandling’s personal items after his death.
“I would open closets, and I found that he saved everything,” he says. “There were these very personal journals, thousands of pages of jokes and ideas, tons of incredible photographs, and as a fan of comedy, I thought it would be terrible if no one ever got to see this again.”
Apatow was surprised again when he dove into his friend’s written thoughts, finding “he was an even better person” than he’d imagined.
“When you read someone’s journals, you always think there’s going to be a lot of darkness and bitterness and complaining,” Apatow says. “His journals were mainly filled with reminders to himself to be a good person.”
The book features numerous personal items, including a letter Shandling wrote to his brother Barry, who died from cystic fibrosis in 1960, and text messages from the comic to his driver looking for a ride to the doctor the day of and before his death.
Including the latter gave Apatow pause.
“His driver wasn’t available, and instead of going to the hospital by cab or getting a ride from someone else, he just delayed to the next day, and then the appointment was delayed, and then he died,” Apatow says. “And in his texts, you see this happen.
“And I thought, is it too morbid to put that in the book? But then I thought, you know what? I think it’s important for people to know that they shouldn’t hesitate to see a doctor when they’re feeling pain,” he continues. “It’s very hard to read those, because you realize he would be around if he just jumped in the car the day before. But everybody needs to jump in the car and tune in to their bodies and make sure they’re getting help when they need help. So I included it.”
Apatow misses his “brilliantly hilarious friend who always made me laugh hard and was supportive in a completely selfless way.”
“Anytime I wrote a movie or made a movie, he would read the script and go to all the cuts of the film and give me notes,” Apatow says, “and he was generally there for me and a lot of people in ways that only now do we realize were so giving. It’s uncommon for someone to really take an interest in helping other people.”
Apatow says Shandling is still with him in a way.
“I think a lot of us hear his voice and his advice in our head. So if I’m writing or thinking about some personal situation I have, I know the advice that Garry would give me,” he says. “That’s how deeply seated he is in a lot of our minds.”