It took me five false starts and four full weeks before I could brace myself to watch @JuddApatow's moving, funny, intimate, loving documentary about Garry Shandling. Even typing this now makes me emotional. See, I met Garry when I was 19. 1/ 
I was performing amateur comedy with the UCLA Comedy Club, and he was the professional headliner. He asked me if I wanted to be a writer. I said yes. He then pointed to 2 jokes (out of my entire set) and set "After I work, let's go for coffee, and I'll tell you why... 2/
.. you should throw everything else out and build out from these." And he asked me if I'd be interested in writing with him. He told me that George Carlin had done the same for him when HE was first starting, and he really wanted to do the same for others. 3/
He was a friend, a coach, and a mentor. He introduced me to a producer friend of his, Marc Sotkin, who came to see a play I wrote and hired me on my first job. I worked on Garry's first TV Show, where I met some of the funniest people I've ever had the honor to know. 4/
He spoke at my wedding, but he didn't finish his entire speech because he got a huge laugh 3/4ths of the way through and abruptly ended it. He struggled in his life - in a lot of ways. But one of the places he took great joy was in seeing others succeed. 5/
He was the first pro to see my potential, and to help me to see it myself. I will always be forever grateful to him. And I will always do everything I can to keep that lineage alive. If you have a chance, check out Judd's doc. I think you'll really get a sense of who he was. 6/6
