Garry Shandling
Born
November 29, 1949 (1949-11-29) (age 57)
Chicago, Illinois, USA
Medium
stand-up, television, film
Nationality
American
Years active
1978 - present
Genres
Observational comedy, Satire
Subject(s)
self-deprecation, human sexuality, everyday life
Influences
Woody Allen, Johnny Carson
Influenced
Ricky Gervais
Notable works and roles
Garry Shandling in It's Garry Shandling's Show
Larry Sanders in The Larry Sanders Show
Emmy Awards
Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series 1998 The Larry Sanders Show
BAFTA Awards
Best International (Programme or Series) 1999 The Larry Sanders Show
American Comedy Awards
Funniest Male Performer in a TV Series
1988 It's Garry Shandling's Show
1996, 1998, 1999 The Larry Sanders Show
Garry Shandling (born November 29, 1949) is an American comedian. He is best known for his work in It's Garry Shandling's Show and The Larry Sanders Show.
Shandling was born to a Jewish American family in Chicago, Illinois and grew up in Tucson, Arizona. He had an older brother, Barry, who passed away from cystic fibrosis when Garry was 10. He attended Palo Verde High Magnet School. After graduation, he attended the University of Arizona, at first majoring in electrical engineering, but eventually completing a degree in marketing and pursuing a year of post-graduate studies in creative writing.
In 1973, Shandling moved to Los Angeles, California, made contact with comedian George Carlin after catching one of his shows, worked at an advertising agency for a time, then sold a script for the popular NBC sitcom Sanford and Son. Shandling's script became the November 1975 "Sanford and the Rising Son," the episode in which Ah Chew (played by Pat Morita) turned junk-yard owner Fred Sanford's house into a Chinese restaurant. Shandling continued to do comedy scriptwriting for sitcoms including Welcome Back, Kotter and Three's Company.
In 1977, Shandling was involved in an auto accident that put him in critical condition for weeks. He later turned the accident into part of his stand-up comedy act.
In 1978, Shandling performed his first stand-up routine at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles. His persona of was that of an anxiety-ridden, grimacing, guarded, confused man who seemed always on the verge of losing control. After a couple of years on the road, a talent scout from The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson caught his act and booked him to appear as a guest host on March 18, 1981. Shandling began substituting for Carson on a regular basis, becoming the "permanent" Monday-night guest host until Jay Leno succeeded Carson.
He is ranked #30 on Comedy Central's list of the 100 greatest standups.
Shandling and co-writer Alan Zweibel went on to create the surreal comedy series It's Garry Shandling's Show in 1985, which ran 72 episodes on the Showtime cable television network through 1990, with edited reruns playing on the Fox network beginning in 1988.
The series, a popular critical hit, became known for its Brechtian use of what is known in theater as "breaking the fourth wall", a concept in which characters turn away from the action and comment directly on the proceedings or make asides to the audience. While Groucho Marx was an early pioneer of the technique in the 1930's movie "Animal Crackers" and television had pioneered with the breakdown of the fourth wall since at least the 1950s, in TV series starring Ernie Kovacs and the team of George Burns and Gracie Allen, and sporadically afterward, Shandling's series employed the idea as a central conceit, and influenced such future wall-breaking series as The Bernie Mac Show.
In 1992, Shandling had another critical and commercial success creating the mock behind-the-scenes talk show sitcom The Larry Sanders Show, which ran 89 episodes through 1998 on the cable network HBO, garnering 56 Emmy Award nominations and three wins.
In 1993, NBC offered Shandling $5 million[citation needed] to take over the late-night comedic talk show Late Night when host David Letterman announced his highly publicized move to CBS, but Shandling declined. The Larry Sanders Show later spoofed the network's efforts to find a Letterman successor.
Shandling has appeared occasionally in movies, beginning with a cameo as dental patient Mr. Vertisey in The Night We Never Met. He played supporting roles in the 1994 films Love Affair and Mixed Nuts (a.k.a. Lifesavers), Dr. Dolittle (1998) as the voice of a live-action pigeon, the David Rabe play adaptation Hurlyburly (1998), and Trust the Man. He wrote and starred in director Mike Nichols' What Planet Are You From? (2000), and co-starred with Warren Beatty and others in Town & Country. Again voicing an animal, Shandling co-starred as Verne the turtle in the computer animated comic strip adaptation Over the Hedge (2006)
Shandling hosted the Grammy Awards from 1990 to 1995, and the Emmy Awards in 2000 and 2004.
In 2006 Shandling met British comedian Ricky Gervais for a Channel 4 documentary about Gervais' comedy heroes, as in the past Gervais had cited him as a huge comedy influence. Gervais had already interviewed Larry David and Christopher Guest which had seemingly gone quite uneventfully. However, according to a columnist for the British newspaper The Independent, Shandling proved to be quite awkward to interview, with another article from the Guardian referring to it as "the uneasiest interview ever".
The columnist stated, "At one point, Shandling told Gervais he didn't think the Extras star 'was happy casting Jews' in his shows". After this interview, Gervais announced that there were "no plans" for him to return to the interviewer's seat in the foreseeable future and allegedly said "The Shandling experience put him off for good."
