was a show being made as if it was produced in the era of the dig van dyke show. i love you! there was hugging. there was learning. i love you, son. if you work for me, your job was to go home, get in a fight with your wife, and come back in and tell me about it. don t sleep on the couch! i just cleaned down there. in fact the pilot, i put in this true thing that happened to me when i sent my parents a gift for the holidays of the fruit of the month club. did you know you sent me a box of pears from a place called fruit of the month? that s right. how are they? and my mother reacted as if i had sent her a box of heads from a murderer. why did you do this to me? oh, mom. what is happening? what do you think we are, invalids? we can t go out and get our own
now we hit the 90s and once you can go for an audience of 5 million and have a successful show, you can say, i don t care if the parents don t like this. can i tell you something, miss ellen? of course, wendy. don t [ bleep ] with me! what? youeard me. stay away from my man, bitch, or i ll whoop your sorry little ass back to last year! trey parker and matt stone were two of the funniest people i ever met. and their success story is proof that if you just stay true to yourself, you don t have to do anything else. people think, oh, you came and did the show and now you re big sellouts. the truth is, we were sellouts to begin with. perhaps there is no stopping the corporate machine. i mean, we were sleeping at friends houses, had no money, and then one fox executive had seen a cartoon we had made in college and he said, make me another christmas video i can send out as a christmas card. he gave us like 700 bucks.
out. the larry sanders show was unique in that it was really dead pan and ground breaking in its way. i think it really made people go, that s level of work you may be able to do on a cable network. oz comes on in 97, and it s set in this fictional penitentiary. wow, what a strange show that was. in oz, sometimes the things you can t touch are more real than the things you can. for instance, fear, hatred, loneliness. are more real to me than a shank. and a soul. it was jaw-droppingly violent. it s a men s prison. it probably should be. but, you know, it kind of announces the idea that hbo s going to get very serious about
larry sanders, that is. he s the alter ego of gary shandling. he wanted to do a show that deconstructed the kind of show the tonight show was. just after 10:00, like you re talking to me so it won t seem weird. blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. it was sort cathartic. because, in the world of the larry sanders show, there was a network. you want me to [ bleep ] with your budget? is that what you want me to do? so it became this weird fun house mirror thing where can you use stuff from your career, from your misery as fodder. don t take this as a threat, but i killed a man like you in korea, hand to hand. my boy doesn t want to do anymore commercials. larry sanders was, aside from being a brilliant television show. can you say hey, now. hey, now! it was my every day life. i m here for three good reasons. last show, big movie coming
because it was almost like you weren t around. it was filthy! the language was disgusting! i loved it. he ll have such a time, such fun, such oh, you ll i have to warn you, though, there s a street down there in rome where it just isn t safe for a woman. where? where? where? where? when you get to your show of shows, that s a very famous writer s room, and you had two women who worked at separate times, the first with lucille callen and the second was selma diamond. it s always great to have the women s viewpoint and who better than woman to say, women will laugh at that. so when i put together the characters for the van dyke show, i said, we need the women s viewpoint. and when i told my agent, he immediately said rose marie. it s a beautiful piece of writing, but if he doesn t get a laugh every ten seconds, he calls the cops and has the audience arrested. rose marie on the dick van