Green Guide, Melbourne Age 13 July 1990 p. 19
I was trying to remember what sort of things I used to write about on this blog in the days before Nancy and Helmi were born and there was no facebook for my hardest-hitting reaction material, and I found this controversial post from 2006 where I dissed Monty Python and praised It's Garry Shandling's Show* although also found that when it came down to it some part of my brain had the same reaction to both (remembering phrases and ideas and being unable to help conjuring them to mind when 'triggered').
This also put me in mind (I mention it in the post linked above) of the Sydney Morning Herald reviewer who took the Shandling 25th Anniversary entirely at face value, whereas in fact it's (quite obviously really) a satire of chat shows, post-war American popular culture, and so on. And I thought, well, now I have newspapers.com I can track down that particular issue of the SMH and pull it to pieces a little bit more. Except, bizarrely, I can't find that review in there, at least not by searching 'Garry Shandling"+ "25th anniversary" or even just "Garry Shandling" between 1989 and 1991. When I had the sterling idea (just then) of searching on Gary Shandling instead, all I got was this gem:
So there's always the possibility that I have falsified a memory, but also, I might have read it in something other than the SMH, but I have just conflated all print media from that time in my memory to the SMH whereas there was probably a 'shit-ton' of print media around that I read but don't remember. What I did find was that the SMH reviewers - I was living in Sydney then and that's what I would have been reading by the way - were extremely enthusiastic about It's Garry Shandling's Show, unanimously and constantly, and were all bemoaning the fact that it was being shown at 11:30pm and, just the way indie music enthusiasts were about indie music in the 80s, being all convinced that if unimaginative media mediators gave something imaginative a chance then it would probably not only be hugely successful but also, make society a better place for everyone. I think we have modified our expectations a little more these days (but of course, we don't have Big TV limiting what we can watch, these days).
I still think Garry Shandling was one of funniest comedians I have ever had the pleasure of delving into on a grand scale, though the work of a man of his generation working in the sphere that he did is going to age badly as was brought home to me a few months ago when I tried to watch his 1984 stand up special Alone in Las Vegas and found it dismally sexist and also, worse (?), dull. Comedy's like that, it can't survive, and I suppose the best comedy is the most responsive and intuitive so that (1) most of it has a use-by date (2) the bits that don't have a use-by date get absorbed into the zeitgeist and become stuff for the next generation of comedians to react against.
The excellent, just excellent, Judd Apatow documentary about Shandling from 2018 cast a lot of light on his process, though left him nonetheless a bit of a cipher, which incidentally is perhaps what all comedians are, or at least the good ones. The amount of time he spent every day trying to push the envelope was a revelation but also his role as mentor to so many others (so many comedians I adore, too, like Sarah Silverman who is probably the current US comedian most likely to be inheritor of his mantle) was inspirational. Of course, not to put too fine a point on it, the whole defining moment for GS the man was the death of his brother, Barry, when they were both children (which now makes me feel weird when I think about the 'Dancing Barry' interlude in one of my favourite It's Garry Shandling Shows).
Look despite all evidence to the contrary I stopped being a hardline proselytiser for things I liked lo-o-ong ago, about the same time I stopped believing in the canon, and I'm super content to hear about what you like but I'm not going to try to make you like what I like, and for all that there's no crime in enjoying something just because you do - it doesn't have to be current and if you (I) understand the context and no-one else does, that's to your (my) advantage.
By the way, have you watched everything Stewart Lee has ever done? Because you really should.
*I actually think there are still some eps of IGSS I still haven't watched, and I do have the full DVD set (it made me appreciate that the season Channel 9 showed in the early 90s, season 2 I think, was really superior to Season 1 when the show took quite some time to hit its stride - no surprises there).
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