 by Julian Spivey Emmy Award-winning actor, writer and stand-up comedian Garry Shandling died Thursday, March 24 at age 66. Reports are he died of a heart attack. Some people may not realize this, but there was a time when HBO didn’t have these terrific, award-winning original series. That pretty much all started with Garry Shandling and “The Larry Sanders Show” in the early ‘90s, after a four-season stint doing a Showtime original called “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show!” in the ‘80s. I can’t pretend to be a Garry Shandling super-fan as I’ve only seen a quarter of “The Larry Sanders Show” episodes (through a ‘best of’ compilation I found cheap at Big Lots featuring the classic or best episodes as chosen by Shandling) and I’ve never seen an episode of “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show!” or much of his stand-up (though I did record a re-run of Johnny Carson’s “The Tonight Show” recently just because it featured him), but I’ve always admired him, found him funny and most importantly understand his impact on television. If you like anything on a premium television network these days from HBO comedies like “Veep” to even dramas, you owe at least a little bit to Shandling who showed that premium channels just weren’t places to watch the most recent movies or get your late night adult film fix. His shows also influenced irreverent shows with people playing exaggerated versions of themselves like Larry David’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Tina Fey’s “30 Rock” and Ricky Gervais’ “The Office.” Shandling had this perfect anxiety-ridden, confused, about to lose control of his life style of humor that was popular at the time and you’ll see, although maybe not to the extent, from the likes of Jerry Seinfeld and Paul Reiser, others I admire greatly. But, he was also terrifically witty, which is why he was one of my favorite comedians to follow on Twitter – I just retweeted a joke of his that he published six days ago: “If I was Kanye I wouldn’t wait for the GOP convention, I’d go make a deal with Mitt right now.” Two days before that he tweeted: “I hobbled today for the very first time – it was for just a very, hair-split second. But it was a hobble. I’m sure of it.” Just the absurdity of that, mixed with the way you can hear him say it in your head makes it a great representation of Shandling’s humor. “The Larry Sanders Show,” the behind the scenes look at a late night talk show like “The Tonight Show,” which he frequently guested on and guest hosted for Johnny Carson in real-life, was so iconic – specifically his title character – that some people to this day may be unaware that Sanders was a fictional character. Despite being fictional, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to see him along the likes of Carson and David Letterman on lists of greatest talk show hosts ever, in fact Vulture recently ranked him ahead of Jay Leno, Jimmy Fallon, Conan O’Brien, Craig Ferguson and Stephen Colbert. The article written by Rob Tannenbaum and Craig Marks said: “What ‘Spinal Tap’ is to heavy metal, Garry Shandling’s brilliant HBO workplace comedy ‘The Larry Sanders Show’ is to late-night talk. Shandling knew talk shows; after a stint as a sitcom writer, he turned to stand-up, with successful appearances on ‘The Tonight Show’ leading to a gig as one of Johnny’s recurring guest-hosts in the '80s. In 1992, Shandling mined that desk gig to co-create ‘Sanders’ for HBO, lampooning— with deadpan accuracy — the glorious vanities of late night.” “The Larry Sanders” show made TV Guide’s list of the 50 Greatest TV Shows of All-Time and TIME magazine’s list of the 100 greatest ever. As huge of an impact as “The Larry Sanders Show” had on television it’s a shame that the show is not currently available through any streaming service, oddly enough even HBOGO (which has most HBO shows past and present available). A show this important to television and its history really should be more readily available. Shandling’s catchphrase as Sanders when throwing his talk show to commercial break was “No flipping” and he fittingly ended his final episode (which earned him an Emmy for writing) in 1998 by saying, “You may now flip.” Thanks Garry for all your hilarious work, but I’d rather continue watching.
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