Hacker Cinema
The Larry Sanders Show
1992 · TV series · 30 min episodes · 6 seasons
Created by Garry Shandling, Dennis Klein
Comic Garry Shandling draws upon his own talk show experiences to create the character of Larry Sanders, a paranoid, insecure host of a late night talk show. Larry, along with his obsequious TV sidekick Hank Kingsley and his fiercely protective producer Artie, allows Garry Shandling and his talented writers to look behind the scenes and to show us a convincing slice of behind the camera life.
5 positive1 neutralfrom 6 commenters
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6 comments on Hacker News
His primary dislike for cable television was the amount of "garbage" it offered, while seemingly ignoring that Netflix also has plenty, if not more.
> But it doesn't matter... they're all available at once
I'm sorry but streaming everything is not a panacea. The spigot of worthwhile content is not endless. Ok great you binge-watched the entire season of Stranger Things over two nights. What will you watch tomorrow? And the day after? How much of the show do you actually remember? You lose out on the fun of discussing each individual episode with like-minded people, the wondering about how the next episode will resolve the last episodes drama, maybe watching an episode a second time and catching some additional detail.
I can assure you that watching great television - Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Larry Sanders Show, Homicide: Life on the Street - one episode per week is vastly superior to binge-watching it, even if it feels inconvenient in the moment. (Of course this is with the convenience of DVR so you can time-shift occasionally)
>Artists enjoy doing their art, whether it's writing, reading out loud, playing music.
I guess this is probably generally true. It's really not always true, though. Neil Gaiman told an anecdote on his blog about knowing some writers who hate writing and are miserable.
The fictional TV show The Larry Sanders Show does a good job of finding comedy in the misery of showbusiness: the main character is a neurotic talk show host who is desperate for top rating, jealous of his rivals, and gets no joy from the process of making a hit tv show. I'm not saying most stars are like that, but there's probably some truth there.
I had completely stopped downloading movies in 2018, and even for that year, I downloaded very few. I had been tapering off since 2015. These are real numbers from my NAS. I got a seedbox 2 months ago. This was my last straw: trying to rent some movie on Amazon and was told I had to subscribe to some service to watch it--there was no price to watch it once.
The other things I did recently: 1) paused Google YTTV because NBA season was over 2) canceled Netflix because I never watch it
I've been watching content (some of it very old, like The Larry Sanders Show) on HBO Max, but the app on Roku is *SO HORRIBLE* I'd rather pirate content and watch it on PLeX.
The Amazon app/UI is *HORRIBLE*, too. Like multiple seasons are separate items? WTF. I'll download series I have access to on Amazon just to avoid that app.
Why would you choose Borat as the kind of comedy which "isn't allowed to be made today" when you know you're going to have to contrive a reason for the existence of a sequel which was near enough made today in a footnote...?
Most of the points express a disappointment with mainstream Hollywood movies, which if you don't broaden your horizons is eventually going to lead to disappointment for any cinephile.
"The sitcom-and-laugh-track era appears to be over, thank heavens" I would agree about the laugh-track era being over - but thats hardly a new development. I've been watching the Larry Sanders show from the early 90s which was a landmark show without a laughter track. But to say the era of the sitcom is over is nonsense? There are so many great recent ones.
The one thing I agree with is that scrolling through Amazon Prime / Netflix is a draining & dissatisfying experience
Otherwise, I don't know... I've been watching movies at varying frequencies for decades and I certainly don't feel I've come close to even really tapping the surface, don't feel like I can guess immediately where the director will take me & don't feel really constrained by Vonnegut's theory about there only being six types of story.
Well before these even. HBO has been pioneering the edgy, interesting, original content model for television shows since the 80's. 1st and 10, Larry Sanders Show, Oz, Real Sex, America Undercover, Not Necessarily the News, and on and on...
Netflix has obviously run with the idea though. I'd love to see Netflix and HBO merge actually.
The thing that bothers me most about this is I credit HBO for leading the charge with innovative content that as a whole brought TV to a much higher level. They took big chances even when it wasn't profitable to do so.
I've had a serious love affair with the network beginning with Dream On, The Larry Sanders Show, then moving on to Oz (yeah it was a 'male' soap opera I guess :), Sopranos, 6 Feet Under, Deadwood - which I didn't particularly _love_, but highly respected, and most of all The Wire (best thing to ever grace the screen IMO - they lost $$ on it throughout its run)... and then I killed my cable sub and haven't seen anything of their's since.
Now Mad Men and Breaking Bad are my two favorite shows, they're both on AMC, and I can easily purchase each season on iTunes HD for just north of $30. Every episode is available hours after they originally air. I'd pay twice that much.
Of course, the problem is HBO is just too tightly coupled to big cable. They're one of the main attractions, and as such the kickbacks they get are tied to contracts that prevent them from wresting their content to any great degree. Until this model changes, their A content won't see the light of day, and more draconian measures are likely to be put in place to thwart piracy. It's not HBO itself per-see, but HBO as a proxy for big cable; as a defense mechanism to prop up a flailing business model.