Fitzdog Radio - Larry Charles - Episode 1103

Episode Date: July 9, 2025

From Seinfeld, Curb, Borat, Bruno and Entourage; legendary writer/ director Larry Charles talks to me about his wild ride and about making a movie with Bob Dylan. Follow Larry Charles on Instagram @larrycharles Watch my special "You Know Me" on YouTube! ⁠http://bit.ly/FitzYouKnowMe⁠ Twitter: ⁠@GREGFITZSHOW⁠ Instagram ⁠@GREGFITZSIMMONS⁠ ⁠FITZDOG.COM⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Adidas. When the frustration grows and the doubts start to creep in, we all need someone who has our back. To tell us we'll be okay, to remind us of our ability, to believe, because their belief in us transfers to self-belief and reminds us of all that we're capable of. We all need someone to make us believe.

Hashtag, you got this. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad You got this. and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees exclusions and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. ["Fitz Dog Radio Theme Song"] Hi, welcome to Fitz Dog Radio. I could not be more excited to play for you later my interview with Larry Charles who was like one of the comedic masterminds of the last 30 years in this country.

And let's face it any country. Are there are there other countries that are doing comedy the way we are I mean, Canada's got some funny stuff. I don't know. I guess all the European countries are like pie in the face, red nosed silliness. And comics come here with few exceptions. They don't do well in this country. It's a very specific tone of they don't do well in this country. It's a very specific tone of American humor that we appreciate. There's that guy in Austin, he's from Estonia. Why do you forget his fucking name? He's so funny.

Saw him in Austin this weekend. Anyway, welcome to the show. Please spread the word. Tell your friends about Fitts Dogg Radio. Follow, like, comment, do all that stuff. I'm watching, everybody's talking about this Epstein case now. Like, it's so amazing to me.

People go like, hey, you know this Epstein, there's a missing minute on the tape that Pam Bondi's not accounting for. There's a list. The list is missing. Yeah, my list is missing too. I had a to-do list from a few days ago and my wife keeps asking to see it,

to see what I'm doing all day when I'm home alone and she's out. Can't find the list, honey. Lists are real easy to lose, especially when the biggest leaders of the world are on it. Yeah, yeah, let's preserve that list. Good luck with that. Good luck with the fucking videotapes of Bill Clinton or whoever else doing whatever they did on that island. I mean, come on. You think

they, you think they don't have an assistant? You don't think they all have assistants that are Navy SEALs? Come on. This is life. People in power get away with stuff. We don't. You know? Just back from Austin, Texas, played the mothership this weekend. Real blasts, a lot of fun. Worked with some really good comics. What are their names? Mason James was very funny. And I'm

spacing the other guys anyway, great time. Good shows we had. It is a town where like they have they have they speaking of Navy SEALs they have Navy SEALs that work security. They all like all the all the bouncers are like jujitsu pros and Navy SEALs and I gotta take this hat off I'm hot. How about that? I got a nice tight fresh shave about an hour ago. And and they walk you from the mothership back to the hotel, which is literally one and a half blocks away. But Six Street is so fucking nuts. But it's also like, there is no town that per capita has as many comedy fans in it as Austin, Texas. Like you get mobbed. Like me! I'm just a mid-level guy and I walk down the street and like one

out of four people stops me, wants a selfie, wants to tell me they watched my special. It's really nice. It's very it's very flattering. God, I look pasty white. Jesus. And it's like being a comedian in Austin is like, it's like being a music. I'm sure like a musician in Nashville probably feels this kind of, you know, sense of importance. You know, like a, or a Civil War reenactor who lives in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, walks down the street, someone's like, Hey, man, you killed yesterday. Now, literally, you killed you killed that Confederate soldier with your with your musket and your harpoon. What do they call it? The what do they call the thing that sticks out of the front of the musket? The knife? Your Garrett?

No, what do they call that fucking thing? God, my mind is gone. And I hope they you know, after after spending a few days in Texas and seeing like how much they hate Democrats and how much they hate just liberals in general, it feels like maybe those reenactors should keep the, it's good that we kept the uniforms because the new civil war is going to start. We get we don't have to make new uniforms, dust out those fucking woollen gray suits. And maybe that's why am I yelling? Maybe when we do the new war or the old war again,

well, it's going to be the same states. Let's not kid ourselves. Look at the fucking electoral map and look at the Civil War. And within one or two states, it's exactly the same. So let's have the war, but you can only use the muskets and the cannons. That's it.

And you have to wear the uniforms. And everyone has to have lice and syphilis. And you got to sleep in like canvas tents that weigh like 150 pounds each. None of this new camping shit, no cell phones. And and it'd be great because I can burns, Ken Burns can actually be at something for a change. He doesn't have to dust off some old photos. He can take the photos himself of the new Civil War. Wolf Blitzer will be embedded with the Union side and Tucker Carlson will be embedded with the Confederates and there'll be drone shots. Like the media can cover it in real time,

but the fighting has to be done with muskets. I like it. Anyway, all right, I watched the Pee Wee Herman documentary and oh my God, if you haven't seen it, it's amazing. I love Pee Wee Herman. He was so magic. He was so silly and fun. And yet at the same time, such a pro, such an incredibly gifted character actor and and it was just so such a shame because like, you see the documentary and he was gay, obviously.

He was gay. And he came out of the closet before he became Peewee. And then he went back in when he became Peewee. And if he had just stayed out of the closet, they wouldn't have been able to make such a big deal out of him being in a gay movie theater. Cause it's like, well, where else do you go? If you're a gay guy in the eighties, you're going to go to a gay movie theater,

a legal theater. I mean, is it legal to jerk off in the theater? No, but is it, is it legal to fart in an elevator? Like you do, you shouldn't, but you do. We used to go to those theaters, not the gay ones, but we used to go to the porn theaters in Chinatown, not Chinatown, in Times Square when we were teenagers. They were gross, we wouldn't sit down, but we'd walk in and stand in the back and look at the porn. And we'd go to the Chinese, in Times Square,

they had these Chinese shops where you could buy fake IDs, and they were so bad. But back then anybody would take a fake ID. Literally, I had a Pennsylvania ID where they spelled Pennsylvania with one N. It was spelled wrong. But it had my picture and it had the right date. And I

used to get into bars with it. You know, he used to go, there was a bodega downtown in Tarrytown down in the projects, there was these like, Colombian delis. And I'd go in there with my fake ID. I had a moped with a big basket on it. And I'd get a case of Budweiser and I throw it in the basket Drive it back up to the high school behind the bleachers And we would drink We're fucking 14 years old. I looked 11. I looked so young when I was a teenager

We get we get the whippets from the Chinese shop in White Plains. I forget what it was called, but we would get Whippets, you know, those little, what is it? Nitrous oxide Whippets? Yeah. And then we get all our, the Chinese gave us all the fun stuff, all the fireworks. Happy 4th of July, by the way.

I don't know if you, we used to drive down to Chinatown and then they'd have guys like pop their trunks and you'd buy not just firecrackers and rockets, but like M80s and blockbusters. And M80 is an eighth of a stick of dynamite. And we used to fucking, we used to take those orange traffic cones and we put one under there and it would shoot it like a mile into the sky.

It was insane and we blow up mailboxes because that's what you do. Fourth of July Independence Day, independence from England. No more stamp tax. That's why we blow up the mailbox. It's symbolic. And one kid blew off his thumb when we were growing up blew off his thumb at like 14 never got to jerk off again. Maybe he went lefty I guess you could you could switch it up but that feels gay. That might feel like not your hand if it's the wrong hand. I don't know. Anyway, let's get to it. I got shows coming up. Batavia, Illinois, which is about an hour west of Chicago. The

Comedy Vault, July 25th and 26th. Pottstown, PA at Soul Joles, July 31st. Point Pleasant, New Jersey. Uncle Vinny's, August 1st and 2nd. Then I'm coming to the LA, just announcing. I'll be at the Comedy Store in the... What's that room in the attic? The Belly Room. I'm gonna just do one special show there for fun. August 16th.

Then I'll be in La Jolla in August, Denver, Connecticut, Vegas, Chicago, San Francisco. Go to FitsDog.com, get some tickets to an upcoming show. All right, my guest today, he is, he started out, he got his first writing job when he was like 20 on that show Fridays that had Kramer on it. Michael Richards was on it, and Larry David was on it. So then Larry brought him on to work on Seinfeld and then he was one of the original writers for the first five seasons. And then he went over to Curb Your Enthusiasm and he wrote, I think he later directed, he directed all the not all of but a lot of the entourage here, I think no, he was the showrunner on entourage. And then I think he direct then he came back and directed on a curb we talk about all of it, but he's just a powerhouse and such a great dude, we connected,

feel like I made a new friend, which is one of the best parts about this podcast is meeting somebody new and who you're just, so in awe of, and then you realize they're just a good dude, you know? It's like me, I'm sure a lot of people feel like that when they meet me. Just a good dude. All right, here is my interview

with the great Larry Charles. Larry Charles is my guest. He is just talking about his house being burnt down. That's right. Which not by the fire, it was his ex-wife actually, which you know, a lot of people lost their houses. I don't know how close that is to the truth. She's a hell fire. She cursed us.

Yeah, but losing everything is. Greg made that up, by the way. No, I did make that up. Yes. Because I'm still paying Alan. I don't want to create issues. I've gotten a lot of my guests in trouble over the years. Yeah, just ask David Feldman.

Do you know David Feldman? I know who he is. I don't know. Yeah, he's a great writer. But I just lost my computer crashed, and I lost everything on it. You know, you really, it's all your most current. But then, you know, like today, I'm just like, you know what?

How much did that really fucking matter in the end? You know? Well, right. Here I am. I mean, I don't have a house. I lost a lot of stuff. But I'm here. I'm talking to you.

Everything is OK. Right. I feel very lucky, weirdly enough. Do you feel lucky in general? Or is. Yeah, I'm talking to you. Everything is okay, right? I feel very lucky weirdly enough Do you feel lucky in general or is that though? I might be delusional. Yeah, you're a little bit delusional But I mean I do feel lucky. I do feel lucky in general. Yes. I talk about that a lot in the book Yeah, there's a lot of synchronicities and a lot of luck involved in me being here today Well, I feel it feels like that's your microcosm and your and your macrocosm. I think you feel like you're in your directing.

It sounds very much like you live. It's funny that you you connected with Rick Rubin because immediately I thought of him when I started reading your book in the sense that you are facilitators more than necessarily always generating the content. Right, right. Although I do generate a lot of content, but that's the stuff. It's interesting, you know, you're judged, as you know, you're judged by your body of work that's produced.

But how much of your, so much of my stuff, I've written dozens, dozens of screenplays that haven't been produced. That I feel reflect me in some ways, even more than the stuff that's been produced, but I will be judged based on the stuff that is produced. So who am I based on perception? You know, that's an interesting kind of dichotomy that I have to live with so I do I am a facilitator of a lot of the Stuff that's been produced. Yeah, I'm also a generator of a lot of stuff, but just people haven't seen a lot of that

Well, I guess I mean the distinction is when you start directing, it's more so letting it happen, and I guess Curb especially was your education into directing, which was like, okay, they're going to improvise, you're going to have to, the cameras are going to have to find the action sometimes. Yeah, well, and also though you want to, I had the good fortune of being so close to Larry that I executive produced the show for a few years and I would sort of help him with those stories. So I had a sense of where the stories were gonna go.

I kind of had a sense of where I wanted to push that comedy, where those lines were, you know. So there was more, it was a very immediate kind of spontaneous activity, which I really enjoyed as opposed to like storyboards and knowing exactly what the shot's gonna be and what you're trying to accomplish. I like the idea as a director

of not knowing what's gonna happen, which is not always like what people think of when they think of directing. Yeah, and I guess it's a life philosophy as well. You made some jumps in your career, which were based on gut as well. I mean, here you are on Seinfeld with a job that was paying, I'm sure by most people's standards, an extraordinary amount of money every week.

It's also pedigree. It's also all the perks that it's also, you know, all the perks that come with being a producer on a big show. And then you fucking left it. You know, you walked away. And then you walked away from Curb to work on Entourage. And then you left Entourage to come back to Curb as a director.

And each time you did that, it was a leap of faith because in this business, that could be your last gig every time. You know, the thing was for me, first of all, I never thought of myself as having a career. Like I always thought, I just want to do cool things. And these are the cool things I wound up doing. And the second thing is I didn't really, I felt like I didn't get into this business for security Yeah, it's like I could have stayed on Seinfeld I could have stayed with curb if I had done those things

I wouldn't have done borad or I wouldn't have done You know the Bob Dylan movie there are things that it's just I I never thought of myself as like a Having job security show business. It seems like an absurd kind of equation. So I was very comfortable gambling, rolling the dice, taking the risk, and seeing what would happen at a certain point. Because I had already failed enough and survived those failures, and also learned

from people like Bob Dylan and Larry David that you can survive and thrive from failure, that failure is part and thrive from failure, that failure is part of the success equation, that it didn't scare me to take risks and see what would happen. If I felt it, I trusted that instinct. It feels like the lesson you got from them as well is you'll continue as long as you follow your vision of what your next creative thing should be, as opposed to trying to write to the network executives and figure out what they want, which never works.

No, no. I mean, that's one of the things. I learned a lot from Larry David and Bob Dylan. But Larry David particularly, because I met him when I was still like, I was 22 when I met him. And on Fridays, the show that we did that Michael Richards was on also. And he kind of just taught me, I say this in the book, he taught me how to be a man really, you know?

He taught me about integrity and discipline and craft, you know, and I really learned those lessons, I absorbed those lessons, and I've applied that in my life, both behind the scenes and in front of the scenes. So it's like, it's an important thing to trust your instincts if you're gonna try to be a, quote, artist, you know? Well, yeah, just the TV, I think it's become more art than it was.

I mean, if you go back to when you were doing Fridays, I mean, the typical sitcom was extremely formulaic. Yes. There was, nobody was pushing boundaries, and HBO came in and did that with dramas and comedies. And so you guys, Fridays was way ahead of its time. It was way edgier than SNL at that time. Yes.

And there's a great scene you talk about in the book where the show was live, it was Friday nights. Was it an hour, an hour and a half? It started as an hour and a half, and it was Friday night, was it an hour or an hour and a half? It started as an hour and a half, and I think it got cut back to an hour. So here you are with all this real estate that you're filling up with that week's work. I mean, it's not like you've got, you're going every week, so it's not like you've got a month's work. Right, you've got to produce.

You've got to produce, and so you come in and you put these sketches together and the show is doing okay, but it's a battle. And then Andy Kaufman comes in. Right. And he breaks the fourth wall in the middle of a sketch and starts saying, I'm not gonna do this. And at first the other actors are trying to go with it and they're laughing. And by the end, the crew doesn't even know what to do

and people are looking at each other. And it was a brilliant, it was what he did. Yeah. And the craziest fucking thing is if you think your phone's not listening to you, I'm telling my wife about this scene in the book. The next day, that scene gets fed to me on my Instagram live. Wow. That is weird. Well, that's, that scene gets fed to me on my Instagram live videos. Wow. That is weird. Well, that is true. I mean, that's an experience that I've had as well. The phone is listening.

It's quite pervasive. So at the time, when that happened, We are our own big brother now, essentially. Well, yeah, because George Orwell said in 1984 that the government was going to take our privacy and our information. What he didn't know was that 75 years later, we were going to offer it to them. We were going to just donate it all to Facebook.

Just carry it all in their pockets. Right. So at the moment that Michael Richards went rogue, what was the sense from you guys on the stage? Did you know at that moment that this is great TV or were you kind of panicked? No, there was no panic at all. The writers actually knew that he was going to do something. The writers were privy to that.

Jack Burns, the producer, was privy to it. But beyond that, beyond knowing that he was going to do something, it was going to be... I mean, we had the deepest respect for Andy. He was a conceptual artist. He was a performance artist who happened to work in nightclubs rather than art galleries. So we knew he wasn't worried about getting a bad response or people booing, people getting upset. That's kind of, he wanted to know what happens beyond the laugh. He was like exploring this netherworld beyond laughter.

It was really an interesting experiment. And so we found it fascinating, not necessarily funny like in a kind of traditional way, but as a piece of television and also taking advantage. Live TV is so well planned and well organized. Every moment is really planned. So there's very little spontaneity on live TV, even though it's live.

You know, like we're having a spontaneous conversation, but that's unusual. You know, on a talk show, they know the questions, they know the answers, our producers come and talk to somebody about what they're going to be discussing. They know how long the segment's going to be. This was breaking free of all of those constraints. We didn't know what was going to happen, how long it was going to take, what anybody was going to say.

And we weren't really, we didn't have expectations of what's gonna go this way, you're gonna go that way. It just went the way it went. So it was a very liberating moment in television and certainly for the show. And what's funny about Larry David is like, here's this guy who came up as a standup and just, my opinion,

was never a really good stand-up comedian. He just he disliked the crowd. If he didn't like them, he'd walk off stage. Right. I've seen him spit at this audience. I've seen him throw down the microphone and storm off the stage. So yes. So you know. Very Johnny Rotten like stuff. Yeah, which stand-up comedy has flavors of punk rock, but it's ultimately, it really is more of a trade than an art I mean you're there to entertain that crowd they paid money yeah they got babysitters they valley-parked and you give them a fucking shout yeah he was never comfortable with that before yeah I think now he's kind of

like eased into finally that that idea of like giving the audience like you know some laughs. He really didn't care about that earlier on in his comedy days. Yeah. And it's funny, because New York at that time, because I would see him. I grew up in New York and I would go to all the clubs

as a teenager on the weekend. Sure. And I would see Belzer and Richard Lewis and Seinfeld. And these guys were really buttoned down. And Seinfeld, I would see Belzer and Richard Lewis and Seinfeld. And these guys were really buttoned down. And Seinfeld, I would see him, his hand was in the same spot on the moose bit every time. You know, it was choreographed, it was tight. And then Lyra would come up,

and I never saw him walk off stage, but I definitely saw him nail it in when he didn't like it. You know? Yeah, yeah. You could see him turn off. If he didn't get the laugh, he sometimes he would get a laugh, but it wasn't the laugh he wanted. And now you could see him sort of turn off at that point. It was the wrong laugh.

It was the wrong laugh. Hilarious. Now, did you ever dabble in stand-up? Because your father was a comedian, right? Yeah, my father was a failed comedian. His stage name was Psycho the Exotic Neurotic. And he came out of World War II and that's, he tried that for a while. I did do stand-up.

I tried it. And I had good material. Yeah. But I learned that the best comedians are the people that could be the best versions of themselves on stage. And I just couldn't get to that point that I felt I was myself or the persona that I was trying to project on stage. But I had good material.

So that's when I started writing, sort of selling those jokes. Right, right. Now, I don't, maybe I shouldn't ask because it's sort of like conspicuous in its absence is your childhood in this book. Well, that's a good question. I wrote the original draft of this book was about 1,100 pages. No shit. Oh yeah, because I didn't know if I could write a book. Were you on

Ritalin or something? No, no, I just I'm a disciplined writer at this point in my life. Yeah. I could write every day and produce. You know I've been living with deadlines for the last 40 years. Even a book has no deadline. Well, I felt like I wanted to make sure I could do it. I really felt like, wow, I don't know if I could write a whole book. So I started writing, and by the time I got to the end of my childhood stuff, I was 500 pages in.

So the whole book was like 1,000 or 1,100 pages, and the editors and my agents all loved it, but they said we can't publish a 1,000-page book. So it's like, well, what do you do at that point? Do you try to, like, cut down each chapter? And I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to sanitize it or clean it up. I liked it the way it was,

so we made the decision to cut it in half Yeah, and so it starts on my career basically on Fridays Right and goes there and so the second second book which will come out at some point is going to be from Oh, thank God I'm so glad because you're kind of haunted when you're reading it of being like because you mentioned your father Just a few times. Yeah, when you talk reading it, because you mention your father just a few times, but when you talk about him, it's not positive. No, no, and he's much more of a figure, obviously,

in the first half of the book. Yeah, no, my father was kind of competitive with me. He didn't encourage me, but he exposed me. Right. He went to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts on the GI Bill. Really? Yeah, and so he tried acting as well, and that didn't work out either.

So by the time I was born, he was out of show business, but he still had friends who were in show business. Jason Robards had been his teacher, if you remember Jason Robards. And he had a lot of guys who weren't actors anymore, but were now like lighting directors on variety shows and stuff, and a lot of that who weren't actors anymore, but were now like lighting directors on variety shows and stuff.

And a lot of that was still done in New York. So he would take me to, especially my main memories, going to the Ed Sullivan rehearsals, because he was friends with the stage manager of the Ed Sullivan show. So we would go like on a Saturday, not the Sunday when the show was being done, but the Saturday dress rehearsal. And I was like stunned, you know, as a Saturday, not the Sunday when the show was being done, but the Saturday dress rehearsal.

And I was stunned as a kid to watch how a show was done. And he really exposed me to that stuff. And he was more concerned, not so much about math or science, but that I memorized the dialogue from White Heat. Things like that. He would always kind of quiz me on that kind of stuff. Do it with the Cagney accent? He did it. My father was on all the time.

So I was like his main audience. So I was very exposed at a very early age and so he really didn't encourage me, but he exposed me. And then when I decided that I was gonna do this, he kind of like shut down a little bit. Interesting. And he did give me a couple of pieces of advice. He did tell me, for instance, if you have a second, I'll tell you a quick story.

A guy in World War II, he was in the occupation forces and he did stand up for the troops and stuff, his troop or whatever Captive audience captive audience and he had this guy write material from a guy named Stan Burns Stan Burns went on to be a very Well known very successful TV writer wrote forget smart Carol Burnett show the Tonight Show He really made the rounds. He was a freelance comedy writer. And I thought maybe that's what I would do. Yeah. Did he write for Woody Allen also? He may have worked for Woody Allen.

He did a lot of stuff, a lot of credits. And so he had a show called Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp. You know, he had like, because I used to follow his career because he was a friend of my dad's. So my father said, when you go out to California, call Stan Burns. you know, and I'm like, you know, really, and I went out to California,

and just one day I opened the phone book, because we still had phone books then. Yeah, paper internet. Yes, and there was, he was listed, you know, Stan Burns was listed in Woodland Hills. So I called him Coles, and I said, hey, I'm Lefty's son, and my father was known as Lefty. You know, and he remembered, you know, from the Army,

and he wrote material for him, and he was like really nice and really excited. He said, why don't you meet me? We'll go to DuPars. I'll buy you breakfast, we'll talk, you know? And I met him at DuPars. He was the sweetest guy. He was working for the Dean Martin Celebrity Roast

at the time. Wow. And he working for the Dean Martin Celebrity Roast at the time. Wow. And he said, write some jokes, write some jokes. Maybe we'll use them on the show. So I started, and I was maybe 18 at that point, and I started writing some jokes. I'd meet him like once every couple of weeks,

have breakfast, give him some jokes. Some of those jokes wound up on the show, which was really encouraging. And we did this for like six months. And then one day I met him at DuPars and he said, Larry, I gotta tell you something. And I was like, what? He's like, I have no idea where your father is.

Ah! Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha! And I was like, what? And he was like, you know, I've been racking my brains. That's amazing! I've been racking my brains. That's amazing. I've been racking my brain since you called.

You seemed like a nice kid. You're talented. I didn't want to, you know, break your heart. But then a war buddy. Yeah, yeah. But I don't remember your dad. And at that point, you realized you could call any guy in the industry.

Exactly. Exactly. But I never told my father. Oh my god. So the one good contact you then gave you wasn't even really a contact. Right, exactly. Oh my God. So the one good contact your dad gave you wasn't even really a contact. Right, exactly. Oh my God, that's great.

Why'd they call him that? You never want a dad named after a boxer. Right. He was like, my father was a lefty when you weren't supposed to be a lefty. So they kept on trying to make him into, they would like hit him, try to make him into a righty.

It was the gay of the 50s. Yes, exactly. Exactly, that's true. And so he was called lefty by everybody. and try to make him into a righty. It was the gay of the 50s. Yes, exactly. Exactly, that's true. And so he was called lefty by everybody. His family, everybody called him lefty. That's hilarious. So going back to, I mean, the way this book is written,

it's interesting, and I know you love Bob Dylan, you work with Bob Dylan, because his book, Chronicles, which I loved, was just snapshots, it wasn't chronological. It was just like a chapter about Charlie Daniels. You're like, what? Right, right, right. He loved Charlie Daniels.

Yeah, he, talking about follow your instincts, I mean, he won't think twice, not to quote one of his songs, about what he feels like expressing himself about. If he feels it, he does it. And he will accept the consequences, or he doesn't really care about the consequences. Yeah. Which has led to some flops.

It's led to things that are transcendent, mostly the latter. Yeah, but he's had, and it's true, and it is a life lesson, he's had public humiliations. You know, major public humiliation mean, he's been born again. You know, he's been extremely Jewish at one point. You know, he's like done Victoria's Secrets commercials. He's done so much weird stuff,

but he survived, transcended it all, and is maybe more popular now than ever. Yeah, yeah, I'm so glad this movie came out because, I mean, my kids got into him from Big Lebowski. He's got that great song from Big Lebowski. The man and me. Yeah, and they just, and I had been pushing Bob Dylan on him since they were kids, but you can't play Bob Dylan

for anybody under the age of 16. They just don't, they don't get it. Maybe some training, homesick blues or something like, you know, catchy, but it wasn't until they heard that song and then they started kind of going in and now they're both Dylan fanatics. It's just like, it takes time.

But I'm- There's so much stuff to wade through. I mean, he's got so much, so much material. Yeah. So like, it's like art, it's like Picasso. There are different periods, you know? You can get into this period or that period, an acoustic period, a bluesy period, more rock and roll.

Gospel. He got into this very cheesy period. He got into the gospel stuff, yeah. So there's a lot to choose from, actually. We flew out to Tulsa last year to go to the museum when it opened. Yeah, I've been there. Have you been there? Yeah, yeah.

Well, we showed my Bob Dylan movie. We showed there. Oh, did you really? Yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. So that was just at the opening of it, actually. Yeah, if people don't know, Tulsa, Oklahoma, first of all, is a very cool town. Yes.

It's got, well, obviously the Woody Guthrie Museum is attached to the Bob Dylan one. And then you've got, Leon Russell's got this recording studio called The Church there that you can take a tour of. Yeah, Kane's Ballroom, did you get to that place? No, no. Oh, that's a great venue for live music. Oral Roberts University is there,

I don't know if she said that. That's right, that's right. The Big Hands, it's a very strange place. Oh, wow. It's a really interesting town. And then the Tulsa Massacre also. Oh, wow. It's a really interesting town. Yeah. And then the Tulsa Massacre also. Yeah, we went to that museum.

Yeah. That was heavy. It's a fascinating city. I went to it with my friends black and we walked in to buy the tickets and then he said to the ticket taker, is there a different entrance for him? Yeah.

And they said yes. Yeah, of course they did. They were all black. Every day at the work there was black. Yeah. They laughed their asses off. And then we saw Springsteen there. They've got this beautiful arena. Wow.

And it's Tulsa. So we had the nosebleed seats. And by the end, we're standing four feet from the stage. Yeah. So let's talk about the movie a little bit. Yes. It's misunderstood. I think it's probably a good way of describing it.

In some ways, I wish I could have seen the three and a half hour version. I saw the hour and 40, I guess they made you turn it in at a hundred minutes. Yes, that's right. When I, when I, we had, we had a screening, which was a poorly conceived screening. It was a, it was a screening of the three and a half hour version. This was at Sundance? This was, no, this was before Sundance. It got into Sundance right away. But that was later when it was already cut down.

No, we showed it first, the three and a half hour version, for what kind of people? A group of agents in suits after work in an air conditioned room. And they were like dying to get out, and they were like, this movie has no commercial potential whatsoever. So I was like, well, I don't care what they say.

It doesn't matter to me. It's like this movie's not made for them. And then they showed me the contract that I had signed, which said you had to deliver a 110-minute version. And so I had to cut it down. They gave me a great editor, Pietro Scalia, who had won Oscars with Bertolucci and Oliver Stone, and he was a good editor, but the movie changed

from being this kind of much more comedic pageantry with a lot more music to being a much more somber movie actually. And so it was inevitable that it would be misunderstood, but people have, he doesn't care about that. That's one of the great conversations I had with Bob Dylan was he came one day, we were writing and he had a line that's, the line was, I'm not a pig without a wig. And I was like, look, Bob, I reached a point where I could talk to him like that also.

I was like, Bob, no one's gonna, even in a movie like this, this kind of surreal, weird movie, no one's gonna understand that line. And he said, what's so bad about being misunderstood? And I was like, wow, man, okay. And he wound up not using it in the movie, but using it in one of his songs called High Water,

which is a great song. But it even jumps out in that song, it's such a weird line. So he wasn't worried about, he's been understood. He's interested in what happens, like Andy Kaepernick, once you're misunderstood. Like what communication takes place by misunderstanding, you know, not knowing what people are meaning. That's kind of an important thing for him.

He's always looking for the question beyond the question. Yeah, he's right. It seems like he's admittedly, his lyrics don't always mean something. Correct. Sometimes he's just sort of, he's channeling some verse. I mean, it's like, I know Rambo was a big influence. It is.

A lot of it is just, it's meter and it's feel and it's color. And it's also, if I may, it's also like William Burroughs. William Burroughs pioneered a thing called the cut-up technique, where he would take text from one book and a magazine, and he would put it together, even if it was juxtaposed, and make it into some sort of coherent thing. And Bob, that's a very beat generation kind of practice.

And Bob was very influenced by that stuff too. So he takes scraps of different ideas that he's had, and he will kind of synthesize them into some sort of new idea, you know? Yeah, it's so funny, his music's probably, I mean, his college courses at Harvard about Bob Dylan's lyrics, like he would be the first one to go like, "'Cut the shit, it's not a class.

"'Feel what you're gonna feel, experience it.'" But as a fan, you can see it. There is some brilliant imagery, some brilliant language being used. It's very singular. There's nobody really to compare it to. No. No, I mean, Joni Mitchell, I know that's one of the things I took away from the Bob Dylan Museum is that there's one, if you've never been there, people, go check it out.

It's two floors, it's interactive, there's a jukebox where you can pick the songs, and it's got, you walk in and there's Roseanne Cash singing, what is that song, Girl From the Country? Girl From North Country. Girl From North Country, it's just like a meat, it's the first thing you see, and you're like. Yeah. But Joni Mitchell felt cheated by Bob Dylan. She felt like, well, Joan Baez did as well,

but Joni Mitchell felt like she was as... He cheated on Joan Baez. Right, right, right. But Joni felt that she was as prolific and as profound and as talented as Bob. Certainly had a better voice. And that sort of she always felt like she had to live in his shadow.

Yeah, well there are people who kind of lived in the shadow. There's also, I mean Leonard Cohen, who was brilliant as well, also was kind of like overshadowed to some degree. John Prine, what was his name, Phil Oakes, was a very big folk singer before. There was a lot of big folk singers before Bob came along, kind of got eclipsed. Yeah.

Because they just couldn't keep up the... He was also ready to evolve, Bob. While they were very pure about their folk singing, he plugged in, he did electric, he did a lot of things that... Because he didn't care what the audience thought really, which was kind of a key to his success in a weird way. He was kind of not caring, you know? Right, right. Yeah, and also the way, I thought you were talking about how we would interact with people

when they'd ask him the same questions, and he would just go, I don't know, how do you feel? Yeah, yeah, it just throws people off so much, you know? How do you feel? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he did that all the time. Yeah, so. Well, also you could say, I don't remember.

Yeah, right, right, right. Just dismiss it that way. Right, right. So you say at the end of the chapter on him, the last line of the chapter is, Bob Dylan doesn't have friends, but I amused him for a while. Right, yeah.

But it seems like the one guy maybe that's the exception is his manager, who he's Jeff he talks to. Well, Jeff, I think, has finally retired, actually. And Jeff was maybe the closest person in his life. I still wouldn't necessarily say, and I'd be curious how Jeff would characterize it, I don't know that you could call him a friend He was a confidant. He was on payroll. He was on the payroll

And so he was there like 24-7 for Bob if Bob was in Norway at 4 o'clock in the morning and felt like talking He could call Jeff and Jeff had to be the Jeff was always on call and he was always there for Bob and he was a smart enough and eloquent enough and articulate enough and literary enough person that he could talk with Bob and keep Bob interested and tolerant of Bob's indulgences. But if you look at Bob's- Can I be that guy for you?

Sure, let's hang out, of course. You saw how quick I answered the phone when you called me. Yes, let's hang out, of course. You saw how quick I answered the phone you called me. Yes, no, it was great, man. I appreciate it so much. He, I don't think that he really has friends in that kind of classic sense. He's not like a guy that goes, hey, how you doing? You know, he's not like a small talk kind of person, you know. Right.

But, and he's had very few collaborators also. And so that's why I feel so lucky. I actually collaborated and made something with Bob Dylan. Not just one song like Sam Shepard did, who I admire immensely, or Jacques Levy, who did the album Desire with him, and co-wrote a lot of his big songs from that album album like Hurricane.

No, I actually wrote a movie with this guy and shot the movie and it exists. Although the funny thing is it started as a sitcom. That's the best part. So I spent two years in a room in a cubicle, a plexiglass cubicle in a boxing gym. That's what we wrote. And he was chain smoking.

Like I was as far from him as you, and we were surrounded by the cubicle. And he would be chain smoking. I wasn't smoking at that time. And we would just fill up with smoke, and we were there for like 12 hours, and he could keep going. He was amazing.

So I had that experience. So I think, but once that was over, it wasn't like, hey, I'll call you next Tuesday, we'll get lunch. He's not that kind of guy. How do you think that translates to him as a parent? Because the funniest thing I ever heard was like, Jacob Dillon was, his son was starting up

in a little high school band, and he's out in the garage and he's jamming and they're making a lot of noise. Bob opens up the door and he goes, hey, keep it down out here. And then Jacob goes, dad, you don't understand. And he goes, I'm Bob Dylan. I understand. Yeah, I think it must be a tremendous burden to be his child, particularly like Jacob being a musician.

I got very friendly with Jesse. In fact, if I was going to be friends with any of the Dillons, I became friends with Jesse, his oldest son, who was my age. And, you know, we hung out actually a lot. And we, you know, when I was married to my first wife, he was married to his wife at that time. And we would go out to dinner, we would hang out, and he was like a person you could hang out with.

He was a great photographer also. But so I think the burden of being Bob's children, by the time they became adults, they kind of figured it out. And then he's got a second set of kids as well. That's right, yeah. And grandkids that he's very involved with. And grandkids, yeah. So I think he's probably mill it out a bit and maybe he's finally enjoying that aspect of life a little bit

Yeah, I have a friend who goes to school with his grandkids There his kids go to school as a grad kids and he's he's like at all the game. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, you know sometimes people are better grandparents than they are parents. That's true That like slows down right trying to figure that out myself. You have grandkids now? I have two grandchildren now. Oh, how old are they? Seven and five. Oh, that's prime time.

Yeah, yeah. That's pretty sweet. Yeah, I was a little more impatient when my own kids around that age, because I was so hungry, and ambitious, and unhappy, you know. But I have a great relationship with them now, but I, but the grandchildren are very special. Obviously, was there a time when you had to sort of fight your way back into that relationship with them?

Well, you know, yes, around the time and not so much fight my way back in, but there's certainly I created a chasm by getting divorced and it was something I dreaded something I really, you know, I needed to do, but I was afraid to do. And I didn't want to hurt them. And I remember my parents getting divorced and how devastating it was for me. And I kind of swore I would never do the things my father did.

And there I was doing exactly what he had done. And so that was rough for me to sort of, you know, deal with them during that time. But I made it kind of a priority and wanted to make sure I bonded with all of them. And now I'm really tight with all my adult children. And they are adults at this point. And they're in L.A.?

All of them except for my son is in D.C., actually. He works for Ralph Nader. Really? Yeah, very weird gig, but he's like a saint, Ralph Nader, but a pain in the ass at the same time. Yeah, that's what I've heard. Yeah. He doesn't use a computer, he doesn't use a cellphone.

Oh my God. You know, he's somebody like that. But he's been, again, a very pure person as far as his politics are concerned. Yeah, my brother used to work for him when it was NYPIRG. Right, right. This is New York. Yeah.

But, so what would you just, I want to get back to Bob Dylan because I feel like I've never talked to somebody who had as much exposure to Bob Dylan before. Greatest Bob Dylan song. Well, that is such a hard question. I personally, the song that popped into my head just now when you said that is a song that most people don't know. It's from the, it's from Biograph. Biograph was like a collection of sort of bootleg songs, and it's called Angelina. And I wanted to use it in the movie and we

couldn't find a place for it and I finally had somebody just do an instrumental version of it and it's kind of like plays through the end of the movie. It's got it's like a hauntingly achingly beautiful song it's kind of a love song but it's also very political at the same time and again he juxtaposes these things so well. So that's one song I would pop out. But I mean, you know, it's all over now. Baby Blue is a song that I love.

You know, I could go back. I, like most people, will get into a kind of a certain mood that a Bob Dylan song or a period, I could go back. I love Lenny Bruce. He did a song called Lenny Bruce from Shout of Love. I like this new album, or maybe it's two albums ago now, called Rough and Rowdy Waves, which has the, is that the one with the Kennedy song on it?

Oh my God, like that song, that 18 minute chronicle. You see the video of it? I've seen the video. That song made me cry the first time I heard it. Everybody says that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, so there's so many to choose from. That's the great thing about his body of work.

Because obviously like a rolling stone, only because Griel Marcus wrote that incredible book about it. Fantastic, yeah. Also great. Yeah, to be such a great artist that one of the most respected rock critics of all time writes a long book about one of your songs. Yes, yes.

And it talks about how that snare drum hit at the beginning is the most iconic drum hit in history. Yeah, yeah. Well, there's great stories around even that song with Al Cooper just showing up and he sat down at the organ and you hear that organ in the song. It's such an iconic organ riff, but it was kind of just made up there. It wasn't part of the song.

No, right, exactly. It wasn't part of the song and he was there and sat down and just started doing it and it became such a crucial part of the song. It's like Freebird didn't originally have that piano in it. That's interesting. And then took a break.

And I forget who the pianist was. He sat down. He put that in and it made the song. He wasn't always the best judge, in my opinion, of his music, Bob. He often, this is why his bootleg albums are so great, because he often didn't put fantastic songs on the record. He would leave those songs off,

or he would leave off much better versions of the songs that he would put on the record. So you have to kind of almost explore the bootleg tapes, which have come out over the years now officially, because that music is also, it's like a whole second, it's like Bob, I guess Bruce Springsteen just put out like a kind of a 73 song set or something like that. Bob has all the, so many songs.

And they come from so many different places. And they're all him, but very different versions of him. Yeah, so the movie we should talk about, it was called Mastin. Mastin Anonymous. Mastin Anonymous had the most insane cast. He got Jeff Bridges in there, John Goodman. Penelope Cruz.

Penelope Cruz. Jessica Lange. I mean, it was insane. And I know that nobody was making money on this. Everybody did it out of the love of Bob Dylan. Even with all those people, we still couldn't get the money to make the movie. I mean, that movie was made for $4 million.

We had a 20-day shooting schedule, which was unreal that we were able to get the movie made. So Mickey Rourke was in it. Ed Harris, Cheech Marin was in it, Luke Wilson. Yeah, I mean, they're all really good. But we could not get the money even with that cast to make that movie. That's how weird the script was. Well, it's weird, but it's also, you know, it does have a traditional three act structure. Yes, it does. And it's like, you know, it moves.

I mean, it's like, there are monologues in it. Like that kid sitting in the back of the bus talking about how he killed his own village. I mean, there's some amazing monologues, but you can't look away. I mean, you can't look away from this movie. It may not, you know, It may not answer what most movies give you, but it's worth seeing. You can see it on YouTube. I don't know where else you

can see it. It's been on Amazon and 2B and all that kind of stuff. I don't know where it is right now. I couldn't find it anywhere but YouTube, but it's kind of a grainy version, but that's fine. Was it hard to shoot around Bob's acting? Because he had never really acted before. Bob's, you know, Bob is all about persona. Yeah. So he was fantastic. He was, to me, he was like Clint Eastwood or something.

But he didn't have any experience like blocking a scene or hitting his marks. So what I would do for that, first I had Jeff Bridges kind of work with him. Jeff Bridges, very generous, very sweet person. And I said to him, look, you're like the thespian. You've been on set since you were four years old. You know, help, improvise with him, loosen him up,

get him used to the idea of acting, basically. Because he would come to me first, Bob, and he's like, I want to do an accent in this movie. It's like, don't you, or I want it all to be dancing. You know, it's like, he called Tony Basil, and she's calling me going, we're going to do it. No, no, no, you know, come on. So what I did finally was, like, he would do,

like there was a scene with Jessica Lange and John Goodman, and Bob is in the scene, and Bob has lines, but Jessica and John Goodman are going at it, and when it's time for Bob to talk, he didn't talk. And we did it again, and he didn't talk. It's like, Bob, you have a line there. He's like, I was just enjoying watching them. So things like that would happen.

But that is what is so entrancing about the movie is watching him listen. And that's all, I mean, that's the whole Meisner technique is it's all about listening. And he is engrossed and just the way he kind of looks, he's listening, but he looks like he's half listening. But then you see that he actually is completely enraptured by it.

And his character is like, it's like right out of like a Cormac McCarthy novel. Exactly. He knows his lines also, just like he knows, you never see him with a teleprompter on stage, he's 80 years old. You know, he knows every lyric of every song, even the alternate lyrics if he wants to use them. So in the movie it was the same thing and he wanted, you know, like Chris Penn was in the movie yeah who the late Chris Penn and it was a great guy but he was like do I have to do the lines as it could I infer and it's like you could try but I'm gonna guarantee Bob's gonna hear you do the variation on the line and he's gonna come over to me

and say make sure he does the line is right so he was very much like that and to get back to the blocking thing I didn't know what to do because he wouldn't understand like he got to get back to the blocking thing, I didn't know what to do because he wouldn't understand, like he gotta get over there by that line for us to shoot that close up, whatever it was. So I had the stand in during the rehearsals. I would have his stand in, he was a great guy, do the scene with Jeff Bridges and Joe Guman

and Bob would watch and then Bob would imitate the stand-in in order to do that. Except he forgot to do the line. He forgot to do the line anyway, yeah. And this movie was not good for your career. You didn't direct. Killed it. Killed your career.

Yeah, yeah, killed my directing career. And you didn't get paid. They made you give your money back. I had to give, I had to give, I got paid very little. I got paid DGA minimum. And they want, they said, look, we can't shoot this whole script. It was like 150 pages.

That's why it's a three and a half hour movie. And Bob was like, I'm not doing it unless we shoot the whole script. And so they came to me and they said, you know, if we're gonna do this whole thing, you gotta kick back, you gotta kick back your salary. Like that really made a difference. They needed to get some victory, you know? And so I said, you gotta kick back your salary. That really made a difference. They needed to get some victory, you know?

And so I said, sure, I don't care. I'm not doing this for the money, you know? And I kicked back the money, and so I made zero on that movie. My agent almost shit his pants. Harry Emanuel? That was not Harry Emanuel at that time. That was another guy whose name, of course,

I can't even think of right now. Is Harry still your agent? No, I wouldn't think so because you Hasn't been yeah, I love that you're in a position where you can shit-talk an agent who's probably top three biggest agent in Hollywood Well, let's hope I survived. Yeah, I think you're gonna do all right. Yeah that movie that movie Stopped my directing career dead. Yeah, and that's why I kind of scurried back to Curb where it was kind of a safe haven. I could go back to doing straight comedy, the improv stuff and have fun and be accepted

and everybody's in their own bubble. So they weren't really, they didn't really care that the mass anonymous kind of faded so precipitously. Right, right. So at one point you were executive producing Curb and Entourage at the same time. How does that possibly work? And one's in Santa Monica and one's in Hollywood, which is a good 35 minutes. Yeah, I started to feel very stretched, obviously.

And I felt like, am I doing the best for both shows? You know? It's like I had agreed to do Entourage because Curb, Larry would finish Curb and then he might take a couple of years off. Right. There were four-year breaks at times with Curb. You know? So I had time to do other stuff.

But this was one season where everything started at the same time. So I was racing back and forth, back and forth from Santa Monica to Hollywood, trying to make it work. The difference was I had been promised by R.E. Emanuel that I would get to direct Entourage. That was one of the reasons I wanted to do it. And I never got around to directing it because there was so much other work to do with the casting and the writing and the editing that I never got to direct it, whereas Curb, I was directing, and I wanted to sort of pursue this directing thing, and so eventually

I made the decision to go back to Curb. So it seems like there's a lot of cooks in the kitchen with Curb in a way because you've got Larry, who seems like he must be very much much, he's a force of nature. He's gotta be, even when he's not directing, he's gotta be sort of ghost directing, right? Well, I wouldn't say ghost directing, but he is the driving force of the creative,

he's the auteur of that show, for sure. And then you got Jeff Garland, who's a co-creator. But Jeff Garland didn't have a lot to do with the- Production. Yeah, with the creative choices of the episodes. Okay that kind of stuff. Got it Yeah, he was the one that said to Larry tell Jeff tell Jeff Garland that yeah Well, yeah, well, I'm sure that at some point I'll have to yeah Jeff Garland's a great guy But I would say that he he wasn't as involved in that

the the behind-the-scenes scenes sort of discussions of the show. Yeah. He had the great idea that made Curb, really, which was Larry was gonna go back into standup and Jeff said, well, you should film it. Right, right. And that's what- I was there, yeah. That's what Curb really, that's how Curb began.

It was at Largo, he used to come down, I remember he was wearing like a high school varsity jacket. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go up and bomb. Yeah. And I was like, what is this? I go, what is, this is nothing.

I had no idea it would become my favorite sitcom in history. Right, it's amazing, it's amazing, yeah. Yeah, and it's what's funny is like, you know, it's called Seinfeld. Jerry's gets the credit, but then you see Curb happen and you go, oh, interesting. Yeah. Yeah, well, it's a very,

these sort of creative partnerships are sort of like unholy alliances in a way. You know, Jerry had the great wisdom to ask Larry when he got a chance to do a pilot to ask Larry to write it with him. That was a brilliant move on Jerry's part, you know? Larry would have been still toiling in obscurity, most likely, if Jerry hadn't asked him to do that, you know?

So, and then if Jeff hadn't asked him to do that. Yeah. You know? So, and then if Jeff hadn't said film your stand-up, there would be no Curb. So there's these little moments that really, it's like the butterfly effect. It just changes everything that precedes it. Right. And so with Curb, it seems like the first few episodes, first few seasons were about finding people that people didn't know, like your JB Smooves.

Yes. And even Wanda Sykes wasn't that big at the time. Right. And then it seems like as you got into the later seasons, it became very much about stunt casting and getting big names. Yeah, I think that was one of the challenges of the show was, you know, it happened that a lot of the people that were brought on at that time were willing to sort of play a kind of very dark version

of themselves like Ted Danson. He was willing to be a bad guy in the show. And so that became kind of like a funny revelation to see Ted Danson behaving badly. And so that was kind of fun to play with that idea. But you're right, I mean, that's one of the things that I talk about with Seinfeld. Like, at a certain point, Seinfeld to me was a very working class show.

Everybody was struggling. Julia's struggling for a job, or Elaine, and George is struggling to get work. And how does Kramer make a living? And Jerry is not supposed to be a successful comedian. But eventually, after a few seasons, they're going to the Hamptons, they have, since the people have second houses,

they're getting better jobs, she's working for the Yankees, she's working for Jay Peter. You know, it got a little bit more bourgeois, and I was a little bit more uncomfortable, because to me, I liked it when it was more Bukowski and Harvey Picard, and it had that kind of influence to it. And the same thing with Curb.

Curb, as you point out, was much more about finding people who seemed like real people who were in the show, who turned out to be successful actors later on, Bob Odenkirk and people like that. But eventually it was like Larry's life. It reflected Larry's life. And Larry's life, Larry became a successful person. And he was hobnobbing with the people,

and those people wound up being in the show. Yeah, the fact that you've got, I mean, so much of American sitcoms have been about blue collar, you know, from Roseanne. Up to a certain point. You don't see it today as much. No, now you've got Larry belongs to a golf course. Exactly, exactly.

And half the episodes are like... Yeah, and you know, the thing is that, course he's he's poking fun at all that. Yeah. But he also is in it. Still going. Yeah. So walk me through the odd... I've never auditioned for Curb. I don't know why. Why? That's interesting. My agent never got me anything. Terrible. Ari Emanuel is my agent. Come on. No. But walk me through the audition. You would have gotten it for you and then taken all the money.

Exactly, yeah. So walk me through the audition process for somebody coming in for that show because I know there's no scripts, so there's no sides. You get a paragraph. You get like a little paragraph, a couple of sentences that tell you what's going to happen in your scene. And then you come in, and one of the great things about curable auditions, and they're all taped,

it would be great to just put these out, is Larry auditions with every actor. Every single actor. That's exhausting. Through the entire run of the show, he would do the improv with the actor. And so, some people come in, they get very intimidated. Some people come in, they're trying too hard.

But some people come in like JB Smoove, and it's just like, wow, this is magic. He had us on the floor, you know? And so that's how the auditions work. A little piece of paper, a slip of paper, literally. And then Larry's sitting there when you come in, waiting for you to sit down next to him and do the scene. Crazy. And is there an NDA involved with that?

You know, I don't know. I don't recall there being anybody having to sign anything. You did a couple little bits on the show, right? Not on Curb, on Entourage, I'd say. Oh, on Entourage, okay. Yeah. And on Seinfeld, I had a couple little cabins. Right, right. You walked past Elaine in a doorway or something.

I came out of the bathroom smelling on the airplane, you know, things like that. Yeah, yeah. There was an episode where Bob Alaban, who was playing Warren Littlefield, falls in love with Julia, Elaine, and he joins Greenpeace, and Larry and I play the other Greenpeace guys, you know.

So we did little things like that. In the parking garage, Elaine has these goldfish that she's bought that are dying because they can't find the car, and she's asking me as I walked by if I would help her find the car and I just ignore her and walk past. That's such a perfect dramatic device to have like that's your ticking clock. Yes. The goldfish in the hand.

Yeah, yeah, it was good. It's hilarious. All right, so let's, I don't wanna keep it too much longer, but we should obviously talk about Borat a little bit. Okay. And all the other projects that you've done as a director and collaborator. Like Sacha Baron Cohen is a guy that obviously you had already seen that he had pilots

for his movies because he'd done these characters before. So how did you draw that out into a script with him? Were you sort of involved from the inception on writing the script or did he write it and then you came in and directed it? He originally started the movie and started shooting the movie with Todd Phillips. Oh, okay. And they shot for about a week or so

and they did not get along. And he was very upset with Todd Phillips and Todd Phillips left the project. And the movie was gonna be shut down at that point. And then Ari was my agent and Sasha's agent. And so they set up, and I had met Sasha at a boxing match of all places down at Staples Center, and we hit it off, this was a couple years before.

And so they called me up, Sasha called me up and said, would you be interested in directing this? And I knew the Borat character from TV show, and I was like, yeah, man, I knew how funny he was. And so when I came in, the movie, as originally conceived, was really, Todd was the lead character, and he was kind of bringing Borat around to these places. So it was still funny, but you had Todd there,

and every time he came on, the movie would just die. And so my idea was, like, Borat has to be the main character, you know, and give him an assistant, give him a sidekick, and that was the first big change. And then we found Azamat, which is a funny story too. And then the other thing was, it can't be just episodic scenes. That would be funny, but you would get tired of it

after a while. There's gotta be some sort of emotional through line. And finding the emotion, the three dimensions in the character of Borat was very important to me and something that I was able to infuse into the movie that I think helped make the movie a movie rather than just a series of sketches. Pam Anderson. Pam, he had to find Pam Anderson.

But you know what's so amazing about that choice is that Pam Anderson is so much in all of our hearts. Like, yeah, she was sexy, yeah, we all whacked off to her, but she also was represented something very, even though she's Canadian, something very American, you know, as this lifeguard and she was kind of all American. And so him desiring her was just, I think, it was stakes that every, certainly male American could relate to. And that was a challenge because some scenes had to be manipulated to a place where he could find out that, oh, Pam Anderson's in California, like he was doing the scene with the feminists.

And part of his goal in that scene, besides making fun of them and telling them they had brains like squirrels or whatever it was, was to find out where Pam Anderson lived. And one of them finally said in exasperation, I think she lives in California. He just got up in the middle of the interview and split. So we would get the plot points that way as well. So the story was, it was driving the story as well. Yeah. Now the scene with Pam, it's so funny because it was so obviously, you know, she was in on it, but there was real talk about that she had no idea that that was gonna happen. Well, the original ending, which we shot,

I never liked and I felt was so contrived and did not deliver after this whole movie. It was, you know, she was having a wedding. It turned out to be her dog's wedding. Borat somehow got a boat, and he sings her a song from the ocean because she's got this house on the ocean there. And it was just, like, very contrived,

very unfunny, very long and convoluted. And when we watched, they were like, this doesn't work at all. And the good thing about Sasha and his writers was they would throw things out. They didn't care. They loved doing things again. They loved trying to top themselves.

And I would encourage that. Let's find the better version. And so I brought in Jeff and Alec and Dave, who were from Seinfeld and from Clare. Alec Berg and Jeff Schaeffer and Dave Mandel. I brought them in and we all sat together and tried to pitch on a better ending and came up with this book signing,

this thing in a record store. And it seemed much more real. It seemed like something you would stumble into. You know, like imagine, you could imagine that she was just there and we just showed up. You know? Yeah, and it's that book signing is that, that like very like tenuous wall

between celebrity and the public. Correct, correct. And they're always overstepping, so perfect for that. And you also have the built intention of him being on the line Yeah, waiting to get the chance so people know shit something's about to happen Yeah, and and then she was great She was totally game and he grabs her and puts the bag on her and they run out into the parking lot and these guys

Of course the security guys didn't know yeah, we're all running. Oh the security guys didn't know no They're running after they tackle him in the parking lot pretty rough actually And finally we were able to say cut yeah, and I also was somebody didn't like saying cut I wanted to make sure we got it. You know so But so that had a kind of a verity feeling to it Yeah, that really kind of was a perfect sort of ending to the movie. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So did you see her in the last show girl? I have not seen that. It's pretty good. Yeah, I bet it is. Yeah, she's interesting. I did think she was a really cool person actually

with time we spent. And of course she had supposedly had been married to Kid Rock at that time. And that hanging out with Sasha had made Kid Rock jealous and ended that marriage, which is probably for the best. Yes, absolutely. So I have to ask you, I was very flattered about, I don't know, four or five months ago, you followed me on Instagram. How did that happen?

This is before I asked you to do this. Yeah, you know, I don't know the reason why. I remember seeing you and realizing, oh yeah, I know who you are. And you know, I like following comedians. I like comedians. You know, I'm friends with a lot of, if I have friends, I would say a lot of them are comedians. And you were somebody who sort of like had fallen through the cracks of my life. And again, I trust my instincts, and so I followed you. Here I am.

I followed you all the way to here. Yeah, you did. Well, thank you for doing this. My pleasure, man. Thank you for doing it. The book is unbelievable. I mean, comedy samurai, it's sort of like you as a samurai, how you come in and you save projects you support projects

It's very zen like and again I did there is like a Rick Rubin comparison people will Rick Rubin and I used to be very close friends of yeah Yeah, yeah, we hung out quite a bit. Yeah, so check it out the book is everywhere and go back and watch the movie and And I hope when your next book comes out, you'll come back. My pleasure, man. You can be before that if you want.

Oh, great. OK. Thank you. Of course. you