Gary Shandling: Comic genius, or giant asshole?

[madtapes]

Has anyone else been watching these "Ricky Gervais Meets..." specials? If not, the gist is that Ricky Gervais goes to America to interview some of his comedy idols. The last one I watched was "Ricky Gervais Meets Gary Shandling". The only thing I could think afterwards was "wow, what an asshole the Shandling turned out to be". The guy is seriously about as big of an asshole as I would think someone could be in this type of situation.

If anyone hasn't seen it here are some helpful links:

Full Episode via Rapidshare: http://rapidshare.com/files/12986825/Ri ... ling_2.avi

Episode Highlites via Youtube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=LljWm8umGIE


So my question is this: Is anyone here familiar enough with Shandlings body of work to determine if the whole thing is a big ruse, or if Shandling is really a giant ass? I understand that it was Shandlings schtick on the Gary Shandling show to behave like a twat, but I would have thought that if it was an act there would be at least one point in this interview where Shandling isn't behaving like a knob.

Also, whats the deal with Shandlings face? Yikes.

[Icesickle]

Shandling's that dude, lol.

"Make sure you cut so you look like you won."

[Philaflava]

Larry Sanders was one of the greatest shows on tv in the 90's.

As for his face, he's an old jew what did you expect Paul Newman (1/2 jewish)?

[Career Over Like Mike(NJJ)]

Gervais is such a lickspittle.

Shandling is obviously playing up to his image and in character to an extent for most of the interview but i'm sure he is a complete prick.

..which is hardly a bad thing.

[rainmaker]

yeah I just watched these recently...the Shandling one was uncomfortable pretty much the whole interview...The only time Shandling acted normal when he got to talk about himself and his work...Such a big difference in how gervais got along with Larry David...

[Philaflava]

Are these on DVD?

What station do these interviews air?

[rainmaker]

I found them on dailymotion.com, the site with all the office episodes...type in: "ricky gervais meets" in the search function and the Shandling and Larry David episodes will come up...don't know if he's done any other interviews....

[Lester Maddox]

also Ricky Gervais meets Christopher Guest. link below -

http://bigscreenlittlescreen.net/2007/0 ... her-guest/