“90% of success is showing up.” –Woody Allen.

“Every great thing you do in life will result from failures, both large and small.” –Napoleon Hill

“Failure isn’t fatal, but failure to change might be.” — John Wooden

No one would look at Garry Shandling and think, leading man material. If central casting were to draw up a stereotypical leading man for roles in their projects, they might use Garry Shandling’s characteristics, as a contrast for what they seek. No one who listened to Garry Shandling’s early standup routines thought, “This man needs to be on The Tonight Show, he might even make a great fill-in host, or he should have his own sitcom.” If they were to compose a list of 100 comedians most likely to succeed beyond the stage, at that time, the young Shandling would not have made any of those lists, unless he chose to pursue a career as a sitcom writer. The difference between Shandling and those “more talented” comedians he succeeded beyond, according to Shandling, was that he just continued to show up.

He began his career in comedy, as a writer on the sitcoms Sanford and Son, Welcome Back Kotter, and The Harvey Corman Show. He left that world of consistent paychecks behind to enter into the far less stable world of standup comedy. The problem with that decision, according to those who’ve documented Shandling’s career, is that he wasn’t very good at it. One of the most powerful and influential individuals in the world of comedy at the time, owner of The Comedy Store Mitzy Shore, went so far as to refuse to put Shandling on her stage. The reason she didn’t put him on stage, and one of the themes of this article, is that Mitzy Shore felt that Shandling lacked stage presence and an overall sense of command of the audience, and she had an uncanny ability to spot those characteristics. “I don’t know if Mitzy even listened to jokes,” one comedian stated. “She didn’t care if you were funny. To her, it was all about stage presence.” 

As a result, one of the funniest comedic actors of his generation wasn’t even able to make it on her stage, because of his perceived lack of talent. The lucky break, if one wants to call it that, occurred for Shandling when the “talented” comedians on The Comedy Store’s roster, decided to strike. That strike occurred as a result of Mitzy Shore’s decision not to pay her comedians. Shandling made the unpopular decision to cross that picket line, and in total desperation for a body to put on the stage, Shore eventually conceded and put him on.

Gary Shandling might even admit that the difference between Garry Shandling and the other comedians who didn’t succeed in that space was that he was willing to continue to get on the stage night after night, regardless the circumstances, the pay, or lack thereof. He was willing to face the abuse and hectoring of an audience that must have reached a point where they agreed with everything those in the know said about him.

We can only guess that while those who cared about Garry Shandling admired his courage and perseverance, they probably sat him down, at one point, and told him to go back to doing what he did best, writing for sitcoms.

The summation of all this is no one gave Garry Shandling any reason to believe in his abilities as a performer, but he continued to show up and hone his act, until a talent scout from The Tonight Show watched him for a number of nights and decided that he had the chops to make an appearance on a show that was then considered the Holy Grail for all comedians. It’s difficult to describe how powerful and influential The Tonight Show was during this era, but if you were a standup comedian who made it on the Tonight Show, and then the couch, you were known throughout the nation, if not the world. People stopped otherwise anonymous comedians on the street the next day, saying, “Hey, weren’t you on The Tonight Show last night?” Some suggest that the exposure of a five-minute set on The Tonight Show was worth more, back then, than an HBO Special and a Netflix show is today, combined. After a number of these spots, Shandling vaulted up the ladder to guest hosting for Johnny Carson for years, and The Tonight Show producers even began to seriously consider him a suitable successor for Johnny’s seat, should Johnny ever decide to retire.

Was Shandling ever as funny as Jay Leno or Jerry Seinfeld, or the many other “more talented” comedians of his era who didn’t succeed? His material was top shelf, according to those who know, but those same people considered his presentation so poor that they didn’t foresee him developing a career in the field.

He kept showing up. He kept enduring the years of bad nights, presumed harassment and humiliation, and the feelings of failure that had to have resulted from bombing so often that he achieved levels of success in TV and the movies that were unprecedented among most of his peers.

The first step, Shandling instructs, is to show up so often that you grow more accustomed to your stage fright. The import of this advice is that tips, tricks, and advice may ease the psychological trauma a little, but nothing compares to just doing it so often that the fear becomes more manageable. Writing quality material before you take to the stage helps with the confidence, of course, but nothing helps more than just doing it so often that you almost incidentally become better at it.

The next step is to work your material before an audience and tweak it based on their reactions. Some have said that this might be the hardest part of the job, and it is never ending, but at some point a routine does develop. At some point you create a greatest hits of jokes package that you can take to a talk show. It’s implied throughout this part of the process that a comedian has to have thick skin for those in the audience that will help you shape material in good and bad ways.

Thick skin, to my mind, is an understatement. How about rhinoceros skin, or the type of skin necessary to evolve from a sane, somewhat humorous individual to someone who is asking around 450 paying customers a night (the seating capacity of The Comedy Store) three-to-four times a week what they think. The first question that comes to mind is how many paying customers in an audience understand that you’re just working on material? How many of them will be patiently understanding? How many people would pay to see someone perform raw, untested material, and how many people will let an unknown comedian know that they’re no better than them, and that the comedian should be sitting next to them in the audience? Unless it’s some sort of amateur night, most people will sit with folded arms, wondering why the owner decided to put this newbie on stage on their only night out of the week. These people enjoy the schadenfreude of watching another person squirm. This thick skin requires that the aspiring comedian move past such people, and the consistent feelings of failure, the heckling, and the excruciating nights where you’re left alone to adjust your material for the next night of more of the same.

The night after we bomb onstage, the natural inclination of most sane individuals might be to adjust the material in such a way that it sounds like the exact opposite of the night before. The inclination may be to list those jokes under the “rejected” heading. The inclination may be to consider a scorched earth policy on all that material. It’s often somewhere in between, say successful comedians. The successful comedian has to believe in the material, they say, and it may require nothing more than some tweaking of the language. They might want to consider adding something here, deleting something there, changing the point of emphasis, or the point of perspective. Then, just when a comedian reaches a point where they’re comfortable with their material, they’ll want to do a complete overhaul that puts them in an uncomfortable place where they’re nervous and agitated and learning from the audience again, because once a comedian becomes feels comfortable with the material they reach a point that no successful comedian wants to reach: comfort.

A comedian is no longer striving when they’re comfortable, and they’re no longer developing fresh, new material that makes the audience so uncomfortable that they’re laughing with you, as opposed to at you. The space all comedians search for exists somewhere between artistic purity and honesty, a sweet spot that can take some over a decade to find, if they ever do.

This struggle, according to Garry Shandling, didn’t involve the material. He may have needed years to shape the material, but the basic task of writing jokes always came easy to him. His presentation, on the other hand, had always been lacking to some degree, and the fact that he kept showing up to put himself in the uncomfortable position of exposing this weakness before others bore fruit in the form of an insecure, neurotic character who was insecure about his presentation skills.

What Shandling did, to create a long prosperous career, was combine his greatest strength, and his greatest weakness to form a pure, honest character that he would hone over the course of a decade in the form of two television shows: It’s Garry Shandling’s Show and The Larry Sanders Show. These shows featured a character who knew how to write material but was forever worried, and neurotic, about his presentation. He took everything his greatest supporters said about him, combined with everything his greatest critics said about him to develop one of longest and most fruitful careers in comedy. The shows he starred in won nineteen Emmy nominations, numerous American Comedy Awards, and a spot in the hearts of many standups who regard him as one of the most influential comedic actors of all time.

Garry Shandling’s story is, in essence, the exact opposite of all those sad, depressing “could’ve been, should’ve” stories of individuals that were on the cusp of stardom but didn’t make it … for a variety of reasons. His is a tale of a “couldn’t have been, shouldn’t have been” character that showed up so often, and worked so hard that he was … for a variety of reasons. His unlikely story should remain an inspiration for those marginal talents, who are informed that they are marginal talents, that there may be a sweet spot for you too, if you are willing to work your tail off and show up so often to succeed. It’s your job to find it, use it, and hone it.

The one cliché in the Garry Shandling bio is the “no one believed in me or my talent as much as I did” angle that has been put forth by so many, but in Garry Shandling’s case, it appears to be the unvarnished truth. The non-believers may have been witness to some killer material, but they may have believed that a more skilled, more charismatic presenter would better serve that material. His is the story of an individual of marginal talents that believed in himself beyond reason.

To those that have never heard of Garry Shandling, or believe that I am overselling the insecure, neurotic characteristics of a man who has succeeded in life to the degree he has, I challenge you to watch the interview Ricky Gervais did with him in 2010. The purpose of this interview, for Ricky Gervais, was to deify Shandling as a comedic luminary, and to pay homage to Shandling as a personal influence. Shandling, however, appears as insecure and unsure of himself in this interview as he may have been as an upstart comedian in 1978. Even after all Garry Shandling accomplished in his career, this interview is uncomfortable to watch in parts, and in other parts, it appears almost confrontational. Even the most informed viewer –who knows Shandling’s schtick, and knows that some of it is schtick– can’t help but think that at least some of what they’re watching is an exposé of a man who is unsatisfied with his career, relatively unhappy, and uncomfortable in his own skin.

The idea that Shandling has lost whatever it was he once had crosses the viewer’s mind, as does the idea that he might be too old, or that he’s been out of the game so long that he can’t handle this type of interview anymore. There are parts of the interview when the viewer begins to feel sorry for Shandling, and we want someone to step in and put an end to his pain. Those informed viewers who know the Shandling story know that was Garry Shandling. He never had it, in the manner some define the elusory “it”, but that doesn’t stop the intrigued from watching something that becomes almost unwatchable in parts. A description that Garry Shandling, himself, might admit is a beautiful encapsulation of just about everything he did throughout his illustrious and unusual career.