Garry Shandling
The Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series is the single clearest marker of formal recognition in Garry Shandling's career — an honor that acknowledged his work as a writer on a comedy series for television.
Shandling was born on November 29, 1949, in Chicago. He attended Palo Verde High Magnet School and went on to study at the University of Arizona. From there he built a career that ran across several disciplines at once, working as an actor, comedian, writer, director, and producer in both film and television. He was also a voice actor, a screenwriter, and a television producer and director, moving between performing in front of a camera and shaping projects from behind it. That breadth — writing, directing, producing, and performing — meant he rarely occupied just one role on a project, and his Emmy win for writing on a comedy series reflected how central the work on the page was to what he did professionally.
His work spanned television and film alike. As a film actor, film director, and film producer, he carried the same multi-role approach from television into other parts of the industry. He worked in the English language throughout his career and was a citizen of the United States. Whether performing or producing, he operated across the full range of creative and logistical responsibilities that a project could involve.
Shandling died in Los Angeles on March 24, 2016. The Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series, which he received during his career, stands as a concrete point of reference for the writing work he did in television comedy — a recognition that came to someone who had also spent years directing, producing, and performing, and who had first come up through education at Palo Verde High Magnet School and the University of Arizona before making his way in the entertainment industry.
Quotes by Garry Shandling
Garry Shandling's insights on:
To be thrown onto the stand-up stage is an experience that you cannot fathom until you're actually there, because there's no place to go, and everyone is looking at you and you can't even see them because of the lights. And yet you have to manage to start talking and be funny on top of it.
My second or third year in the engineering department, I got very frustrated, and I sat down with myself and had a soul-searching conversation with myself and said, 'What I'd really like to do is see if I can write comedy.' ... I moved to L.A. stone cold. Didn't know anybody; didn't know how to go about it. Really started from scratch.
I had no idea who I was when I started. I was frightened to death and had no natural performing skills.
The art of boxing is seeing spaces and being able to take shots. The hitting and being hit have to become one. Your reactions have to be so in the moment. There's no time to think.
There's a good chance that if you're talking to me when I'm snoring, it means I'm bored.
I have this very abstract idea in my head. I wouldn't even want to call it stand-up, because stand-up conjures in one's mind a comedian with a microphone standing onstage under a spotlight telling jokes to an audience. The direction I'm going in is eventually, you won't know if it's a joke or not.
That's what we were exploring on 'Larry Sanders' - the human qualities that have brought us to where we are now in the world: the addiction to needing more and wanting more and talking more. We were examining the labels put on success - is it successful to be on TV every day, to be famous, to have a paycheck?
I started boxing for exercise, and on the very first day, the trainer got in the ring with me and said, 'Whoever controls the breathing in the ring controls the fight.' I immediately passed out.