“Curb Your Enthusiasm” may be gone, but the series — and the unique mind of its creator and star, Larry David — are not ready to be forgotten any time soon.
Larry’s not done being annoyed by his fellow humans,” jokes Jeff Schaffer, executive producer and director of the landmark comedy that ended its 12-season run in April. “Larry, the other day was like, ‘What are we gonna do with all these ideas? Because until we can walk out of our house and not be annoyed by our fellow human, we’ve got a job to do.’”
The duo — whose collaborative efforts go back to the “Seinfeld” years where Schaffer wrote several seasons and served as executive producer during its ninth season — have offices right next to each other and still bat around ideas daily.
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He walks in, he complains about something, I complain about something…” Schaffer tells Variety, riffing on the general theme of just about every “Curb” episode. “The show may have left all of you, but Larry hasn’t left me. I’m still getting a really good, valuable dose.”
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Ideas continue to go back in forth between them because, well, “things are still happening to us,” as Schaffer puts it.
“It’s really a testament to the just awful behavior of humans on the west sideof Los Angeles,” he says, referring to the city where “Curb” is set. “I mean, I’ve always said documenting the west side of Los Angeles’ terrible behavior is an evergreen business, and it really is. So, there’s still plenty to do. Where we’ll do it, I’m not sure yet, but right now we’re just taking names.”
Larry David, both the character and the man himself, has come to be known as the person who says things out loud that most other people may be thinking let sit quietly in the back of their brains. Larry has no pause button before opening his mouth, which is why his foot frequently ends up in it.
“Larry speaks for those who have no voice,” Schaffer says. And that is exactly the approach that was taken with all 120 episodes of “Curb,” which made for some hilariously outrageous ad-libs and a whole lot of unused footage on the editing room floor.
For example, in the first episode of Season 12, Larry is in his car and gets into a screaming match with the iPhone’s digital assistant Siri because it isn’t hearing his request correcting for driving directions. The moment had really happened to David and was worked into the show.
“Larry was trying to get to a restaurant and had a kerfuffle with Siri; Siri was not playing along,” Schaffer recalls. “Larry was complaining about this on set the next day. I’m like, ‘Oh, we gotta do that scene. We gotta do that scene now.’”
Fast forward a few days later after Larry had quickly looked at the outline. “He knows what the scene is because he’s lived it, so he’s gonna do it,” explains Schaffer. But since the dialogue is improvised, “he doesn’t know what Siri’s going to say.”
While Larry is in his car talking to Siri, Schaffer is standing behind a monitor with a walkie talkie: “I’m Siri,” Schaffer says with a laugh. “And I just start to make it as humanly impossible for him to get [directions to that restaurant]. It was brilliant.”
And that’s how the show would get made. “It got shot the same way Larry lives his life. It’s Larry against the world. He doesn’t know what the other [actors] are gonna say. He wants to be 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 in charge of marshaling the forces of the world against Larry.”
Many, many of those moments when David laughed at the end of a conversation with Leon, that was David (the actor) breaking character, laughing at something J.B. Smoove said. “Larry hasn’t heard what JB is going to say until take one. J.B. goes into the scene with a very consistent m.o., and that m.o. is, ‘I’m gonna f*ck Larry up,’” Schaffer reveals. “The laughs that you’ve seen in the scenes are Larry really laughing. We’ve cut out the ones that are inappropriate for the scene.”
But in a cast filled with comedic actors seasoned at improvisation, it isn’t just Smoove who comes up with zingers. When Sienna Miller recently guested in a few episodes as a fictional version of herself who was studying to convert to Judaism, David ad-libbed a tirade in which his character went all-in criticizing a rabbi for requiring Miller to study. Schaffer said David’s lengthy rant had to be cut because it wasn’t needed to make the scene work.
Larry’s outburst to the rabbi went something like this: “Why are you making Sienna Miller study? Just let her in! You think if Natalie Portman went to church, they’d make her study? … This is why we’re always on the bottom. This is why we’re in last place. Let me manage the team! I can turn this into winners. I can have Charlize Theron and Margot Robbie singing the haftarah in a week!”
But one of the greatest — and most unexpected — ad-libs has to go to the Boss himself, Bruce Springsteen. A plot point in the penultimate episode had Larry getting someone famous very sick. He had heard that Springsteen was a fan of the show, but never dreamed of him actually making a cameo appearance. Nonetheless, they reached out to his manager, and he accepted. The scene has Springsteen’s fictional rep reveal that although he is now a man, he was a woman, at which time he and Larry had sex on the floor.
“[Bruce] comes on set and within 20 minutes he’s saying, ‘Larry, I never took you for a floor f*cker!’ And I’m just like, this is one of the happiest days of my life,” Schaffer grins. “His reward for being so funny is that now when he goes and tours, there’s someone with a sign in the auditorium saying, ‘I’m a floor f*cker, too.’ And it happens all the time now.”
When all is said and done, the final episode of the final season of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” gave not only the longtime viewers of the show exactly what they hoped for, it also gave fans of “Seinfeld” the resolution that it failed to deliver when it had its entire cast of characters sent to prison.
While the “Curb” finale setup mirrored the “Seinfeld” finale, Seinfeld tells David the trial ended in mistrial because of a jury sequestration violation and David was a free man. Together they walked out of the jail like it was just another day.
“We wanted everyone to think, ‘Oh my gosh, they’re doing the “Seinfeld” finale to the letter, including the jail, including pulling back from Larry, talking about something he talked about in the very first episode of “Curb,” just like in “Seinfeld” with a button.’ Then boom! Jerry comes in, saves the day,” Schaffer says. “When we leave them, we are cutting out in the middle of them arguing. We leave them as we found them. And they’re going to be doing this forever. Whether the audience is watching or not.”
