It’s Garry Shandling’s New Act Comic Returns to Stand-Up With an Insecure Air of Confidence

If you know anything about Garry Shandling, whose one-hour HBO special simply entitled “Garry Shandling: Stand-Up” premieres this week, then you know that he’s always been a sensitive guy. Maybe a little too sensitive. Anyone whose signature line is “How’s my hair?” is not exactly brimming with self-assurance.

Which is why, almost from the moment he answered the door of his Sherman Oaks home, he was asking, “Did you see the special? What did you think? Was it funny? No, really, you can tell me.”

The special, filmed in late March at Irvine’s Barclay Theatre, is Shandling’s first major project (besides hosting the last two Grammy Awards) since he decided to pull the plug on “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show” a little more than a year ago. That series, which ran for four years on the Showtime cable network (and also on Fox for two seasons), turned the notion of traditional sitcoms upside-down, not only acknowledging that there was a studio audience but often including it in the story lines. It was the ultimate inside joke, a sitcom based on the premise that “we all know this isn’t real.” Critics adored it and both networks wanted it to continue, but Shandling thought the idea had run its course.

“Since I finished my show, I’ve been unclear about exactly what I want to do. And it’s still not clear what my future holds,” Shandling said, taking a seat at his dining room table, cluttered with handwritten notes from stand-up routines of years past. He’d been looking through old material, some from 20 years ago. “But what I was very clear on when I finished my show was that I felt I’d never reached my potential as a stand-up comedian.”

What Shandling decided he wanted was a no-frills special, a comedy palate cleanser, something as far removed from the conceptualized absurdities of “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show” as he could get.

“I really felt invigorated by the idea of going on stage again and not being constrained by a half-hour series, not portraying a character or having to follow a story line,” he said. “And I was pleasantly surprised that when I went on stage I had a new comfortability that allowed me to really just talk as I talk in real life, as opposed to sounding like a comic telling jokes.”

So, late last fall, Garry Shandling, 41, went back on the road, back to the kinds of comedy clubs he’d played in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, before he hit it big, before his frequent guest-host shots on “The Tonight Show” put him in a position to have his own show. He had always hated the road, always been a little uneasy in front of nightclub crowds. But this time, things were different.

“This time out, it was fun,” he said, the thrill still evident in his voice. “I’d always wanted to get to the point where the audience would know me well enough that I didn’t have to fight for a laugh when I first walked out. Because then it allows you to be like a regular person. When you meet somebody for the first time in real life, you don’t normally start with two or three strong jokes. And I don’t like to do that in stand-up either.”

And he didn’t have to. He found he could just tell stories, relax, be himself.

“I didn’t have the luxury to do that before,” he said. “Or the courage.”

Shandling’s newfound conversational confidence is what shapes the “Stand-Up” special. There still are punch lines (“My act, by the way, has been cleared by Israeli censors. That’s why I can’t do any more jokes about my mom”), but the bulk of the show is relaxed and anecdotal, extended tales about how Shandling broke his leg in Hawaii because he was being chased by a bull while he carried a stray dog in his arms. Or how he was taking a tour of the White House when George Bush recognized him and invited him to a state dinner.

“What’s great is that they’re true stories, not contrived situations that you sit down and write jokes about. A lot of that material is stuff that I actually said at the time, just describing things to friends and I logged it in my head and then brought it up on stage. That’s what I’ve always wanted my material to be. I want it to be pure.”

But this was Garry Shandling we’re dealing with, so there was still plenty about the show that concerned him. He worried that he wasn’t really “hot” the night he filmed the show, that he should have filmed it in a smaller, more intimate room. He worried that some people may have heard him talking about the George Bush story on “The Tonight Show” a few months ago. He worried that he forgot to tell two of his favorite jokes about his girlfriend.

“OK, now that we’re done with the interview,” he was saying, walking into his back yard. “What’d you think of the show. Off the record. Did you laugh? No, really. “

“Garry Shandling: Stand-Up” airs Saturday at 11 p.m. on HBO.