Arts Entertainment

NAOMI PFEFFERMAN

Special to the Jewish News

G

arry Shandling remembers
the day he turned on the
television set and discov-
ered Woody Allen. It was a
Saturday morning in 1966, and there
was Woody on a children's TV show,
explaining how baseball bats were
made.
"He said that, originally,
bats were made of halva,
and that after a batter
would strike out, he would
have to eat the bat," the
comic actor-writer-produc-
er recalls.
"And I was just struck,
like someone who sees a
beautiful woman and says,
`One day, I'm going to
marry that girl.' I just
said, 'Who isl_this person?
He's the funniest person I
have ever seen.' And I
pursued his work. I
became a fanatical fan."
The smitten Shandling
bought all of Allen's come-
dy albums and listened to
them over and over again.
When one of Allen's early
films, Take the Money and
Run, opened in 1969,
young Garry was first in
line at the theater. "I've
probably seen all his early
movies five or six times,"
Shandling, now 50, con-
fides. "There's a wit to the
way that he writes and an
unexpected self-depreca-
tion. I completely related
to the kind of Jewish neb-
bish character he portrayed,
because that is how I per-
ceived myself."
It's an image that has
helped to make Shandling
one of the funniest men in
Hollywood. Like Allen, he
developed the comic per-
sona, on and off camera, of an angst-
ridden neurotic, who is concerned
about his appearance, his romantic
liaisons and his relationship with his
parents. On two wickedly funny, now
classic, deconstructionist TV sitcoms,
he depicted characters that were self-
obsessed and terminally insecure.
On It's Garry Shandling's Show,
which lampooned the artifice of sit-

toms, he played a comedian who had
the same problems with his hair and
his love life as Shandling. On The
Larry Sanders Show, a sardonic parody
of late-night TV talk shows, he por-
trayed an edgy, narcissistic late-night
host. Celebrities like Jim Carrey and
Jerry Seinfeld clamored to play them-
selves on Sanders, which ran for six
seasons on HBO and was labeled the
best comedy on television. The show

some people in Hollywood don't want
to be thought of as 'too Jewish,"'
Shandling says. So was Sanders
Jewish? The actor smiles coyly. "The
answer is, I'm not sure."

Felt Like An Alien

Shandling's latest project is a bawdy
comedy, his screenwriting debut,
called What Planet Are You From?,
which opens today in Detroit.

and, perhaps, "too Jewish." Though
his Reform synagogue was right down
the street from his home, he was one
of the only Jews at school. "I was
made fun of because I was Jewish," he
recalls. "I remember wanting to go to
school on the Jewish holidays because
if I was absent the children would
know I was Jewish and they would
tease me. I did actually feel like an
outsider at those times. And the
defense mechanism that
came into play for me was
my sense of humor. I was
always able to make the
other children laugh.
Perhaps that is why I
became a comedian."
A happier memory is
walking to services with his
older brother, Barry, as the
family cat tagged along. The
rabbi would look up wearily
as the brothers and the cat
walked into services. "Garry
and Barry," he would say,
"would you please take your
cat home?'"
Barry died of cystic
fibrosis just short of his
13th birthday, when Garry
was 10. "He did not live to
become bar mitzvah, and
that was very sad for my
family," says Shandling,
who was suddenly the only
child of grieving parents.
"It was a treacherous time,
a time when my sense of
humor completely left me.
I remember being in
school and crying."
Eventually, Shandling's
humor returned, and his
father and mother, a print-
er and a pet shop owner,
respectively, were the bud-
ding comic's first audience.
"Actually, I only remem-
ber being heckled by my
mother," he quips during
the interview. "It was, 'Get
off the stage, dinner's
ready.'"

Garry Shandling discusses being "too Jewish,"
his hero and his new film.

Naomi Pfefferman is the

entertainment editor at the Jewish
Journal of Greater Los Angeles

3/10
2000

90

In the Mike
In "What Planet Are You
skewered the banality of
Nichols-directed
From?" Garry Shandling
late-night chatter and the
film, which also stars
stars as an alien sent to
hypocrisy of Hollywood,
impregnate
an
Earth
Annette
Bening,
including the lengths that
woman,
played
by
John
Goodman
and
some performers will go to
Annette
Bening.
Greg
Kinnear,
play in Peoria.
Shandling plays a
In one episode, a nosy
randy alien who
reporter asks Larry if he is
comes to earth to impregnate a
Jewish, and Artie (Rip Torn), the
woman. It's part of a plot to take over
producer and Larry's caretaker, stern-
the planet from within.
ly replies, "We do not discuss Larry's
Growing up in Tucson, Ariz.,
religion around here."
Shandling
himself felt like an alien
"That is a poke at the fact that

•

Comic Belief

Shandling studied engineering and
marketing at the University of
Arizona, but had little confidence in
his comedic talent until he dared to
hand some of his jokes to comic
George Carlin after a performance in
Phoenix. Carlin told Shandling that
he was funny, which helped the young
man work up the nerve to pack his
bags and move to Hollywood in 1973.

