Curmudgeon Larry David is back with his popular Curb Your Enthusiasm on HBO. Resurrecting the show after six years was against his better judgment, he insists.
“I’m not a misser, so to speak. I don’t really miss things, people that much,” he says at a press gathering at Beverly Hills, California. “But I was missing it. And I was missing these idiots (co-stars). So I thought, ‘Yeah, what the hell?’ And I got tired of people asking me, ‘Is the show coming back?’ I couldn’t face that question anymore. And I wasn’t ready to say, ‘No, never.’ And I kept saying, ‘Oh, you know, maybe. Who knows?’ So I thought, ‘Yeah, I won’t have to be asked THAT anymore.’”
Also returning is executive producer Jeff Schaffer, who’s been with the acerbic comic since Schaffer was 24 and on the payroll while they produced the hotly treasured Seinfeld.
“I did learn everything about how to write comedy from Jerry (Seinfeld) and Larry on Seinfeld,” says Schaffer. “You guys would let me and my then-partner, Alec Berg, we used to follow him (David) around on the set. And we’d be in the editing room. So we learned how to edit. We’d go to the sound mixes, taught us how to do (that). We learned how to do all of that stuff basically for the first two years … at Seinfeld,” recalls Schaffer.
David is convinced that he has no more new ideas to perpetuate the series, says Schaffer. “It really starts with, ‘Well, every season is done. Right? We are done. There’s no more seasons. There’s not going to be another season.’ Then he calls up and goes, ‘We are NOT doing another season. Even if we did, I only have one idea.’
“I go, ‘Well, do you want to talk about it?’ ‘No. It’s stupid for me to talk about it. It’s a waste of time.’ And we talk about it, and then I’m, like, ‘Do you want me to come back to that office?’ ‘No. It’s a waste of your time.’ ‘Well, I have other things to do.’
“And this goes on for months. And then there’s about six or seven shows written, and then we go, ‘Hey, do you want to tell HBO you want to do another season?’ So that’s the order. And only after the season is mostly written do we tell anyone that we are doing it,” says Schaffer.
Though this ninth season makes Curb Your Enthusiasm HBO’s longest-running scripted series, David confesses, “I’ve gone into every season not thinking I had 10 shows.”
“After every season, Larry used to say, ‘This is it. I’m NEVER doing another one.’ So we were used to that,” says Susie Essman, who plays Susie Greene on the show.
“At the end of Season Five, the last show was called The End,” recalls Schaffer. “Every season was the last season.”
“On Seinfeld I would write season endings to the last show because I didn’t think I’d be back. So that’s just my nature,” shrugs David. “I like to quit things too. You know, it’s a very satisfying thing, quitting. Did you ever go up to a boss and say, ‘I’m done. I’ve had it. Go to hell’? It’s fun.”
J.B. Smoove (right) says nothing has changed for his Curb Your Enthusiasm character, Leon.
Schaffer says these intervening years have given David plenty of awkward instances to write about. But David insists his ideas don’t come from personal confrontations.
“A lot of people think they’re always providing me with fodder, but they’re not. You know, all of a sudden, I’ll write something down, and they’ll go, ‘Oh, did I just say something? Did I just give you that?’ ‘No, no, you didn’t. Shut up. No.’”
Back in the fold will be Jeff Garlin as Jeff Greene, J.B. Smoove as Leon Black, and Richard Lewis as himself. Also appearing will be Bryan Cranston, Ted Danson, Bob Einstein and Cheryl Hines.
Smoove says his character hasn’t changed during the protracted hiatus. “It’s a new Curb, same old Leon, and I think that is the thing that I love about the character,” he says.
“I love that he’s an in-the-moment guy. He’s a guy that lives day-to-day. … The first day on the set, it was I could tell the man had a little glitter. Do you know what I mean? … One take, and this man was back to gold again, you know, it’s like playing tee-ball. He sets you up so well, you can’t go wrong. And I’m happy to be back on the show.”
While the series often provokes controversy, that’s not why David writes it, say his co-producers. “Anyone who really is writing and doing things to be provocative is probably not funny,” says Garlin, who also stars as the patriarch on The Goldbergs.
“So they are looking for another way to shock people or bring them in. I’m going to say that I don’t think Larry thinks about anything except what he thinks is funny.” – Tribune News Service/Luaine Lee
Curb Your Enthusiasm airs every Monday at 10am/10pm on HBO (Astro Ch411/431).
