Larry David (Curb Your Enthusiasm)

[faceless]

Larry David stands on the 'Curb' of Season 6
By Gary Levin
USA TODAY

NEW YORK — Larry David is preparing to unleash his easily antagonized alter ego on adoring fans. HBO's improvised comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm returns for a sixth season Sunday (10 ET/PT) after a 21-month break, its longest yet. When we last left Larry, he'd learned he wasn't adopted after all and decided against donating a kidney to longtime friend and fellow comedian Richard Lewis ("He's more of an acquaintance," he rationalizes. "Who gives a kidney to an acquaintance?")

Larry's back to his usual crotchety ways this season, railing against the kinds of grating everyday nuisances that made Seinfeld, which he co-created, a cultural touchstone. "Anything but my old self I don't think would work," David says. So he goes after "sample abusers" at ice cream stores and disputes the "law of dry cleaners" — which dictates that you inevitably lose some clothes, but you win some that aren't yours — when it comes to a beloved Yankees jersey.

In a season-long arc, Larry and long-suffering wife Cheryl (Cheryl Hines) take in the Black family, displaced by "Hurricane Edna."

David's alter ego (he calls him "TV Larry") will do and say anything when provoked, no matter how outrageous. That's proved liberating for the real David, who is often — rightfully — confused with his persona. "When people come up to me, they assume they're talking to TV Larry. And you know what? In most cases, they are. I aspire to be like Larry, because he's completely honest." But after five seasons, "it's easier for me to behave like him now, because it's not so shocking. So in a way, he's kind of helped me get by."

David, 60, says he's surprised that some fans cringe at Curb's humor, which also inspired Ricky Gervais, who created The Office and HBO's own Extras. "I never knew that it was going to have this kind of squirming effect," he says, quoting a friend's description of Curb as horror comedy. "I never expected that some people would just be so uncomfortable they'd have to leave the room."

Curb episodes begin with seven-page detailed outlines, but the unrehearsed actors make up their dialogue while they're filming. Frequent guest Ted Danson says he was taken aback when he walked into a scene only to hear Lucy Lawless talking trash about him. Other guests include former tennis star John McEnroe, who gets into a screaming match with Larry, and Ben Stiller in a return appearance.

Co-star Jeff Garlin, who plays Larry's manager, says David's secret is "he doesn't believe the hype. We never think we're great." In fact, David's perpetual insecurity informs his humor, and even his approach to making the show. "Usually, I say it's my last season to help me get through it. I trick myself mentally." But last time, even David was dubious; his last season finale was titled "The End" and could have served as one. Then he started working on a movie — his first, 1998's Sour Grapes, bombed — "and at some point I thought, 'Gee, I'd rather be working on the show.' "

He now puts the odds of a seventh season at "50-50. If I go back to Los Angeles with 10 good ideas, that will tip the balance." But he has ripe material already at hand: His wife, Laurie, an environmental activist, filed for divorce in July, raising the obvious question of whether TV Larry will split with Cheryl. "I could do that," he offers. "That's a good reason to go back" for another season. "But I'd have to run this by Cheryl."

----------------

I didn't realise there was a new series yet, so this is great news.

[nekokate]

Ah, brilliant! Thanks for posting this, you've reminded me that I was intending to download some of the earlier seasons! I must go do that now!!

[faceless]

Susie Essman, Uncurbed and Enthusiastic

By JACQUES STEINBERG
September 16, 2007

JUST as Harvey Korman used to break up when he went eye to eye with Tim Conway on the old “Carol Burnett Show,” Larry David says he finds it hard to get through a scene with Susie Essman on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” without dissolving into giggles. As soon as I look at her, I know she’s going to call me a name or whatever, and I just lose it,” Mr. David said the other night, just after Ms. Essman, who plays the foulmouthed wife of his manager on “Curb,” had finished interviewing him onstage (and out of character) at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan. “It takes me like five takes.”

Lately, Mr. David said, his almost allergic reaction to Ms. Essman on camera has gotten so bad that he has taken to devising mental tricks to fend it off. “I have to picture my kids held hostage by terrorists,” he said, flanked afterward at the Y by both her and Jeff Garlin, her on-screen husband. “And if I laugh, they’re going to harm my children.”

While it was probably inevitable that the novelty of Mr. David’s plots for “Curb” would begin to wane by its sixth season on HBO — especially when layered atop the nine seasons of his previous series, “Seinfeld” — somehow Ms. Essman’s profane outbursts continue to be among the elements that give “Curb” a welcome jolt.

In the episode that has its debut next Sunday, the third of 10 in the show’s current run, Ms. Essman’s high-strung Susie Greene confronts Larry in her kitchen to demand an expression of condolence from him. That prompts a competing request for sympathy from Larry to her. Never mind that the deceased, whose recklessly operated wheelchair was struck by a car on Sunset Boulevard, is the mother of Marty Funkhauser, an acquaintance of both of them and of no direct relation to either. “I’m so much closer with Marty,” Susie rages.

That scenario, like all the others that have been concocted for “Curb,” came straight from Mr. David’s warped writer’s notebook. But it fell to Ms. Essman, as it does so often, to draw Mr. David into a spiral of narcissism and one-upmanship. Her portrayal suggests that Susie Greene has not evolved much since her first detonation in Season 1, when she was seen berating her husband for taking in a Fresh Air Fund child, only to have him rob them. Not so Ms. Essman, a stand-up comedian as well as an actress, who has gone through quite a number of metamorphoses over that same period.

She is, for example, about to become a reality show host. Beginning Oct. 3, she will be seen presiding over six episodes of a new series on Bravo called “Better Half.” Each week, Ms. Essman will pit two couples against each other, using the following device: One member of each couple will have the same occupation (chef, photographer, hairdresser), and must train his or her mate to do it.

“It’s not exploitive,” she said, before acknowledging that the premise was probably a little intrusive. “You do follow the couples and see there’s a tremendous amount of stress between them for 48 hours. Invariably someone ends up having a fight and hating the other one. I don’t think we broke anyone up,” she said. “Actually, one couple broke up, but they should have broken up.”

Ms. Essman, who will say only that she is in her 40s, has had the opposite experience in her own romantic life. Seemingly perpetually single, she was as surprised as anyone when she fell in love four years ago, and in the process acquired an instant family. Her companion, Jimmy Harder, a commercial real estate broker whose first marriage ended in divorce, has four teenage children. The couple have no plans to marry, but Ms. Essman described Mr. Harder with a dewy ardor that Susie Greene could never muster, saying, “I will be with him the rest of my life.” She also regards his son and three daughters as her stepchildren.

“It’s a weird, weird thing: I never had that burning thing that so many women have, I never really wanted kids,” Ms. Essman said over a goat-cheese omelet at a cafe in Morningside Heights in Manhattan, near her apartment and just a few awnings away from Tom’s, the diner depicted in “Seinfeld.” “I always had a dog. Then I jumped into this role and didn’t really think about it. There was a need. I did what just had to be done. As challenging as it is, because they’re teenagers, it’s incredibly gratifying.”

Mr. Harder’s children have also provided kindling for Ms. Essman’s stand-up act, which she has been honing for more than two decades and which she performs about 50 nights a year. “They’re great kids, but here’s the thing,” she told a sold-out audience at Carolines, the New York comedy club, in early August. “They lie. ’Cause they’re teenagers. And they know they’re lying. And we know they’re lying. And they know we know we’re lying. But nobody says anything.”

Ms. Essman’s reflections on her family — she and her three siblings were raised in Mount Vernon, N.Y. — have always been a big part of her act. This includes the somewhat malicious fun she pokes at her mother, a retired Russian professor at Sarah Lawrence College, and her father, an oncologist, who died six years ago. “We had a really great funeral for him,” Ms. Essman recalled for the audience at Carolines. “Everybody told different stories of how beloved he was. It was all: Lenny this and Lenny that, Lenny saved my life. But this is the best part of the whole thing, and I can’t believe I’m telling it to you. A lot of my friends went over to my mother at the house afterward to say he sounded like a wonderful man, and they were sorry they didn’t know him better. My mother said to each and every one of them” — and here she turned nasal and sotto voce — “ ‘There was a side of him we didn’t talk about.’ ”

Both in real life and in her act Ms. Essman peppers her speech with enough salty exhortations to make Howard Stern sound like Howard K. Smith. “You’re a pervert” is how she upbraided one audience member at Carolines, after he informed her he was a photographer who specialized in portraits of children but had none of his own. But she cautions those who don’t know her well that there are major differences between herself and her “Curb” persona.

For one thing TV Susie considers herself a fashion maven, though her definition of dressing up typically includes slicking her hair behind a pink headband and donning a rhinestone-studded velour warm-up suit. In real life Ms. Essman lets her long dark curls fall to her shoulders and favors Diane Von Furstenberg dresses, or jeans and sweaters.

So does the real Susie ever let loose on someone with one of those volcanic eruptions characteristic of her “Curb” persona? “If I’m particularly hormonally imbalanced, and they really push me,” she said. Her best friend, Joy Behar, who came up through the New York City comedy clubs with Ms. Essman, related this story about Ms. Essman and Mr. Harder’s children: “As you know, she has these pretend daughters, her ersatz daughters, and the other day some creep on the street was coming on to one of these pretty young things. And so she ‘Susie Greened’ him. She says she’s trying to teach these girls how to survive in New York City.”

To that end Ms. Essman recently agreed to do “Bolt,” an animated film for Disney in which she will give voice to a “tough New York City stray cat” named Mittens, who takes a road trip to Hollywood with a dog played by John Travolta and a hamster voiced by Thomas Haden Church. “Mittens has got an edge,” she said, which is probably a given. That said, considering that this is Disney and not HBO, she assured, “I can keep it clean.”

---------------

you can get the second episdoe by torrent HERE

[faceless]

NEW YORK (AP)

Jeff Garlin isn't long into his comedy set when he announces to the audience: "I'm never nervous." Calmness in the face of many things -- an improvising Larry David, repeated production halts for his new film "I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With" -- has served Garlin well.

As David's agent and sidekick on "Curb Your Enthusiasm," which is made in only a roughly scripted manner, Garlin never flinches. He appears almost serene next to David's hysterical paranoia. The comedy series, for which Garlin is also an executive producer, has just returned for its sixth season on HBO.

"To not be in the moment is to deny so much comic possibility," the 45-year-old comedian said during a recent interview over breakfast at a Manhattan hotel. "By being in the moment, you are being true to the art form." The moment has finally arrived for "I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With," a film that Garlin wrote, directed and stars in. It opened recently in New York, Los Angeles and other cities, and further expands later this month. It's also available on demand on cable channel IFC.

"I can't believe it's actually out. I've reached my goal," says Garlin. "I got a release and a review in The New York Times -- a rave. I'm done." It was around 1997 when Garlin began the script for "I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With," a deadpan semi-autobiographical story about a Chicago comedian who's fired from Second City and dumped by his girlfriend in quick succession.

Garlin struggled to find financing, which twice fell through. He shot it in 18 days, but those days were spread out over two years. Garlin cast the film mostly with comedians he's known through the years, including Sarah Silverman, Amy Sedaris, Bonnie Hunt and Dan Castellaneta. "I have a sense of resiliency," Garlin says of bringing his film to theaters. "They knock me down, I just get back up. I don't get emotional."

The reviews have been positive. The film offers a pitch-perfect picture of loneliness and quiet desperation, populated with wry observations on life a la Paddy Chayefsky's "Marty" -- for which Garlin's character repeatedly professes his devotion. "It's like an Albert Brooks or Woody Allen movie, only not as good and I star in it," says Garlin. "But there aren't a lot of movies like that."

Since he was 8 and saw Jimmy Durante perform, Garlin knew he wanted to be a comedian. He's spent his entire career as a standup, character actor and improv player. "I'm just a lucky guy," he says. "I'm lucky because I crossed paths with Larry David. I think that, yeah, I'm talented, I'm a funny guy. But I'm lucky because there are talented, funny guys that haven't gotten my career opportunities."

It was Garlin who suggested to David that he film everything surrounding his post-"Seinfeld" comedy special on HBO, thereby leading to "Curb Your Enthusiasm." On the show and in his movie, Garlin often plays the straight man to those around him: he's a comedy enabler. As an executive producer on "Curb," he often advises David on what's working and what isn't. He also helped direct HBO comedy specials for Denis Leary and Jon Stewart.

The comedy show where Garlin pronounced his immunity to nerves is also a case in point. For years, he has been performing "Jeff Garlin's Combo Platter" weekly at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in Los Angeles. (He lives with his wife and two sons in L.A.) The show, which he recently brought to the UCB in New York, has a loose structure that allows for improvisation. Garlin begins with a set of standup, then introduces several guests (in this case, Louis C.K., "Curb" co-star Susie Essman and Jim Gaffigan), who each do a short set.

Garlin then takes a suggestion from the audience, spawning brief two-minute standup routines from every comic, with each riffing off the previous one. It's the opposite of what you see at many chest-thumping standup shows. "Most comedy today is about bravado," says Garlin. "I love low-status. I love when you're humiliated and the audience feels for you. In my standup, the only one who should ever look stupid is me."

Garlin is now preparing a full-length standup act. He later plans to tour with Richard Lewis and Essman, and next year turn it into a TV special. He places the odds for another season of "Curb" at 50/50, "because that's what Larry says." But Garlin isn't as positive about the prospect of another season as you might expect. "It's a great job, but I'd like to move on and do whatever's next," he says. Still he adds: "But I'm not going to be the jerk that stops 'Curb Your Enthusiasm.' "

------------------

[faceless]

Fans want to know: Is Larry David 'that guy'?

NEW YORK (AP) -- Larry David steals a glance at his wristwatch. It's about 11:50. He needs to check out of the hotel by noon. He pleasantly explains he's only got a few more minutes. Larry David plays a constantly aggrieved man named Larry David in "Curb Your Enthusiasm." And no offense meant, by the way, when he looked at his watch.

"I wasn't bored or anything," he assures his interviewer. Eureka! "There's a typical 'TV Larry' thing," he says, unleashing a small rant: "In life, we can't look at a watch! It's anti-social to look at a watch. You can't be at a dinner party and look at a watch. It's rude! People think you want to go home. Maybe you just want to know what time it is! You're allowed to know what time it is, aren't you?"

He's put his finger on another of life's injustices. Didn't the first President Bush lose a re-election race just by looking at his watch during a debate? "Exactly!" says David. "The guy lost the presidency 'cause he looked at his watch! Absolutely!" This could be a scene straight from "Curb Your Enthusiasm," the sort of deconstruction site where TV Larry thrives. "It's certainly something that he would be interested in," nods David -- "this taboo about looking at a watch!"

Having already made TV history (and a bundle) as a creator-producer-writer of "Seinfeld," David had little to prove when he shot "Curb" as a comedy special for HBO in 1999, then turned it into a series a year later. Now with "Curb" in a sixth hit season (airing 10 p.m. EDT Sundays), David has built on his "Seinfeld" legacy with a made-for-TV version of himself: TV Larry is a former "Seinfeld" producer who lives in Los Angeles and confronts random wrongnesses that fuel each episode, which is plotted by David, then improvised by him with his "Curb" co-stars (including Jeff Garlin, Susie Essman and Cheryl Hines as Larry's wife, Cheryl David).

Among the striking similarities between the two Larrys: Each has marital difficulties. In June, real-life Larry and his real-life wife, Laurie David, separated after 14 years of marriage. On "Curb," Cheryl left Larry. She was fed up after he refused to take her phone call from an airplane flight she feared was going to crash. She had wanted to tell him goodbye. He told her to "call back in 10 minutes" because the cable repairman was at their house fixing the TiVo.

But there are also big differences. For one thing, David is busy channeling himself into a comedy series, whereas its hero, TV Larry, has far too much time on his hands. Instead, he lives a life of agitated leisure swollen with annoyances (slow toasters, underwear with no fly, anonymous philanthropy, indecisive people ahead of him in line), and he courts disaster by taking corrective action.

Is TV Larry just a self-involved provocateur? "I think he's an idealist," says David unconvincingly. Or maybe just bored? "No," David insists. "He doesn't create messes out of boredom. No! In one episode he says, 'I'm not an inventor. I'm an improver. I see things that are wrong, and I improve them.' He wants the world to be run the way that he feels it should be: the RIGHT way."

David -- the 60-year-old spitting image of TV Larry, from his tennis shoes to his irredeemably bald head -- says the show is a blast. "I had such a good time this year, I think I'd probably like to do it again," he says. "My only issue is my face. I've got to edit this show and look at my face six to eight hours a day. Most people just look at their face when they're looking in the mirror. I've got to see it all day long."

Another year would be fun, except for "this big bald head," he sighs, shaking it. "It's big and it's bald. I gotta take that into consideration, too." The head and the face have become widely recognized since "Curb" began. While "Seinfeld" made David a familiar name, he mostly stayed behind the scenes on that show. He says he likes being a public figure now.

"It's 95-5 on the good side," he figures. "The world's become a much friendlier place. Every now and then people will bother you when you don't really want to be bothered: a small price to pay. And I'm not dealing with everybody. Most of the people who know me are fans of the show." And those fans, David adds with amusement, all wonder the same thing: "Am I that guy?" That friendly but intrusive guy, that calculating, never-lets-it-slide guy? "I think people really WANT me to be that guy. I think they're probably disappointed when I'm not."

Not yet, anyway. The distinction, always tenuous, between the two Larrys is steadily eroding, David reports. "I feel like TV Larry is my role model," he says, "and I'm becoming a little more like him -- just because I CAN be, because that's what people expect. Now it's easier for me to make what would be perceived as an anti-social comment: If I'm at someone's house for dinner and there's way too much butter in the mashed potatoes, I might say so now. Whereas before I would be tactful enough not to."

So his character has given him permission to speak his mind, not just occupy a character who does it for him. "Absolutely," he says. "Gradually I'm encroaching on TV Larry's style". It's a whole other benefit of doing "Curb"! "You're not kidding," he grins, free to look at his watch. "It's fantastic!"

[faceless]

'That's a big bowl of get my ass out of here'
Curb Your Enthusiasm star Jeff Garlin tells John Patterson about Wall-E, his comic career - and keeping a straight face in front of David Hasselhoff
Friday July 4, 2008
The Guardian

Jeff Garlin, writer, director, comedian's comedian, demigod of American improv, accomplished standup comic, and blank-faced second-banana to Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm, is recalling his lean years. "I played the villain on Baywatch once, an evil disc jockey who tries taking over the beach, fights with David Hasselhoff and has a fantasy sequence with Pamela Anderson. I think it was the best acting I've ever done - even though when you watch it, it's obviously not good acting - but when David Hasselhoff is yelling at you, you try not laughing. And I didn't laugh, so I think it's pretty fantastic on my part."

Garlin is off colour today, a virus having laid him low, so we greet by bumping elbows awkwardly, instead of shaking hands. As we clear a space to talk, he picks up a colour catalogue of some kind, squints at it and groans, "Oh no, that's just a big bowl of wrong!" (He says that a lot, I've learned. As in "Well, that's a great big bowl of thank-you-very-much," or "That's a big bowl of get my ass out of here!" - an interesting turn of phrase for a large man who bases a lot of his act around his own appetites and eating disorders.) The object in question is the programme for some rightwing Christian Broadcasters' convention, evidently held in this same hotel recently.

"You want this?" he asks with eyebrows raised, perhaps satirically. He pushes it as far away from himself as he can, like a live hand grenade, and we get started.

Garlin is the principal human element in Pixar's latest release, Wall-E, the story of a garbage-crushing droid left behind on Earth to clean up after humans blast off to escape the polluted planet. After an extraordinarily vivid and effective opening half-hour sequence, containing not a single word of dialogue, Garlin shows up midway as the only significant human voice in the movie, playing the captain of a spaceship full of overweight and sedated human exiles in orbit awaiting Earth's big clean-up. And for a change, this time the fat guy gets to save mankind.

As one lonely voice in the recording studio, Garlin "had no idea while we were making it what it would end up being. I really didn't have a clue that I was as much of a hero as I am. That was a huge surprise to me. It's like doing a radio show. I'm doing it scene by scene in a vacuum, not paying attention - you're wrestling this guy and that guy, talking to this one, doing all this and all that - so I'm totally out of it."

I tell him I can't help noticing similarities between the trash-choked planet Pixar depicts in Wall-E and the future-world of Mike Judge's far angrier dystopian satire Idiocracy, which has its own garbage-mountains and landfill-lakes, albeit with plenty of humans, most of them moronic.

"There are similarities, but people aren't nearly as stupid in Wall-E as they are in Idiocracy. They're fat, sure, they're not in contact with one another, but you can see that when they wake up later in the movie they do become enlightened."

Adding Garlin's voice, with its everyman's turn of phrase and antiheroic bashfulness, is what humanises a movie mostly made by computers and largely bereft of humans (and which nonetheless is perhaps the best Pixar movie yet). Even when you can't see his bulky frame or his never-surprised face, Jeff Garlin is someone you're happy to root for.

Although Wall-E reminds us that Garlin is a fine actor and not merely an improv comic writ large, his history in the world of improvised comedy has put him in contact and on set with an entire generation of great comics. Name any American comedian who has made his or her mark in the past 25 years and Garlin is likely to know them, or be their friend, or to have directed their HBO standup special, or even to have discovered them in the first place.

Back in the 1990s, three women comics who were his dates for different tapings of Saturday Night Live - Janeane Garofolo, Laura Keitlinger and Sarah Silverman - all ended up as performers on the show. No such luck for Garlin when his own audition rolled around. "It was kind of ironic. I was set to audition and just as I walked to the stage [SNL producer-impresario] Lorne Michaels left the room, so I was like, 'Oh well, that stinks.'"

He reels off a string of the household names and future legends with whom he first worked with at Chicago's famous Second City comedy ensemble, one of the major wellsprings of American comedy since the mid-50s: "Who was there when I was there?" he aks himself. "Tim Meadows [SNL], Mike Myers, Bonnie Hunt [Jerry Maguire, Cheaper by The Dozen], Chris Farley [SNL, Belushi-like early flameout], Dan Castellaneta, Richard Kind [Spin City]. Who am I missing? Steve Carell, Amy Sedaris [Strangers With Candy], Steve Colbert [The Daily Show]. That theatre just produces those kind of people en masse."

The Second City connection underlines Garlin's Chicago background. He was born and raised there, by parents who owned a plumbing-supply business, until the family upped sticks to Florida while he was in his teens. It happened halfway through the school year, which made him altogether too visible in this new environment for his own liking. He spent a lot of time in high school fighting anti-semitic rednecks, constantly surprised that yet another midget teenage bigot was happy to take yet another pasting from the big, burly Jewish kid, and elsewhere he has noted: "Just because it's south Florida" - home to many Jewish retirees and their families - "doesn't mean it's not still the South."

So it's not altogether surprising to learn that he later dropped out of the University of Miami and, propelled by the example of idols such as Woody Allen, Richard Pryor, Shelley Berman, Jackie Gleason and Walter Matthau, made his way back to Chicago, whose metropolitan virtues he is happy to hymn. "It's my favourite place on earth," he says. "It's more of a town, a big town, than a city. It's the capital of a bunch of sensible, mostly rural midwestern states, and everyone from those states goes to Chicago. It's like it's the exact right amount of big city for them. It's not provincial, the food's great, I love the women - my wife's from Chicago - and I love the Cubs, even though they've broken my heart a lot of times. It's not a big neuroses city, it's a genuine city; people encourage each other, not a lot of negativity."

And then of course, there's Curb Your Enthusiasm, which in TV terms these days is like the big, high-stakes, floating poker-game of comedy where all the comics du jour feel they must ante up at least once to be taken seriously. Garlin, holding things together as star Larry David's nominal straight-man and combination Boswell/Lou Costello, is never far away from a comedy legend, and holds his own in the presence of such titans as Mel Brooks, Shelley Berman (the long-lost, missing-link 1960s comedy pioneer who plays David's dad), 50s-era ex-Second City member Paul Mazursky and against youngsters such as Ben Stiller, Seinfeld's Jason Alexander, Paul Reiser and David Schwimmer.

In this demanding environment - "totally highwire, no rehearsal, the cast members don't know what we're about to do, it's very loose, I love it!" - Garlin can draw on his years of improv, his ability, widely admired among his peers, to listen for his moment, to know when to hold back, and exactly when to leap in.

"To me, in a way," he says, "Curb's a very English show. We think of Fawlty Towers a lot - having a lead character not being inherently likable, that was one of the first shows to embrace that. Britain's the one place where it's been successful, that hasn't surprised me at all."

Offscreen, Garlin's dependability and network of friends have given him a second career as a director of comedy specials, mainly for HBO, whose standup one-offs have helped along many a blossoming career. Garlin directed specials for his friends Jon Stewart (Unleavened) and Denis Leary (Lock-n-Load), two comics whose style couldn't seem more outwardly opposed, and also directed This Filthy World, a marvelous record of shock-meister John Waters' one-man show. His theory of his role as a director is a lot like his acting: stand back, get out of the way, let the laughs breathe. "John Waters - what a fine gentleman! I told him I wanted to let his stories unfold without too many camera moves and so on. I don't want to edit him, or rewrite him, I just want him to do what he's gonna do. He's already great without me stepping on him."

Inevitably, Garlin was going to direct his own feature sooner or later. His small-budget labour of love, I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With, appeared in 2006 after an 18-day shooting schedule spread out over two years (with two collapses in financing). Drawing from his own experiences as a lovelorn large guy, it's finely pitched between comedy and melancholy, as Garlin's character longs for love and simultaneously tries out for the lead role in a local revival of Paddy Chayevsky's Marty (for a better clue to the movie's tone, note that Marty's ancient mother ends up being played by Gina Gershon, best known as the lesbian sexpot in the Wachowski brothers' Bound). He is negotiating for a British release in the near future.

"It's a personal movie, a character study. It's funny but not like, you know, 'hilarious!' I'm pretty proud of it, it was difficult to make, but I'm not going make any kind of money making that sort of movie. The only thing you get out of it is that you hope you made some good creative choices."

It's certainly a step up from playing an evil DJ on Baywatch.

[faceless]

'Curb' to resume production in December
HBO comedy booked for 10 episodes in 2009
By DANIEL FRANKEL
variety.com

HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" will be back in production in December, with 10 season-seven episodes slated for next year, sources close to the series said. The pay cabler has yet to release an airdate or exec producer lineup for season seven of the comedy skein created, exec produced and starring Larry David. The season-six finale aired in November of last year -- a lengthy break, but not as pronounced as the 21-month gap between seasons five and six.

Launched in October 2000, series is the longest running in the HBO lineup. Winner of the 2003 comedy series Golden Globe, "Curb Your Enthusiasm" was nominated for four Emmys this year, including series, guest thesp (Shelley Berman), casting and editing.

The finale left off with Larry still separated from wife Cheryl (Cheryl Hines) and hooking up with house guest Loretta Black (Vivica A. Fox), although it was left unclear as to whether that was a dream sequence.

-------------------------

Excellent

[nekokate]

I can't wait for this!! I really hope the Loretta thing wasn't a dream sequence - it would add a great new dimension to the show if he was going out with Loretta, she's very funny.

"Loretta Black? Hey, that's like me being called Larry Jew!"

[faceless]

Larry David Grilled on Woody Allen
On not screwing it up with Woody, overcoming cold feet and being a real-life George ... Costanza.
By Jordan Riefe
thewrap.com

He started as a stand-up comic, but Larry David didn’t even give himself a chance to die, famously surveying the audience one night and exclaiming, “This isn’t gonna work” … then exiting without telling a single joke. Next came a coveted spot on “Saturday Night Live,” where only one of his sketches ever made it on air. Despondent but not defeated, he came up with a sitcom about him and his friends doing nothing. The show, of course, was “Seinfeld,” and it earned David over $200 million. His current HBO series, “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” also about nothing, is entering its seventh season.

This week David makes his jump to the big screen in Woody Allen’s “Whatever Works,” in which he plays a neurotic misanthrope in shorts and a bathrobe who falls for a witless ingénue from the south. If it sounds like typecasting, think again. Larry David wouldn’t be caught dead in a pair of shorts.

You've been known to often try to talk your way out of role -- that you get cold feet.
I feel that way about everything ... “A date, I’m not up to the task!” That’s life for me: “Not up to the task.” I felt that way when I first got the script for "Whatever Works" and saw how big the part was.

Is that kind of self doubt ever paralyzing?
Well, you’re always hoping that something will get you out of it. The date will call and cancel. “Oh, you can’t make it? Oh, that’s a shame. Ah jeez, oh, okay ... maybe next time.” Or that Woody would call, “Y’know, we decided to go in another direction.” “Oh, whatever, I understand.” A lot of times those calls don’t come, so you have to put a gun to your head and get through it.

Woody didn't make that call. Were you nervous working with him?
Yeah, I don’t want to screw it up, that’s for sure. You’re aware of that. On the other hand, you know that if there’s something that’s not to Woody's liking, he’ll get it to his liking. But there was a little more pressure doing that, certainly, than there is in doing an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

This character seems a lot like the guy on “Curb.”
The character on “Curb” is normal compared to this guy -- he actually wants relationships and sex and things like that. This guy’s way out -- he wears shorts, OK? Never would the character on “Curb” wear shorts, or would the person that’s talking to you right now wear shorts. So I think that’s a very disturbing thing right there.

How did they get you to wear shorts?
It was actually my idea.

Woody wrote the script 30 years ago with Zero Mostel in mind. Did it have to be rewritten for you?
No, the only thing … there was a character description on the first page of the script that described Zero Mostel to a T, but that was it.

When there’s a Woody Allen film without Woody in it, the lead actor usually ends up doing a Woody impression.
Even Kenneth Branaugh … I know that’s a trap to fall into, cause others have done it. I am saying his words, but at no point am I doing him … though, for that matter, you can say that everybody’s doing him, because they’re all his words.

What about Woody's directing style? Did you get nervous when he didn’t comment after takes?
No, no I didn’t. When there was something that wasn’t to his liking or to his tastes, he would certainly point it out to me, but it was in a very easygoing way. I suppose the worse you are, the more he’ll tell you. But if you’re that bad, he’ll replace you.

The story is you quit “Saturday Night Live” when you were a writer there, then came back two days later as if nothing ever happened.
I came back. This movie is the only enterprise that I’ve ever been involved in that I haven’t quit.

Why did you go back?
I just thought it was a good idea. Yes, they gave me a few looks, but then we had a meeting and the producer never said a word to me.

They just let it go?
I came back like nothing ever happened.

And of course you did an episode of “Seinfeld” where George does the same thing. How much of George is based on you?
Oh, I don’t know. It’s certainly a big part of me, his shortcomings as well.

You take notes from real life and use them on “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Can you give an example?
Things might just catch my eye or strike me a certain way. “Do I have to thank that woman? She didn’t pay for the meal … Her husband paid, why am I thanking her?’ You know, just things like that.

It’s going into its seventh season. How long before this thing runs out of gas?
We’ll see what happens. I’ll stop when I feel like that moment has arrived, but so far so good. If a network keeps picking you up and you keep doing good shows, it could probably go on for a while.

Where do you see yourself in five years? Any plans?
I’m going to be a concert pianist.

------------------

I'd not heard about this new movie - it's got the potential to be great with him in it and Woody Allen directing.

[nekokate]

Larry will be the main guest on The Daily Show tonight. Tune in if you're American, torrent it tomorrow if you ain't!!!! I can't wait!!!

[faceless]

thanks for the news kate, here's the clip

[faceless]

The second video is a playlist of an interview from The New York Times (in 8 parts)

[Colston]

Thanks Face... superb stuff. new season starts in the US tonight.

[nekokate]

New season tonight??? Brilliant!!! Some evil communist had better get it onto a torrent site near me quick sharp!

[Colston]

Superb first episode....