There are some off-the-beaten-path things people rave about where you just know it’s primarily because they are off the beaten path. Actually given the opportunity to check them out, you would likely find the lyrics juvenile or the bouillabaisse oversalted.
“The Larry Sanders Show,” available only to HBO subscribers and those who pester them to make tapes, is not one of those things.
Perfectly seasoned, unassailably adult, brooding, base and piercingly funny, it is as good as everybody says it is, perhaps even better. While plot descriptions and joke recitation can suggest the intelligence and wicked wit of this portrait of life backstage at a “Tonight”-style TV talk show, only seeing it can convey how vivid and penetrating it is.
It doesn’t elicit laughs, it wrenches them from you in the harsh recognition of characters-primarily the cunningly neurotic talk-show host, his astonishingly uncomplicated on-air sidekick, and his consiglieri of a producer-behaving true to themselves and to human nature. It gives viewers the credit for comprehending what they see, not only by the absence of a laugh track but by the willingness to let a raised eyebrow do the work that another sitcom would devote two explanatory lines to: “You sure must be mad at the way he dissed you.” “Mad? I’m steaming.”
But it is also rich with the drama of people held together, only and tenuously, by a paycheck and with no small amount of commentary about the medium itself. It had serious competition for the title when it began in 1992 and “The Simpsons” was still at a giddy peak, but now, as it opens its sixth season, “Larry Sanders” is the best show on television, in both senses of the phrase, and it is one of the best shows ever on television.
And it is going away. Probably.
Star and co-creator Garry Shandling says that this season, which starts at 9 p.m. Sunday (the series’ new night), is for sure his last as a performer on the series, which means the last with his title character, the veteran host whose twin obsessions are about size: the size of his ratings and of his posterior.
Shandling does allow there is “the smallest possibility” the series would continue with Jon Stewart–the real-life comedian “Sanders” has set up as the hipper, cheaper youngster the network is hot to move into Larry’s shoes–as the new host.
“It would be an interesting story,” Shandling says. “Just like Jay replacing Johnny there’s a story to be told. But at the moment I would say that’s not likely to happen. But there’s always a chance of that.”
But, Shandling adds, “Larry’s goodbye will be the goodbye show for him, for sure.”
And “Sanders,” with some 90 shows completed at the end of this season’s run of 12, may also live on in syndication, where it is currently being shopped. But with no canned laughter and peppered with language that reflects how people talk, not what we want our kids to hear, the show does not have Shandling sounding optimistic about getting rich in the resale market.
It seems more likely the reruns will end up on another cable network, perhaps for the 1999-2000 season, than on a UHF or VHF station, where the biggest money is.
Stories have circulated that the series had shot alternative, cleaner scripts all along, with an eye toward eventual syndication. But in a recent phone interview, Shandling pooh-poohed–sorry, contradicted–that idea.
“It’s a very funny story,” says the actor and comedian, who had written for “Sanford and Son” and “Welcome Back, Kotter” and was one of Johnny Carson’s heirs apparent before he started making his own shows. “We tried in the first season to tape alternate versions and every time we did the language came out dirtier, because everyone’s attitude here is sort of rebellious. The more we try to force something that is false the more everyone resents it. It was hilarious. So Rip Torn”– who plays Arthur, the salty show producer–“would replace an F word with a C word. And we really had a lot of laughs about that, then we sort of said, `Oh, well, maybe we can just edit around it.’ “
It’s not that Shandling doesn’t care about the business end of it. The best guess is that the show’s irregular production schedule–seasons have started in July and in March– has a lot to do with his trying to wring more money out of HBO, which has used “Sanders,” in the ’90s, to brand the channel as cable’s best source of original programming. The series’ 16 Emmy nominations last season were the most any comedy, network or cable, earned. (It won no awards, leaving the show with one win out of 62 Emmy nods through the years.)
But it is also very clear in that anecdote about the alternative versions that when the staff gets down to making the episodes, creative freedom shoves aside a mercenary concern such as being able to make money years down the road.
And that, Shandling says, is what the legacy of “Larry Sanders” ought to be: “It shows that allowing an artist the creative freedom to do what they want can create good work.”
As far as loftier questions, such as the “Sanders” place in the television pantheon, Shandling says he is too close to it to know. But of the 90 shows, he says, “There are a dozen shows that I’m really proud of, that I think are sensational. There’s probably a dozen shows that I wish we could do over. And then in the middle are some very good shows. That’s why I feel somewhat compelled to move on, because it becomes somewhat duplication after that.”
Knowing that this is the last season, responding to the challenge of finding an end for the Larry character, seems to have put an extra egg in the show’s omelet, however. The overriding question for the new season echoes and reinforces one of the series’ most prominent underlying themes: How much is Larry willing to sacrifice what he thinks is good in order to be popular?
Shandling doesn’t bother trying to keep the plot developments a secret in the interview, but it’ll be much better viewing if you don’t know in advance how it all plays out. Suffice to say that in one episode sidekick Hank Kingsley takes a job on “Caroline in the City” but gets fired because he won’t stop saying “Hey, now,” his Larry Sanders introduction catch phrase.
“Sanders” works not only because you watch it and understand the dozens of lies a show like “Entertainment Tonight” tells nightly in its cheery portrayal of show business. Yes, it is funny in an insider way when the network weasels who are nipping at Sanders tell him in Sunday’s opening episode that he should change the part of his hair and slap hands with the crowd, “like Leno,” to boost the ratings.
But this is funny more because it says something bigger about people. Creators, in the “Sanders” world view, are squashed by managers whose big ideas amount to junk science–a change away from an “indefinite part,” the network guy believes, saved Dan Rather–and outright imitation. Knowledge, wisdom and authority seem mutually exclusive. Money kills art.
When Sanders, who spends the meeting with the network guys thumbing through a magazine in search of models and actresses to book as guests, gets up and leaves during the playing of a “snappier” theme song, one of the executives says, “He just walked out on us.”
“No, he didn’t,” says Arthur.
It is, of course, an unveiled lie, the currency that makes it possible for these people to continue to work together. In an upcoming episode, Phil (Wallace Langham), the show’s writer, leaves because the network wants to pick up his sitcom. He tells Larry and Arthur he is very, very sick. When the deal dies, they say they’ll take him back only if he tells the truth, that he went off to do a pilot.
No, he says, I swear I was sick.
“Works for me,” the two agree.
In the world of “Larry Sanders,” as in life, bad deeds often go unpunished. One grand exception was when Larry made up a drug problem in order to cover for freaking out and running away from the show to Montana, then ended up developing the dependency he had created.
And people are displayed as their essentially base selves: The show’s staffers practice random cruelties on each other, mostly determined, as on the playground, by their place in the pecking order.
Larry is so private and scared of emotion that in the HBO show Web site, when you click on “Up Close and Personal,” it always says “transfer interrupted” (a great inside joke). He takes out much of his aggression on Hank (Jeffrey Tambor), a grand composition in petulance, fragile self-importance and utter lack of self-awareness.
After Hank, in one memorable episode, had slept with Larry’s ex-wife–and then was so stupid and pathetic as to tell him about it–Larry was especially venomous, coming up with one of the all-time great insults.
“Did I say `talentless fat f—‘?” he says to Hank. “I meant, `Sidekick.’ “
Hank in turn, picks on almost everybody he can, even turning on his dedicated and well-meaning gay assistant (Scott Thompson) in Sunday’s season opener. Hank immediately rears up and calls the assistant a “fruit basket” and shoos him from the room when the latter dares suggest that a man who imitates Hank’s catch phrase captures him.
But the show isn’t all darkness. It can achieve a kind of multiply ironic levity, as in the episode where Hank’s status as an orange juice spokesman was threatened when an underground porno tape of him circulated through Hollywood.
What saves him is when the juice executive, a woman probably in her 50s, sees the tape and, at first appalled and concerned for her product’s image, soon becomes transfixed by Hank’s extraordinary masculine attributes. She disappears with him behind a closed door, and the episode ends with someone asking Hank about his juice work with the kicker–this is a paraphrase–“Who did you have to sleep with to get this job?”
The rather venal Larry and Hank are balanced by Arthur, who is the fixer, a producer who harkens back to the days of Gleason, protecting Larry from the bull, as he sees his job, keeping the show functioning and even demonstrating the occasional soft spot behind the profane bravado.
Torn gets the lion’s share of the recognition for acting, and he deserves it, but Tambor and Shandling are brilliant, as well. Notice how much Shandling’s outwardly expressionless face communicates Sunday as he watches the monologue by a guest-hosting Stewart, or the way Tambor makes you understand exactly why Hank so crudely dismisses his assistant.
The best writers and directors in the business guide the show with an expert hand, always underplaying, writing jokes that blossom in the viewer’s mind, cutting from scenes just as they suggest the peak of their meaning. Episodes are crafted: The story lines speak to one another, and there is almost always a great “kicker,” or closing moment, that twists and amplifies what has gone before.
An artful conceit–the “show” moments are on videotape in front of a studio audience, while the backstage ones are on film and without backing soundtrack–adds to the layers of verisimilitude.
Meanwhile, the many big-name celebrities who come on, usually playing themselves as show guests, aren’t just there as credits candy. Larry, in the show’s world, has made fun of Chevy Chase, fretted that David Duchovny had a crush on him, slept with Roseanne and Sharon Stone, though not at once. (Roseanne dumps him for her limo driver, and he can’t handle Stone being so much more famous than him.)
The way Winona Ryder is used in the season opener demonstrates how the series makes its celebrity walk-ons integral to the plot. Larry, who reacts to his ratings crisis and the network’s barely hidden lust for Jon Stewart by turning randy, is trying to figure out how to pick up Ryder. Feigning interest in musical guest Smashmouth at their preshow rehearsal doesn’t seem to work.
Then he comes upon her, in the Green Room, necking with a sheepish Stewart. It is an aching moment, one more sword thrust into the back of the bull. You shouldn’t feel bad that Sanders’ lechery will go unrequited, of course, but the show takes you so thoroughly into his world that you do anyway.
“Larry Sanders” makes you understand not just the tip of the iceberg, that celebrities are insecure, but the whole iceberg, that they are insecure because fame is so ephemeral and there is always a Jon Stewart on the horizon.
Once you start watching “Larry Sanders,” you’ll start finding its real-world equivalents–David Letterman’s “Late Show” and Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show”–excruciating to watch and feeling, mostly, sorry for the hosts.
It seems so painful watching Larry start to lose the show, a pain that is reflected in Artie’s no longer bluff demeanor and Hank’s immediately cozying up to Stewart.
But as you think about it, you realize that the post-talk show Larry Sanders may well end up someplace far saner–someplace like cable television, at the helm of a series that explains his whole talk-show experience, and a little about life besides, and just might be remembered as one of the great achievements of television.
A GOOD SHOW TO COME FROM
`The Larry Sanders Show” has served as quite a talent incubator. It wasn’t always “Sanders” that made the break for these actors and writers, but the following list of some of the more prominent people who have gone on from the show to fame or infamy demonstrates that it is a pretty good line to have on your resume in Hollywood:
Maya Forbes, former writer for “Sanders”; executive producer of NBC’s “The Naked Truth” (and the inspiration for the first name of the Laura San Giacomo character in Levitan’s “Just Shoot Me”).
Megan Gallagher, formerly wife Jeannie on “Sanders”; wife of Frank Black on Fox’s “Millennium.”
Janeane Garofalo, formerly talent booker Paula on “Sanders”; semi-established film star (“The Truth About Cats and Dogs”) and comedian.
Wallace Langham, writer Phil on “Sanders”; also the is-he-gay assistant on NBC’s “Veronica’s Closet” and star of a Nissan commercial.
Larry Levin, former writer for “Sanders”; executive producer of CBS’s defunct “If Not for You.”
Steven Levitan, former writer for “Sanders”; executive producer of NBC’s “Just Shoot Me.”
John Markus, former writer for “Sanders”; executive producer, with Al Franken, of NBC’s “Lateline.”
Jeremy Piven, formerly head writer Jerry on “Sanders”; cousin and roommate Spence on “Ellen.”
Peter Tolan, writer for “Sanders”; executive producer of CBS’s “Style and Substance.”
