The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - South Beach Sessions - Larry Charles

Episode Date: May 22, 2025

Larry Charles is eccentricity manifested in human form. The creative genius’ journey through television (Seinfeld, Mad About You, Curb Your Enthusiasm), film (Borat, Bruno, Religulous), and new media has been winding and star-studded. Larry has worked with greats from every industry, from the likes of Bob Dylan, to Nic Cage, Sacha Baron Cohen, and (quite famously) Larry David. Larry and Dan chat about his upbringing, his struggles with love and identity, and how he began to find peace in his forties. They also revisit his wildest journeys, from seeing the darkness of humanity making Borat and Bruno… to finding light while visiting comedians in Somalia. Larry’s book, “Comedy Samurai: Forty Years of Blood, Guts, and Laughter” is available on June 17th. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're listening to DraftKings Network. Welcome to South Beach Sessions. This man here in the cowboy hat. One of the things that I wanted to do with this project in general is talk to the creatives who make the creatives and find out a little more about creativity. So Larry Charles, if you're not familiar necessarily because this is a behind thescenes person, but what he's made, Curb Your Enthusiasm, has directed many episodes. You wrote for Seinfeld, Mad About You, the Borat movies, Religulous. You have worked... Entourage, yeah, quite a few. With all of the crazies. All of the creative crazies and some of the best.

I didn't even mention Kanye West. I haven't mentioned yet Nick Cage. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. So you gravitate, thank you for being with us. My pleasure, thank you. You gravitate toward the eccentric. That's why I'm here.

What is it? What is the magnet for you? How did this start your trip toward laughter? Where did it start? My father was a failed comedian and he was funny around the house all the time, always doing shtick, always doing impressions, always doing material. His professional name was Psycho the Exotic Neurotic and very early in his career he realized he wasn't gonna make it and gave it up reluctantly and I think regretted it his entire life but I would find in his closet I would find old material from

the army and he would make me watch movies with him and test me and quiz me on stuff and he would make me learn instead of like learning math or science I would learn bits from the Marx brothers or from other movies like White Heat and weird James Cagney kind of stuff and I think he kind of and then he had friends he went to drama school and a lot of the people that he went to drama school with stayed in the business in one form or another, not always as actors, and he would take me to visit them. One of his best friends was the production manager

of the Ed Sullivan show. So when I was a little kid, he would take me to the rehearsals of the Ed Sullivan show, and he of course was into the glitter and the glamor, but I was fascinated by how the show was done. And he would stop celebrities in the street, didn't matter. He had no shame and he would stop them and talk to them. I remember many times doing that.

He was friends with the lighting director at the Kraft Music Hall, where Don Rickles would be and all those people. And we lived across the street from a place called Cookies in Brooklyn, under the train station near that NBC place where Groucho Marx would hang out and he apparently put me on his lap. So I was kind of surrounded and it turned out that part of Brooklyn was like the golden triangle of comedy. Mel Brooks is from there, Larry David is from there, Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen. It has this kind of weird pedigree that that part, that's the X factor that I can't explain. So you didn't have a choice.

This is like from childhood, your father, did your father get to see much of your success? He saw some of it, yeah, yeah, up to a certain point. He definitely did, yeah. At first I think, unfortunately, he was kind of maybe jealous or competitive, didn't really want to acknowledge it or kept his pride very close to the vest, but I think towards the end of his life he was able to sort of

express it. Jealousy would make sense there, right? If your formative years are filled with, it was the exotic neurotic, right? The erotic neurotic would have been funnier, but. Yes, right, he was the exotic neurotic psycho, yeah. Yeah, and the thing was that for me, when I made the decision to kind of just go out to California and see what I could do, because I didn't really have a plan, my plan was he's my anti-role model.

Where he gave up, I will not give up. You know, I will become a bum rather than wind up doing something with my life that I don't want to do. And that was kind of my driving force as a young man. Well, you said that you think that your father always regretted giving it up. And my guess is that you know he did because you felt it in your household.

You're correct. You're correct. He was unhappy. He was a very unhappy person and he was seeking for the rest of his life the fulfillment that he'd gotten on stage or in a scene, those kind of things. He never was able to recreate that in his so-called civilian life. It would make sense and you would not be met necessarily with just support and love upon I don't know what the first couple of successes were for you

or things that would have landed that way on him. Well, right, I mean, I started, I used to go in front of, right here, I used to go stand in front, I didn't know how to get started, honestly. And so I would write jokes by hand. In the late 70s, I came out here, I had quit school and drove out here,

wrote jokes by hand on a yellow piece of paper, and then I would go to the comedy store and literally stand in front of the comedy store until I saw a comedian I recognized, and then I would approach them and go, hey, you want to buy a joke? And eventually I had good jokes, and people started buying the jokes. I would get $10 if the joke did well on stage. And Jay Leno and people like that started buying my jokes. Well tell me about that. Tell me about the decision to come out here,

how much risk was involved in it, and how little you had in terms of plan or details, but how much you had in terms of dreams. Well the truth is, first of all, I still don't have a plan. I've always just wanted to do cool things. I didn't think, oh, I'm going to build a career or a legacy. I had no intentions about those things. I had no illusions about those things.

But when I came out here, I came out here thinking, I'm going to do something. I had no idea I would be a writer or a director. Those ideas were like ideas that I kept to myself. Because in Brooklyn, you couldn't say out loud, I want to be an actor or I want to be a director, those ideas were like ideas that I kept to myself because in Brooklyn you couldn't say out loud, I want to be an actor or I want to be a director. You sound like an asshole. So I didn't share those thoughts with anybody. But in my heart and in my mind I visualized it. And eventually I went to Rutgers for a year and then I went to NYU film school for like

one semester. And while I was at film school, which I was amazed I got into, but once a year and then I went to NYU film school for like one semester and while I was at film school Which I was amazed I got into but once I was in I realized I'm past school already, you know I don't want to be in school anymore. I want to do it. And so I got a Driveaway car which they used to have you could for 50 bucks. You could drive across country It was in a white Cadillac was great and I drove with a You could drive across country, it was in a white Cadillac, it was great. And I drove with a friend of mine and his girlfriend who eventually became my girlfriend,

who eventually became my wife and the mother of my children. And then we got divorced, and that's the whole story. But we drove out here and then I started kind of writing and doing that kind of stuff without a typewriter even. And to give you one quick story that sort of illustrates it, I think, my father in the army was friends with a guy named Stan Burns, who wrote some of this material that I would find in his suitcase. And he said, when you go out to California, see Stan Burns. It's like, how do you do that, you know? But I came out here, it was like 76, 77,

and I looked in the phone book, in those days there were phone books and Stan Burns was listed, you know, he didn't have an unlisted number. So I called him I cold called him and I said hey Stan, I'm lefty's son. My father was known as lefty at that time I want to be a you know, a comedy writer and the Stan Burns who had left the army and actually stuck with it himself wrote for the Steve Allen Show, wrote for Get Smart, wrote for Laugh In, wrote for the Carol Burnett Show, became a veteran successful comedy writer. He was so sweet to me. He said, meet me at DuPars in Studio City.

We'll have breakfast and we'll talk. So I met him. He was the sweetest guy in the world. And he said, write me some jokes. So I wrote him some jokes. And he was working on Dean Martin's Gold Digger's Celebrity Roast. And I wrote jokes for that, like insult jokes for the guys. And he started to use them on the show when I was like 18, 19 years old.

And he, I was ghost writing jokes for that that show and I did that for about six months I'd meet him at DuPars give him jokes He would take the jokes back and some of those jokes wound up on these shows One day we had breakfast and he said to me, you know, I gotta tell you something and I said, oh my god What and he said I have no idea who your father is and he said you just seemed like a nice kid. And he didn't know who the exotic neurotic was. He didn't know lefty.

He had no memory of it at all. My father, it's like a defining moment. But for Stan, he probably met so many people over the years, it didn't have any meaning to him, you know. And I never told my father that. I didn't want to break his heart. How much were the jokes selling for? It doesn't sound like a career selling jokes

outside of the comedy store. Correct. I was getting, as I said, like $10 if they scored. On a good day, though, you're making what? $20, $30, $50 maybe. But I was working as a car valet. That was my main job. And one of the people I parked cars for was David Steinberg. And David Steinberg was a really big comedian at that time.

And I used to park his car and he would leave, for whatever reason, big roaches in his ashtray. And the parking valleys, we would steal his roaches, smoke the roaches. But I would always talk to him when I was getting his car. I would insist on getting his car. And I would talk to him and say, hey, I want wanna be a writer, whatever. And eventually, I wound up writing for David Steinberg also. I should tell people I failed to do this off the top. He's got a new book that's coming out. It'll be available June 17th, Comedy Samurai,

40 Years of Blood, Guts, and Laughter. Where do you go from there? How do you get a break from there that turns into you working with some of the most eccentric personalities that there are in Funning? Well, I was working as a car valet in Marina Del Rey and I was living in Venice. And I would walk home from Marina Del Rey to Venice every day in my black and whites. I worked the night shifts.

So I'd be getting off work about 6 a.m. and I'd walk, maybe stop for a hamburger, and I'd walk along the beach. And one day I saw this tall, angular, very handsome, very striking black man dressed all in white walking on the beach with his little dog. And I recognized him as Darrell Igus because I used to, one of the things my father did for me was he would have me memorize credits. So I got into the habit of memorizing credits and this Darrell Igus was in a movie called Car Wash and I remembered his name from the credits and I walked up to him as my father would have done

and I said, hey, you're Darro Igus and he was thrilled that I recognized him and I told him I'm an aspiring comedy writer and he said, write some material for me. Because all these, this was a great golden era in Los Angeles for comedy. Robin Williams and Richard Pryor were performing at the Comedy Store It was great Letterman and Leto were both like the big comedians at the Comedy Store

So you could really see vintage great classic comedians in their prime at that time, which I was very lucky to do so he was looking for material I started writing for him and After a while, like, you know, everything kind of started falling apart in LA for many different reasons. I went back to New York and never said goodbye to him and I came back a year later, called his wife who was an editor at We Magazine and Chic Magazine. She worked for Larry Flint and I thought, oh maybe I'll write some porno humor because I had written for Screw Magazine also, pieces and I called her up thinking that's how I'll make money and Darryl was in the office that day and he said hey what happened to you?

And I said I went back to New York and it's a long story kind of thing and he said well I got cast on the show Fridays and I told them about you and they want to meet you. They want to read your material. So I gathered my material really fast, wrote some new pieces even, handwritten and hitchhiked to this interview at ABC and met the producers and I said to Jack Burns, who was one of the producers who was in Burns and Schreiber, which was a classic comedy team, I said to him, you know, look, I understand, I may not get this job, that's the way show business works, I'm cool with that, all I ask is don't hang me up.

Let me know one way or the other whether I have the gig or not. I could take it, I appreciate the time, I felt it was a good sign that I even got that far. And I got back to my apartment, I was sharing an apartment on Cherokee at that time with a friend of mine in Hollywood. Phone was ringing, I picked it up, it was Jack Burns who said, I have good news and I have bad news.

The good news is I'm getting back to you quickly. My heart sunk. He said, the bad news is you're hired. So I got hired on Fridays, and that's where I met Larry David and Michael Richards. And Larry David became my mentor almost immediately, and he's where I met Larry David and Michael Richards and became Larry David became my mentor almost immediately and he's from that neighborhood. Hitchhiked? You were broke? Had no money yeah I mean like the kind

of cash you'd make for parking cars or selling a couple of jokes. I could not afford a car. Your dad some of the other things he foisted on you that would have been unusual what are some of the others that would be the the things that are making you not really have a choice? You're going to go to where the laughter is. Well, he was a, you know, I swore to myself, and I get into this in the book, because the book starts really with me, I originally wrote a thousand page book that has my entire childhood, and they just said you can't put out a thousand page book. So rather than trying to cut it or somehow abridge it,

I decided okay, I'll make it into two books. And so the first book, it starts with my career, basically on Fridays, and goes to the present. He was a, and so I didn't wanna be anything like him in any way, because he was so unhappy. And one of the ways he kind of manifested his unhappiness was that he was a serial philanderer, you know, and he really made my mother just miserable and unhappy and she was like broken, you know.

And I saw that. I saw how much pain she was in. And she would have women calling the house late at night going, do you know where your husband is? And stuff like that. And that was like haunting to me. I had a younger brother, so I was the older brother. And I felt very responsible. And then when they finally broke up, my grandfather was trying to push, and my mother was a beautiful woman, you know, but my grandfather would try to push these loser men on her because he felt she could not survive without getting married. So she never really found herself.

She had been broken by the men in her life to some degree. And I felt like, God, that was just really, it was a pain that I carried with me my whole life really, you know. It was a pain that I carried with me my whole life, really. And then of course I found myself repeating many of those patterns, and hating myself for repeating those patterns as well. And you couldn't control it with an awareness of not wanting to be that the same way you had in other places?

Eventually, yes. Therapy, pain that I caused other people, a lot of things finally led me to have my epiphany, my epiphany that I was just causing pain. I had children, at some point I'm hurting them the way my father hurt me. It's like I was walking around with that burden that I created myself and that I laid on all these people, these innocent people around me. So eventually I had to get out of my marriage as well, free myself of that and then I wound up meeting somebody who showed me that I can be myself and I don't have to fill that. That hole

will fill itself with love if you let it. And I kind of was able to walk a different path at that point. Have you gotten to a better place with everything that happened there with your mother? Because you said you've carried it for a long time. Where do you, how do you find your forgiveness there? Well, unfortunately, my mother finally found happiness. Late in life, she was living in Boynton Beach in a condo.

She had married a man who she didn't really love. He was a sweet guy, but I don't think she really loved him. I don't think she loved my father. You know, I think she was pushed into all these things. And she finally was, my stepfather died, and she was like free, and she suddenly blossomed. You know, like her wings came out and she was living a great life.

And then she was in a car accident and was killed in the car accident. So all the beauty and the light that she was finally able to feel and appreciate and kind of savor, it was short lived, unfortunately. How the fuck am I supposed to segue out of that? See, that's the thing.

There is humor in it because it was such an absurdity. It was an absurdity that, and that's what haunts me today, was my mother doesn't get a chance to really enjoy my children, my grand- I have grandchildren now, you know, she was like a healthy, vital, you know, saint and she doesn't get a chance to really- she doesn't- she'll never know about the book, you know, at least not in terms of the corporate world, you know, hopefully somehow she does, but neither of them will ever be able to know

that I actually was able to write a book. They would be shocked to know that I've reached a point where I was worthy of writing a book. Two books, thousand pages, because you're so self-involved that you have to, you can't be contained to a mere 900 pages. Well, the first part of the book is more like a Charles Bukowski book,

because it's about growing up in the rough streets of Brooklyn. So, and the second part of the book is more like a Charles Bukowski book because it's about growing up and the rough streets of Brooklyn, you know. So and the second part is what is coming out in June is the showbiz memoir, which is also a lot of blood and guts and also laughter. Well you meet Larry David. Where is the Arsenio Hall show on this timeline? The Fridays is from about 1980 to 81 or 82 and I don't do I don't work really I come out of Fridays thinking oh wow I'm a star you know I'm never gonna have I'm gonna always have great jobs and it was such a cool job for me I was

like literally went from being a parking valet and a bellhop also in the cast girls to being a comedy writer and I thought thought, oh, this is it. I'm set. And then I couldn't, didn't work for like seven years. And so then- Seven years? What's happening in those seven years? I'm being very picky. People are coming to me going, you wanna do this?

You wanna do that? I'm going, that sounds terrible. No, I'm waiting for the, I wanna write a movie. I wanna, you know, I wanna do these things. Now I'm being very ambitious. But seven years of no work? From like 82 to 88, I would say. Six years.

What are you doing? My wife was a copywriter at a successful, she was a successful copywriter at an ad agency. And I was doing little things here and there. I wrote for David Steinberg. I wrote for people, but it was just like kind of little gigs. No TV, no movies, nothing. No career. No career.

No career. I hadn't thought about a career until after Fridays and I realized, wow, if I don't think about it, nobody else is gonna think about it either. And then one of the other guys from Fridays, a guy named Brian Gordon, who was the first writer from Fridays to actually direct something, he recommended me somehow for the Arsenio Hall Show.

And I went in and met with Arsenio, we hit it off, and I got hired. And I worked for him. That's like 88, 89. But that was or wasn't fun, because it looked fun on television, but it also would have been pressurized because he's- The show, yeah, the show was great.

The show was really fun. The musical guests, the action, the energy of that show was unsurpassed. But writing jokes for Arsenio, I was like writing edgy controversial material. And because he was a black host of a TV show, that was enough for him in those days before the internet, he would get reams, stacks, rooms full of hate mail. Just for being a black person on TV, if a white woman came on the show and he shook her hand, the switchboard would light up.

So he couldn't do after a while the controversial material. So he had to stay safe. I couldn't write those kind of jokes. So I worked for him, and we were friends. And he would come into my office and say, I love this material, but I can't do it. And after a year, he fired me. And in fact, the day before I got fired,

I was feeling like, because I knew my contract was coming up, and I went out, it was at Paramount, and I stood outside at Paramount, and I stood outside of Paramount, and I was smoking a cigarette and just kinda hanging out, trying to, I had a baby, I didn't know what to do. And I had heard that Jack Nicholson was on the lot. He was editing the two Jakes, which he had directed.

And I said, jeez, I just, what am I gonna do with my life? My life is over, this is it. I had this shot and I blew it. And suddenly I saw him in his Mercedes with the Laker cap kind of sauntering along. And as he came past me, he's wearing his sunglasses. As he comes past me, I look at him, I'm wearing my sunglasses. And we look at each other and we both crack up.

We both start laughing. And he goes, yeah, it's funny. And he just keeps going. And I kind of interpreted that as a sign, like it's a game, you know, this is a game, you know, and it's not, it's an absurdity not to be taken so seriously, relax, you know, have fun and everything will fall into place. And the next day, Larry David called me and said,

hey, you wanna work on this on this little pilot that I did, you know, Seinfeld? And I was like, out of work, and it was like perfect. So as I said, yes. It's easy to say though, you're the one who was fired, he's Jack Nicholson. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But I felt like, and as I talk about in the book,

I have these inadvertent oracles who come along and share some piece of wisdom. And of course, it's up to me to interpret that wisdom, but that's how I interpreted that. Yeah, it's funny. It's like, yeah, this is show business, man. It's ridiculous. There's no security. There's no logic.

You know, it's random to a large degree. What is talent? What is good? What is bad? Who's making these judgments? It's not like sports where you can judge people by their statistics. You know, there's no statistics here. They really don't work. You know, so that level of absurdity kind of liberated me to some degree.

Did you deserve to get fired by Arsenio? I was not contributing. I was trying my hardest. And like I said, we remain friends to this day. But you were trying to write edgy jokes for a show that was ahead of its time. He could not risk his life enough. We used to have metal detectors in the audience because people come into the audience with weapons. So he didn't want to take that kind of risk. And he was flying high at that time. Why take the risk?

So I understood completely and I couldn't, if I could have written what he wanted, I would have done it. I just couldn't seem to be able to do it. I could not do it. I saw Seinfeld comedians in cars. He was talking outside with Gary Shanley and there was a moment that stuck with me

because they both made it look very easy but neither of those things were easy and they were totally consuming. So what were the early years of Seinfeld like? It was great in a lot of ways but it was also a challenge. The early years of Seinfeld were Larry, first of all before he tried to hire me right from the beginning and Castle Rock and NBC said no you can't hire this guy Because he's never done a sitcom before and you've never done a sitcom before So we had to wait he did a they did a pilot then they did four episodes Then it finally got picked up for 13 and at that point for the 13

He was then made the showrunner if you could believe it the first few shows there was somebody over him then made the showrunner, if you could believe it, the first few shows there was somebody over him kind of supervising him who was kind of a more traditional sitcom person. But that person left and then he was in charge and that's when he hired me. So it was really at first just the three of us you know and Jerry, Larry and myself there was a guy named Matt who also wrote for a short time sweetest person in the world, too sweet to write for a show like Seinfeld. He could not get in touch with his inner prick. Am I allowed to curse?

Yes, of course. He was not. Let your inner prick fly, sir. Yes, he could not get in touch with his inner prick. He was more a traditional sitcom writer and he could not write the darkness that was required to do a Seinfeld. What was the Seinfeld?

No problem for you by the way. No, no I was very in touch with it. Far too in touch with it maybe. But he, the show was, what was it? We didn't know what it was. But Larry said to me, come on, do the show, we'll do 13 episodes, we'll make a little money because he'd also been in and out of work

and not really done anything of notes. He worked on Saturday Night Live for a season as a writer and didn't get any sketches on, which is part of the lore of Larry David. And he said, come on the show, we'll make a little money, the show will get canceled and we'll move on. That was the mandate, that was the mission statement. And because of that, again, talk about liberation, we all felt let's just do what we think is funny.

And that's what we did. We hit a lot of walls, NBC, Castle Rock, they didn't know what the hell this was. Larry was writing episodes about people waiting for a table at a Chinese restaurant, no plots, you know? And they were like, you need plot, you need story, you need three acts. You need like people hugging at the end, and a moral, you know, and they were like, you need plot, you need story, you need three acts, you need like people hugging at the end and a moral, you know, and we were

not doing any of those things. And we were on Wednesday nights. In fact, our first episode was preempted by the Gulf War. So we thought, well, that's a bad sign. You know, you get preempted by a war, you know, but know, but it was for some reason, even though it was not, we were losing to a show, I don't know if you remember, called Jake and the Fat Man. Yes, I do remember Jake and the Fat Man. It was a, what a great premise, you know, it was about a cop who's overweight. That was the whole thing, you know.

And yet it had more plot than what you guys were doing. Way more plot and far more successful. Far more successful. And we were like really Way more plot and far more successful. Far more successful. And we were like really down at the bottom of the ratings. But NBC didn't have anything better to replace it with. And they liked what they were seeing in terms of the demographic. Like there were people watching our show that didn't normally watch TV. And didn't normally watch other kinds of shows. So they kept with it. And then eventually, after a season or two, I don't remember anymore, they said, we want to put you on Thursday night

on Must See TV following Cheers. Cheers was still out at that time. And Larry said, and I'll never forget, and nowadays he cleans up the story, but I was there when he said it, which was, if they didn't watch this on Wednesday, they can go fuck themselves. And everybody went, no, we have to do this.

This is it. And he finally relented. The show went on Thursdays and immediately exploded. The NBA finals are almost here and every second counts. With DraftKings Sportsbook, an official sports betting partner of the NBA, you're not just watching history, you're betting on it. Now is your shot to get in on all the action. I'm talking player props, I'm talking game lines, I'm talking live bets. This is playoff betting at its finest. New to DraftKings? Bet just $5 and if your bet hits, you'll cash in with $300 in bonus bets. Download the DraftKings? Bet just $5 and if your bet hits, you're cashing with $300 in bonus bets.

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For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see dkng.co.slash.audio. Which of your collaborations do you recall as being the most fun? In terms of a Seinfeld? The doing of it. No, I'm talking about the people you're working with anywhere along the line because I don't know the different experiences, what they look like, but just enjoying making, I would imagine that making something just with Larry and Jerry can be fun, but also have maybe some perfectionism with Jerry that Larry doesn't have?

Well, they both could be tough. I often felt like the George Harrison of Seinfeld. I was working with John and Paul. I was working with these two geniuses and it was their thing. And I was trying to find my way within their thing. That's why I gravitated to Kramer, because he was the most unattended to character, and I could relate to Kramer in a lot of ways. But getting a show on the air with those two guys

writing the other episodes was really, really tough. However, my collaboration with them, as it was with almost anybody we could talk about, Sasha, Bill Maher, Bob Dylan, any of the great people that I work with, Nick Cage, there were moments of incredible exhilaration. Exhilaration beyond my wildest dreams, beyond my expectations. Those were the things that I would cling to, and those were the things that sustained me. All of those relationships also had their dark sides.

All of those relationships had had their dark sides. All of those relationships had a price to pay. But you had to pay that price if you wanted that exhilaration. And I learned that that dichotomy was something I had to accept if I wanted to have those experiences. Who do you regard as the person collecting the largest tax on those prices? Wow. I would say probably Sasha, only because the initial experience was almost pure exhilaration, and then slowly over time, because we worked on three movies together,

it evolved to something that was no longer enjoyable, and that I didn't want to do anymore. And I didn't usually feel that way about things. I didn't feel that way about, Seinfeld I left because I felt I hit my creative wall and I didn't feel like there was anything, I didn't wanna write any more Seinfeld episodes. Because again, I didn't go into this to have security

or to have a long-term job. I wanted to do cool stuff and I did Seinfeld for four, like 80 episodes, four seasons, and or five seasons, whatever it was, and I wanted to do cool stuff and I did Seinfeld for like 80 episodes, four seasons, or five seasons, whatever it was, and I wanted to try something else. I wanted to tap into another part of myself, so I did Mad About You, which was much more emotional and more like kind of analogous to my marriage. And I wanted to explore that.

I want to explore different things and do cool stuff that made me excited. But with Sasha, our relationship just kind of, with Bob Dylan, it was like he was sitting with a guru, a master, like somebody who transcends labels. He's not a songwriter or a singer or a musician or an artist. He's Bob Dylan. He's Shakespeare a songwriter or a singer or a musician or an artist. He's Bob Dylan.

You know, he's Shakespeare of our time. And so I would just, I just absorbed everything. But that relationship lasted about a year. And then we did this movie and then we moved on, you know. People would say, well, are you friends with Bob Dylan? And I would go, no, I just amused him for a little while, you know, because he doesn't really have friends. You can't really be friendsused him for a little while, you know, because he doesn't really have friends. You can't really be friends, he doesn't hang out, you know.

But Sasha, I was extremely close to, and over the course of time, we just kind of drifted apart and had a lot of conflict, to the point that I was not, I was no longer happy. I was kind of in a miserable state, working on the dictator. Tell me if I have this right, because I've heard a story before about how Hollywood works, and Sacha Baron Cohen, with and around Borat,

would have gotten an opportunity to do whatever it is that he wanted to do, but you get a couple of chances, actually. And I was told that an executive, that he was gonna have three movies that he could make around Borat, but then ended up in a fight because The dictator wasn't what it was supposed to be and then he didn't get those three movies And so I'm assuming without knowing what's in the book or what you experienced that the pressure ratcheted so high around the

Expectations for whatever came after Borat that they weren't going to be possible for those to be met? Well, again, that part of it I don't really know personally. I mean, he wound up making some kind of deal. During The Dictator, which was made for Paramount, the Paramount executives would call me every day going, you're doing a great job. We know he's impossible to deal with, you know, we're so grateful for you, but when the movie was over, I got nothing and he got a three picture deal, because they still felt that

he was a possible moneymaker, you know, and that's the bottom line with a lot of this stuff, you know. Then the dictator did not perform up to what their expectations and maybe things changed. It's, there's a lot of things that go into it and I don't want to necessarily paint myself as a saint. You know, again, I had plenty of darkness and I had plenty of anger and a lot of that anger was coming out, a lot of his anger was coming out and a lot of trust issues between us.

Our collaboration started to strain as other things pulled us in separate directions. He had gotten married, he had had children, he no longer wanted to go out there and risk his life for a joke. Which is really, after Borat, where people were very patient with him, Bruno was a very different experience. Bruno, the rampant homophobia around the world, including the United States, was so clear. The violence towards him was so blatant.

You underestimated it? Very much so, to the point that we were getting depressed making the movie, because, wow, people are being so mean and they're being nasty and hateful, and we were meeting murderous white supremacists who wound up literally murdering people and winding up in prison and you would meet these people and they were just like sucking your soul you know they were sucking your soul and it was hard every day to get excited whereas at the

end of scenes on Bora we'd jump in the van we'd all be laughing giddy like we robbed a bank and got away with it. So there was like the circumstances and the environment changed. And then by the time of The Dictator, Dictator was a scripted movie. And so he had to now learn lines. He had to now create a character quickly, as opposed to Borat he'd been doing for years.

And Bruno, he had done those characters for years. Now he's got to quickly come up with a character. He's got to lock into stuff. He just never got comfortable in that mode. And so I think fear, anger, insecurity, he was not able to let go and enjoy the experience and instead he substituted a kind of a control thing where he felt he needed to control every, these papers are not in the right place, here, that's better, you know? And he would waste a lot of time on nonsense

instead of focusing on the character and the humor. Bill Maher seems like he would be difficult to work with. Ironically, I, now Bill Maher seems more crotchety these days, I admit. But when I work with him, when we did that movie together, we had a great time. That was one of my best film experiences was doing religious. He was easy to work with. We laughed all the time.

We're really in sync on the sensibility of the movie. We had a great kind of situation where we were able to just go out and shoot whatever we wanted for as long as we wanted. You know, there was not the kind of pressure that you have. In Borat or Bruno, we would work 16 hour days, six days a week, and Sasha could never break character because he was sitting this close to people. He had to be, he couldn't start laughing or lose his accent or do something that felt out of

character. It was a lot of pressure to stay in it for everybody. But with Bill, Bill could just be Bill and we put him in situations that were perfect for him and we had a chance to shoot in really cool places. I used a crew that were friends of mine from Borat and Bruno and we had a great time and he was loose and that was great. I had a really really good and he also he didn't like traveling so we would shoot our stuff and then he would go back to the hotel and then we would keep shooting. So I had a lot of fun on Religious Sexually.

Borat was more fun or more pressure or did the pressure just escalate and then the fun, in the doing of all of it, it just became less and less fun. Started as fun and then the pressure of it became too much and then everything blows apart. Borat was more fun. Borat was more fun because the character, it was easier for people to be patient with Borat, even though he was a rapist and an anti-semitic,

people liked him for some reason. They just liked him. There was a funny mortifying sentence. Right, I mean it is and I understood that too. But inherently he was, he was, people were very patient with him and he was indulged and But with but so that so so I saw things happen You know the sociological we had a lot of this a six and a half hour cut of that movie You know because a lot of the scenes are not necessarily funny, but just like mind-blowing You know like he was in a Civil War reenactment And he and the soldier would get killed in the Civil War and he would start raping the soldier and say that's what we did in Kazakhstan. You know, stuff like that that didn't make the movie but was hilarious to me and jaw-dropping. Or he, I don't

know if you remember in the movie, he gets healed by in a church. People are doing glossolalia and they're speaking in tongues and they heal him, you know, and I would be watching this going, I can't believe it, they're healing Borat. You know, it went just as we hoped it would go, even better. You know, so we were having a great time. We really had a lot of fun. Yes, there were some conflicts along the way, but overall, and then of course, you can't minimize success.

You know, Borat was a phenomena. It did so well around the world. People still say, very nice, and you know, it's like still popular to this day. Whereas Bruno, I found- He's genius. The character's genius. And it just connected also. It connected with the zeitgeist, which like the Beatles or like Seinfeld, you can't really

predict that part of it. There's an X factor. Why does an audience connect to certain things? And other things which might be equally great, they just don't feel. There's a kind of a mystery to that, which is cool. That's art. And I love that, but it's frustrating when it doesn't work.

But in the case of Borat, it worked beyond our wildest dreams. And with Bruno, which in some ways is a more radical piece, people, a lot of people, you know, know Borat, they could quote Borat, and never saw Bruno, you know. And Bruno in some cases is actually funnier, but it's also much darker. Does that surprise you? I've learned now that you cannot underestimate people's homophobia, people's anger, people's hatred, and it kind of came along at a time when there was a lot of anger towards gay people.

And even gay people were angry about the movie because they felt like there's a bunch of straight white guys, you know, making fun of a gay guy, and straight people going, I don't want to see him get it get it up the ass you know so there was like there was a lot of there was nobody who was really pleased you know even though actually if you watch the movie it's hilarious I would imagine let me not speak for you here but your experiences with underestimating homophobia on Bruno underestimating racism on Arsenio. Are you someone who's surprised by the state of division in America right now having seen that or did you get a glimpse and you're like yes of course this is what it is? Well as I told you

before we started I grew up in Trump Village so I've been aware of Trump for since I was a little kid and his father too who was really kind of like Satan. If you ever saw a picture of his father, like someday Google a picture of his father, his father looks like Satan from a movie, you know, just like the evil, you could just feel the evil kind of exuding from him. So I think Gavin Newsom looks a little bit like that. Maybe yes, he does. He's got a kind of a twinkle in his eye that seems wrong.

But I was also an avid reader. I read Man Child and the Promised Land. I read Down These Mean Streets when I was like in elementary school. I didn't know any better. Because there weren't a lot of black kids where I was. Busting had just begun when I was in elementary school. And so I didn't know a lot of black kids where I was, busing had just begun when I was in elementary school. And so I didn't know a lot of black kids excepted in class, there'd be like one black kid in the class.

But reading these books, I started to get a sense of like, wow, there's this incredible division in society. I didn't understand it, but I knew that it existed. So I've been watching that my entire life, get better, get worse, get more extreme this way, get more extreme that way, with some hope that things were moving in the right direction and now feeling like, wow, they're moving in such a wrong direction that I don't know if we could pull out of it. One of the things that I have in Miami that leaves me alone in my community when you say, because I didn't grow up in a diverse environment either. I had a lot of Hispanics, but not a lot of other ethnicities. It was actually the University of Miami

football team of the late 80s and 90s and being on campus at that time that sort of introduced me to an entirely different way of thinking. But I think in a lot of these instances, when you're a white man running Arsenio's show, you're not giving a lot of thought to what kind of this opportunity this is as a first for Arsenio and how much pressure there would be on that to not tell your jokes

that you know are good enough to make the show really different. I did get that, I did get that. I was one of the things that I really, I was really happy to have worked on Arsenio on that sociological level, because I was the minority on that show. White people were the minority on that show.

And it's good to put yourself in that position sometimes. I did a show called Larry Charles Dangerous World of Comedy on Netflix, where I went to Nigeria, and world of comedy on Netflix, where I went to Nigeria and I went to Liberia and I went to Somalia. That sounds by the way, like a terrible idea. I'm just, I, I, just to try and find the funny amid like real legitimate danger. Yes. And I found it. There were always comedians in all these

countries. There were always comedians. Sometimes they were assassinated afterwards. Some comedians in all these countries. There are always comedians. Sometimes they were assassinated afterwards. Some comedians were assassinated before or arrested. But there are always comedians in all these places. But I walked down the street in Lagos, and I was literally the only white person in the crowded, crowded streets. And it's like interesting experience

to have that shoe on the other foot. And on Arsenio, because most of the staff was black, you would see, we tend to look at it like a block, but it's not a block at all. There's so many different subtle nuances to the black community, you know, from education, from regionalism, all these different things went into play amongst black people on that show. It meant something different to be from the South and to be from the North, to go to this college rather than that college.

Even skin tones were judged by different people. And it was interesting to me to learn that there was nuance to that community that we tend to go, oh, black people, and generalize about them when that's really incorrect. Two things that you have spent time on with eccentric's who people want to know more about. Have your projects, your documentary with Larry David

and the work that you did with Kanye West, have people, are people gonna be able to see those things? The Kanye West thing, somebody, I put it on like my Vimeo account to sort of have it there, it was safe, and somebody was able to rip it and show it. And there's a comedian who's in the show named Wyatt, really great guy, and he was showing it in Brooklyn for a while, like at his comedy show. Wyatt Sinak? Wyatt Sinak, exactly. And he's one of the co-stars.

And he would show it with some commentary. So I think I'm going to put it on my YouTube channel at some point. So it is something you can see eventually. The Larry David thing is a little trickier. There's more legal ramifications to it. I can't just show it. Hopefully, someday, I'll be able to show it.

There's also longer cuts of Borat. There's also like longer cuts of Borat. There's a much longer cut of the Bob Dylan movie that I made that I would love to have come out. One of the things that kind of is emblematic of my career is I have not had final cut on most things. So when I'm done with something and it's the way I want it to be, somebody else has come along, whether it's Bob Weinstein or somebody else, taken it and recut it and ruined it a lot of the times. Now, I'm not saying that all those things got ruined, but they were altered in a way that I did not approve of.

So I would love for a lot of that stuff to come out and be seen the way it was supposed to be seen. That seems crushing. It's been crushing. It's been crushing at times, yes. I mean to have things that you've made that you care about that are your voice that you're powerless to keep power from. Well that's one of the reasons I started the YouTube channel was so I can make my own stuff. It reaches a smaller audience, it's made

on a much more minuscule budget, but I don't answer to anybody. So it gives me a kind of a satisfaction and a purity that is hard to get in commercial cinema. Among these people, because Nick Cage is another one, we haven't talked about anything, but who would you regard as the most unusual? Wow, Bob Dylan, I would say. Bob Dylan is a singular person. He doesn't march to anyone else's drummer.

An example, we wrote this movie together. I sat in a room like this, smaller, like a cubicle, and he would chain smoke all day and like 12 hours and we would write this, this would eventually became that movie. And one day he had a line, I'm not a pig without a wig. And I was like, I reached the point where I felt I could be honest with him. And I said, Bob, you know, I have to say, no one's gonna understand that line. That is a crazy line, no one's gonna understand it.

And he said, what's so bad about being misunderstood? And I was like, pshh, wow, he could say that. He's been understood, he's done that. He's interested now in the process of how people are misunderstand things So he just saw thing or he would people would say to him Well, what were you thinking when you when you played electric guitar in the Newport Jazz Festival? He's like, what were you thinking? You know, and so he was always kept keeping everybody on their toes without even trying You know, he just had a different point of view and he and Larry David And so he was always keeping everybody on their toes without even trying.

He just had a different point of view. And he and Larry David, I compare to each other quite a bit because they're the kind of guys, and who knows, maybe they're on the spectrum and they haven't been diagnosed, but they're the kind of guys that if they were at a bus stop, they'd be doing exactly the same thing that they're doing now.

Well, what is it about you though? Because the people in sports that I've gravitated toward Ricky Williams, right John Amici Terrell Owens, I I gravitate toward the eccentric so I really like people who are who are shaking the establishment You do too. Obviously, this is an Incredible collection of weirdos. Yes it is. You've assembled some all time hall of fame weirdos.

Yeah. And the creativity is there as well. Yes. Because they're counter culture. What's happening there? Why are you a magnet toward these things? Well again, I go back to Brooklyn. I was surrounded, I grew up in Trump Village,

which was all these kids moved in at the same time in 1964. And so it was a demographic explosion. And amongst those kids, there were a lot of mad men and geniuses. And some of them were scary, and some of them were really cool. But if I wanted to go downstairs and play basketball, or do something in the park,

I would have to interact with these people often older boys who were really rough it was like Lord of the Flies to a large degree and learning how to navigate those kids and survive not get my ass kicked you know but survive and even be respected I think that I learned how to interact. It interested me in interacting with the offbeat, you know. And then the things that I read, the movies that I liked, were always about outsiders and always about strange people. My father was an eccentric guy, you know, and I think I just, and maybe I've never even thought about this before, but

maybe like trying to recreate a whole relationship with the one that I didn't have with my father with these other people. Maybe that, because they were all older men to a large degree too. Larry David, Bob Dylan, Michael Richards, these were all guys who were older than me and took me in as a mentor, mentored me inadvertently quite often. Well this one's interesting because if you're doing something there that you haven't thought about with your parents, I don't know the answer to the question I'm about to ask you. How many of these people would you say are happy?

None. None. So you are doing that with your father. Yeah, yeah. They're all, I mean Bob Dylan who might be might be the most brilliant, also might be the most unhappy. You know, he never, but he's, I think what's important is he's okay with it, it seemed to me.

He learned to navigate it, he learned to balance it, he learned to let go of it, you know. He learned to let go of the things that were plaguing him and just be and not worry about it and totally My father totally did not trust his instincts He wanted to be a comedian. He wanted to be an actor He wanted to be in show business so badly and he went against that And dropped it and left it behind and never went back to it Bob dillon didn't do that and then would have been and Larry David even more so had so many opportunities to quit Because he was failing

failing miserably, you know and And also these are guys who are not from as many people today are they're not from extraordinary parents They're from very mundane people. Where do they come from, these savants that suddenly kind of emerge? It's very interesting to me as a process also. When you meet Bob Dylan's parents, when you meet Larry David's parents, they are completely plain people, you know, just regular people, appliance salesmen and haberdasher and people like that. So they don't come from any kind of, or Mel Brooks too,

you know, all these people come from very, very regular people. And where does this genius, even their brothers are not geniuses the way they are. You know, their brothers are regular people, but they somehow exploded out of these family units. And people would say to me also, I can't believe you're the child of your parents, you know. So there's something to that kind of explosion that drags you out that I think can't be fully explained. You know, it's kind of, again, part of this mystery. What an interesting thing though for you to both choose and learn that you chose that you're trying to

recreate with older comedians a connection you didn't have with your father who also was the one who provided for you. Hey kid come over here it's nice to be near the laughter but it's not going to be necessarily happy to be around the laughter. Right, right, right. That's crazy. Yeah, yeah. Each of them would be that that you would just keep sort of ending up there? You know, I have to write another book because I never thought about that. I think that's true. I call them inadvertent oracles, inadvertent mentors,

because they all were kind of like fatherly, paternal to me in some way or another. And I gravitated to that for sure. And felt comfortable in that kind of womb-like environment. They also seem, and I gravitated to that for sure and felt comfortable in that kind of womb like environment. They also seem and I don't know if they of course it contributes to the unhappiness this is presumptuous of me but the group seemed to be a little bit lonely with their genius as well. Yes, yes. Well Larry David has evolved in many good ways to be a more generous soul

that he maybe started out to be. At a certain point, he would get angry with people when people would go, are you happy now? You happy now? When Seinfeld was a success, people were constantly bugging him about that. And he'd go, no, I'm not happy now. I'm not any happier than I was before, you know what I mean?

But he is now, I believe. I believe he's a happier person than he was. I'd argue seeing the evolution of that, just watching what they've televised of it, the relationship with Conan or whatever it is that I've seen of it, I'm guessing that the communal community of those particular people sharing that success with them, that you forced it on him.

Like that he has to absorb, hey, this was a pretty cool thing we did together. Yes, right. That's two ridiculous runs on television. Absolutely, unprecedented by the way, in my opinion. When you look at it, you look at the great television creators, I don't think any of them could really point to things

like Seinfeld and Curb. Norman Lear, James Brooks, all amazing geniuses in their own way, but they didn't create two culture-changing things too like Larry David did. And I think Larry David now, in his older years, appreciates that much more. He has a perspective on that that maybe he didn't have when he was forced to write episodes every week. You know, he's loose now. He's loosened up a little bit. Oh, but I mean what kind of, I mean I'm not even gonna call it a purgatory. I'm saying what kind of hell would it be to have

that kind of success around the specifics of laughter and not learn at any point while you're living to enjoy it? Yes, well for a long time I would say he didn't. For a long time he just sort, he would threaten to quit all the time. I mean maybe that was part of his mechanism to survive. But he was pretty unhappy for a long time. I would think, I don't know what else is going on, but I would think that the burden of expectation

of always having to top yourself when you're making a seminal thing, I mean, that seems like it could be a suffering if you're not somebody who's entirely consciously self-aware and introspective enough to know, you know, to try and go about removing your blind spots. Well, I think you also touched on a word that's very important also which is suffering. We're taught to some degree, especially Jews, especially Jews from Brooklyn, but Bob Dylan's a Jew as well, there's a certain degree of suffering that goes along with the equation and that you need to come to grips with that in some way. You need to have a personal relationship with

your suffering. Either it's going to consume you or you're going to learn to live with it. The shadow, whatever you want to call that, you know. The first noble truth of Buddhism is life is suffering, you know. So if you don't come to grips with that, come to terms with that, then you are going to suffer. And I think it took Larry David a long time to come to terms with his suffering, to balance it, and to be able to bring some joy into his life and balance it out. Have you?

I think so too, yes. I think so too. How? I think that I, you know, I think the end of my first marriage, you know, that was kind of like a bottom for me. That was like I hit bottom during that time. And I think that meeting somebody who kind of

injected joy back into my life, I was like desperately open to it. And she kind of freed me from a lot of the burdens that I was carrying with me. And I felt like liberated by that love. I really felt saved to some degree by that love. And it kind of freed me in terms of my work, in terms of my approach to work.

I'm a very intense person when I work particularly, but I was able to balance it. So I wasn't going over the deep end all the time. And I still go over the deep end. Believe me, I just did it today. No, I'd like to learn from this. Yeah. Because I've got someone next to me

who is a source of great strength and support and has done a great deal to teach me how to love myself better. But this is a bit of a struggle for me. Yeah, well, it still is for me as well. And it probably always will be. But I know that I'm in a much better place for enjoyment, for joy, for perspective. I think a lot of it had to do with me.

My father was a very selfish person. Like when we moved into Trump Village, just to give you an illustration, it was a two-bedroom apartment. My brother and I shared a room our entire lives. And my parents had their bedroom and there was a big walk-in closet in the bedroom. And then there was a hall closet. And my father said, I'm not moving into this apartment

unless I get the walk-in closet. Normally a woman would be getting that, my father took that closet. He was a selfish person. And I was just talking to my brother today. We were talking about how selfish we've been in our lives at times. And I think we're both, now that we're in our 60s,

I think we're both able to go, wow, we could be generous finally. We've learned generosity. And I think my wife, Keely, has helped me learn generosity. She's kind of forced me to see generosity and embrace it and enjoy it, you know? Enjoy the benefits of generosity. When you're talking about the end of your first marriage, you're blaming yourself there when you're doing rock bottom on that?

Yes. you're blaming yourself there when you're doing rock bottom on that? Like it's not just that it's your fault, there's also the shame and guilt of it being your fault and so it becomes just a spiral? Yeah I don't think I was good to any of the people in my first marriage. I don't think I was good to my kids. I don't think I was good to my ex-wife. Because you were selfish the way your father was? Yes, yeah. I felt like I wanted what I wanted and I wasn't gonna let anything, maybe I made a mistake in even going down that road.

I wasn't ready to go down that road. Why did I even go down that road? And of course then I wound up loving, I have a great relationship with my kids today and my grandchildren, you know. But I think at that time I was unhappy and I was desperate and I was hungry and I was like, in Buddhism they call it the hungry ghost. You can feed it and feed it and feed it and you can never fill the hole.

And that's how I was. It's like there wasn't enough. And I didn't know what I wanted. And that's how my father was. He wanted and wanted and wanted but he didn't know what he wanted and never gave him any satisfaction You know, and I think that's how I was too and I couldn't believe How much I wound up being like my father that one's a mind fuck right? Like when I when I see God this happened to me the other day

I'm throwing blueberries in a smoothie and my wife ever so gently is telling me to wash them and for some reason I've just got some aversion to learning there that's just ugly and when I see my father in the mirror on that one because I see it in childhood, I'm like how the fuck did that happen? How did that one escape my attention. There's a genetic thing going on that we don't get, you know, and you can have therapy. I had a great therapist for many years. He was amazing and in fact the day that I was, I'd finally gotten the courage because I was a coward also, an emotional coward, and the day that I'd finally gotten the courage to go see my wife and say it's over, you know, I was going to see my therapist first to kind of almost rehearse and I went to see over. I was going to see my therapist first to kind of almost rehearse and I went to see him. It was a Monday night in Santa Monica

and I went to the door and I went to open the door and the door was locked. And I was like, wow, that's weird. Am I in the right place? And he was like, no, the door is locked. I knocked, there was no answer. And then there was a message on my phone and I listed a message to my psychiatrist

and he was Italian and he was like, Ladi, I'm sorry to tell you that I was diagnosed with terminal cancer today and I've had to close down the practice and I can't come back ever again and I wish you the best of luck. And again, the absurdity of that and the tragedy of that. And I was left on my own to do this and I had to finally screw up the courage to have this talk with my wife, with my kids.

And in hearing that, it was a very Tony Soprano kind of life I was living, you know, where I could have just continued to do what I was doing, because Tony Soprano was a miserable guy also, you know. He was an unhappy person, and he was like, you know, kind of a, you know, such a symbolic person at that time. And I felt like, well, I could have a Tony Soprano life, but that's not what I want. I don't want it to just go to black at the end. I want something more.

And that was, my selfishness was in wanting happiness in some way, in some form, some temporal version of it, to taste it, to feel it, to feel emotional satisfaction. Roughly what age does that arrive? Late 40s, late 40s. A lot of people go straight to the grave without ever getting there, right? Without ever examining any of it, seeing any of it, and they just, they never see it. I would say that's my dad. My dad lived to 91, and I don't think he, he got married a second time and was equally unhappy the second time he got married,

and just didn't, I don't think he had the energy to make a change again, you know. And so you then go and you feel rescued? You feel saved by a woman's love? I do, I do, I did. Yes, I really did. I felt like I had somebody, and my first wife is great in many ways,

and I'm not at all criticizing her. I think we had just kind of reached the point where we were no longer connected. It was like a business. I used to say, and I think I say it in the book, my life was perfect except that I was in it. I lived in Bel Air. I was making a lot of money at that time.

My kids all went to the best schools. We had friends, we had social life, we had all those kind of things, and I was miserable, you know? And I finally met somebody who had my back. You know, didn't care about anything except me, you know, and us. And I was very humbled by that, I think.

What is the work that you consider the most fulfilling? Well, I could look at this commercial work that's really dealt with in the book, and I know that I'm proud of almost everything that I talk about in the book. All of those things have had some impact, which is something I'm always looking for. I don't want it to just be good or just be successful.

I want people to walk away, remember it, to see it again and again like they listen to a great record. So I'm proud of all of that stuff, all of my commercial stuff. But the thing that kind of gives me great pleasure these days is doing shows that I make up myself for this YouTube channel, where I'm just like on my own, I have an editor and I use my own money

and I don't get notes, and I don't have to run it by anybody, and I think it's something that's a good idea. Doesn't reach as many people, but it's out there. It's made, and that's the coup for me. It's like I've actually made things that I wanted to make the way I wanted to make them. Art for art's sake, right?

Exactly, exactly. And it's not about commercial. There's less than in there in terms of the superficiality of success or what might look like happiness to others versus you're making what you want when you want, how you want now. Still lessons will be learned. One of those things is the book we're talking about

and June 17th is when it's available, Comedy Samurai, 40 Years of Blood, Guts, and Laughter. Larry, a pleasure, it's been a pleasure to watch you work, sir. Great to meet you, my friend. My brother's name is Dan, by the way. Okay, well there you go. That doesn't mean anything to me, Larry.

There's nothing I can. It means something to me. But I'm very happy to meet you. Likewise, and I feel like I just ruined everything we just did because of that as my punctuation, by insulting you, by not caring to go brother's name is Dan You have to go for it. Well, you could you're also right in a way. It doesn't matter You know, I mean I happened I wanted to share that with you and so I sure you wanted to share it and then I just

Rejected it. I Just ruined everything at the end. We hit we it was intimate. It was vulnerable. It was a lovely conversation I'm like, I don't care about your fucking brother, Dan. You can cut it out. No, leave it in. I insist you leave it in. The more awkward, the better. Good.

I think you're right. More awkward makes sense. I mean, I'm talking to Borat. I'm talking to a guy who made Borat. Awkward is great. Awkward's good. That works. Awkward's good.

Yes, there's a truth in awkwardness. Thank you, sir. My pleasure. Thank you, sir. My pleasure. Thank you.