It’s Garry Shandling’s Tribute

When I was 13 and a 1/2, I attempted to break the barrier and make myself known to a girl…

I didn’t ask her out until three years following that.

Garry Shandling would have understood and appreciated this.

When the Fox Network began airing primetime television programs in the late 80’s (‘Married with Children’, ‘The Tracey Ullman Show’ which featured ‘The Simpsons’), one of the half hour sitcoms featured was ‘It’s Garry Shandling’s Show’. The standup comic’s first starring role actually aired on Showtime, and Fox was airing reruns. I didn’t know this.

I loved this show and I didn’t know why. Shandling played a character on a sitcom who knew he was on a sitcom and not in the real world. He shared his thoughts with the audience. He was self depreciating. The show was like nothing else I had seen.

The influence on me was immediate. My dad would call me out if I spoke in Shandling’s cadence – except I didn’t think I was doing it. And the  play-within-the-play concept, which Shandling would later perfect with HBO’s ‘The Larry Sanders Show’, was something that I still carry over in the majority of the projects I work on to this very day.

And then there was the theme song…

I sat next to a girl in my 8th grade Earth Science class. I’ll never know how it got brought up, or if there was a lead in for me to do so, but I sang the theme song… And I did it more than once –

This is the theme to Garry’s Show

The theme to Garry’s Show

Garry called me up and asked if I could write his theme song…

I think I was trying to be funny. Or cute. It comes across as a weird teenage boy thing for sure, but we didn’t think of it that way in retrospect.

I’m almost halfway finished 

How do you like it so far

How do you like the theme to Garry’s Show

Needless to say, I had no move past the theme song. Honestly, I probably didn’t fully understand that singing the theme was a move at the time. Yet, the theme to ‘It’s Garry Shandling’s Show’ was the inciting incident for a relationship that went on again-off again for eight years.

This is the theme to Garry’s Show

The theme to Garry’s Show

This is the music that you hear as you watch the credits

I’m almost to the part 

Of where I start to whistle 

Then we’ll watch ‘It’s Garry Shandling’s Show’…………..