Garry Marshall: Runaway Funny

With Foster's help, Marshall, at age 24, got a job writing jokes for Jack Paar. "My father used to say, 'Get a job you can do if you have a toothache.'" No matter what else was going on in Marshall's life, he could always write his five pages of jokes. In 1961 he moved to Hollywood to write for Joey Bishop. He soon hooked up with Jerry Belson and together they wrote more than 100 sitcom scripts for such series as The Danny Thomas Show, The Lucy Show and The Dick Van Dyke Show. Producing stints followed. In 1974 came Happy Days (which ran for over 10 years; Henry Winkler's leather jacket is in the Smithsonian), and in 1976 he launched Laverne & Shirley, which his sister Penny starred in with Cindy Williams.

From the first episode it was number one in the ratings. "He single-handedly put the Paramount television department on the map," says Carl Reiner. Mork and Mindy followed and for a period of about five years, Garry Marshall was king of network television. His queen, Barbara, he met because she lived next door to him. "I'm a terrible driver, and I dated whoever was in the next building." They've now been married 36 years. This in a business in which it's not unusual for married directors to take their leading ladies to bed.

"My wife says, 'If you run off with some 19-year-old, she'll send you back in a week. Especially after she sees you eat.' I have my own problems. Hard to live with. So she's pretty secure. Also, she's a nurse, so she's not fascinated by show business. Once I came home all upset because Danny Thomas didn't like a couple of my jokes. And she said that, earlier that day, two patients had died in her arms."

Barbara was the one who got the call when Garry had an anxiety attack while shooting his first feature, Young Doctors in Love. "I was nervous, I didn't know quite what I was doing, and I got crazy, and when I get crazy I get sick. And Barbara had to leave the hospital and come on the set to get me. And she said, 'What is this? This is supposed to be fun.' It's never happened again." Now, if things spiral out of control, Marshall and his cinematographer have worked out an act. "We walk off the set. We go about 100 yards away, and then we get very animated and scream at each other. Nobody can hear what we're saying, but it looks bad. In fact what we're yelling are numbers. 'FIVE, SIX, SEVEN, EIGHT!' Then we come back." By then things usually have settled. "Nothing is that important that you should get crazy. I made that peace years ago. If it's too messy, I'll go home before you fire me."

You've got to figure that, with Marshall's background, his perspective on the current state of screen comedy is going to be interesting, so I ask, "What did you think of There's Something About Mary?"

"It's the next generation of comedy. It has to be gross, because comedy has no other place to go. With violence, you can go further out. Tarantino can give you more blood and more shooting, but with comedy where else can you go? You can't go ethnic, because the politically correct people have pulled the rug out from us on that. And all the best, light, white humor is on TV. You're not going to make a movie that can top some of Seinfeld's stuff. They got 10 writers, and they're all in the same room. They're topping the movies. But Mary wouldn't have worked with another girl. Her beauty had to be above all the grossness. And Cameron Diaz has the same qualities as Julia and Gwyneth Paltrow and Claire Danes and Natalie Portman. Their beauty on the big screen will not let them get into the muck and mire."

The muck and mire, I suspect, will not claim Marshall either. Don't expect to see him following the trend and going the gross-out route. His has always been a gentle, observational, above-the-waist comedy. Rather than getting their dicks stuck in zippers, Marshall's characters get their thumbs stuck in bowling balls. While his better-known comedic contemporaries (Woody and Mel) get increasingly bitter or marginalized, Marshall continues to give us mainstream, romantic comedies with great setups, great punch lines and happy endings. "It's still a magical business," he says, "and my job is to try to keep it magical."

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Jeffrey Lantos interviewed Juliette Lewis for the March 99 issue of Movieline.

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