Tortured Zen Garry Shandling |

The Tortured Zen of Garry Shandling |

Fans of “freaks and geeks,” school dramedy about midwestern
teenagers in the early eighties that ran for one glorious season on NBC,
1999-2000 recall that for me the most indelible
scene. In it, one of
titular geek—bespectacled bill Haverchuck, played by Martin
Starr returns home from school and plops a sandwich with cheese and
a piece of chocolate cake Entemann on a plate. Bill-child
a single mother, shyly and awkwardly neglected, and television is part of
his lonely after-school routine—one that is, if not particularly
invigorating, at least, is reliable only when nothing else is. But then, for
when something unusual happens: Dinah shore, whose talk show bill
blankly watching as he mechanically shovels his food, invites young
comedian Garry Shandling on the scene. We don’t hear jokes scene
scored on who “I’m one”—but we see that bill going through
Shandling routine for the first time. His initial laughter turns into
laughter, which then turns into a full, open lips cracking up. For
the audience, it is clear that the bill recognizes, perhaps for the first time
time that there might be a community of like-minded people
somewhere in your future.

Patron Saint of the lonely and alienated, Shandling, in his Comedy
and his face showed that it was O. K. to hate yourself if you were
scream about it; that, in fact, there was something sincere, even
honorable about the case; and that this honesty can even transform
something like love—for yourself, for others, for the world. Judd
Apatow, the Director and co-author Haverchuck-Shandling episode was
Each Shandling and ward, while influential comedian died
a heart attack in 2016, at the age of sixty-six. His last tribute
humorist—“Zen Diaries Garry Shandling”—consists of two parts,
four-and-a-half-hour documentary on HBO that uses extensive
archival materials tell about the life and work of Shandling, along with
interview with his Comedy-a community of peers (Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld),
and young friends and disciples (Sacha Baron Cohen, Sarah Silverman).
The through line extracts from the manuscript diaries that
Shandling kept—both showed on the screen and read in mellifluous
vote for Michael CERA. In the first moments of the film,
Shandling is seen crouching on the floor, what looks like a TV room,
digging through dozens of old magazines overflowed from wooden
chest. “Now I’m going to Hawaii and I’ll tell you how the weather is,” he
speaks, reads one of them. Rhythm, smile,
at the same time a grimace, and then, with a smile: “so, you know, they
filled with such depth You can’t get anywhere else”. The camera
Laughs, Apatow and Shandling continues: “I’ll let it all go
two tranches of nine-ninety-five that’s where I am. But
what you get:”he thumps a lot of diaries, suddenly more sombre—“my
whole fucking life.” For Shandling, this life was, on the one hand,
next you got to be kidding, and, at the same time, something too
meaning, every moment is bursting with potential for growth
and fulfillment.

Shandling was born in Chicago, but soon his family moved to
Tucson, Arizona, hoping the dry climate will help to improve health
his older brother Barry, who suffers from cystic fibrosis. Barry
death, when Shandling was ten, depicted in “Diary of Zen”, his life
the structuring of the injury. Repressed Shandlings not to discuss Barry
death, and Shandling, his friends say, never talked about his brother
but excerpts from his journals, it became clear that the loss was a wound
would never heal. “No one ever told me, let’s stay with the pain and walk
through it,” he writes in one entry. Work Comedy, Apatow
suggests, provided a life path for Shandling to go through it
pain, if obliquely.

After studying engineering in College, Shandling moved to Los Angeles,
where he became a successful young TV. But he was not satisfied;
he wanted to find “the true way of life,” as he truly said in the diary
entry. In 1977, a car accident in which he was seriously wounded marked
the next turning point in the spiritual-quest narrative, “Diary of Zen”
puts. There’s something strange, almost perverse, about trying
to start over and be enlightened to the Comedy of the scenes depicted in
the documentary as Cutthroat and depressing. But, for Shandling,
Comedy was, from the beginning, and a way to Express their niggling anxiety
open. He toured and performed constantly, developing person
narcissistic neurotic and captivates the audience with a keen
identity.

Diary entries for this period comes fast and hard, but for a man like
instinctively funny as Shandling, they are extremely serious, their
Message with a mixture of California-ish, spirituality hue farewell
(“Just Harry”; “relax and enjoy”; “nothing never felt so good”; “I
I Gary Shandling and I are free. Free. Finally free”) and
business samurai-style messages (“to commit murder”; “commit
the play”; “to become one with the tonight show”). Shandling took
voluminous notes, but his expression was open, his unhurried rhythms and
of course. He was thick-lipped, squinting his eyes and fleshy face
expressing equal parts fear and fun, his hair bristly helmet
its distinctive honk of a voice steadily punch line after punch
line, comes with a accurate, the object is idle. Most of his material
to be a loser with women (“my girlfriend moved to another
a guy, so I dumped her, because that is where I draw the line”), or
to be a loser with women, but still Horny (“we’re going back to your place; I
on the couch and I really get into it . . . and then she comes in
room”), or trying to pretend not excited, but still
Horny (“you have ‘Zen and the art of archery’? O. K., so just give me
that Hustler”).

Shandling, who reminded his ardent fans that it was totally cool
a bit ugly and nervous and funny and smart, had a propensity
jokes about hot stewardesses and nagging nightmare of a Jewish mother
that left some of us with complicated feelings. Comedy, Shandling on
heyday, was a boy in the club, and, save for the inclusion Silverman, and
the inimitable Comedy writer Merrill Marco, the documentary reflects the
this. (In her new
a memoir about coming in the industry, Nell Scovell tells how Shandling,
after reading the script told her eighties, her appraisingly
she writes “like a guy”.)

As Shandling’s career turned to television—this time as the Creator
own show—his understanding of female characters and complexity
in General, became more and more slim. His most Stellar
contributions to Comedy and television has been
fourth-wall breaking “this show is Garry Shandling,” which ran from 1986
in 1990, in which he played a narcissistic, insecure comedian
who knows what he-an actor of the sitcom, filling kit
together with other actors, in front of a live audience in the Studio; and, later,
a truly brilliant talk-show satire “Larry Sanders”, which ran
from 1992 to 1998, in which Shandling played the narcissist
uncertain character, the late night host that interacts with
as narcissistic and insecure characters who surround him
behind the scenes. Sanders was great because of its weak
naturalism: it portrayed the daily humiliation, frustration,
and desires of people who interact within the framework of ego-inflating and
-the conditions for the destruction of the entertainment industry. This is how
television writer al Jean said in an interview, “at the dawn of that
they call the Golden age of television.”

The last hour “Diaries Zen” slack. This may be because
humiliation and frustration that haunted Shandling most of his life
relaxed their grip in recent decades: the magic that is needed to turn
worldly experience in the art disappeared. Creative outlet Shandling on
he was skinny, but he was happier. He didn’t Zen, but embodying
it—mentoring Junior comics, meditating and getting deeper
in Buddhism. Talking about “Sanders” Shandling said, “some people
it is a mistake to think that the dark show about people trying to get what they
want. No, it’s a show about people trying to love this shit
in the way.” At the end of life Shandling, the documentary suggests,
love won.

Sourse: newyorker.com

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