IS IT GARRY ... OR IS IT LARRY? : SHANDLING THRIVES IN BLURRED REALITY OF HBO'S `THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW'.

Byline: Ilene Rosenzweig The New York Times

Backstage on the set of ``The Larry Sanders Show,'' the award-winning HBO sitcom that exposes the inner workings of a late-night talk show, Garry Shandling, the show's creator and star, was being a perfectly gracious host. Until he suddenly threw out his guest, a visiting journalist.

Earlier, Shandling seemed to be the antithesis of the neurotic talk-show host he portrays. Wearing sweat pants and unlaced work boots, he offered his guest bites of his frozen yogurt and pointed out that he would soon have to go ``punch up'' a bit of dialogue for a scene with Rip Torn, who plays Artie, Sanders' producer, and with the visiting Ellen DeGeneres.

But once rehearsals were over, and Shandling was costumed in the double-breasted suit that is Larry's uniform, a transformation began.

Shandling, who is also a writer and the executive producer for the show, which just started its fifth season after an absence of a year, darted out from behind the camera to act in scenes, huddled with technicians and got steadily edgier. Every time he passed the journalist, he rolled his eyes and let out an irritated grunt.

Finally, he turned to her with a frighteningly telegenic grin. ``I'm sorry, but you're going to have to leave now,'' he said. ``I wish you could stay the whole time. I'll walk you out.'' Then, with the chilling schmooziness of a host breaking for a commercial, he escorted her to the door.

Had he changed from Garry to Larry, or from Larry to Garry? Is there no difference? That is the mystery that is central to ``The Larry Sanders Show,'' and it is in this elastic environment that Shandling thrives.

In his show, he creates a searing portrait of the entertainment industry as a hornet's nest of narcissism and superficiality, but his talent for exposing the human vulnerabilities beneath even the most obnoxious celebrity behavior mitigate his sting. As a result, he has emerged as Hollywood's foremost inside outsider.

He has won not only critical acclaim and a devoted audience but also the recognition of the industry he mocks and the adoration of the stars whose world he lampoons.

``He's a comic genius,'' said Sharon Stone, an old friend of Shandling's who has appeared on the show. ``The fact that he's willing to get in the face of the Hollywood community and tell the truth is why we all want to be a part of it.''

Through and through, Shandling, 47, is a creature of paradox. In 1990, he declined a $20 million offer from NBC for his own late-night show, opting instead to create an imaginary one for cable, where he would be free to spoof the travails of a host beset by the pressures that he had avoided.

While Larry Sanders' show is in danger of cancellation, Garry Shandling's show, which is broadcast at 10 on Wednesday nights, enjoys consistently good ratings and has won a Peabody Award and 15 Emmy nominations (Torn recently won an Emmy for best supporting actor in a comedy).

While Larry Sanders struggles to book A-list guests, Shandling can engage in celebrity cream-skimming because his show has the cachet of a nightclub of the moment.

Stone is not the only person in Hollywood who praises Shandling, in part for providing a forum to acknowledge the absurdities of show business. ``Everybody I know wants to be on the show; it's kind of an honor to be picked,'' says Julianna Margulies, a star of the NBC drama ``ER,'' who appeared on an episode in which she helped nurse Larry after he had cosmetic surgery on his eyes. ``In any other world, that doesn't happen - men at 45 getting their eyes done,'' she said. ``But men in Hollywood do, and women my age, 29, do too.''

``The Larry Sanders Show'' is virtually alone today in being a sitcom that is touted as ``real.'' Genuine stars are guests (Sting and Sally Field were on last Wednesday's episode), and they satirize themselves through scripted dialogue as the talk show within the show is taped before a live studio audience.

Shandling spent years as a substitute for Johnny Carson, and he mines his network experience to create the show's dark, fictional behind-the-scene dramas, which have to do with booking problems, nervous guests and unctuous executives.

One of the few criticisms of ``The Larry Sanders Show'' is that it appears erratically. Working away from prime time has provided Shandling with undeniable benefits: few restrictions on content or language and the luxury of making only 13 episodes a year (a network sitcom generally produces 22).

The show's fourth season ended in November 1995. Then Shandling took time off to write a book, ``Confessions of a Late-Night Talk-Show Host: The Autobiography of Larry Sanders,'' which will appear in March, and a screenplay.

Given this schedule, Shandling could be expected to start this season looking fresh and well-rested. Instead, a few days after the taping of the DeGeneres episode, he showed up for an interview exhausted to the point of illness. Bundled in a chenille turtleneck, he swallowed a fistful of over-the-counter pain relievers and wondered whether the series was really ``doable.''

The pressure is largely self-induced, Shandling admitted. If his show is difficult to produce, it is primarily because he sets his goals very high. Perhaps the chief reason he is so loved by his peers is that he works hard to show that Hollywood players have souls, if tormented ones, beneath the showy surfaces.

He also has an aversion to formula, which he developed at the age of 25 when he quit writing for sitcoms like ``Welcome Back, Kotter'' and ``Sanford and Son.''

``Just getting laughs or just entertaining results would be unfulfilling for me,'' he said. ``I'm using talk shows as a metaphor for the duplicitous behavior that we all have in our lives. Because everybody has a curtain in their lives that they walk through and suddenly they act like a different person, whether it's at their job or in a relationship, or shopping for a car.''

Often that raw kind of characterization isn't found in the script. Shandling appreciates the sort of old-fashioned improvisation that characterized shows like ``The Honeymooners'' and ``The Carol Burnett Show.'' Actors vie to appear on his show because it's an opportunity to perform in a place where invention is still welcome.

In one episode, Burnett, appearing as one of Larry's guests, was feeling hostile toward him for abandoning a Tarzan sketch that she had planned. During a break in the interview, an awkward silence was suddenly broken when Burnett lashed out at Larry, telling him that his testicles had been hanging out of his Tarzan costume.

``I threw that in in rehearsal, and they went with it,'' Burnett recalls. ``It was a golden opportunity to say something naughty on cable. I miss that kind of liveness and spontaneity, which translates into danger.''

The show also can be dangerous because Shandling uses as material his actual relationships with the guests. Stone, for example, is one of many friends whom Shandling has booked, giving the show yet another layer of inside-the-freeway humor.

In one episode, Stone and Larry were romantically involved, but he couldn't handle dating someone more famous than he. This situation parodied, and inverted, a real-life friendship that dates to when Shandling and Stone studied with the same acting teacher.

``There was a competition between us, and for so long he was so much more successful than I was,'' Stone said.

Part of the appeal of appearing on ``The Larry Sanders Show,'' though, is that Shandling makes his guests feel comfortable. While the invitation list is limited to people ``with the ability to laugh at themselves,'' he says, he gets rid of any lines that make a guest uneasy.

His comic skewer is sharpest when it is turned on himself. On this season's premiere, Jon Stewart appeared as a guest host, and Larry, worried that he would be replaced, sabotaged Stewart's moment by providing second-tier guests like Zsa Zsa Gabor.

It's depressing to see somebody satirize so beautifully what you did for a living,'' said Stewart, who guest-hosts on Tom Snyder's ``Late Late Show'' and has done short stints as a host for MTV and syndicated talk shows. ``It's like somebody had a security camera. They base everything on reality. That's why it's so effective. They capture the unbelievable dichotomy of wanting to entertain people and the incredible self-involvement.''

In real life, Stewart recently signed a production deal with David Letterman's company Worldwide Pants. He is deliberating whether to develop a talk show or a sitcom. When asked if he would consider the alternative that Shandling did, however, Stewart demurred. ``Garry's an artist,'' he said. ``I'm a businessman.''

Indeed, if there is an essential indictment at the heart of Shandling's satire, it is that television comedy cannot be produced like parts on an assembly line.

``In its simplest and most dysfunctional form, late-night television and most television has become more about ratings than content,'' said Shandling. ``That always existed to some degree, but I think something's gone awry in a society in which each member believes that money and success is more important than content.''

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3 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) It's still Garry Shandling's show

But are the lines blurring between the comic and his TV personality?

(2) ``I'm using talk shows as a metaphor for the duplicitous behavior that we all have in our lives,'' says Garry Shandling, right, with his ``Sanders'' sidekick, Jeffrey Tambor.

(3) Garry Shandling is joined by Sally Field for a scene in ``The Larry Sanders Show,'' on which celebrities often appear as themselves.