Garry Shandling

Garry Shandling (born November 29, 1949) is an American comedian. He was the star of It's Garry Shandling's Show and The Larry Sanders Show, and ranked #30 on Comedy Central's list of the 100 greatest standups. Shandling's influences include Steve Allen, Jack Paar, Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Woody Allen and Johnny Carson.^{[citation needed]}

Biography

Early life and career

Shandling was born to a Jewish American family in Chicago, Illinois and 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. He also attended Palo Verde High School in Tucson, Arizona.

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.

Stand-up comedy

Shandling performed his first stand-up routine at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles. His shtick was the persona 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.

TV series

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 broadcast network Fox Broadcasting 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 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.

Other work

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 Mamet 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 other media

Shandling was immortalized in the Butthole Surfers song "Revolution, Pt. 2" on their album pioughd. During the end of the song his name is chanted repeatedly.

Trivia

Shandling was played by Stewart Francis in the 2002 TV-movie biography Gilda Radner: It's Always Something.

References

• AllMovie.com: Garry Shandling
• Museum of Broadcasting: It's Garry Shandling's Show / The Larry Sanders Show
• The New York Times (Jan. 28, 2007): "Hey Now: It's Garry Shandling's Obsession", by Jacques Steinberg
• The BBC.co.uk Guide to Comedy: It's Garry Shandling's Show
• Filmbug.com: Garry Shandling

Wikipedia information about Garry Shandling This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Garry Shandling". It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer). Help contribute to Americola and edit this article.