“Sexist.” “Racist.” “Neurotic.” “Anti-Semite.” “Homophobe.”
These are just a few of the kinder tags that have been used to describe unlikely, multi-hyphenate, Hollywood powerhouse Larry David. Not the balding, bespectacled 58-year-old, writer-producer David who pocketed a fortune for co-creating and show-running the wildly popular Seinfeld sitcom (Forbes estimated his eye-popping, take-home pay at $242-million, even before the release of the show’s DVDs). And not this same David, who then went on to concoct another successful–albeit more moderate–series Curb Your Enthusiasm, currently in its fifth season on HBO (Sundays, 10 pm). The abrasive words refer to the curmudgeonly character David plays on CYE: a balding, bespectacled 58-year-old writer-producer who pocketed a fortune for co-creating and show-running the wildly popular Seinf –Whoa! Wait a minute!
Reality (TV) check: Donald Trump is Donald Trump on his cutthroat, corporate inspired hit show The Apprentice; there’s no blurred confusion over his identity. Ditto for Martha Stewart’s fledgling version–no matter how uncomfortable she appears sitting behind that imposing desk, it’s clearly her. Looking in the rear-view mirror, that was definitely bad-boy, rocker Tommy Lee going back to school, fragile Anna Nicole Smith having multiple meltdowns–and clearly those cantankerous Brits were The Osbornes, cursing at one another as the cameras rolled. But the intensely selfish, obdurate and insensitive misanthrope who lands himself into boiling, hot water each week on CYE can’t be the real Larry David, right?
Well, no–and yet maybe? Writer/producer David freely admits that the Seinfeld character who most closely resembled him was second banana George Costanza (played by Jason Alexander), a bald, shiftless, self-involved neurotic whose immediate reaction to his fiancée’s sudden death was to ask actress Marisa Tomei out on a date. With Alexander acting-out the auteur’s sketch of his remotely distant self, at least a comfortable distance existed between writer and actor for the David-inspired character. As for his controversial Curb persona: “At first I didn’t realize it was going to be a character,” David told 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon. “I just thought I was going to be doing me. And eventually, as I started writing it, something emerged that was not quite me, but a version of me.”
When Simon labeled that version “a miserable, selfish, duplicitous, egotistical and neurotic son of a bitch,” David responded, “I would agree with all that, except the son of a bitch part. I think that’s a little harsh. I don’t think he’s doing anything malicious. I think he’s a nice guy–totally nice and sensitive.”
Actually, friends and co-workers, alike, feel that the “nice guy” description, minus the sarcasm, fits the real David as comfortably as his collection of sport shirts. The actress who portrays his wife on the CYE series, Cheryl Hines, recently told the New York Post, “I’ve seen a lot of comedians who, when the camera isn’t rolling, sit in the corner and sulk. But Larry is not that person. We sit around and talk and have a great time.” Jeff Garlin, the actor-comedian who exec produces the series and appears as David’s somewhat self-serving agent added, “He’s not a jokester–I’m the jokester–but he’s a great audience.”
Restless comedian Richard Lewis, who, as well, limns a version of himself on CYE, considers David one of his best friends. The two, born in Brooklyn only three days apart, first met at a sports camp in upstate New York when they were thirteen. It was a case of instant hate, but that early animosity was completely forgotten when they met again twelve years later at the Improv Comedy Club in Manhattan, in the fledgling stages of their respective stand-up careers.
Lewis recalls David’s on-stage appearances as being “brilliant” and “unbelievable,” an admiration shared by other comics. But club-goers did not warm to his routines. The material (including, speculations on how answering machines might have affected life in the Old West, and elaborate rants about petty matters) may have been a little too hip for the room. Or maybe, it was his less-than-humble attitude. In the CYE pilot for the half-hour edgy series, Jerry Seinfeld notes that David referred to his audiences as “you people” which “was a little distancing.”
At the height of his Seinfeld show success, when asked by an interviewer from Laugh Factory Magazine if he missed stand-up, David replied, “I’m really only happy when I’m on stage. I just feed off the energy of the audience. That’s what I’m all about–people and laughter . . . I’d much rather be up on stage talking to a couple of retards for twenty bucks than sitting at my desk thinking up jokes for . . . well, let’s say a few dollars more.”
David entered television via Fridays, an experimental West Coast Saturday Night Live clone, writing and performing with a number of young, talented comedians including Michael Richards, who’d play the future, iconic Kramer character on Seinfeld. When Fridays went on permanent hiatus in 1982, David returned to New York. He spent the 1984–85 season in the writing room of Saturday Night Live, but he didn’t quite fit the vibe of that show; he can recall only one of his skits being performed, and that was near the end of the evening–a spot saved for the show’s weaker material.
[PAGEBREAK]
He remembers being so dismayed at the direction his career was taking that he would stroll Manhattan’s streets looking for a comfortable doorway to inhabit, should he become homeless. Before the worst happened, he met Jerry Seinfeld, a smart, young stand-up who was, then, being romanced by executives from NBC. “On his own, Jerry might have been able to come up with a funny show,” an observant friend of both men states, “Maybe a light comedy like Mad About You. But it was Larry’s hilariously warped outlook that made the series so special.”
It is generally conceded that David was responsible for turning Seinfeld into the legendary ‘show about nothing,’ in which a wonderful performing quartet–Seinfeld, Alexander, Richards and Julia Louis-Dreyfus–was forced to deal with an assortment of hilariously frustrating situations including, famously, a Chinese restaurant where you’re never served, a parking spot you can never find and a soup Nazi whose chilly, officious reception could turn-off an appetite in one ladle’s worth of bisque.
David says that the main thing fueling his creativity was that he “really didn’t give a damn” about whether the show would be a success, or not. He was only interested in doing his best. “When you’re not concerned with succeeding, you can work with complete freedom.”
HBO lets him exercise that freedom to the hilt. The original 1999, hour-long, Curb special, in which he bumbled through a china shop of petty problems and grievances on his way to a return stand-up engagement as a performer, had a fair share of salty language and outré situations. However, it was relatively mild compared to the subsequent series of video verité-like, half-hours that have left no taboo untouched, mining humor from: the Holocaust (David confuses a team member from the Survivor TV series with a concentration camp survivor), incest, oral sex, race, homosexuality and the disabled.
During one jaw-dropping December episode, he mistakes the ornamental, Christmas, nativity-scene pastries that his wife’s family has baked, for “animal cookies,” and then later tries to excuse his devouring of the baby Jesus by objecting, “I thought it was a monkey.” No religious stone is left unturned, as David’s irreverence can offend all. He kicked off this same season by purchasing scalper tickets to a High Holiday service, only to start a lewd, shouting match with Richard Lewis that, ultimately, gets him tossed out of the synagogue, yarmulke askew.
For each provocative episode, David creates a specific, often complex, storyline; but the scenes, within, are not scripted, and are ultimately improvised by the cast. The naturalistic acting and the use of hand-held cameras lend the series a ‘documentary feel’ so effective that some viewers are actually convinced they’re watching reality TV, rather than a mockumentary series. And so, the conundrum begins. Furthermore, with David revisiting the self-reflexive convention employed in Seinfeld (wherein the character plays ‘himself’ sort of), now ratcheted-up a notch to mime the “reality TV” format in CYE, it’s no wonder the show’s hybrid nature causes speculation; the show is intended to blur perspective. Hence, why the confusion began in the first place. Will the real David please stand up? Perhaps this disarray over reality is what keeps the audiences tuning in to HBO on Sundays. Viewers watch and wonder: Is this life imitating art, art imitating life–or in Larry David’s case, is it all one-in-the-same?
