The Larry Sanders Show

Started by meatwad, June 15, 2004, 04:31:40 PM

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meatwad

one of the funniest show i have ever seen. It's a shame nobody is showing re runs or the whole series has not gotten a proper release (the first season is available, with almost no extras and it costs alot).

For those of you who have never seen it, It stars Garry Shandling as a late-night television host. His on-air sidekick, Hank Kingsley is played by Jeffrey Tambor, who can now be seen on Arrested Development, and Rip Torn plays Artie, Larry's executive producer. Janeane Garofalo was on for a few seasons, and when she left Mary Lynn Rajskub joined the cast.  And Scott Thompson from Kids in the Hall also joined the cast in the later seasons.

Sleuth

Somebody DOES show reruns, though.  I've only seen one episode, and it was a rerun and it was great.  I don't remember what channel, though, that's why I haven't watched more
I like to hug dogs

A World Apart

I used to watch this show a lot in reruns. I think they played it on comedy central for a spell many many many years ago. I haven't seen any recent reruns though...i wish i could if Sleuth is correct and perhaps they started showing them on some channel once again. This show is sooo hilarious though, and i'd pay money for it if the DVD was any good...but apparently it isn't eh. Oh Well.
No, I've never seen that, I've never seen anyone drive their garbage out to the curb and bang the hell out of it with a stick.

meatwad

Bravo did show re runs for a little bit, then they got rid of it.  I didn't think anybody showed re runs anymore, but i guess i could be wrong

Ravi

I used to watch reruns of it on a local WB station.  I don't know if they still air them.  Jeffrey Tambor is gold in almost anything he does.

Fernando

I think either ABC or CBS still air it, IIRC it's on weekends and late at night, if on saturday probably way after SNL.

About this show, it's absolutely hilarious, it's right up there with Seinfeld and lately Curb your enthusiasm.

Quote from: RaviJeffrey Tambor is gold in almost anything he does.

One of the best is when Hank hosts the show and then he turns into a complete asshole bossing everyone around.

meatwad

my favorite hank moment is when he is making the goodbye tape for larry and he is filming drew barrymore, and he asks her to take off her top like she did for lettermen.

hedwig

Hey Now: It's Garry Shandling's Obsession
By JACQUES STEINBERG; January 28, 2007
The New York Times

IT was almost nine years ago that Larry Sanders, the fictional talk-show host who was a too-close-for-comfort amalgam of Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Jay Leno and Jack Paar, signed off the air. In the final episode of his show (and of the biting HBO series that bore the same name), he perched Carsonesque on a stool in front of a blue curtain and started his farewell monologue.

"To you at home, thank you so much," he began, choking up. Regaining his composure, he returned his gaze to the audience and continued, "To tell you the truth, I don't know exactly what I'm going to do without you."

Larry wasn't just losing his talk show; he was losing a nightly ego boost, and the security of a shimmering curtain that kept the real world at bay. But what of Garry Shandling, the comedian who not only played Larry but created him and "The Larry Sanders Show"? After a six-year run, what would either of them do without it?

"The Larry Sanders Show" had always straddled a fine line between reality and fiction, with Mr. Shandling encouraging the actors and writers to draw on their own experiences to send up the most unappealing aspects of Hollywood culture. Thus an endless stream of celebrities were recruited to play cartoonish versions of themselves, whether it was Ellen DeGeneres having a fling with Larry while Hollywood buzzed about her sexuality, or Alec Baldwin sleeping with Larry's wife while the couple were separated, only to be booked later as one of Larry's guests.

But while the actor and his main character shared more than a few awkward insecurities, Mr. Shandling had never pursued that nightly fix of entertaining millions. As a regular substitute host on "The Tonight Show" in the 1980s, he could have tried to succeed Mr. Carson and was later offered Mr. Letterman's old job. He declined.

Nonetheless that final "Larry Sanders" monologue proved prescient: Mr. Shandling, now 57, has never entirely moved on. Unlike Jerry Seinfeld, whose television series ended that same spring, Mr. Shandling has not done a stand-up tour. And unlike Bill Cosby, whose "Cosby Show" signed off NBC in 1992 only to be succeeded by "Cosby" on CBS, he has not pursued another series. Meanwhile, as "Larry Sanders" fades from memory, shows like "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and "Entourage" on HBO, and "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" and "30 Rock" on NBC, have tried to replicate the show-business realism that Mr. Shandling did first and, arguably, best.

Save for two gigs as host of the Emmy Awards and scattered movie roles, Mr. Shandling has kept a low profile. "It's very similar to — what is it? — the seven stages of grieving," he said recently, during the first extended interview he had granted in several years. "First there's the shock," he said, at ease in a soft leather chair in his living room. "Now I'm going to head for something funny here. Then there's denial, acceptance and," he paused, "masturbation."

As it turns out, the wrenching process of producing as many as 18 episodes a season was so grueling for Mr. Shandling — who was not only the star but also the head writer and so-called show runner — that he never really gave the show a proper goodbye. Meanwhile, in the midst of ending the show, he filed a spectacular lawsuit against his manager, Brad Grey, whom he accused of cheating him.

Hence there was no real wrap party for the cast, and even years later Mr. Shandling was still too exhausted to contribute much to a DVD of episodes from the first season. "It was unfortunate the show couldn't end with a higher spirit," he said.

These days Mr. Shandling seems more settled. He spends much of his time boxing (four times a week) or in periodic pickup basketball games at his home. He is financially secure, at least partly as a result of his settlement with Mr. Grey, valued by Mr. Shandling's lawyer at more than $10 million. His bushy brown hair, so memorable from his early "Tonight" appearances, remains full but is now close-cropped; his face is tan and taut. And he has sought peace in a place Larry never would: the study of Zen Buddhism. He meditates on long, solitary trips to Hawaii or around his sprawling home, with its sloping backyard overlooking a canyon.

"My sense is that this has been a time for Garry of introspection, and, it sounds funny to say about a comedian or comic actor, of real spiritual growth," said Peter Tolan, a writer and producer who was his longtime collaborator on the show. "He's in a better place than when we were doing the show."

Still, Mr. Shandling has lately been tugged by a powerful, almost obsessive desire to go back and revisit the breadth of his "Larry Sanders'' experience, for the purpose, he said, of finding out both who he was then and how he might give the show, and his role in it, a fitting ending. His vehicle: a DVD set, drawn from all six seasons of "Larry Sanders," to be released by Sony Pictures on April 17.

Other performers might be content to put out such packages with a few sweeteners, maybe some outtakes and running commentary from the star. But Mr. Shandling has never been like other performers. More than a year ago he set out, hand-held camera crew in tow, to interview virtually everyone connected to the show. There are the series regulars, including Jeffrey Tambor, who played Hank Kingsley ("hey now!"), Larry's eager-to-please yet quick-to-lash-out sidekick, and Rip Torn, who played Artie, Larry's fiercely protective executive producer. Mr. Shandling's camera also found many of the A-list guest stars whom he had goaded into cameos on the original show, including Mr. Seinfeld, Mr. Baldwin, Sharon Stone, David Duchovny, Carol Burnett, Jon Stewart and Tom Petty.

Thus the DVD's title, "Not Just the Best of the Larry Sanders Show," and its length: four discs, despite containing just 23 episodes.

Mr. Shandling concedes that these recorded conversations — which are presented largely unedited, with awkward silences and plenty of mistakes — are at least partly self-congratulatory. Taken as a whole the treatment is also expansive, exhaustive and at times exhausting, with Mr. Shandling's new material (including a documentary) adding up to nearly eight hours.

But the results are, in many instances, riveting. There are some good casting stories: Ms. Burnett, for example, tells how Mr. Shandling persuaded her to be a guest and to play against her clean-cut image. (On the talk-show-within-a-show, she warns Larry that the loincloth costume he's wearing isn't covering what it needs to cover.) And Bruno Kirby, whom Larry memorably "bumped" from the last episode, made an appearance as well — his last, it turned out, before he died last summer.

But to those who watch them carefully — and Mr. Shandling hasn't a clue whether anyone will — the interviews are also striking for his efforts to make amends. He apologizes to some of the best-known people in Hollywood for having failed to thank them for their service on "Larry Sanders," and for largely allowing them to drift from his life in the years since.

It is as if the drama club president has returned to high school, a decade after graduating, to find out what his classmates and teachers really thought of him, while also telling them he was sorry if he occasionally passed them in the corridor without saying hello. Mr. Shandling has a slightly darker analogy.

"What's that old adage, you don't hear nice things until the funeral?" he said. "I wanted to objectively see the realities of that time. What was I like? What were my relationships like, with the actors and writers? What did they feel?"

Thus the viewer gets to listen in as Mr. Shandling apologizes for not reciprocating when Mr. Baldwin promised to send a gift after his cameo appearance, and later for losing Mr. Baldwin's cellphone number. This scene of self-reckoning takes place in a boxing gym. [Here's a video clip of Shandling's meeting with Baldwin.]

"I thought you really extended yourself," Mr. Shandling says, as his hands are being wrapped outside the ring. "I did not appropriately extend myself back. I'd like to. ..."

"Make it up to me by coming in here and smacking me in the face a few times?" Mr. Baldwin says, leaning against the ropes.

Mr. Shandling responds, "I'm going to allow you to hit me so hard that I don't have to. ... "

"Work again for the next five years?" Mr. Baldwin interjects.

No, Mr. Shandling says, " ...finish these DVDs." Mr. Baldwin eventually gets fairly pummeled by the better-trained Mr. Shandling, while the two somehow conduct a meaningful conversation about comedy.

It is hard of course for anyone to be genuine with a camera trained on him, but an exchange that raw would never find its way onto Jay Leno's "Tonight," or even Bravo's "Inside the Actors Studio."

The most voyeuristic moment on the DVD, however, probably comes when Mr. Shandling sits down in a production office to talk to Linda Doucett. On the show she played Hank's secretary, Darlene, but in real life she was Mr. Shandling's fiancée, at least for a time. After the engagement ended, she was fired, and in 1996 she sued Mr. Shandling, along with Mr. Grey's company, for sexual harassment and wrongful termination. Mr. Shandling and Ms. Doucett eventually reached a settlement, but last March she told The New York Times that he had warned her that Mr. Grey once considered putting Anthony Pellicano, the private investigator now under federal investigation, on her case.

In the interview Ms. Doucett is teary as she and Mr. Shandling openly discuss their relationship. "It's really perfect for 'Larry Sanders,' " he said, "and perfect for the DVD and, I suppose, perfect for my life that I'm able to have captured the nature of this personal relationship on tape." (He said he would have nothing to say about the Pellicano matter, "until it's finished.")

Perhaps appropriately, the four discs end with Mr. Shandling in idle conversation with a Vietnamese monk, who is seeking to explain the meaning of a particular Buddhist statue.

"So always extend compassion," Mr. Shandling is heard saying to the monk, Hanh Nguyen, who interrupts him to add, "Love and compassion to all sentient beings."

"Even for the enemy," Mr. Shandling adds, sounding like a post-enlightenment Larry.

The monk responds: "Sure. The true enemy is ignorance."

GARRY SHANDLING'S humor always had the neurotic shadings of someone raised a summer weekend's drive from the borscht belt, but he actually grew up in Tucson. His family had moved there from Chicago because the dry climate better suited his older brother, Barry, who suffered from cystic fibrosis.

Barry died when Garry was 10. "I was devastated," Mr. Shandling recalled. "I remember starting to cry in the schoolyard. I didn't quite know how to deal with it. I think there was some damage in that."

His comedic awakening came in his early teens, when he watched "Hot Dog," a children's show that, in this particular episode, featured an appearance by Woody Allen. "Here he is, this kid in Arizona, he's not in New York," Mr. Shandling recalled, "and while being Jewish, he's not at all Jewish in the traditional sense, of a noisy Jewish household. And suddenly he sees Woody Allen, and he relates."

He went on to study electrical engineering at the University of Arizona, but in his junior year he wrote a monologue in the style of George Carlin. As it turned out, he was able to get it to Mr. Carlin, who read it and encouraged him to pursue a career in comedy. After he sold scripts for "Sanford and Son" and "Welcome Back, Kotter," his big break came during a "Tonight" appearance in March 1981, in which Carson told viewers: "His name is Garry Shandling. You'll hear a lot about him."

In his first sitcom, "It's Garry Shandling's Show," Mr. Shandling frequently broke character to address the camera and even walk into the audience. That experience led directly to "Larry Sanders," in which he marshaled everything he had seen backstage in Hollywood to produce, in cinéma vérité style, a scripted half-hour comedy intended to show how people really treat one another when the spotlights are off.

For several years now the creative well that fed those efforts seems to have run dry, and instead of mounting something original, he has been content to retrace old steps. Watching him during this period has been somewhat frustrating to some old friends, who believe he is young enough and creative enough to find fresh ways to entertain people.

Mr. Seinfeld, for example, is among those who have been encouraging Mr. Shandling to go back on the road as a stand-up comedian, with an eye toward bringing his act to television. In a recent phone interview Mr. Seinfeld said he understood his friend's reluctance.

"When you go through this TV thing like he and I did, you make so much, you do so much, you're kind of overfull at the end," he said. "You don't want to write anything. You don't want to read anybody at an audition."

"Someone starts pitching you an idea," he added, "and your head just explodes."

And yet, Jeffrey Tambor said, the same relentlessness Mr. Shandling displayed on "Larry Sanders" was reassuringly evident in his preparation of the DVD. When Mr. Tambor arrived at Mr. Shandling's home for a joint interview with Mr. Torn, he was filmed from the time he left his car, so no moment would be lost.

"He's thrown himself into this like I've never seen," Mr. Tambor said. "Happy go lucky, he ain't. Heels clicking, he ain't. But I think he had enormous pride in that show, and I think that continues."

Told of Mr. Shandling's various attempts to make amends, Mr. Tambor said: "He certainly doesn't owe me an apology. He changed my life."

Nonetheless, by finally putting his "Sanders" experience to bed between the covers of his DVD, Mr. Shandling is hoping that he may finally be able to consider what the next new thing might be. "It certainly didn't start that way," he said, "but there is no question that this became a reflective journey that I'm still absorbing."

One idea he is mulling is working up to a stand-up special, as Mr. Seinfeld and others have urged. Another project would draw from his study of Buddhism and shed further light on "what life is about, what the human condition is about," maybe a series or documentary. He has yet to divine quite what.

"Usually things become clearer as I get closer to the moment of execution," he said. And then, because old habits die hard, he added, "That's not to be confused with Saddam Hussein's execution."

SiliasRuby

You can get full episodes on youtube in three sections. From the very first episode to the later ones, just type into the search Larry01 for the first one, larry02 for the second and so on. You can subscribe to the guy who does them so you can get the new episodes. So, if you guys are interested there you go.
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My Collection

picolas

he finished posting everything the other day.

hedwig

April 17, 2007



apparently the first season is being re-released the same day.  :-D

modage

i'm watching this now and i can't believe i had never seen it before.  i guess it was because i didnt have HBO when i was younger and (as meatwad pointed out above) it's not really rerunning anywhere, but this is an INCREDIBLE SHOW.  the first season takes a few episodes to really get going but i'm most of the way through season 3 now and i will put it with Seinfeld and Arrested Development and Futurama and The Office as one of the best comedies ever.  i've been going crazy watching the episodes from torrents while new ones are downloading so i hope they eventually put out the entire series on DVD.  hank kingsley has got to be one of the best characters ever written.  the line of dialogue that made me jump up and write this....

Hank is having trouble in his marriage.

Hank: Things have not been great in that house for months.  She's been distant.  Cold.  See, at first I just chalked it up to female problems.
Larry: Is she having trouble with her...the, uh...
Hank: No, no, not that.  I mean, on the other hand, how would I know?  I haven't been down there in months, she could've grown a dick over the summer, I wouldn't have a clue.
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squints

So I've been watching this via torrents lately. fucking brilliant. I netflixed the not quite the best of and while i've seen most of the episodes before the bonus features are great. boxing with alec baldwin, him tearing ricky gervais a new one. Hank got a lot of praise in this thread but i think Rip Torn as artie is fucking genius too. Him and all his salty dogs. I guess most of the regulars around here have seen this if you haven't you should check it out. Pubes, have you seen it? Its up there with the wire as some of the best stuff on tv ever.
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Pubrick

Quote from: squints on September 22, 2009, 05:52:49 AM
Pubes, have you seen it? Its up there with the wire as some of the best stuff on tv ever.

i haven't seen it since its original run. i'll queue it up after i've watched Generation Kill.
under the paving stones.

Fernando

Quote from: :P on September 24, 2009, 10:48:24 AM
i haven't seen it since its original run. i'll queue it up after i've watched Generation Kill.

so I take you already watched the wire, right?? if not, you know what to view next.

if you did, you should watch next Breaking Bad, as much as I love Lost and its craziness, this is the best written show on tv right now.