Short Takes

TELEVISION

And Now, Heeere's . . . Larry?

The line between real life and TV life gets smudged further in HBO's new comedy series, The Larry Sanders Show. GARRY SHANDLING, a former Tonight guest host, plays the host of a Tonight-style talk show. Each episode begins with Larry's opening monologue, which sounds just like Garry's real monologues, and brings on real-world guests like Carol Burnett. The twist is that we get to peek behind the scenes, where all is phoniness and petty bickering. It's show- biz satire of the dryest, most in-jokish sort but undeniably funny. Shandling and a guest try to schmooze as the closing credits roll. "Just pretend like you're talking to me," he tells her. Fine, Garry, and we'll pretend TV comedy isn't running into a self-referential dead end.

CINEMA

A Novel Seduction

The premise is almost high concept. A young writer (Fabrice Luchini) has just been jilted. A friend proposes that, as a delicious act of revenge on all women, the fellow should choose a prospect (Judith Henry), seduce her, then leave her and write a best seller about his experience. But Christian Vincent's LA DISCRETE is no frivolous American sex comedy; it is French, in the best sense of the word. With breathless poise, the script by Vincent and Jean-Pierre Ronssin juggles cruelty and gaiety, revealing modern man as a ruthless appraiser auditioning women for his imaginary harem. Hollywood wouldn't know what to do with a film so airy, so grave. Poetry is what gets lost in transatlantic remakes.

BOOKS

Angst and Insights

It is 1882 in Vienna, and the fog is nearly as thick as Schlag on the strudels. Friedrich Nietzsche and Dr. Joseph Breuer, an early associate of Freud's, are striking an odd bargain. The physician will try to cure his patient's migraine attacks; the philosopher will treat the doctor's deep- rooted angst. Soon their roles reverse: healer becomes sufferer and, voila!, the psychoanalytic revolution begins. In WHEN NIETZSCHE WEPT (Basic Books; $20), psychiatrist Irvin D. Yalom imagines an encounter between two < real people who never met. The novel is strewn with italic sentences to highlight his characters' head-smacking insights. Still, their relationship carries a certain poignancy as they discover their common roots: delusion and loneliness.

MUSIC

Playing It Straight With Carmen

CARMEN is quintessential opera that virtually performs itself. So irresistible are its melodies, so forceful is the drama, so primal the emotions, that it's hard for even an inept production to miss. Over the years, Bizet's masterpiece has been adapted, updated, mutilated, so it is refreshing that the New York City Opera has a new version (performances till November) that plays it straight. It helps to have a Carmen who dominates the stage, and Sharon Graham, a young American, scores high. With a fluid, supple mezzo, she revels in the gypsy girl's fatal craving for freedom and her dance toward death, but she avoids phony flourish. More will be heard from Graham, starting with a PBS broadcast of Cavalleria Rusticana on Sept. 30.

MUSIC

Doesn't He Shine?

"I ain't California pretty,/ I can't survive the Great White Way," sings WAYLON JENNINGS in Too Dumb for New York City, Too Ugly for L.A., the title cut from his potent new album of barroom sermons. Yet the Last Outlaw of country music will get along somehow. His voice, after four decades of late nights and one-nights, has the moral authority of a man who's found mellow wisdom on hard roads. He tells us, in The Hank Williams Syndrome Is Dead, that it's better to trust an artist's songs than to imitate his misspent life. In Didn't We Shine? he administers balm to all lost loves: "But I've long ago forgiven you/ For what you did or didn't do." With these witty, poignant songs, Jennings proves that the country heart is equidistant from the brain and the gut. Keep on Waylon, old man.