Dave has teamed up with top men's magazine, 'Shortlist' to bring you a series of fantastic articles; including, this interview with the comedy genius that is Larry David.
“Who likes enthusiasm?” he says when quizzed on the origins of the show’s name. “It’s quite sickening, isn’t it
“Larry David? Now he is not funny,” sighs Ted Danson, leaning back in his chair. “He is manipulative and does not even write the [Curb] scripts – he’s the laziest human being on the planet. “He stayed in our guesthouse when he was getting divorced two years ago and we could not get rid of him. Literally. We used to call him Larry The Lodger.”
Larry David interview taken from this week's Shortlist magazine.
Right now, ShortList is standing with Danson, the former Cheers and Becker star, in a sprawling sound studio in Los Angeles, while the subject of his ire – Mr David – is less than 20ft away from us, in the midst of filming a kitchen scene for the new series of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
The insanely influential sitcom about David’s life in LA, now in its seventh season, regularly depicts the two ageing actors sniping at each other (much like Danson is doing now). They are, however, great friends off-screen. Mercifully, though, Danson doesn’t give way to the usual Hollywood shtick when describing his partner in crime – he does relent just a little bit, however. “Hey, that goofball’s just a big pal of mine,” he says, grinning.
Ten minutes later and we’re all alone as David wraps up the take and stumbles over in his distinctive shuffling gait. “Hey, Mr David,” we say respectfully, “we just spoke to Ted Danson who says you’re the laziest man in the world.” “That bum,” David barks. “He’s not with me when all these scripts are prepared. I’m the guy who makes him look good!”
And that pretty much sums up Larry David – all ¬misanthropic backchat and sly backbiting. It’s the main theme running through Curb and it’s an outlook David appears to maintain when he’s off-screen.
“Who likes enthusiasm?” he says when quizzed on the origins of the show’s name. “It’s quite sickening, isn’t it? When you ask how someone is you don’t want to hear, ‘Fabulous! Things are fantastic! I feel great!’ You want to hear, ‘Eh, you know.’”
We remind him of a scene filmed on Hollywood Boulevard when a pretty girl passes him and says, “Hey there, smile!” David laughs: “Yeah, and I say, ‘Hey, mind your own business. How about that?’ It’s from real life. I walk around and everyone wants me to cheer up. What if I shouted, ‘I just found out I got cancer’?” [He pauses] “Damn. I should have put that in the show.”
Teaming up with pal Jerry Seinfeld to write and produce Seinfeld – one of the most popular and critically acclaimed sitcoms of all time – during the Nineties clearly wasn’t enough for the bilious New Yorker. In 1999, he was approached by HBO to take part in a fake documentary entitled Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm, that depicted a fictionalised version of himself living in and loathing Hollywood. The show was then commissioned by HBO as a series the following year and since then David has developed a character with a dark, abrasive and neurotic outlook on life. Who else could pretend...
Read the rest of this article at Shortlist.com
