Larry David documentary

i had a particular personality in brooklyn with these guys these friends my family my relatives i was this person who was not funny there was nothing funny about me i didn't think i was funny um nobody ever laughed at anything i said i never said anything funny and then all of a sudden i went to i went to an out of town college i knew i wanted to get away i had to get away and and suddenly people started laughing at me and i go what the hell is the gun what's going on you know one guy in particular became my best friend man oh man you know all of a sudden a part of me that i didn't even know existed now started to emerge and it was it was it was something i was quite startled by it and um i still didn't think about becoming a comedian that didn't enter my mind i was raised to think that there was i couldn't do anything you know don't don't get your hopes up okay [Laughter] so being being a comedian didn't occur to me then i got out of college and um my friend's wife kept saying you know you're funny why why aren't you doing stand-up comedy because i was floundering so she's you know she was encouraging me to do it i went to the improv i went to watch a night of comedy and as i'm watching it i'm going jesus i thought you know what i think i could do this and in the middle of the show i walk up to bud friedman who's the manager of the club the owner of the club and i say uh i'd like to go on yeah like how insane is that i want to go on i have nothing okay i've never been on a stage i want to go on thank god he said who are you no of course not you can't go on you got to audition i go okay so then i wrote some material and i started trying to do it so so what was the act was it was it a version of were you larry david then i mean was it a version of the the larry on the show or is it no no just awful it was dreadful the audience did not like me i can tell you that they did not like me i would be doing it i would hear the the vile vicious comments that it's unbelievable the disrespect you know it was it was startling to see what people would do with a couple of drinks and then what they would call out what they would say and i'm a sensitive vulnerable guy i couldn't take it i couldn't stand it you know so um you know stuff like oh you're so much funnier than him why don't you go up you know talking to their friend you know so um so it was rough it was rough but there would be some some really good ones interspersed with with the awful ones but there were many many awful ones larry david was the ultimate comics comic you know the guy who went on stage and all the comics would come in the room and watch him uh because he was a great stand-up but he was not the type of stand-up who embraced the audience he was about three minutes up there he wasn't really getting too many laughs and he goes i don't need this forget it he threw the microphone down called the audience a bunch of ignorant and and walked off the stage he said [ __ ] you he said people and he left the stage i went wow what an act now somewhere in here you met jerry seinfeld and that's got to be the great turning point in your life in a way right i mean everything else kind of yeah flows from that yeah i met jerry um at catch rising star probably in 1976 when he was first starting and um we hit it off right away we had a um really good we had always had a lot of fun talking to each other same things interested us uh occasionally we would write together i would tell him my premises and he would tell me his premises and then i wrote this screenplay that he liked and um he just approached me one night at one of the clubs i think it was catcherizing star and said that nbc was interested in him doing a um uh show and uh did i want to work on it with him and then so you guys then evolved this kind of brand new kind of sitcom yeah basically we just went into this grocery store that night that same night that he approached me uh we went to the grocery store we were going to share a cab back to the west side and we started talking about these idiotic things that we like to discuss these inane silly things about the products in the grocery store whatever you know ripping on that and and then i said this this is the show this this is what the show should be and um then we flushed it out and uh next thing you know i'm in california pitching it at a meeting to nbc and at this meeting the same thing that we did that i wrote about in that episode with george getting upset when he said this is not the show that's not the show that's exactly what happened i said at nbc no no this is not the show that's not the show uh look if you want to just keep doing the same old thing then maybe this idea is not for you i for one am not going to compromise my autistic integrity and i'll tell you something else this is the show and we're not gonna change it right that was the famous meeting if you think we're gonna uh if this is the idea and if you think we're gonna change it we're not which nobody had even suggested changing it but he was throwing down the meaningless gauntlet and i remember ending the meeting and i looked at rick and i said i don't know you know i look it's a script commitment you know we haven't spent that much money on this guy and who the hell knows i guess we wrote the pilot and it really didn't take us all that long we had a lot of fun writing that we always had fun writing it was never a struggle i don't remember us ever really racking our brains too much in in writing we had a great chemistry the story of the pilot where a woman who a jerry had met out of town asked if she could stay with him uh she was going to be in new york for a couple of days and wondered if she could stay with him and what all that meant it certainly wasn't a strong story drive and it was kind of all over the place but it was funny so we all said oh what the hell let's try pilot on this thing and let's see what happens you know what jerry's a funny guy they seem to have a pretty good uh thing going on here with uh with larry god we still need to get a good show runner on this show and we just said go make it see not to me that button's in the worst possible spot the second button literally makes or breaks the shirt look at it it's too high it's in no man's land you look like you live with your mother are you through you do of course try on when you bought yes it was purple i liked it i don't actually recall considering the button oh you don't recall i think i did 134 episodes by the end of the 96th season i may be a little off but and that's seven years all told i just physically didn't didn't want to do it anymore i just felt like i just can't uh i can't i just couldn't do another one i don't know i just had come to the end um [Music] so i was hoping that everybody would feel the same way but i was the only one it was time for him to do what he wanted to do whatever that was whether it was just not do the show or do something else and god knows he had poured his whole life into it and i honestly don't know and i wouldn't even ask him how much i know what he would say i would say i would i would ask him how much of the show did you really want to do and he would probably say the pilot but i'm sure he's glad that uh he went past that jerry is the one who made the announcement that larry wouldn't be coming back and um and that i think i think it was at that same time he said that we would be coming back however i knew we were losing a great writer a visionary i was concerned about what would happen to the show in general um what would certainly happen to george in specific you know larry was george george was larry and without him there to to guide the george stories and the george reactions i anticipated that it wouldn't be quite the same character and i think it wasn't quite the same character larry eventually had to leave and kind of face the world without the structure of the show weirdest feeling i had was was when it was in august it was the day they were filming the fir the first show without me that day and i was i had an office in castle rock i am sitting there in my office by myself and i'm trying to write this movie and there's nobody to talk to and i'm sitting there by myself and i'm going geez they're doing the first show today boy they're all getting ready now and oh my god look at me what have i done i'm sitting here by myself i should be with my friends over there what am i doing here am i am i crazy what did you do you stupid idiot how could you have left that show to sit here by yourself and write this what are you nuts and i just kept berating and then i got like very depressed that night you know then they were filming and a few hours later they started to film and i'm thinking they're filming right now i'm here how could they do that how dare they do that you know and then i started to get mad that they were doing it and it was it was a it was difficult um but i i got over that what what happened was jeff garland who plays jeff on the show greatest funniest guy he uh he said to me what are you going to do next he had an office in the same building that i had and this is after seinfeld was over i said well i'm thinking about going back to stand-up i haven't done it in 10 years and i'd like to go try it again maybe i'll have more success this time you know if they introduced me as the co-creator of seinfeld maybe that'll help you know so he said well you know what you should film it and i said film it no i don't want to do that he says yeah yeah it'll be good it'll be like a documentary for hbo i'll direct it so i i asked my wife about it she said yeah you should do it but i still i couldn't get behind it and then finally she my wife talked me into it and i said okay i'll do it but it seems like this is a really boring idea you're going to film me going back to do stand up and i could see the stuff that i'm going to do on stage might be somewhat interesting because i'll be doing stand-up but what about when i'm off stage what's going to happen off stage are you going to follow me around going to the dry cleaner i don't get it i don't see how it's going to be funny or compelling or interesting and so what i'd like to do i'd like to make that stuff up let me make up the off stage part i'll get a fake wife you know not my real wife i'll cast for a wife you won't direct it you'll be my manager okay and um i'll make up a storyline that that i will intersperse with the stand-up so he said okay so i i worked on this thing i wrote this and and um it was an hour special we pitched it to hbo they said okay we it's an hour special for hbo and um [Music] it had to be improvised because it's supposed to be a documentary about me going back to stand up so there's where the improvisation comes in and while we were filming jeff was saying to me you know this this could be a series and i said yeah yeah maybe he could and then chris albrecht who was running hbo at the time he said you know we want to do this hey good boy yeah good boy wow all right i found it hey what the hell's with your dog what he was growling at me before like he was going to attack me i was scared to death then i went to heil hitler and he suddenly walked over and just lay down what why would you do that why would it work with the writing process then um presumably you you storyboard the whole trajectory and individual uh uh um episodes and then how does it get from the idea to to screen you know i walk around with a little pad and um whenever i get an idea i jot it down and then i have a another book where i take all the ideas and i and i put them in another book in the best handwriting in my best handwriting yeah so before i write a show it's uh i'll just you know look in the books and then i'll think oh that would be funny to do with that well those two ideas really would work well together and so what would what would a typical script say um laura bring me uh bring me in a script oh fantastic huh i i don't care bring me in anything bring me in something from uh not this season bring me in something from season four and um you know i'll take two or three ideas and kind of put them together and build a story okay so this is uh this is from the show the uh the carpooling when i picked up the prostitute yeah i'm not going to use the carpooling by myself because i do i don't want to well that's the difference between you and me all right goodbye hey daddy we want a date with mama get in the car uh larry and monine are zipping along in the express lane larry tells her he doesn't want any sex but he'll pay her for her time she's never been paid for her time before uh and she tries to figure out how many [ __ ] and other forms of sex she normally have within that period which larry of course disputes so you know you there's there's tracks to go on here exactly i can get four blow jobs an hour four blow jobs at all yes i'm good okay i drove a cab i used to drive around for two hours i couldn't get a fair you're telling me you're getting four blow jobs in an hour yes honey you didn't picked up the best honey i got a red snapper that talks to you you know what it's saying i'm charging way too much there's actually more there than i imagined because yeah it's like you're laying down the jokes really you are you're laying down the the structure and the tram lines for for the for the humor yes and the the trouble is that that i have with watching kirby enthusiasm is that i agree with everything larry says outside that sort of mild male autism where it's probably better that he doesn't always say what he's thinking i think he's right well that's why i like that larry so much better than this larry all right we're great to be like that wouldn't it one three yeah freedom not burdened by conscience absolutely not really the people that we're going i'm so sorry just going there yeah he's he's happy that guy look what's going on with this kid wow honestly it's a bigger penis than mine he's got a bigger penis than me we all have the good thoughts and the bad thoughts but you know nobody ever expresses the bad thoughts we just think them and we don't say that yeah but the bad thoughts are funny i saw your sound at the hell yeah kid's got some penis on him it's pretty good what are you saying his son it's venus wait what are you saying that before hey it's a compliment what's the big deal what's the compliment how's it bad it's how's it bad he's gonna he's got a nice big penis so what well i'm not talking about your wife's tits i am i may this is rude you can sit by you can say my wife has nice chits as long as it's complimentary and when you come back and you say that you know i i mentioned his kids penis she says why would you do that larry and you say and this sums up what i think um a comedian's mind you say i took a risk and that's what comedians do sometimes you think well you know i might go down well it might not but i just i just say it i mean that's how we're all going through life isn't it just not saying what we really what we're going to say we're going through life compromising pretty good it's pretty pretty pretty pretty good

Channel: Clutch15

Views: 288,531

Rating: 4.887785 out of 5

Keywords: Larry David, Documentary, Curb your enthusiasm, Seinfeld, comedy

Id: OOmzQXolrlw

Length: 18min 27sec (1107 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 15 2020