HBO To Air Judd Apatow's Garry Shandling Documentary in March
by Dan Snierson
Jan. 12, 2018


This spring, HBO will bring Garry Shandling back to the network: Judd Apatow’s two-part documentary about the late comedian who brought you two highly inventive and influential TV comedies: Showtime’s "It’s Garry Shandling’s Show" and HBO’s "The Larry Sanders Show".

The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling will premiere on March 26 and conclude on March 27, the network announced on Thursday at the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour in Pasadena.





The four-hour-plus documentary about the comedian who passed away in 2016 — someone that Apatow considered a close friend, boss, colleague, and “one of the most important comedy minds of all time” — boasts interviews with 40-plus comedians, including James L. Brooks, Jim Carrey, Sacha Baron Cohen, David Coulier, Jon Favreau, Jay Leno, Kevin Nealon, Conan O’Brien, Bob Saget, Jerry Seinfeld, and Sarah Silverman.

In addition, it features personal diaries, letters, and home videos, and covers his rise to success on the stand-up circuit to becoming a TV star to lawsuits over "The Larry Sanders Show".





Asked at TCA why the documentary stretches more than four-and-a-quarter hours, Apatow quipped, “O.J. got seven hours and he murdered people. So don’t you deserve more time for not murdering people?”

http://ew.com/tv/2018/01/11/hbo-judd-apatow-garry-shandling-documentary/

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Garry Shandling's Twitter account is active again following The Zen Diaries documentary (http://ew.com/tv/2018/03/30/garry-shandling-friends-twitter-journals)
"Friends who love Garry, working with his estate, are opening up Garry’s twitter," Shandling's account tweeted today. "We will occasionally tweet material from the writings, notes and journals he has left us." Shandling's last Twitter activity occurred four days before his death, when he retweeted a Kathy Griffin tweet (https://twitter.com/kathygriffin/status/711716813441073152) featuring a photo of him, her and Bob Odenkirk.

Judd Apatow is coming out with It’s Garry Shandling’s Book this fall (https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-news/its-garry-shandlings-book-judd-apatow-866283/)

The book, due to be released on Nov. 12, is an extension of Apatow's HBO documentary The Zen Dairies of Garry Shandling, featuring never-before-seen photos, journal pages, scripts, stand-up material and contributions from close friends.

It's Garry Shandling's Book from Judd Apatow is scattershot, but offers a little bit of everything (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/books/review/judd-apatow-gary-shandlings-book.html)

The book, out Tuesday, could best be described as a scrapbook, featuring photographs, notes, clippings, script pages and words from Shandling's friends like Sarah Silverman and Jim Carrey. It's ostensibly Apatow's HBO documentary The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling in book form. ALSO: It's Garry Shandling Show theme was written in an elevator (https://www.vulture.com/2019/11/its-garry-shandlings-book-judd-apatow-highlights.html).