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  On the show the two seem like competitors as much as friends and are more often in conflict than not — over Richard’s latest girlfriend (whom he invariably believes to be “the one”), a piece of jewelry they both want to buy, or a perceived insult. Their voices grow loud and sometimes they even scuffle, although nothing divides them for long. When they’re together their teenage selves re-emerge. Over time in the series, Richard shows himself to be part of the inner circle to which Larry too belongs. They go to the same parties, the same openings, even the same synagogues and funerals. Richard is not always a part of an episode’s main story, but an adjunct to it.

  SUSIE GREENE

  Last of the regular company of characters is Susie Greene, Jeff’s wife. If Cheryl doesn’t like Jeff (at least in the first season), Susie likes Larry even less. Although Susie Essman, who plays Susie Greene, doesn’t get as much airtime as the other stars, she’s like the spice in the dish, giving it that extra flavor.

  Susie Essman grew up middle-class Jewish in Mount Vernon, New York, and unlike the other stars hasn’t moved to Los Angeles. “It’s so fucking boring,” she said, sounding like her character. “Constant sunshine. I want to kill myself.”

  She always knew that she wanted to be a comic actor, but took an urban studies degree. Waitressing to pay the rent, she finally walked on at an open mike at Mostly Magic, a club in Greenwich Village. Her career grew from there. Although she had a few minor movie roles, Essman continued to work primarily in stand-up. She found one advantage in being female: men rarely heckled her. On the other hand, they were harder to win over. “The reason . . . is because humor is power and funny women scare the shit out of men.”

  Improvisation was an essential part of her show; when she got up onstage, like Garlin, she only had a general idea of how the evening might go. “I want to make my show a real, live experience, so that what’s happening in this immediate moment is never going to happen again.” She was working the clubs back in Larry’s day and saw him perform. “All the other comedians were cracking up at the back,” she remembered, “but it was way over the audience’s head.”

  Larry David was looking for an actress who could use foul language like she meant it, something Susie Essman was known for in her act. (Her hero was the late Richard Pryor.) One night he was flipping channels and caught her doing a Friars Club roast for Jerry Stiller, who played George’s father on Seinfeld. Instantly he knew she was the one. He called her on the phone and offered her the part. She asked what it was and he said not to worry, she could do it. She asked if she could read a script. “There’s no script,” Larry said.

  Essman got on set, saw her home, and made some quick decisions about her character. “I took one look and said this is a Beverly Hills housewife whose husband is in the business. She gets her hair blown out three times a week, gets every kind of facial. She wears lots of animal prints. . . . She just reacts without any kind of censor. Everything is an indignity, and she is absolutely sure of herself in every single response.”

  It was Essman who brought the idea of disliking Larry to the show. “That came as a surprise,” Jeff Garlin said after shooting her first scenes. “We did not know that she was going to go that way. And when she did, we just fell over laughing.”

  In the first season, Susie is a harridan, a woman worthy of being afraid of. But in time she softens; sometimes she’s even kind to Larry when he makes a mess of things. And, as Essman gets deeper into her character, it becomes clear that underneath the foul language and the quick fuse is a woman who is protecting her family — her husband, her child, and her marriage — from the vicissitudes that may threaten them.

  Larry did not write conventional thirty-five to forty-page scripts for the episodes. Instead, he wrote outlines six to nine pages long, a series of scene descriptions with the general feeling and the key plot points laid out. The story was not to be improvised, but the dialogue was, although Larry might feed a key line or two to an actor — something he did increasingly as the show went on. Larry found the experience liberating. He didn’t have to create the voice for each part but could rely on the actors to do so, allowing them the freedom to really create their characters.

  Most shows begin shooting with just a few scripts in hand; a team of writers cranks out more under the pressure of the shooting deadlines. Larry wrote all his outlines before beginning to shoot, allowing his ideas time to gestate. Later, when he would create season-long story arcs, this was crucial, but it was important even in the first season. For years Larry had carried a notebook in a pocket to jot down ideas, and it was these jottings that provided the seeds for the outlines. “Most of the ideas stink,” he said. “But you’d be surprised. See, a lot of these I’ll use, not as a big story but like a little piece of filler. And then all of a sudden it somehow leads into something.”

  Among the ideas that came from life in season one were the notions of: having to tip the “captain” in a restaurant, a lawyer charging to read a script, the wire in Cheryl and Larry’s back yard, and the friend who struggles to compliment Larry’s film Sour Grapes. The notebooks were so important to Larry that he would even use them in a story line, losing one in episode six of the first season. One idea had been in the back of Larry’s mind for a long time and he finally used it for the season closer in which Larry pretends to be an incest survivor at a group therapy session. He had discussed the idea with Jerry Seinfeld years before, but his co-creator didn’t like it. While Seinfeld never censored a script, Larry recalled, he did occasionally veto an idea that he wasn’t comfortable with. Quite possibly NBC would have had issues with it as well. But Larry had no problem putting himself into the situation.

  Sometimes ideas came from other people on the show. Robert B. Weide, the director, came up with the porno story for season one, episode three.

  As Larry was writing, Jeff Garlin got rear-ended in his car and had to have back surgery. (In episode seven of the first season, Jeff Greene’s car would be rear-ended — this time with Larry driving.) And then a month later Garlin had a stroke. He was only thirty-seven. His wife was pregnant with their second child. He spent a week in hospital and, coming out, had to use a cane (actually, he used a golf club) to get around. He was slurring his words. But Larry was supportive, acting helped him to recover, and he managed to make it through the season.

  Shooting the episodes took place over about six months. A Digital Betacam was used to save money; a computer later turned the images into something that looked more like film. One camera was used much of the time, just as Larry had wanted and failed to get for Seinfeld.

  For cost reasons the cast had only one trailer to share and had to take turns going into the bedroom to change into costume. Even famous guest actors had to share. Larry’s real office in Santa Monica was used as his office on the show. The house he and Cheryl live in was rented from the owner, director Sam Raimi (Spiderman). It was empty and the set decorator had three days and a small budget to make it look inhabited; the result was a house that didn’t quite look lived in. It was the first of several houses the couple would live in over the course of the series. In season two a family’s real house was rented to look more authentic. When the family grew tired of the inconvenience of having television crews in the house, another had to be found for the fourth season.

  Jeff Garlin got to read the outlines in order to give Larry feedback, but the other actors were kept largely in the dark, even about the episode actually shooting. Larry wanted real reactions and spontaneous dialogue. Cheryl Hines would sit in her makeup chair asking, “Does anyone want to tell me anything about anything?” In the second episode of season one Larry goes shopping with Mary Steenburgen whom he has a crush on. Discovering that he has been to Barney’s, Cheryl asks why. Shooting the scene, Larry did not tell Cheryl Hines in advance that his character went shopping with Mary Steenburgen so that she would react with natural surprise.

  Robert B. Weide, who directed six of the first season’s ten episodes, explained that “One
of our rules for actors is, ‘Don’t try to be funny or go for the joke. It will only end up on the cutting room floor.’” Rehearsing was very brief so as not to spoil the spontaneity. Some actors found the process hard, even scary, and some vomited before going before the camera. But Larry often cast stand-up and improv veterans in speaking roles, people who were used to thinking on their feet. Larry even allowed actors to speak over each other, something that happens in real life but never in sitcoms. The result was a hybrid — something that felt almost like a reality-show but that had a crazy, obviously designed story. Of course, Larry couldn’t just take a scene because it was improvised — it had to come out well. So when he didn’t like what someone was doing, Larry would give suggestions, speaking bluntly (something actors weren’t used to), and they did scenes over and over again, building up hours of recording that would have to be edited down. Shots often had to be retaken because actors laughed, especially Larry.

  Susie Essman’s first big scene, for example, did not take place until the sixth episode of the first season, when she discovers that the boy Jeff sponsored for summer camp has robbed their house. Larry David’s direction to Susie Essman was simply and crudely to “rip Jeff a new asshole.” After the first take, Larry told her to be even meaner. Mock him for being fat, Larry said. Essman was reluctant — Garlin was a human being, after all. But they began shooting again and she took her performance up a few notches, calling Jeff a “fat fuck” — an expression that would become associated with the character.

  The improv process affected people in different ways. Richard Lewis found himself nervous. He had no idea how he was going to come off. Larry told him not to worry but it was only later, seeing a completed episode, that he really understood the feel that his old friend was going for. During the taping of episode four of the first season, Larry and Richard had to get into a scuffle in the entrance to a jewelry store. Richard got so into it that he broke Larry’s glasses and sprained his finger. Sometimes it was the director who used the process to his advantage. Andy Ackerman, the director of episode five, privately told actress Rose Abdoo (playing an interior decorator) that during her own scuffle with Larry she should suddenly kiss him. The kiss caught Larry totally by surprise.

  Like Larry David, Jeff Garlin thrived on improv. David Steinberg, the veteran comic turned director who would helm the second episode (and more in subsequent seasons), said, “Jeff is one of the best improvising comedians I’ve ever worked with, and that’s hard to be good at. You have to be older, you have to read, know what’s going on in the world, be worked out in a troupe for a minimum of a year to learn how little you have to do in a way. Deep listening is what makes an incredible improviser, and having instincts sharp enough to know whether to jump in or not.”

  Most of the guest actors had to audition for their parts. Tim Bagley, the shoe salesman in episode two, wasn’t too crazy about the character description — a flaming homosexual. So he went in and played the character in a more restrained and dignified manner, and Larry gave him the part. But Larry allowed life and art to mix. The woman playing Cheryl’s best friend in episode seven, Julie Welch, is Cheryl Hines’s best friend in real life.

  The process of editing was onerous and took even longer than shooting — about two weeks per episode. All those improvised takes had to be closely examined to find the best parts of each then edited together in a manner that would look seamless. A lot of sound editing was also required to make all the lines audible. Although he worked with editors, Larry was very much in charge. He spent six hours a day in the editing room; he called watching himself that much “horrifying.” Larry did not want to use the same music that had been employed on the special. He wanted something to add to the liveliness and humor, something buoyant. And he already knew what he wanted. Years before he had heard an Italian-sounding instrumental tune on a local bank commercial and had asked his assistant to track it down for him. It was “Frolic” by Luciano Michelini, who often worked in Italian film as composer and music director. Its upbeat circus sideshow quality comes from the combination of spritely mandolin and puffing tuba. Elsewhere in the show Larry drew on related Italian music, with mandolin and accordion, but he did so far more artfully than when he used the classical works in Sour Grapes. Over time his musical repertoire would expand. The theme from Carmen, for example, would be associated with a guest character but would continue to be used in subsequent episodes. Likewise, klezmer music, which was introduced for the seder scene in episode seven of season five, would be used frequently afterward.

  With the first episode set to air on October 15, 2000, HBO cranked up the promotion machine. Larry didn’t like doing publicity and he feared the show being over-hyped. He thought that viewers should simply discover it for themselves. But he told the New York Times, “If you like a show where everything goes wrong, you’ll like this show.” An HBO exec, Carolyn Strauss, said, “Larry has always been this kind of guy, where the world moves one way and he moves another. It’s the clash of that, that’s always been a hallmark of his stand-up, and what influenced Seinfeld so much.” Clearly, putting viewers in a Seinfeld frame-of-mind would be good for the show.

  The season opener, “The Pants Tent,” introduces themes that will recur throughout the show, especially that of sexual humiliation. It uses several plots whose stories crossed a là Seinfeld. The second episode introduces Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen, stars playing versions of themselves. It begins the question of where Larry and Cheryl fit into the social world that surrounds them, one of rich famous people. Ted, both here and in future episodes, proves to be the friend whom Larry seems to like the least. “Beloved Aunt,” the fourth episode, isn’t the first to bring in Richard Lewis, but it allows him to weave his own comic “stylings” (as comedy emcees like to call it) into the show. It also has some gentle satire of Christianity, a well that Larry will find himself dipping into occasionally. Larry doesn’t so much criticize the faith as he does show a Jew’s perplexity over its images and rituals. (Paul Dooley makes a strong comic impression as Cheryl’s father.) Another recurring theme not always known for its comic possibilities — race relations — rears its head in episode nine, “Affirmative Action.” Larry’s behavior around black people is touched on in the HBO special; here it gets full attention. And in the season closer, Larry uses a subject — incest — that he had not been able to touch on in Seinfeld and manages to be very funny. It is also notable for being one of the few episodes in which Cheryl wants sex more than Larry does.

  The season began and the critics weighed in. Julie Salamon reviewed it for the all-influential New York Times: “[The show] may be even more idiosyncratic than Seinfeld because Mr. David is a very strange man — and he’s playing himself. . . . You find yourself laughing at the uncomfortable situations he creates for himself, and even sympathizing with him. . . . Mr. David operates by a strict moral code, whose rules aren’t obvious but which seems to revolve around the notion that all deeds, good and bad, will be punished somehow. In Curb Your Enthusiasm he has used a glum principle to turn life into a very funny comedy of comeuppance.”

  The Los Angeles Times couldn’t curb its enthusiasm either. “Larry David is an acquired taste. For some of us, it takes about ten seconds. . . . Funny and wickedly weird. [David] elevates his own gloom and pessimism to high art.” The reviewer praised Cheryl Hines and Jeff Garlin too, but even more so Richard Lewis “who memorably sulks his way through a pair of early episodes.”

  The show had about 5 million viewers (HBO would show an episode several times and tally the numbers up) — not at all bad. But the numbers were less important at HBO than a show that creates buzz and gets people to subscribe to the channel. Curb was getting just that sort of attention. Soon the New York Times was calling it a “cult favorite,” an industry darling, even a “cultural touchstone.” And then it wasn’t being called “cult” anymore, but simply a hit. The thrilled actors professed their own surprise. “It is surprising,” Cheryl Hines said. “Because someti
mes with the subject matter, you would imagine people would find it offensive on a mass scale.”

  Jeff Garlin also called it a “huge surprise. We thought that three people might watch it. And they all worked at HBO. . . . It is amazing.” He liked to recount a comment from a forum that the show put on during the William S. Paley Television Festival where a man stood up and said, “Hi, I live in my mother-in-law’s basement. I love the show.”

  CHAPTER 9

  The Real Larry:

  Season Two

  A lot of writing about Curb Your Enthusiasm has focussed on the question of how close the fictional Larry David is to the real one. Larry himself said, “I’m playing — yes — I am playing myself. I’m playing the part of myself that doesn’t censor my thoughts.” And “I aspire to be like that character. He’s honest. It’s the things I’m thinking but not saying.”

  Of course it isn’t the job of a creator to analyze his own works, and Larry David has developed a salable attitude about the character that he can trot out whenever interviewed, a useful but simplified version of his fictional self. For the Larry of Curb is not as consistent as commentators like to pretend, or as free to speak his mind. He sometimes gets into trouble because of his brutal honesty, but often as not his predicaments are the result of lying. Larry frequently lies to get himself out of social obligations or difficulties with his loved ones, or he fabricates schemes that, as they did for his boyhood hero Sergeant Bilko, sometimes backfire. It can even be the occasional altruistic impulse that lands Larry in hot water, usually due to some misinterpretation or misunderstanding.