Deconstructing Larry
"Seinfeld" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm" funny guy David takes on a big role for Woody Allen
LOS ANGELES - Spoiler alert:
Larry David has no shtick. No joke. In real life, the other brain behind “Seinfeld,’’ the curmudgeon at the core of every episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,’’ is neither particularly comedic nor cranky. He’s rather kicked back, in fact. At first the only obvious connection to the character he plays on HBO are the gray tennis shoes, white tube socks, and the rest of his California casual wardrobe (khakis, T-shirt, loose-fitting blazer).
But then it happens. Larry David pauses. And holds the pause. He’s in no hurry to answer a question about his new movie, “Whatever Works,’’ written and directed by fellow former stand-up Woody Allen. No reflection on his affection for the film, the hesitation is - an awkward social/professional situation, what’s come to be known as a “Larry David moment.’’ And then he’s back to being a pleasant enough tall guy seated on a couch, and a surprisingly non-slouchy one at that.
“People are always coming up to me with ideas, thinking that something that happened in their little world might be useful to me, that it’s funny,’’ David says with a pained look. “I don’t even look at [written ideas]. I try to dissuade them from even telling me. They’ll say their lives are just like mine. This isn’t really my life, either. It’s all concocted. There are a few things that happened on the show, but for the most part, it’s all made up.’’
Over the years, David has had plenty of incarnations, not all of them successful. Back in the mid-1980s, he spent one season as a writer on “Saturday Night Live’’ - and got exactly one sketch on the air. His own movie, 1998’s “Sour Grapes,’’ earned exactly zero stars from critic Roger Ebert. But of course he was already ridiculously wealthy from “Seinfeld,’’ whose character George Costanza was based on the Brooklyn-born writer with the rim of hair.
Back then David was mostly off camera and behind the scenes. In “Whatever Works,’’ his character is all over the screen. David, who had small roles in Allen’s “Radio Days’’ and “New York Stories,’’ is the star of the writer-director’s latest. He plays Boris Yellnikoff, a former physicist and self-proclaimed genius who has failed at his career, his marriage, and even his suicide, which left him with a limp. And still, despite Yellnikoff’s rude, whining obnoxiousness, he manages to attract a beautiful young woman (Evan Rachel Wood).
This is a Woody Allen movie, after all. David, 61, plays his stand-in of sorts, a role originally written for Zero Mostel in the 1970s. Still, “Whatever Works’’ has a familiar feel. The theme is that whatever works love-wise is what people should do. Allen has said that his wife, Soon Yi, recommended David for the part. David says he could not believe how big the part was: pages and pages of monologue and dialogue.
“First I was asked about my availability; I thought it’d be for a couple of days,’’ David says. “Then I got a script the next day . . . and I saw the first page. I was all over the first page. I went to page 50, I was on page 50. I went to the last page and I had a monologue.
“I was like, ‘Oh dear what is this?’ . . . I didn’t know if I could do this. I’m used to improvising. I’m not used to memorizing someone else’s words and doing a character. I’ve never done this on this scale before. So I called [Allen] up and shared some of my concerns and he sort of talked me off the ledge. And I said, ‘Consider yourself warned.’ ’’
Allen, as always, encouraged his cast to improvise. David said he couldn’t. No matter what he came up with, Boris was so smart - “so much smarter than me,’’ David says - that David’s own words sounded unnatural coming out of the character’s mouth. So he stopped trying and started memorizing, carrying the script with him wherever he went. (David says he has since forgotten all but a few of the jokes, as well as his high school Spanish dialogues and all of the Hebrew he learned for his bar mitzvah.)
In those days, David insists, he wasn’t known as the funny kid, or even a funny kid at all. He does remember doing impressions in his house once and making a few people laugh, but that’s about it. Comedian was never a career choice. Then he went away to the University of Maryland, where he majored in history and discovered his sarcastic, self-deprecating side. The way David tells it, he was as surprised as anyone.
“It was the strangest thing, the strangest thing,’’ he says, chuckling. “All of a sudden this self-deprecating humor came out and people liked it. I went out of state and, I don’t know, I met new people and I just suddenly became funny. Really, it was odd. It was like I developed a new personality. I stopped being funny as soon I came home.’’
It’s hard to tell if David is kidding. He’s that dry, or difficult. It’s hard to tell that, too. That’s not to say David isn’t personable. He is. But he doesn’t have any apparent urge to entertain. Perhaps he’s so secure in his comedy chops that he can dare to be dull. Mostly, though, the recently divorced father of two teenage girls seems disinclined to offer up too much personal information or many particulars at all.
This much he allows:
His older daughter, 15-year-old Cazzi, is nicknamed Sarcazzi. He doesn’t pretend to be sunny around his kids. “You know, I try to be myself around them,’’ he says. “If I’m not pleased with something, I’m not going to pretend I’m happy. It’s tough.’’ Pause. “You want them to enjoy life more than you.’’ Long laugh.
Since his 2007 separation and subsequent divorce from environmental activist Laurie David, he has been dating. But he doesn’t meet women on his own. “Well, you know, it happens,’’ he says. “It’s a lot easier to meet people than it was before I was married.’’ Because he’s famous and loaded? “Because people, uh, yeah.’’ Dates be warned, though. “You’d be surprised. I don’t go in with an arsenal of jokes,’’ he says. “I kind of wing it.’’
He wasn’t winging it in “Whatever Works,’’ though, not with Patricia Clarkson among his costars. Woody Allen doesn’t rehearse, so David says the actors would get together and work out their scenes on their own. He picked which leg would limp (the right) and found it easy, except for the time he forgot to limp entirely and a scene had to be reshot after the crew had shut down for the day.
“Boris is not quite me,’’ David says. “But obviously there are things we have in common.’’ Such as? “Disdain for mankind.’’ 