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March 2000 Issue, Volume 1

Garry Shandling: Always A Joker

By Gerri Miller

Garry Shandling has a joke for every subject, including his Jewish upbringing. Asked about it during a recent press tour to promote his new movie "What Planet Are You From?," the Chicago-born comedian launches into a short comedy bit.

"Well, you know I was raised in Arizona, and I used to go camping. And I'm Jewish, and people go, `Jews don't camp.' But," he insists, "We do camp. We have it catered," he adds wryly.

It certainly makes sense for a guy who made his name in stand-up comedy and who parlayed that into two successful TV series, "It's Garry Shandling's Show" and "The Larry Sanders Show?" to opt for the funny answer to a serious question about his Jewishness. Later, when pressed further about his Judaism, again, he took the same approach. (See end of story for more.)

One-liners are second nature to Shandling, and that certainly serves him well in "What Planet Are You From?" -- a movie that's based on the comedian's own screenplay and story and that provides him with his first leading-man film role.

In the feature film, Shandling plays an alien from an advanced but all-male planet sent to earth to find and impregnate a woman to bring about world domination. But once he hits earth, the alien -- who takes the name Harold Anderson -- isn't prepared for the complications of human emotions or relationships. It also doesn't help that he's been fitted with a certain private part that hums loudly whenever he's aroused.

"I knew there had to be one discerning feature that makes him an alien so I wanted to come up with a funny one," Shandling explains. He initially thought the whirring member might "be too broad a concept, and all through the drafts, I kept questioning it, but everybody seemed to think it was funny and appropriate for the movie."

Another out-there running gag: Every time Shandling meets Graydon, the imperious leader of his planet, (played by Ben Kingsley), it's in an airplane bathroom, with the toilet humorously providing Graydon's exit path.

Shandling's character learns a lot about human behavior from a series of one-night stands and from a cheating, conniving co-worker (Greg Kinnear) at a Phoenix bank.

But his relationship with Susan Hart, a recovering alcoholic with a promiscuous past (played by "American Beauty" Best Actress nominee Annette Bening) is at the core of the movie -- and the comedy.

He wants sex; she wants to get married. He wants to watch football; she wants to talk about their relationship. All the usual "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" differences come into play, although Shandling insists that author John Gray's books did not inspire the idea, which he insists dates back to 1993-94 and draws from his own experience.

"She confronts him about all his issues, and I'd been in relationships like that so I understood it," admits the unmarried Shandling.

Asked how Warren Beatty felt about him doing bed scenes with his wife, Shandling again goes for the quips. "He saw the footage, and he told me, `She seems happier and more pleased with your sexual practices than mine. We've looked at those and I've diagrammed them.' I think they've been very helpful to him. I think I know what pleases Annette," he says with a sly grin.

In fact, Shandling's relationship with Bening and Beatty is a long-term one and "very familial. I met Annette in Hawaii, 10 or 11 years ago," he recalls. "She had just done `The Grifters,' but it hadn't been released yet.

"I was in Hawaii with some friends, and she was in Hawaii with some friends, and we all got together for dinner. She was excited because she had just gotten a call that she'd received the part in `Bugsy' opposite Warren Beatty, and we all sort of kidded her, 'Look out, look out!' She said, 'No, no I can take care of myself.' And she did."

Several years later, Beatty tapped Shandling to appear with him in "Love Affair" (they've since also made the comedy "Town and Country" together). Shandling then asked Bening to participate in a read-through of an early draft of the "What Planet...? " script. "She was so funny," Shandling recalls.

Four years and many revisions later (and for Bening, nearly two pregnancies--she learned she was expecting soon after `What Planet...?' wrapped), the movie went before director Mike Nichols' camera last summer.

Shandling left his writer and producer hats in the closet while on the set to concentrate on his on-screen performance, and he was happy to hand over responsibility to Nichols ("The Graduate," "The Birdcage").

"He was a disciplinarian when it came to making sure we all played the emotional track of the character and stayed real, and let the humor come out of the circumstances," Shandling notes. "That was really good for me and I learned a lot, just what I wanted to do. It was a good experience."

But Nichols insisted on sticking to Shandling's script. Even though it was his very own script, the comedian found it difficult to stick to it because of his extensive stand-up comedy background. "I like to improvise some," he says.

Meanwhile, Shandling has more film and TV ideas in development now, but he doesn't foresee doing another sitcom any time soon. For him, "Larry Sanders" -- which he opted to do after turning down real talk show hosting spots that went to Conan O'Brien and Tom Snyder -- provides "the perfect scenario" to express himself creatively.

"The part that I don't miss about TV is that grueling element of producing, writing and acting. You really end up having no time for your life. I'm sorting it all out," he adds. "I have to see how it unfolds and I'm curious myself."

So, what's next for Shandling other than his popular TV show? Shandling will be visible on the tube this spring, playing the cinematic alter ego of Fox Mulder on "The X-Files."

"I play the Mulder character in a film version, and he comes to see if he's being depicted accurately," Shandling explains, grinning widely at the prospect of a love scene with star David Duchovny's real-life wife: "I get to make out with Tea Leoni."

While there's no Mrs. Shandling yet, he insists in his inimitable Shandling way, "I still have time in my life. I can still get married and bar mitzvahed," he replies when asked if he wanted the former (marriage) and experienced the latter (bar mitzvah).

Though technically Jewish, Shandling doesn't really observe it. "I practice mostly Eastern philosophy, kind of a Zen Buddhist kind of philosophy," Shandling says.

"But I have many, many Jewish friends. And," he adds with a smile, "my mother is still Jewish."

Gerri Miller is a veteran entertainment journalist, and she currently contributes to a variety of print and Internet outlets, including Metal Hammer, Movie (Australia), In Rock (Japan), KNAC.com, and Metal Edge online. She has profiled actors Samm Levine, Ben Foster, actress Lin Shaye for Jewish Family & Life websites. She also writes artist biographies for music groups and she is collaborating on two book projects.