Judd Apatow On "The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling"

March 21, 2018

CONAN Highlight: Judd talks about Garry Shandling's life and impact on comedy and shares an excerpt from Garry’s diary.

TranscriptYou made this documentary, clearly very near and dear to your heart, "The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling." and you were very close to Garry and Garry was a big mentor to you and Garry was a mentor to a lot of us and a lot of us who came up in comedy in this generation idolizing Garry Shandling and discovered so much about minimum in this documentary. An interesting experience because it's a beautiful documentary. It's fantastic and at the same time, it makes me miss him all over again. JUDD: Yeah. CONAN: In this way that -- so, screw you. [laughter] JUDD: It hurts to have feelings. CONAN: It hurts to have feelings. Yes. So I'm not doing that again. No more feelings. But I learned so much. There was something that I -- I knew this. But I think it's going to really shock people. Because Garry was a very spiritual guy. Garry had a near death experience very early in his career as a standup. And it changed the whole trajectory of the way he looked at life. JUDD: Yeah. He -- he was writing episodes of shows like three's company and Sanford and son and welcome back Cotter. And he was doing standup at night at the comedy store. But hadn't gotten good yet. And mittsy shore kept telling him, you're just a writer. You're not a performer. And she was being tough on him. And one day, he -- he's driving his car in the rain. And a car hits him from behind. And so he gets out. And he's looking at the damage. And he's in between the cars and another car hits that car from behind. And crushes Garry in between the cars. And he goes to the hospital. And he was very proud of the joke he said as they brought him into surgery. Which was, just a little off the back. CONAN: Right. JUDD: And he says that during the surgery and floated above and heard everything they said and saw the light and do you want to continue living yarke Shandling -- Garry Shandling's life and said yes and do the standup comedian and everything he did. CONAN: What he does next is really remarkable. George Carlin of course was idolized by -- you know, still today, by so many people in comedy. But then he was the standup comic. It would be him, maybe Richard Pryor. But peesm's love -- people's love George Carlin and did something he took -- that took a lot of guts and I have to see George Carlin and see if I can give him some jokes. And this is a guy who had really no business doing that. JUDD: He was 20 years old. Just -- he was 20, 21 and finishing up college and drives to see a George Carlin show and just a little club because he had just become the hippie George Carlin. And he wrote him a bunch of jokes and George Carlin said come back tomorrow and I'll tell you what I think of them. He comes back. They were laid out and written all over it. And he said there's a great joke on every page. So if you want to be in this industry, I think that you are talented enough to do it. And then Garry just moved to L.A. and took that as a sign that he could make it. And I think that's why he mentored other people like me. Because George Carlin was so kind to him. CONAN: Amazing when you see this documentary you see so many people today that are huge stars, incredibly successful. That Garry personally made their career possible. Helped it along. Certainly. Which is amazing. JUDD: And you have that weird experience where -- when you were being considered for the late night spot, so was Garry. CONAN: Yeah. JUDD: And you guys -- your lives really intertwined. CONAN: Intertwined and AFTER I got the late night spot, he called -- he got on the phone with me and talked to me. And I -- couldn't believe it. And couldn't have been a nicer guy. Such a gentleman about the whole thing. JUDD: And so funny. I read through his journals. 30 years of journals and the estate allowed me to read them because Garry was considering putting out a book and do something with his journals. But really funny things. Sometimes it would be very emotional and other times he would just write jokes. But one thing that made me laugh he did this movie called what planet are you from? And he wrote it -- and it came out terribly and he was very upset about it. CONAN: It was a misfire. JUDD: And so he wrote fake quotes for the poster. And I don't know if he ever showed this or did it for his own amusement. Wrote, I tried my darnedest to pull this off. Garry Shandling. We all make mistakes. That's the last time I trust my instincts. Garry Shandling. I hate myself. Garry Shandling. And he wrote, I thought Mike Nichols, Garry Shandling, Greg kinnear, Annette Benning, what can go wrong? Wait till you see. [Applause] CONAN: You worked on on the Larry Sanders show. And Larry Sanders show, I think, really did create a new kind of comedy. This single -- single camera comedy that there's a whole generation that only understands comedy that way. The seasonal way they can see comedy. So Garry was certainly at the forefront of that. You worked on that show. And when you watch this documentary it's clear how hard -- how much of himself he put into that show. JUDD: Yeah. CONAN: And how tortured he was about it. JUDD: Sure. CONAN: You were there to witness it. JUDD: It was pretty intense because -- when you make a movie they shoot about four pages a day. Sometimes five on a big day. They would rehearse three days a week and shoot 17 pages a day. And so Garry was the head writer and he had to act 17 pages day. So if you walked up to him and said can you read next week's script? What? I can't do that. And so he was really, really exhausted the whole time. And so it was an impossible situation. But he just powered through. And made one. Great TV shows of all time. CONAN: You can see how much it took out of him. JUDD: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. CONAN: When you watch the documentary. We have a clip here, and I believe this is where -- I love that you picked this clip. But it's just Garry being interviewed. JUDD: Yes. CONAN: By -- I don't know who the news man is. JUDD: His name is Brian lan Han -- Linehan from Canada. And promoting this Warren Beatty -- CONAN: A sense of how particular and unique his comedy vibe was. It was so distinct. Let's take a look. >> You say that acting is hard for me. Because I'm still learning to feel. Instead of verbalize. >> That's right. >> Where are you now? >> Well, you know, I think I'm getting better at it. I find myself having to cover less with my comedy than I used to. And I'm able to sort of -- you know, and that's why it's a challenge for me. That's why I wanted to act because I think I can grow as a person through it. No, you're not. You make me uncomfortable. I don't know why. >> Why do you think? >> I don't know. I have a couple of ideas. [laughter] [cheers and applause] CONAN: "The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling" is really special. And I would say it's -- I also think it's an important doubtry for people to -- documentary for people to see. It's about so much. Not just about Garry but how comedy is made and how people try to make something funny. And what it takes out of them. And then there's a lot of it that's just about people trying to figure out what LIFE's all about. So I took out so much from this documentary that I think people will love. The two-part HBO documentary "The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling" debuts March 26-27 on HBO. Check it out. Judd Apatow. Great work. Thank you.

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