Garry Shandling played men who know their neediness is tiresome and cannot stop asking for reassurance anyway. On The Larry Sanders Show that anxiety powers a backstage comedy we would recommend to almost anyone; his film work is a footnote, though a funny one.
Fi1m perspective
Watch Larry Sanders ask whether the show went well. He knows the question is tiresome, he knows the answer will not help, and he asks anyway, and the people around him arrange their faces and reply. Garry Shandling built a career on that gap between knowing better and needing it regardless, and he was honest enough never to make it charming. The man he played on The Larry Sanders Show is a drain on everyone in the building, and the series lets the staff's weariness show.
He came to acting sideways. In the mid-1970s he was writing for sitcoms, including Sanford and Son and Welcome Back, Kotter, before turning to stand-up; a debut on The Tonight Show in 1981 led to frequent stints as guest host. It's Garry Shandling's Show (1986–1990) put a version of himself in a sitcom whose characters knew they were on television and said so. The Larry Sanders Show (1992–1998), created with Dennis Klein, kept the self-awareness and dropped the winking: a late-night host, his producer and his sidekick, and real celebrities playing versions of themselves in the green room.
What makes it work is the company. Jeffrey Tambor's Hank and Rip Torn's Artie are with him across all six series, and the exchanges between the three need no footnotes. Shandling's own performance is the quiet one; he lets Tambor and Torn be loud and plays Larry's vanity as a kind of fatigue. By the fourth or fifth episode in a row we were as worn down by him as his staff are, and then we laughed at the next round anyway, because he plays the asking as something Larry cannot help rather than something he enjoys. The celebrity business dates, and a guest you do not recognise can leave you doing homework while the joke goes past. That is the price of the premise, and it is a small one.
The film work is a footnote, though a good one. As Senator Stern in Iron Man 2 (2010) he sits through Stark's hijacking of a Senate hearing and slowly reddens, and Dan Lebental and Richard Pearson cut the scene so that Downey's lines land on Shandling's face rather than his own. It is the best scene in a film we did not much care for, and it depends on Shandling knowing exactly how to lose a scene, which he had spent six series practising opposite Rip Torn. He came back to the part in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014).
He said of Larry Sanders that "it isn't about a guy who hosts a talk show, it's the ability to have that world within which you could tell the story of human beings." Start there. If a guest's name means nothing to you, wait a minute; the three men in the office will be back, and they are the point.
Biography
Garry Shandling was an American comedian, actor, writer and producer. He began his career writing for sitcoms including Sanford and Son and Welcome Back, Kotter before moving into stand-up comedy, making his television debut on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in 1981 and becoming a frequent guest host.
In 1986 he created and starred in It's Garry Shandling's Show for Showtime, which ran until 1990. He followed this with The Larry Sanders Show (1992–1998) on HBO, where he played the title role of a late-night talk-show host, also serving as creator and writer. Shandling and Peter Tolan won the 1998 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series for the series finale.
