The passing of the late Garry Shandling, who died on Thursday at the age of 66, has left me wandering through YouTube looking for clips that capture how funny, but also how profoundly influential Shandling has been in the comic direction of the past 30 years.
Shandling made his first appearance on The Tonight Show in 1981 and considered Johnny Carson a mentor, but he was a favorite guest to anybody who ever sat behind a late-night desk. This clip from Late Night is a reminder of why I always associated Shandling’s wry, often ironic, often needy and neurotic style with Letterman:
