Garry Shandling

Comedy and boxing don't seem to be an obvious couple. For instance, there's nothing too funny about what Mexico's star Saul “Canelo” Alvarez plans to do to Josesito Lopez on Sept. 15 in their world super-welterweight title fight in Las Vegas. Yet, as Alvarez sweated his way through a workout Wednesday in Santa Monica, he could glance over to the gym's co-owner, comedian Garry Shandling. Shandling has owned the cozy facility, TSB 44, for more than two years with director Peter Berg (“Friday Night Lights,” “On Freddie Roach”)

Comedy and boxing don't seem to be an obvious couple. For instance, there's nothing too funny about what Mexico's star Saul “Canelo” Alvarez plans to do to Josesito Lopez on Sept. 15 in their world super-welterweight title fight in Las Vegas. Yet, as Alvarez sweated his way through a workout Wednesday in Santa Monica, he could glance over to the gym's co-owner, comedian Garry Shandling. Shandling has owned the cozy facility, TSB 44, for more than two years with director Peter Berg (“Friday Night Lights,” “On Freddie Roach”)

Newspaper and magazine clippings--the latest dispatches from the talk-show wars--plaster the bulletin board behind the desk in Garry Shandling's Studio City office. It's a wall full of news from the front: Letterman going to CBS; Leno keeping his job; Arsenio kicking himself; there's Whoopi in trouble; Chevy getting ready; Dennis Miller dead and gone.

Comedian George Carlin may not have been one for frothy, sentimental displays, but Southern California will be honoring his 75th birthday (which would have been May 12), nonetheless; his daughter, Kelly, is leading the charge. Kelly Carlin's one-woman show, "A Carlin Home Companion," has been selling out at the Santa Monica Playhouse for months, weaving together intimate family photos, video footage of George Carlin performing and personal stories in what's something of a tragicomedy, chronicling what it was like growing up, an only child, in the loving but dysfunctional Carlin home.

Reports of the death of Garry Shandling's character on the final "It's Garry Shandling's Show" are premature. The last show's theme is death--Shandling's, specifically. And though the lead character is killed off, in the tradition of television series endings, there is a surprise. In its inevitable style, "It's Garry Shandling's Show" ends with Shandling talking right to viewers at home. "People always say, 'Is it your show or is it your life?' " Shandling says to the camera.

NBC executives are negotiating with Garry Shandling to succeed David Letterman on the network, according to sources. Shandling has been praised by TV critics for his wickedly humorous take on the TV talk-show world on "The Larry Sanders Show," an HBO comedy series on which Shandling plays a late-night host. Shandling is said to be the choice of NBC entertainment president Warren Littlefield to fill in the now-blank name at the end of NBC's "Late Night With. . .

"It's Garry Shandling's Show," which became a hit on cable television after being rejected by the three major networks, is going to make it to a commercial network after all. Fox Broadcasting said Tuesday it plans to add the critically acclaimed comedy series to its Sunday-night lineup in March. At the same time, however, Fox is giving up on its home-grown late-night series, "The Wilton North Report."

The 1982 debut of David Letterman's late-night show, which was variously termed "anti-television" and "guerrilla television," was our first signal that the entertainment talk-show format was becoming played out. But nobody else picked up on it.

Psssst. . . . Don't tell anyone you heard it from us, but Garry Shandling will be dropping into the Ice House in Pasadena this week to try out some new material for a possible coming concert tour. It's all very hush-hush. (The word is, the shy guy hasn't even told his mother yet.) Shandling, a 40-year-old, "insecure" comedian, starred in his own series--"It's Garry Shandling's Show," what else?--which aired on Showtime in 1986 and was picked up by the Fox network in 1988.

Garry's condo. Garry's friends and family. Garry's sputtering love life. Garry's hair. The quirky but comfortable little universe that was "It's Garry Shandling's Show" came to an end in April. Now, Garry is back on the comedy stage for the first time in more than four years, going back to his stand-up roots as he decides what to do next. "I was grateful the show ran for four years, but it was all-consuming," Shandling says now. "I feel better not having to devote my life to the show."

All 89 episodes of "The Larry Sanders Show," Garry Shandling's influential situation comedy about a needy talk show host and the people who need him in turn, have just become available on home video for the first time. In a world in which the entire runs of "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. " and "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" may be purchased whole, this finally remedies a great cultural injustice. "I was asking everybody to go beyond what was TV comedy at that time," Shandling said recently of his cast and crew.

Garry Shandling, the comedian, has co-created and starred in two television shows over the course of his career. Each played with the conceptual physics of the medium itself, and skipped back and forth across the dotted line that divides the actual from the fictional. Each featured Shandling as a comedian somewhat less successful than himself, if possibly no less insecure. And each was born in premium cable and helped establish it as a venue for quality work long before Tony Soprano first decided to see a psychiatrist.

Bespectacled buddies 3. Seth Rogen, center, and Jonah Hill sweetly posed with Judd Apatow on Monday at the Paley Center for Media's 25th annual festival, honoring their "Superbad" director. But as would be expected, once they piled into the ArcLight Cinemas, things took a racy turn. Perhaps a raspy Hill, fresh off his "Saturday Night Live" hosting gig, and Rogen would have toned down their on-set stories had they known the honoree's mother and grandmother showed up! The two-hour laughfest also included Garry Shandling, who gave Apatow his first writing gig; Tom Arnold; and a relatively restrained Andy Dick, who brought his son.

Editor's note: Rachel Abramowitz will be periodically checking in on the trial of Anthony Pellicano -- former private eye to the stars, who faces 110 counts of racketeering, wiretapping, conspiracy and other federal charges -- and writing about what the case means to Hollywood. -- David Chase, have you checked your contracts? Any big name talent who heard Garry Shandling's testimony last week might feel an urge to rush to his lawyer's office. For the Hollywood-obsessed, the bombshell was Shandling's casually dropped assertion that during the 18 years he spent with his former manager Brad Grey -- who also represented "Soprano's" creator Chase and is now the chairman of Paramount -- someone had forged his name on a number of his contracts.

Comedian Garry Shandling offered a somber and sometimes pained account Thursday of a "smear campaign" he said Anthony Pellicano orchestrated against him while the private eye was working for Paramount Pictures executive Brad Grey and entertainment attorney Bert Fields.

WE could begin with the Zen "emptiness circle" tattooed on the back of his neck. Or start by setting the scene: "It's a pleasant spring afternoon on the calm and verdant grounds of the Hotel Bel-Air; swans glide thoughtlessly across a still pond."

If you know anything about Garry Shandling, whose one-hour HBO special simply entitled "Garry Shandling: Stand-Up" premieres this week, then you know that he's always been a sensitive guy. Maybe a little too sensitive. Anyone whose signature line is "How's my hair?" is not exactly brimming with self-assurance. Which is why, almost from the moment he answered the door of his Sherman Oaks home, he was asking, "Did you see the special? What did you think? Was it funny? No, really, you can tell me."

Hoping to boost ratings for its signature event, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences has chosen comic Garry Shandling to be the sole host of the 56th annual Primetime Emmy Awards, which will be presented Sept. 19 on ABC. Critics complained that last year's Emmy telecast on Fox was a disjointed affair, in large part because the single-host format was abandoned in favor of 11 different hosts, including Shandling. The Emmy broadcast is rotated each year among the four major networks.

I am an avid viewer of the Emmy Awards show and have been for many years. It always gives me great pleasure to sit and applaud or be disappointed because my favorite didn't win. I just have to say that I think the choice of host was abominable. Garry Shandling was a disgrace and took up too much time, not allowing the people who were the stars of the program to have their just rewards. They were rushed, and that is unacceptable. I was very offended by some of Shandling's remarks, which were totally unnecessary, and found that if I had to watch one more commercial I was going to be ill. This was by far the worst program I have seen in recent years.