Garry Shandling: Stand Up Comedian... And Shep

August 8, 2023 4:04 PM

Garry Shandling only ever filmed two stand-up specials. Alone In Vegas [50m] was released in 1984 for Showtime and along with his guest hosting on The Tonight Show helped springboard him into his Showtime series It's Garry Shandling's Show [Theme Song]. His second was Stand Up [52m] in 1991, now for HBO, released shortly before his HBO series The Larry Sanders Show [Theme Song] began airing. Please read below:

Being more familiar with his two television series, I was surprised at how much of Shandling's stand-up deals with sexual themes and sexual politics. A lot of it, like much old comedy, may not land that well on the modern ear. The first special especially feels to me to have a lot of problematic moments, although I think the humor still shines through. The second special is an interesting look at the evolution of a comedian toward less troublesome material even from 40 to 30 years ago. Plus, he is comedy legend levels of funny.

posted by hippybear (10 comments total)

There is a ton of sexual comedy in the Larry Sanders show! Love me some Shandling, thank you for this, haven't watched the stand up in a long time.
posted by tiny frying pan at 4:53 PM on August 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

Garry extolling his sexual prowess on a date in Alone in Vegas (at the 38:43 mark):

I’m on the couch.

I’m really gettin’ into it.

And then she comes into the room.

posted by New Frontier at 7:17 PM on August 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

I am incapable of seeing Shandling’s name without a voice in my head singing “This is the theme to Garry’s show / The opening theme to Garry’s show / Garry called me up and asked if I would write a theme song…”

Every time. But it’s cool because we’re almost tothe part where he starts to whistle!
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 8:55 PM on August 8, 2023 [6 favorites]

I am incapable of seeing Garry Shandling’s name without thinking of Mike Watt and fIREHOSE screaming his name over and over. (And also the Garry Shandling Show theme song.)

I’ll check out these links later, when it’s not way past my bedtime. I vaguely recall his stand up special from the HBO of my youth.

GARRY SHANDLING
GARRY SHANDLING
GARRY SHANDLING
posted by slogger at 9:17 PM on August 8, 2023 [3 favorites]

You know, you never saw John Delancey and Gary Shandling in the same room
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 10:32 PM on August 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

And between those two stand-ups he did The Garry Shandling Show: 25th Anniversary Special which confused the heck out of me when I first saw it (we were a Showtime family - the theme song to Brothers is burned into my brain). It was clearly a spoof of talk shows (Mr. Ed talkin' dirty) but for the time they did a good job of making it look like they were using footage from the past. Like the earlier stand-up special, some of the humor is dated (fat jokes, the Kung Fu parody) but I think it's still a fun watch.
posted by LostInUbe at 10:37 PM on August 8, 2023

Ed Solomon (screenwriter of Men in Black and Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure) tells this lovely story about Shandling.
posted by yankeefog at 4:54 AM on August 9, 2023 [10 favorites]

Can’t wait to watch these - he’s always been a favorite of mine and I’m shocked that there are only two shows. I guess I’ve taken all the small performances on late night shows and Larry Sanders monologues and group performances and mentally put them into more long form acts.

My all-time favorite bit of his is one I probably quote a few times a month, because I find it so representative of my own self-absorption (apologies if it’s in one of the specials):
I once dated a girl with flaming red hair. She was on fire. I had to break it off, though, because she kept talking about herself. I’m on fire. Put me out. Call me an ambulance.

If you have a chance to watch the documentary that Judd Apatow made about his journals, it’s well worth it. Every comedian who worked with him talked about how generous he was* - and It’s really ironic how he built a career around being self-centered.

* at least to male comics and Sarah Silverman - he did seem to have some issues with women and I don’t want to turn this into a hagiography just because I love his comedy
posted by Mchelly at 5:13 AM on August 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

Seconding the doc Mchelly recommends. Dude was a laser-focused comedy-making machine. Larry Sanders is still the gold standard by which I measure TV comedy.

And yeah, I'm def checking out those stand-up videos later.
posted by Rykey at 5:59 AM on August 9, 2023

Damnit, I've managed to forget the Garry Shandling Show theme song for almost thirty years and this brought it RIGHT back.
posted by Kyol at 6:09 AM on August 9, 2023