Garry Shandling: The Fake-Host With the Most

What a crew: Rip Torn’s producer Artie, Jeffrey Tambor’s sidekick Hank, the then-barely-known Janeane Garofalo as the booker Paula. So many up and comers — Bob Odenkirk, Jeremy Piven, Sarah Silverman, Dave Chappelle — passed through for high-visibility appearances, while future legends like Judd Apatow honed their chops behind the scenes.

The Hollywood windbag playing an exaggerated version of himself has always been a TV staple, from Jack Benny and George Burns to Larry David and Louis C.K. Shandling brought loathsomeness to the character, yet also vulnerability, because there’s a little (or a lot) of Larry in everyone. Larry wasn’t merely a demented egomaniac — he was the kind who was so good at it, he built himself a private world where everybody was a demented egomaniac, so he never had to come in contact with any normals ever, which meant in a sense that he’d found himself a home. The cultural context of Larry Sanders, which ran through 1998, was the Nineties late-night wars of Jay Leno vs. David Letterman vs. Arsenio Hall (vs. eventually Chevy Chase and Magic Johnson and Jon Stewart … there were lots of them). There was an unbelievably sacrosanct bubble of cultural hot air around the idea of the late-night chat-show host as some kind of cultural spokesman. Shandling took care of that.

In 1996 he appeared on the MTV Movie Awards, the year it was co-hosted by Janeane Garofalo, who became a star on The Larry Sanders Show. She introduced him simply with the words from an old song: “How do you thank someone for taking you from crayons to perfume? It isn’t easy, but I’ll try.” It was a genuinely poignant moment. And then Shandling came out and punctured it by presenting the award for Best Sandwich in a Movie. He announced, “I’m a little nervous because I had sex with the turkey club when it auditioned for The Larry Sanders Show.” Garry Shandling, ladies and gentleman. Goodbye to one of the true masters.