Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Garry Shandling" in English language version.
This story originally ran in The Times on April 15, 2007, just before the DVD release of Shandling's seminal comedy series "The Larry Sanders Show.".... His interest in Zen certainly must have primed him for Roy London, the acting teacher who received a "special thanks" credit on every episode of "The Larry Sanders Show" and whom Shandling calls "the most important man ever in my life." "A lot of questions I had about life and about art and psychology he had answers to. And he was guiding people in that class to eliminate everything but their essence and just be, so you're working on life and acting at the same time." It's possibly too much to say that there would have been no "Larry Sanders Show" without London's influence -- though while he was alive he read all the scripts and directed at least one episode -- but it would have been a different animal, not as layered, probably, or as determinedly real. On the DVD, one cast member after another testifies to Shandling's insistence on eliminating the "acting" from the "being" and to his having changed their work, careers and even lives.
Sharon Stone spoke of Shandling as family. "It strikes me that our family, wherever we find them, and whenever we lose them, seem to disappear with the same magical wonder that they arrive. Garry, my many things, will always be my family. His openness, and joy, his brilliance and tenderness coupled with a weird self knowledge and a respect for the peculiarities of our humanity made him a wonder to me. We met through our acting teacher Roy London who ultimately became a surrogate parent to us both," Stone said in a statement to Rolling Stone. "Roy understood immediately the astonishing talent which Garry possessed and helped him harness that into his own very powerful voice. "Garry was unafraid almost to a point of naïveté, combined with an intelligence that was off the charts, he simply said what came to mind in the best, simplest and most hilarious of ways," Stone continued. "Some of our best times were driving around talking about what we saw out the window. We would laugh until we were in tears and then half of it would end up on the Tonight Show. Sometimes he would tell me things through his jokes in the monologue; his way of handling his shyness. Right now, I can't think of anything sweeter."
