Larry David article in today's Guardian

[butnut]

Here we go:

Curb Your Enthusiasm continues to delight in the foibles of its creator, Larry David. He's rude. He's insensitive. In fact, he may well be the last American hero, says Dan Davies

Saturday October 16, 2004
The Guardian

On the surface there is little to commend Larry David. He'll obsess about his clothes and men who wear thongs on the beach. He'll arrange to play golf with his manager on his wife's birthday, wrongly accuse fellow passengers of stealing his airline tickets and even smuggle the head of a stolen doll down the front of his trousers to appease the daughter of an important television executive. On top of that, he's a compulsive liar worth $600m.

But at a time when the British public finds itself short of genuine American heroes, this balding, disaster-prone, Brooklyn-born neurotic has emerged as the unlikeliest of saviours. Curb Your Enthusiasm, about David's cosseted LA life as the co-creator of Seinfeld, depicts a man at war with the world, yet prepared to own up to his many faults.

In episodes past he has been variously branded a "four-eyed fuck", "a self-hating Jew" and "a pool of wrong", not to mention a misogynist. Gloriously glum, he is a curmudgeon, the bearer of a torch passed on by Woody Allen, Homer Simpson and Hank Hill. He rails against the foibles of polite society while finding a way to insult almost everyone he comes into contact with.

David insists that the Larry David we see in the show is an exaggeration of the real thing - albeit someone he'd enjoy being in real life. On the recent evidence of a public dispute with an architecture magazine that ran a feature on his home in Martha's Vineyard, the divide between the real and fictional Larry is becoming increasingly blurred. He insists he will use the spat as the basis for a new episode.

"The show hugely exaggerates things," insists Jeff Garlin, who plays the repugnant if loyal Jeff Greene, of his famously media-shy colleague. "In real life Larry's a real good guy. I'm about to enter my fifth year working with him. If he was like he is in the show in real life, there's no way I could do that."

If the premise of CYE - Larry's life, Larry's friends, Larry's issues - sounds knowing to the point of self-indulgent, that's because it is. In real life, David is the failed bra salesman turned frustrated stand-up comedian, infamous in comedy circles for walking off stage. He happily admits scouting New York for places to doss if he hit bottom.

After an unproductive year writing for Saturday Night Live he hooked up with old pal Jerry Seinfeld in the late 1980s and together they co-created and wrote the seminal US comedy "about nothing", Seinfeld. You might be forgiven for thinking that the fame and fortune from a global sensation would have cured Larry David of his melancholy, but you would be wrong.

A recurring theme of the show, which starts filming on a fifth series in January 2005, is Larry's fretting about the minutiae of life. He worries about his pants forming a "tent" when he sits down, the heating at his aunt's funeral and whether his friend's grandfather did actually invent the Cobb salad.

When Alan Partridge does this sort of thing it's because he's essentially an empty man with nothing else to occupy him. With Larry David, however, you feel that this rubbish really concerns him. Somehow it's comforting to know that a great home, whopping bank balance and a gorgeous, tolerant younger wife doesn't always add up to an easy life.

Like its comic peers, Seinfeld and The Office, CYE scores with its realism, but unlike both it is unscripted. David prepares an eight-page plot outline and the actors are then required to improvise their dialogue. Multiple takes are filmed on handheld cameras. David and his team of executive editors then piece the best bits together and let the complex plots unfold to a now familiar Italian circus soundtrack. The results are consistently spectacular, compelling you to view unfolding disasters through the gaps in your fingers while tubas fart in the background.

Curb Your Enthusiasm shines an unforgiving light on a vacuous world populated by characters such as Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfus (George and Elaine from Seinfeld), Ted Danson and Rob Reiner, who all play versions of themselves. By season four, which has just finished its run in the States, Martin Scorsese, Ben Stiller, David Schwimmer and Mel Brooks have also joined the fray.

Art is made to imitate life and vice versa. In season two, we find David pitching an idea for a show about an actor who finds it hard to get work because they are so identified with their character from a hit comedy. Spotters will know that Jason Alexander's character in Seinfeld, the stooge George Costanza, is largely based on the real Larry David.

After a petty row with Jason Alexander, Larry takes the idea to Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who loves it. She is keen to pitch the idea to HBO, but her hopes are dashed when first Larry accuses the HBO president of stealing his prawns after a mix-up at the Chinese takeaway and then insults another HBO executive by calling him "a cunt" during a friendly game of poker.

Their last remaining hope of getting a commission is extinguished when Larry traumatises the daughter of a key executive at ABC by cutting the hair off her prize doll. It is this belter of an episode in which Larry and his manager Jeff (alongside wife Cheryl, the only other main character played by an actor) are rumbled in the process of burgling the house of Jeff's estranged wife, played by the brilliantly foul-mouthed Susie Essman.

"I guess I'm a pretty likable guy," says Garlin, asked whether there's any resemblance to his character. "Jeff Greene does some pretty horrible stuff. It would be fair to say that Larry and Jeff's friendship has survived against the odds. There are no lines that cannot be crossed. As you will see in future seasons there are some things that if I pulled them on anybody else, they'd say, 'Get the fuck away from me'."

The genesis of the show could have been lifted from one of David's story outlines. He and Garlin were renting offices in the same Santa Monica block and one day, post Seinfeld, David invited Garlin to lunch. "He was asking me questions about stand-up comedy and I told him that if he wanted to do an HBO special I had the perfect idea," explains Garlin, who had previously produced specials for comedians Denis Leary and Jon Stewart.

The result was the hour-long HBO special, Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm, written by David and first screened in the US in 1999. Essentially a mockumentary about the making of an HBO special, it follows Larry as he prepares to make a comeback in stand-up. Forty shows and 20 hours of classic comedy later, David and Garlin, also an executive producer on Curb, continue to lunch both on screen and off.

Going out on cable (HBO) has undoubtedly allowed David to trespass into areas restricted on mainstream American TV - even to the extent of poking fun at his paymasters. Politically incorrect gags about the disabled, racial minorities and the Holocaust, plus musings on topics as diverse as children getting drunk and incest survivor groups, ensure that the humour is rarely less than reassuringly dark.

David recently wrote an open letter to John Kerry, offering his services as a vice-presidential running mate. In it he suggested "whatever qualities Bush has that people find appealing... I have those same qualities in spades". This from a man who caused a religious war at the baptism of his wife's sister's Jewish fiancée, from someone who Mel Brooks describes in the final episode filmed to date as "a storm that will destroy everything in its path".

Although he might hate me for saying it, I still believe Larry David is a man capable of restoring our faith in America.

· Curb Your Enthusiasm - The Complete Second Series is out on DVD on Monday. Season three is showing on E4

From here. A plug for the DVD really, and no actualy interview with David himself, but still nice to read something about what the fifth series might contain. Anything to promote this series in the UK, where HBO won't let it be broadcast on national television, is welcome (according to the Radio Times).

[Gavin]

Gloriously glum, he is a curmudgeon, the bearer of a torch passed on by Woody Allen, Homer Simpson and Hank Hill.

Don't be stupid.

Like its comic peers, Seinfeld and The Office, CYE scores with its realism, but unlike both it is unscripted.

Oh yes, Seinfeld's realism, that's what was so good about it.

It is this belter of an episode in which Larry and his manager Jeff (alongside wife Cheryl, the only other main character played by an actor)...

Jeff Garlin is a stand-up, albeit a not very good one.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Jeff Garlin is a stand-up, albeit a not very good one.

This is just hair-splitting anyway, but I think Garlin's played enough roles (over twenty, according to the IMDb, not counting guest appearances on sitcoms and such) that I don't think it's off-base to call him an "actor."

[Several Butchers Aprons]

Love.....

[Rev]

Yeah, I'm with you, his brutal attack on the show itself was frankly disgusting.

[Gavin]

Gavin , why would you even POST in this topic with such fuckin' idiotic comments.....?

CYE is TOP-NOTCH satirical comedy from a stunning stand up comic and a stellar supporting cast , I think what you meant to watch on your TV  was "Sabrina The Teenage Witch".

TW.

You moronic prick, learn to read.  It's the article I  questioned, not the show.

CYE is one of the greatest TV shows I have ever seen. Is that simple enough for your pathetic intellect to compute?

[wheatgod]

oh come on people, dont try to escalate things

(in wheatgod's head- FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!)

[Dark Sky]

Do you have to have seen Seinfeld to fully appreciate Curb Your Enthusiasm?

I haven't seen either, you see, yet am interested.

[butnut]

Do you have to have seen Seinfeld to fully appreciate Curb Your Enthusiasm?

I haven't seen either, you see, yet am interested.

No - I got into Curb first and loved it straight away. It's probably best to start at the beginning and work your way through, but not essential. There are some jokes about Seinfeld here and there and in series 2 he works with some of the actors from it, but you can pick it all up without knowing anything about Seinfeld.

Having fallen in love with CYE, it didn't take me long to fall for Seinfeld. They are similar in the style of their humour, obviously, and Larry David is a hero of mine. Both shows are 2 of the best that I've ever seen.

[Dark Sky]

Cool.  I'll have to check them out!  For no apparent reason I'm leaning more towards Curb, though, you see.  Dunno why.  If anyone thinks that that's morally wrong and that I should see Seinfeld first then speak now, or forever hold your peace.

Or I could just save my money for the Frasier boxsets.  Mmmm...tough world.

[Gavin]

Jeff Garlin is a stand-up, albeit a not very good one.

This is just hair-splitting anyway, but I think Garlin's played enough roles (over twenty, according to the IMDb, not counting guest appearances on sitcoms and such) that I don't think it's off-base to call him an "actor."

The article was saying that an important facet of the show was that nearly all of the "actors" involved are stand-up comedians. I just wished to suggest that that's right, but more right than the author  thinks.

[Several Butchers Aprons]

Byeeee.....

[phantom_power]

Jeff Garlin is a stand-up, albeit a not very good one.

This is just hair-splitting anyway, but I think Garlin's played enough roles (over twenty, according to the IMDb, not counting guest appearances on sitcoms and such) that I don't think it's off-base to call him an "actor."

The article was saying that an important facet of the show was that nearly all of the "actors" involved are stand-up comedians. I just wished to suggest that that's right, but more right than the author  thinks.

i thought the point was that most of the other people on the show play themselves, or versions of themselves, but his wife and manager are fictional creations played by actors, or at least by people acting