NEW YORK – After Garry Shandling died two years ago, his longtime friend Judd Apatow went through emails he and the comedian had recently shared. Then he started bawling.
“I realized that every single time I asked him for anything or wanted him to come to some event or to read something for me, he said ‘yes’ every single time,” said Apatow. “It really made me cry.”
In this Thursday, Jan. 11, 2018, photo, Judd Apatow producer and director of the HBO documentary “The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling” pose for a portrait during the 2018 Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour at the Langham Hotel in Pasadena, Calif. The new film draws on 30 years of Shandling’s intimate diaries and notes. (Photo by Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP)Shandling, a groundbreaking comedian not far from the neurotic characters he played, had dedicated his last years to consciously encourage and mentor his friends and fellow comedians but Apatow hadn’t realized the full extent of his generosity.
“He had a lot of conflicts with people but he was also trying very hard to figure it all out so he could do better,” he said. “He was a complete, complex human being with all the flaws and all the greatness as anybody else in the world.”
Apatow decided to memorialize his friend in an appropriate way. Shandling, who masterminded a brand of phony docudrama with “The Larry Sanders Show,” is now the subject of Apatow’s four-hour HBO documentary called “The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling.”