Pretty, Pretty, Pretty Good Page 8

  It’s also interesting to distinguish between talking and doing. Larry is without question a talker, someone for whom speech is often more important than action. It’s worth noting that Larry David always characterizes the fictional Larry as someone who says what he wants, not someone who does what he wants. Indeed, for a wealthy man of leisure, Larry’s movements are surprisingly circumscribed. It’s verbal freedom that he most values. One need only look at the story arc of season four, in which Larry tries to cash in on Cheryl’s promise that he can sleep with another woman one time before their tenth anniversary. Larry expresses the desire numerous times, talks and fusses over it, plans and schemes — and each time fails to consummate the act. Yet he is not really unsatisfied, for the fulfillment is already complete.

  Larry David also understands that his fictional creation isn’t, as he is sometimes glibly labelled, an amoral animal. If someone is taking too many samples at an ice cream shop or falsely accusing a friend of having a small penis, Larry will feel compelled to stand up for the cause. Nor does he suffer from anhedonia, that is, the inability to enjoy oneself (a word that Woody Allen had wanted to use as the title for his film Annie Hall). As the real Larry has said, “Larry isn’t a misanthropist. He has a clear idea of right and wrong for himself. Any wavering from that bothers him. I think he likes people. He has fun. He enjoys life.”

  It is this essential pleasure-taking, a love of humor, an ability to feel intense passion about trivial things, that helped to endear his character to audiences. Time magazine rightly noted how unusual it was for a television show to get viewers to identify with “an abrasive, Jewish, late-middle-age, married-but-childless . . . multimillionaire.” The fact that he held to core values — friendship, marriage, and fidelity — did not hurt. That he carried on despite repeated social humiliations was also somehow cheering.

  Larry has also had some things to say about the trials he put his character through: “Positive is not funny. Nobody laughs at positive. ‘What a beautiful day it is!’ or ‘How many friends I have, how many people love me.’ There’s nothing funny about that at all. But there’s funny in the negative. When you speak in negative terms, the more negative it is, the funnier it is.” About his own humor, he said, “It’s just instinct. It can’t be learned. It’s your sensibilities. It’s what works for you. Where my line is, somebody else’s is ten yards farther. . . . Ultimately what you’re writing is for yourself. I’m looking at it through my prism and if it’s funny, I’m laughing.” What Larry also seemed to feel acutely was the fragility of social relationships — how a misspoken word or action can injure or damage. “Every relationship is just so tenuous and precarious. One tiny miscommunication or mistake it could be all over.” Larry’s need to make comedy out of this would later take on a poignant tone when, in Curb’s sixth season, Cheryl leaves Larry — an act that had as its source Larry David’s own marriage breakup.

  Season one began to air in October of 2000 and by January it had been renewed for a second season. After that, instead of the creators waiting to see if the network wanted to continue the show, the positions would be reversed; HBO would have to hope that Larry wanted to do another season. Like most situation comedies, the first season of Curb was made up of stand-alone episodes. There were sometimes references made to past events and the occasional thin thread connecting a plot in one episode to a plot in another, but for all intents and purposes they were separate. And there was certainly no overarching story. But for the second season, Larry decided to add a new über-layer of narrative, a story arc that ran the whole season. It would allow Larry to develop a story much farther, or at least play off it longer.

  Although he wasn’t writing full scripts, Larry still found the writing daunting, onerous, and difficult. He would become moody, distracted, and look for excuses to get away from his desk. Creating the outlines, Larry discovered that the biggest challenge was to continue the story arc while making each half hour self-contained to provide the immediate satisfactions of a single episode. In the future he would create arcs that truly developed, but on this first try he found one that was more a constant reiteration or replaying of the same idea, each time with building comic effect. And to do it he reached back to his greatest success — Seinfeld. Or rather, its aftermath.

  Larry had not been trying to get the audience to forget about Seinfeld. The show had often been referenced in the first season, most notably in episode six (“The Wire”) in which Larry pleaded with Julia Louis-Dreyfus to meet a fan of her “Elaine” character so that the man would agree to bury a backyard wire. The show put the audience in an interesting position; while the viewer wanted to identify with Julia and Larry, who were annoyed by this obsessive fan behavior, it was a little hard not to identify with the fan too. After all, wouldn’t most of us be thrilled to meet Julia Louis-Dreyfus? Perhaps it was having her on the show that gave Larry the idea of a story involving Jason Alexander, the actor who played George.

  It was well known that the Seinfeld actors were having trouble with their subsequent careers. Rather than pretend that wasn’t so, what if Larry actually played that up? And so he came up with a story in which Cheryl is growing impatient with her husband doing nothing since the end of Seinfeld. So Larry, talking with Jason Alexander, muses about the idea of a sitcom about an actor who can’t get work because he’s too identified with an earlier role. They pitch the idea to a series of networks, each of whom would bite — at least until Larry, with perhaps unconscious intent, does something ridiculous to kill the deal.

  Alexander was supposed to appear periodically over the season. But then his own sitcom, Bob Patterson, got picked up by ABC and he had to drop out. So Larry figured out a way to have Alexander and Larry part ways; they wouldn’t be able to agree at whose office they should take the next meeting. The two would become stubborn doppelgängers, making Jason Alexander’s insistence that in real life he’s nothing like George Costanza hilariously untrue. So Larry offers the role to Julia Louis-Dreyfus instead, continuing the story line as before. A necessity ended up improving the story arc. (Later, Larry David and Julia Louis-Dreyfus actually considered pitching the idea to a network. But in the end they decided, perhaps wisely, against it.)

  Besides the story arc, the second season would have another difference. The marriage between Larry and Cheryl would often not seem as sweet. Larry is even more thoughtless, selfish, withdrawn, and ungiving. Cheryl looks and acts less happy and less amused, and she herself comes across as less kind and more materialistic, the flip-side to her lefty political work. There is a darker, less comfortable marriage on view.

  Production began in February 2002. Five months before, the Twin Towers in New York had fallen, and the New York Times asked, “Will it still be funny to watch a man so enmeshed in his neurosis?” The reporter answered his own question: “What could be more necessary than a good laugh.” Larry would address the subject of terrorism, but not until the next season, and for his own comic purpose — to expose his character’s selfishness and cowardice.

  As before, Jeff Garlin acted as Larry David’s comic conscience. Larry said, “Because I’m acting in so many of the scenes it’s hard for me to see. So I’m completely dependent on Jeff and his eyes. He’s invaluable on the set because he has a great barometer for what’s not funny or not ringing true. He’s also my extra guy. Extras can destroy a scene, and you have no idea they did it until you’re editing. One little gesture with the face, and the scene is destroyed.” Garlin kept a watchful eye on the walk-ons. He was also known on the set as being a generous supporter of the other actors. And for lifting spirits during tiring shoots. Cheryl Hines said, “If you just watch the show, you would think that he’s this very calm, low-energy guy. But in real life he’s so goofy, and funny, and full of energy.”

  Again, some of Larry’s ideas came from life. But others were suggested by fantasies of the road not chosen. The idea for the first episode of season two came from someone asking Larry David what else he might have done in
life. His answer: a car salesman. And so Larry, playing a sophisticated game of pretend, asks a car dealer for a job on the showroom floor. Larry David had not lost any confidence in the improvisational process. During the shooting of the episode, he asked the actors playing customers at the car dealership to surprise him with their questions.

  Episode three brings in a Jewish theme for the first time, as Larry’s whistling Wagner offends a nearby Jewish man. Larry also whistled “Springtime for Hitler” from The Producers, though he as yet had no inkling that Mel Brooks’s musical would play a major part in the story arc for season four. For episode six he drew on a real personal problem — chronic neck pain, which results in his going to an acupuncturist. Larry’s somewhat stiff appearance is due in part to a lack of flexibility in his neck.

  In subsequent seasons, Larry would show himself to have some interest and rapport with kids, but in episode seven of season two he proved himself lacking in any parenting skill. Here he obeys the wishes of the young daughter of an ABC executive — cutting the hair of a favorite doll, only to have the girl burst into tears. Larry got the idea while looking at his own daughter’s doll and thinking that it could use a haircut. He didn’t actually cut the doll’s hair, but it was imagining the outcome of doing so that gave him his story.

  It was on Seinfeld that Larry first wrote a scene in which writers are pitching a sitcom idea to network executives. Over the course of the Curb Your Enthusiasm second season, Larry David and Julia Louis-Dreyfus have to make three pitches — to HBO, ABC, and CBS. Louis-Dreyfus spoke of how anxious the scenes made her feel, as if she really were pitching a series. It is the character of Cheryl who urges Larry to find some work for himself, but each time Larry kills the deal with the network he shows that, in truth, he has no desire to be involved in a television show again — proving once more that the real and the fictional Larrys are hardly identical.

  The show brought unexpected success to its regulars. Cheryl Hines was living in a ranch-style house with a pool and a gym. She and her husband liked to have poker nights at home with people like their friend the actor and SNL veteran Kevin Nealon (which would later spawn an episode of Curb). Hines began getting calls with acting-job offers for which she wasn’t being asked to audition. Jeff Garlin got offers. He even took a meeting with Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio who were working on The Aviator, a big, serious film about Howard Hughes. Going in, Garlin knew he wasn’t right for the part but he was flattered that they knew and liked his work. (Perhaps it is no coincidence that Scorsese would have a couple of very amusing cameo appearances in season three of Curb.)

  As for Susie Essman, she found fans of the show approaching her and politely asking if she might swear at them. “Go fuck yourself, you fat fuck,” Essman said to one admirer who responded with a grateful “Thank you.” She was even asked to make phone calls for charity, abusing people for $2,500 toward a good cause. Essman’s stand-up career took off. She said, “For years you’d get onstage but the audience is not your audience. It’s not people who are there to see you. Now I draw my own audience — it is just a delight. I don’t have to win these people over. They get me. So I can totally let rip.”

  CHAPTER 10

  That Championship Season:

  Season Three

  “Bespectacled, bald, and basset-eared, a long-limbed fifty-four-year-old fellow draped in untucked corduroy” is how Esquire described Larry David during the third season. The New York Times called him “praying mantis tall, and wrathful.” They were only two of many articles about Larry and the show, for in its third season the viewership would double to an average of 5 million viewers. The accolades would follow. Described by a reporter as a comic genius, Larry replied, “Are you out of your mind? What does it even mean?” It was noted that in real life he was married and a father, and that friends called him “content” and “kindly.” There was a big difference between the real Larry David and his fictional counterpart.

  In season one, Larry had partly relied on some of the tricks that he’d picked up writing Seinfeld. In season two, he’d extended his reach, but the story arc, though amusing, was really a series of repetitions rather than further developments. But in season three, Larry would hit his stride. He knew his show better than he had before, success had given him confidence, and confidence made him bolder and more ambitious. The outlines he prepared were unified rather than scattered. They were less monochromatic in their feeling. Sometimes the character of Larry would be down, sometimes humiliated or angry. But at other times he would be flying high, even giddy with pleasure. Almost every episode was hilarious and felt like an instant classic. The stand-alone episode plots were highly inventive. The story arc actually moved forward and deepened. And the season would end on a delightfully high note.

  On paper the arc actually sounded less promising than in the previous season. Larry would invest in a restaurant. The audience would see it all the way from its conception, through the interior decoration, to the opening night. Larry would prove himself more a handicap than a help to the project, interfering with everything from waiters’ uniforms to the selection of chef and the items on the menu. It would look as if he was dooming the restaurant even before it opened, only to turn it around in a moment of delicious triumph.

  But the show wasn’t only about the restaurant. A theme that would begin to appear over and over was now introduced: death. It would be there in the first episode in which Larry admires the shirt worn by the deceased husband of Cheryl’s friend in a photograph. And it would enter Larry’s own life in the death of his mother. Although the audience never saw her (and wouldn’t until the heaven scene in the last episode of season four), they would witness her genuinely grieving son — caught, nevertheless, in remarkably telling comic situations.

  Emboldened by two good seasons, Larry also felt freer to be more politically incorrect and even to flaunt his disregard for conventional boundaries that hemmed in humor. Religion became a significant target, whether it be the Christian Scientist who refuses to take medication in episode two, the excessively strict religious laws that alter the burial place of Larry’s mother in episode six, or the bizarre iconography of Christianity in episode nine. This latter one came from an idea planted by Cheryl Hines. While home in Florida for Christmas one year she phoned Larry. She told him that her family had made a nativity scene out of cookies they had baked. “If you were here, of course you’d eat baby Jesus, and my family would be so mad at me.” Larry immediately saw the comic possibilities and “Mary, Joseph and Larry” was born.

  The other territory that Larry increasingly encroached on was the subject of sex. This season it was oral sex and, for Larry, its aftermath — a pubic hair from Cheryl stuck in his throat. The awful sound he makes, trying to get it out, is enough to send some viewers running from the television. Next to masturbation, oral sex is the most recurring topic in this particular area of human behavior.

  Casting had to be done before shooting. The most important bit of casting for the season was Nat David, Larry’s father, who would be an occasional returning character. Larry had the idea of using an old comedian in the role. Shecky Greene came in for an audition, and after him Shelley Berman, both of whom were born in 1926. After Berman left, Larry ran down the hall to catch up with him. “Will you lose the rug?” Larry asked, referring to Berman’s toupee. He agreed and got the part.

  Shelley Berman had been in the business a long time. After his discharge from the army, he had studied acting in Chicago and joined the Compass Players, the precursor to Second City. He wrote jokes for Steve Allen (Johnny Carson’s predecessor), performed in clubs, made it to television, and was the first comic to win a Grammy Award for a recording. In 1963 a camera followed Berman around for an NBC special, much like the comedy specials that HBO would later air. His career had known its downs, but in recent years, although in his eighties, he had found himself in demand again. He even had an occasional role as a judge on Boston Legal. Larry would prove right in his casting ch
oice. Berman would prove himself a nimble improviser and a wonderfully subtle comic, all the while convincing the audience that Larry really was his boy.

  Larry would add another member to his family. Cousin Andy, a New Yorker, would arrive for Larry’s mother’s funeral and would stick around for some time. Along with Nat David, Andy would reinforce the viewer’s sense of Larry’s roots, for both characters would have a Jewish way of speaking and of seeing the world. For Andy, Larry again chose well, bringing in Richard Kind, an actor who could make a viewer laugh just by his appearance, with his enormous mouth, wide face, and decidedly unathletic body. He would (except when bedding a Playboy bunny) be the voice of conventional middle-class Jewish America. A veteran of Mad About You and Spin City, as well as a lot of theater experience (including The Producers), Richard Kind could match Larry for the camera’s attention.

  The other fine casting choice was Chris Williams as the wealthy rapper Krazee-Eyez Killa in episode eight. Williams himself was not a street kid, but a graduate of Georgetown. But he was brilliantly funny as the rapper engaged to Wanda who tells Larry that he loves “the pussy.” It was director Robert B. Weide’s idea that Krazee-Eyez should try out some new lyrics on Larry; he let Williams come up with them before the shoot and didn’t tell Larry what to expect. Williams was a good example of the value of the improvisational process, not just for his excellent scenes with Larry but also for bringing a rapper’s voice — which Larry himself could never have written — to the part.

  The season would also be notable for its parade of guest stars. Michael York, Joan Rivers, and Martin Scorsese made appearances, and episode number five (“The Terrorist Attack”) alone had Alanis Morissette, Paul Reiser, and Martin Short. Each one of them contributed to the season’s sparkle.

  The season began to air and the critics ate it up. “The funniest thing on television” declared Scott Raab in Esquire. “As daringly funny as Seinfeld at its best,” said Time. “Even more of a tour de force than Seinfeld,” insisted the New York Times. The more thoughtful New Yorker writer Virginia Heffernan saw the differences rather than the similarities with the earlier show. “It’s not Seinfeld. It’s angrier, grimmer, more macabre. Watch the show too often and you might note a downturn in your mood or your sense of virtue. But comedy makes no room for qualms, and Curb Your Enthusiasm is, with discomforting frequency, hilarious.” Robert Lloyd of the Los Angeles Times praised the show via his shrewd observations: “[Larry] is like a small child who will not stop asking questions everyone else has decided it is pointless to answer. But as a man of principle, even of misguided principle, he can be regarded . . . as heroic. . . . And he is thoroughly, almost helplessly honest, except when he’s afraid of being hit.”