The Larry Sanders Show

It's humor for an age when everything we do is recorded and displayed for public consumption, when unscripted moments provide the most tempting opportunities for schadenfreude.

Cringe has infiltrated sitcoms, The Larry Sanders Show, Louis, Hello Ladies, and film.

Napoleon Dynamite, Bridesmaids, every Ben Stiller movie.

It often centers around a character with a total lack of self-awareness or a monstrous ego.

Okay.

Coming in at number five, The Larry Sanders Show.

Gary Shandling.

Isn't that Larry? Well, Larry Sanders was the character.

44 years later.

Where does Larry Sanders fit in there between Ricky Gervais, show The Office, Larry Sanders, and you guys? It's a trifecta.

I have a story about that.

Because I was on Larry Sanders a few times.

David probably was.

Twice.

I approached a genius named Larry David.

So if you have a good idea, go to a genius.

The other thing I was thinking about you, you know what I've started re rewatching that I don't know if you ever watched in the nineties.

Did you ever watch the Larry Sanders show? No.

Oh, my God.

It's so good.

Another way.

Two Larry Sanders references today.

Two specifically Hank references.

Yes, you have the applesauce sign at talk shows.

I, I, I only do these to, to try to see how deep I can get in, in figuring out who someone was, like, to the core.

And in a way, it, it is an extension of what Garry Shandling always talked about at The Larry Sanders Show.

He wanted to, you know, to go to the deepest truth, and really the next deepest truth after fiction is documentary.

And so that's what I'm trying to figure out is, you know, what did these people go through? What wisdom did they get from their lives? How did these, how did these moments affect them emotionally, but also, what did they do with them creatively? You know, the other documentary that, uh, we have coming on Netflix i- in mid-October is, uh, Maria Bamford: Paralyzed by Hope, and we just followed her around for almost three years.

I think everything about trying to get projects made is, like, a trick, right? You're just trying to, like, convince people to let you, you know, make something.

You know, so it's always been that way.

You know, f- from when I first started, how do you get someone to let you make The Ben Stiller Show? How does, how does Chaling convince HBO to make The Larry Sanders Show? So there's, like, the overall business, and then there's just y- the personal, "I have an idea.

Can I figure out what entity would support me in getting this done?" And you, what you look for are people that understand your sense of humor and your point of view, and you have to prove that there's a chance people will make money on it.

So that guy's, uh, one of the OGs.

And a lot of people say Larry Sanders Show and Arrested Development were cringe.

I don't remember cringing as much with those.

Sometimes with Larry because of who he was.