Page 6 - Jewish News_January-2021

6A January 2021 FEDERATION NEWS

People of the Book: Arts & Culture People of the Book...continued from page 6A
and we have become hypersensitive to
By Gayle Guynup everything. It is counter-productive to
he People of the Book author a consulting producer on Curb Your off when I was 21 years old and right experiences, just grown apart. Over what it sets out to do. Comedy used to
lecture series of virtual events, Enthusiasm. On Broadway, he collab- out of college. I started writing jokes a couple of years, Garry and I started be free-flowing and there was some-
Tsponsored by The Jewish Fed- orated with Billy Crystal on the Tony for comedians in the Catskill Moun- getting close again. There was a mov- thing wonderful and unifying about
eration of Sarasota-Manatee, con- Award-winning play 700 Sundays. He tains. Then I was one of the original ie that is coming out that I wrote with it. Now you have to think twice about
tinues in January with three books won the Thurber Prize for American writers on Saturday Night Live (SNL) Billy Crystal called Here Today. I was everything you say. You can say the
most innocuous thing in the world,
focusing on Jewish identity. The week- Humor for his novel The Other Shul- and It’s Garry Shandling’s Show. So, at Billy’s house in L.A. working on the
long event begins Tuesday, January 5 man. During his years with Saturday for years people wanted me to write script. Garry and I spoke. We planned and somebody is going to take offense.
at 7:00 p.m. with Alan Zweibel and Night Live, Zweibel wrote many mem- on having dinner, and I thought we I hope the pendulum swings back to-
his book, Laugh Lines: My Life Help- orable characters and sketches includ- would finally get back to where we ward the middle again, because it is
ing Funny People Be Funnier. The ing the Samurai for John Belushi, and were. We were going to speak that becoming very prohibitive.
What did you learn about your-
following evening at 7:00 p.m., Ben- Roseanne Roseannadanna, portrayed Thursday night, and he died sudden- self by writing this book?
jamin Sheehan will talk about OMG by Gilda Radner. He has won multi- ly that Thursday morning. While with
WTF Does the Constitution Actually ple Emmys, Writers Guild of America Gilda, her death was a slow process, Mary Karr, America’s most fa-
Say? The week’s events will wrap up awards, and TV Critics awards for his with Garry it was so sudden. Garry was mous memoirist (author of The Liar’s
on Thursday, January 7 at 10:30 a.m. work in television. In his latest book, an incomplete story. This was a good Club), said, “Writing a memoir is not
really an act of writing. It is an act of
with Myla Goldberg and her book, Laugh Lines, Zweibel traces the histo- reason to come to grips with our rela-
Feast Your Eyes: The Story of Lillian ry of American comedy through telling tionship. I devote a couple of chapters memory that is innately corrupt.” And
Preston. his own stories and through interviews in the book to Garry. It was the emo- it’s true. You tell the story you want to
Alan Zweibel / Laugh Lines: with friends and contemporaries, in- Alan Zweibel tional thrust I needed to get me to write tell, highlighting the things you want
My Life Helping Funny People cluding Richard Lewis, Dave Barry about my career because I have been the book. It was therapy. to highlight. Look, I wasn’t wearing
a wire for the last 50 years. There is a
Be Funnier and Carl Reiner. The book is a warm- lucky enough to be involved in all of What message does your book
Alan Zweibel is an American television hearted cultural memoir of American these different eras of comedy. But convey about the times in which we self-examination involved in writing
writer, author, playwright and screen- comedy. I didn’t want it to be an ‘and then I live? a memoir. So much of it is person-
writer who was one of the original Sat- What or who inspired you to wrote this, and then I wrote that book.’ When you go on the journey of al. You’ll see my wife is in there, my
urday Night Live writers, a co-creator write this book? The initial thrust that made me want to this book, from 1972 to today, it is the children are in there, Gilda, Garry and
my other collaborators – Martin Short,
of It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, and This is a cultural memoir. It starts write it were two things: the death of story of all the different eras of come-
Gilda Radner and the death of Garry dy. From SNL to David Letterman and Billy Crystal and Larry David – they
Shandling. When Gilda died (she was Curb Your Enthusiasm, it was a unique are all in there. The book gave me the
my buddy and writing partner at SNL), way to look back at all these ways of opportunity to find out what I consid-
I dealt with her death in a book I wrote looking at the world. It also makes us ered important in my life. It’s a huge
therapy session as you sift through all
called Buddy, Buddy, which became a look at what comedy is right now, with
play and now looks like it is going to our politically correct culture, which those memories. You get to the truth
Broadway. There was a catharsis relat- I think is very divisive. It is doing the and then you write outward from there.
ing to that experience. exact opposite of what it is supposed to Benjamin Sheehan / OMG WTF Does
Meanwhile, when Garry Shandling be doing. When we were growing up, the Constitution Actually Say?
and I finished our show, we weren’t everybody made fun of everybody else. Ben Sheehan is a former award-win-
talking. It was the stress of being to- We knew how to laugh at ourselves. ning executive producer at “Funny Or
gether every day for four years, plus Today, everybody is tip-toeing around Die.” Sheehan founded OMG WTF
the fact that we had, through our life continued on next page (Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, Wisconsin,

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