Judd: What kind of background did you have that you could just write this stuff?
Garry: I was an electrical engineering major, if you can believe that. And then I switched to marketing, and then I switched to creative writing. I finally got a degree in business and I went to graduate school for one year. And just took writing classes. I’d always been a pretty good writer. It’s just one of those things. I can sit down and fill a page pretty easily. And so I moved to L.A. and I didn’t know exactly what direction I was going to take, and I met a guy who said, “Well, try writing a script and see what happens.” I wrote a script for All in the Family that they didn’t buy. But someone else saw it and said, “Wow, you have a lot of potential,” and they helped me along. Then I wrote a script for Sanford and Son and they loved it, and started giving me work. It all went pretty fast. And I got pretty hot as a writer. People start to say, What would you like to write? What kind of show would you like to create?
Judd: Yeah.
Garry: But then I was sitting at the typewriter one day and I realized that this was not what I wanted to do the rest of my life. And so when I was twenty-eight, I sort of had a midlife crisis—you know, twenty-eight is midlife for a Jewish guy. I said, If I don’t stop now and start doing stand-up…So I went to some real dive clubs, but it’s real hard getting onstage when no one knew who I was.
Judd: Were there audition nights?
Garry: Yeah, I went to audition nights. I was working in discos and health food restaurants. It was bizarre.
Judd: Jerry Seinfeld, when I interviewed him, said that he did a disco and no one even knew he was performing.
Garry: I’m sure we’ve all had the same experiences. I worked a health food restaurant for about four months where people would just come in—there would be six people, eating rice and vegetables, and I would do forty minutes.
Judd: Only in Hollywood, I guess.
Garry: When you’re first starting, it’s just important to be on the stage. It doesn’t matter if people respond, because you just have to get over your stage fright.
Judd: Was The Tonight Show the big break, as far as stand-up goes?
Garry: Yeah. They like me and they’re supportive of me and they know that I work hard at what I do. I try to get better all the time. And I still don’t think I’m near my potential.
Judd: You feel you have a ways to go?
Garry: Yeah, I don’t think the things I’m doing on the stage now are what I’ll be doing five years from now.
Judd: What will you be doing?
Garry: I hope it’ll be even more honest than it is now, more personal. Because it takes time for people to get to know you. I mean, Richard Pryor is the perfect example. If you look at what he was doing ten or fifteen years ago, it’s different than what he does now, because we know him. He can just get up and start talking about his life—and that’s the funniest stuff.
Judd: What are your long-range goals?
Garry: Well, first of all, my long-range goal is to be funnier. It really is. And to get better, and to keep digging inside myself. Number two, I guess, is to find the right vehicle, either on television or film, that’ll allow me to be funny in the way that I’m funny, you know.
Judd: Well, thank you very much.
Garry: I’m sorry I wasn’t funny this morning.
Judd: This show is pretty serious.
Garry: Okay.
Judd: This is the comedy interview program that talks serious about comedy.
GARRY SHANDLING (2014)
Most of the important breaks and rewarding experiences in my career can be directly traced to Garry Shandling. Let me run through it quickly here for you: One of the first jobs I got as a writer was writing jokes for the Grammys for Garry Shandling in 1990. After that, he agreed to do a cameo on the pilot of The Ben Stiller Show, and I’ve always believed that those celebrity cameos, in that first episode, were one of the main reasons the show eventually got picked up. Then, when the show was canceled, Garry hired me to be a writer at The Larry Sanders Show. Then, one day at The Larry Sanders Show, Garry walked into the writers’ room and, without even asking me, said, “Judd, you’re going to direct the next episode.” And I did.
There is no one who has taught me more or been kinder to me in this comedy world than Garry Shandling. As a kid, my only dream was to be a comedian. I never thought about being a writer. Garry was the first person who ever sat me down and said, “Look, this is what a story is about. This is how you write in this format.” He talked a lot about how the key was to try to get to the emotional core or the truth of each character, which I had never heard before. He taught me that comedy is about truth and revealing yourself, and these are all lessons I apply every day in my work. In fact, when we started Freaks and Geeks, I always thought of it like this: Freaks and Geeks is The Larry Sanders Show if The Larry Sanders Show was about a bunch of kids in high school.
Judd Apatow: Who made you the man you are today?
Garry Shandling: I can’t discuss that without having a shitload of coffee first.
Judd: To get it all out? Oh, he’s spilling it. He spilled it already.
Garry: See, this is why I don’t eat in therapy. Do you ever eat?
Judd: The second you said, “That’s why I don’t eat in therapy,” I thought, Wait. Can you? Because I would definitely do that.
Garry: I know I’ve had sessions where I’ve said, “You should think about having at least a salad bar,” to the therapist. Seriously, though, I don’t know who made me the man I am except to say what I feel in my heart relative to Roy London.
Judd: Yeah.
Garry: Roy influenced me gigantically when I was about twenty-seven years old and I stumbled into his acting class. Instead of talking about acting, we ended up talking about the world and people. Those conversations are what gave me the confidence to move on. Up until then, I was a confused young man who was writing for Sanford and Son.
Judd: Who were you best at writing for? Which character?
Garry: That’s a good question. Lamont. (Laughs) And Aunt Esther. The first script I ever wrote was Ah Chew opens up a Chinese restaurant with Fred. And then the health department closes it down.
Judd: The Asian character’s name was Ah Chew?
Garry: Well, this was when political correctness was required nowhere in the script.
Judd: Do you think the world was better when you could name a character Ah Chew?
Garry: I cannot judge that right now. Even just alone with you, I cannot judge that. But I will say, the two producers on that show, Saul Turteltaub and Bernie Orenstein, taught me a lot. When I used to turn in my script, they’d go, “You don’t have an ending,” and I realized, “Oh, the writer actually is supposed to do the whole script.” I was assigned to write one in which Fred and Lamont went camping for the whole half hour, and then had to—
Judd: There’s nothing not racist in that premise.