Curb Your Enthusiasm may be over, but the series — and the unique mind of its creator and star, Larry David — aren't ready to be forgotten anytime soon.
“Larry is not done annoying his fellow humans,” says Jeff Schaffer, executive producer and director of the hit comedy series, which ended its 12-season run in April. “Larry, the other day, was like, ‘What are we going to do with all these ideas? Because until we can get out of our house without annoying our fellow humans, we have a job to do.’”
The duo, whose collaboration dates back to the “Seinfeld” years, where Schaffer wrote several seasons and served as executive producer during its ninth season, have offices close to each other and still bounce ideas off each other daily.
“He comes in, he complains about something, I complain about something…” Shaffer says. diverse“Recalling the general theme of almost every episode of “Curb,” he said, “The show may have left you all, but Larry didn’t leave me. I still get a really good, really valuable dose.”
And thoughts keep bouncing back and forth between them because “things keep happening to us,” as Shaffer puts it.
“It’s really a testament to the horrible behavior of people on the West Side of Los Angeles,” he says, referring to the city where Curb is set. “I mean, I’ve always said that documenting the horrible behavior of the West Side of Los Angeles is an evergreen business, and it is. So, there’s still a lot to be done. I’m not sure where we’re going to do it yet, but right now we’re just taking names.”
Larry David, both the character and the man, has become known as someone who says things out loud that most people would consider quietly leaving in the back of their minds. There is no pause button for Larry before he opens his mouth, which is why his foot often ends up in it.
“Larry speaks for those who have no voice,” says Schafer. And that’s exactly the approach that was taken throughout all 120 episodes of “Curb,” which led to some very funny improvisations and a lot of unused footage on the editing floor.
For example, in the first episode of season 12, Larry is in his car and gets into a verbal altercation with Siri, the iPhone's digital assistant, because he didn't hear his request for correct driving directions. This moment actually happened to David and was included in the show.
“Larry was trying to go to a restaurant and got into a verbal altercation with Siri,” Shaffer recalls. “Siri wasn't responding to him. Larry complained about it on the set the next day. I said, 'Oh, we have to do this scene. We have to do this scene now.'”
A few days later, Larry glanced at the outline. “He knows the scene because he’s lived it, so he’s going to do it,” Schafer explains. But since the dialogue is improvised, “he doesn’t know what Siri is going to say.”
While Larry was in his car talking to Siri, Shaffer was standing behind a screen with a walkie-talkie: “I’m Siri,” Shaffer says with a laugh. “And I just started making it impossible for him as a human being.” [directions to that restaurant]”It was great.”
And that's how the show was filmed. “It was filmed the same way Larry lives his life. It's Larry against the world. He doesn't know what other people are doing. [actors] “He wants to feel frustrated and surprised by what’s happening around him, because every day is a series of surprises,” the director explains. “It’s Larry against the world, and I’m responsible for rallying the forces of the world against Larry.”
Larry David and J.B. Smoove
Many of the moments when David laughed at the end of a conversation with Leon, David (the actor) would break character, laughing at something J.B. Smoove had said. “Larry didn’t hear what J.B. was going to say until the first take. J.B. comes into the scene with a very static gesture, and that gesture is, ‘I’m going to do something bad to Larry,’” Schafer reveals. “The laughs you saw in the scenes were really Larry’s laughs. We cut out the ones that didn’t fit the scene.”
But in a cast full of stand-up comedians, Smoove wasn’t the only one coming up with the punchlines. When Sienna Miller recently appeared in a few episodes as a fictionalized version of herself who was considering converting to Judaism, David improvised a speech criticizing a rabbi for asking Miller to study. Shaffer said David’s long speech had to be cut because it wasn’t necessary to make the scene work.
Larry's response to the rabbi was: “Why are you forcing Sienna Miller to study? Just let her go! Do you think if Natalie Portman went to church, they would force her to study? … That's why we're always at the bottom. That's why we're in last place. Let me run the team! I can turn this into a winning team. I can have Charlize Theron and Margot Robbie singing the Haftarah in a week!”
But one of the most unexpected improvisations came from Bruce Springsteen himself. At one point in the penultimate episode, Larry makes a celebrity seriously ill. He’d heard that Springsteen was a fan of the show, but he’d never dreamed of him appearing in a cameo. Still, they reached out to his manager, and he accepted the offer. In the scene, Springsteen’s fictional actor reveals that although he’s now a man, he used to be a woman, and that time he and Larry had sex on the floor.
Bruce Springsteen
“[Bruce] “He comes on set, and within 20 minutes he’s like, ‘Larry, I never considered you annoying!’ And I just feel like that’s one of the happiest days of my life,” Schaffer smiles. “His reward for being so funny is that when he goes on his tours now, there’s someone holding a sign in the hall that says, ‘I’m annoying too.’ That happens all the time now.”
When all is said and done, the final episode of the final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm not only gave longtime viewers of the show exactly what they were hoping for, but it also gave Seinfeld fans the resolution that the show failed to deliver when the entire cast was sent to prison.
While the setup for the final episode of Curb was similar to the Seinfeld finale, Seinfeld tells David that the trial ended in a mistrial due to a jury violation of the rules of confinement, and that David is a free man. They walk out of jail together like it's just a normal day.
“We wanted everyone to think, ‘Oh my God, they’re literally doing the end of ‘Seinfeld,’ including the prison, including Larry backing out, talking about something he talked about in the first episode of ‘Curb,’ just like in ‘Seinfeld,’ using a button. And then, all of a sudden, Jerry comes in and saves the day,” Schafer says. “When we leave them, we cut to the middle of their argument. We leave them as we found them. And they’re going to do this forever. Whether the audience is watching or not.”
