Meet the King of Pain: Larry David

Somewhere between jerk and jerked around, between schlemiel and shlimazel, lurks a man named Larry David. Rich and bald beyond his wildest dreams, he spends his days trying to avoid favors, obligations, protocol, intimacy, and deep, lingering awkwardness. Usually, though, he winds up stealing doll heads from little girls, physically scrapping with female interior decorators, hitting on the spouses of his wheelchair-using friends, and pretending he’s an incest survivor — all misunderstood misdeeds that result in yelling, ruined friendships, blown deals, more yelling, and deep, lingering awkwardness.

Somewhere behind that Larry David, the one as seen on the hilariously misanthropic HBO comedy series Curb Your Enthusiasm, lurks another man named Larry David. This Larry David, the real Larry David, the non-comically exaggerated extension of the 55-year-old bespectacled Seinfeld cocreator — now, he must be a whole different plate of latkes, right? What forces could possibly conspire against such a supremely admired, obscenely wealthy Hollywood creative type? To find out, let’s sit across from him in his Santa Monica production office on this quiet summer afternoon and watch him perform one of the most rudimentary tasks known to man: eating lunch.

”It’s a very unpleasant thing, I can tell you that,” he says, shaking his head while unboxing his vegan takeout. ”I never got the hang of eating. I use many more napkins than the average person. There is dribbling. I just don’t have a talent for it and it’s a little disturbing. I’m a very awkward, bad eater. I hated taking women out to dinner when I was single because of the whole eating thing — and also because it was too much money on top of it, but..."

He lifts an unwieldy tempeh burger toward his mouth. A drop of sauce plops onto the plate.

”People think a sandwich is a good thing to have with a girl on a date, but it’s not,” he continues between bites. ”It seems easy to eat. All you’ve got to do is hold it and take a bite. That’s the worst thing you do! A plate is so much easier, dealing with stuff on a plate. It takes a long time to learn these things.”

Just as it seems that the meal has gone off without incident or noticeable loss of self-esteem, David extracts one last carton from the bag. ”Oh, look at this — I left something out,” he says. ”It’s a green vegetable.” He peers at it suspiciously and puts a forkful in his mouth. His face registers disgust. ”This is horrible!” he sputters. ”It’s terrible…[Cough] I really don’t understand how anybody could eat this stuff. [Cough]"

Larry — are you all right?

”[Cough] I’m fine. [Cough]”

His choking starts to reach paging-Dr. Heimlich levels. Suddenly, a forceful hack shoots a piece of chewed green leafery onto his lap. He glances down at it and then back at you.

”See?” he exclaims, sounding amused and ashamed at once. ”Did I tell you? What did I tell you? [Cough, Cough…]”

You look around. There are no cameras rolling.

Curb Your Enthusiasm is one of the least-watched shows in television history to be nominated for the Outstanding Comedy Series Emmy (its 2.3 million viewers represent less than a tenth of Friends' audience). It is vinegary, abusive, polarizing, and up to five times more humanly uncomfortable than the answering-machine scene in Swingers. Its low-budget title credits are set to demented carnival music. Its protagonist hates people almost as much as he hates himself. Plus, the show doesn't even have a script.

And that's why Curb — now entering its third season — is emerging as an unlikely cult hit, a neurotic thriller of epic proportions, the ultimate feel-bad story for our times. "Curb Your Enthusiasm is about a guy named Larry David who gets up every morning with the intention of surviving the day with some shred of dignity intact," sums up co-executive producer/director Robert Weide, "and by the end of the day, we see that dignity instead being torn to shreds."

That's no easy process: Larry has the good life in L.A., kickin' it with his unflappable wife, Cheryl (Cheryl Hines), his food-loving manager, Jeff (Jeff Garlin), and enough Seinfeld syndication money to buy a midsize South American nation. Yet he always makes one seemingly harmless move (say, breezing by an acquaintance on the street) that triggers an intricate chain reaction of coincidences that culminate in mucky meltdown (say, the blown-off acquaintance having Larry arrested for stealing a fork from his restaurant). It's almost as if Rube Goldberg had invented a perpetual comeuppance machine. This year, the agita continues as Larry invests in a restaurant with Ted Danson, anguishes over firing his black AV technician, and gets cast as a "tough Jew" in a film by Martin Scorsese (who'll appear in two episodes).

The true joy of Curb for the offscreen David doesn't lie in constructing complex arrangements of plot points, but rather in using the show as a magical escapist device. "On the show, I can say the things I think about, which I can't say in life," he explains. "I can get into arguments that I wouldn't get into. You can't do anything in life. Other than golf, it's very restrictive. The social barriers in life are so intense and horrific that every encounter is just fraught with so many problems and dread. Every social situation is a potential nightmare."

A guy saddled with such a gloomy outlook would seem destined to dream up a show like this, but actually, it happened by accident. In 1998, coming off a seven-season run on Seinfeld (which caused him so much stress, he prayed for its cancellation every year before finally quitting in 1996 — though he did return to write the finale) and a disappointing big-screen writing debut with Sour Grapes, David began plotting his next move. The Brooklyn-raised comedian had an edgy stand-up act during the '70s and '80s that intrigued comedians and often alienated audiences. (That can happen when you slam the mike down, leave the stage in a huff, and challenge patrons to fights.) Now the idea of returning to his first love (/hate) sounded appealing. Fellow comedian Garlin suggested David film his stage revival: The resulting 1999 HBO special, Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm, was part stand-up, part fictitious behind-the-scenes action. The mockumentary elements worked so well, HBO commissioned Curb as a series without the stand-up stuff — or even a script. (David pens a detailed outline for every episode and the actors improv the dialogue.)

The free-form filming style gives Curb a refreshingly naturalistic vibe: Characters stammer or snicker at odd moments and shout over each other in un-TV-like rhythms. David channels his real-life social pet peeves onto the screen (curse those stop-and-chats; damn those double goodbyes!). Then there's the matter of the rehearsal process. "We have no rehearsal process," corrects Garlin, who, like Hines, has an improv background. "Our rehearsal process is 'Okay, you're gonna stand over there and we'll talk.' We don't read the outlines of what the scene is until right before we do it. We forget. Larry writes them and forgets: 'What are we doing here now?' Which keeps us fresh. For the guest actor, it's horrifying. They'll ask PAs, they'll ask the craft service guy, 'Do you know what I'm doing in this scene?'"

Certain guest stars hardly need instruction. Those boisterous battles between Larry and Richard Lewis (David's pal and frequent Curb guest) feed off the duo's 28-year-old bickerific friendship. For one scene, recalls Lewis, "Larry said, 'Come over to my office and accuse me of stealing your outgoing answering-machine message,' and I went, 'Okay, but what time do you want me there?' I was in the middle of a book tour and I was exhausted and he says, '5 o'clock,' which was rush hour. It took like 12 days to get three miles, so I stormed into the room and I screamed at him. Then I saw the twinkle in his eye and he says, 'All right, goodbye.' We did it in one take. I don't know whether he did it purposely, but it was just — he knows what he's doing."

So it seems. Critics rhapsodize about the show. Writers seeking TV gigs peddle Curb spec scripts around town (ironic, for obvious reasons). Fans are convinced that Hines is married to David... though his wife of nine years is actually a 44-year-old nonprofit environmental activist named Laurie. ("When they find out we're not really married," Hines says, "they're very disappointed. It's crazy.") Nominated for two Emmys, the series earned the coveted post-Sopranos slot this season. "I think Curb can play a very important part for us for years to come," says HBO chairman Chris Albrecht, "certainly as long as Larry wants to do it."

Informed of this good news, David sighs: "I'm very sorry to hear that. That does not make my day at all."

Of course it doesn't. Not only has David bronzed his rep as Gifted Comic Deconstructionist of All Things Petty and Neurotic, he has blurred the fine line between reality and hyperreality so much that his true identity hangs in the balance. On the one hand, this husband/father of two girls assures you that he's a "pretty friendly, nice guy" who's "okay with life" — an assertion that his colleagues second. On the other hand, he wears the same clothes and drives the same car (an eco-friendly Toyota Prius) as the onscreen Larry, and he's pathologically uncomfortable with self-promotion (this year, he turned down a chance to present at the Emmys; a few years ago he asked HBO to take down a Sunset Boulevard billboard featuring his mug). "I think you can make a much better assessment of who a person is by what you're seeing on screen," he notes, "than by what you're seeing in life."

If that's the case, Larry, then we've got to know: Are you happy? "This question about being happy, I get asked a lot," says David, starting to get worked up. "People come up to me and go, 'So are you happy now? You must be happy now!' It's like they're trying to get a confession out of me: 'How could you not be happy now? You've got a show on HBO, a wife and kids, money! So come on, you're happy now, right?'"

And...?

"I would never give them the satisfaction of saying that I'm happy," he admits, "because that's what they want."

Back in his production office, David has finished cleaning up the mean green scene. He crumples up a brown bag and eyes a small trash can across the room. "Think I'm going to make this shot?" he asks. You quickly imagine all the scenarios. The balled-up bag will knock over some fragile family heirloom that someone left momentarily on his shelf. Or a pal who just dropped by to say hello after undergoing a complex rhinoplasty will take the projectile in the nose. Sadder yet, he'll just miss.

David cocks back his arm. He squints at his target. He shoots. He...scores???

"That was pretty good, wasn't it?" he asks, leaning back in his chair, resting his feet on the desk, and trying hard to curb an enthusiastic grin. "That was really good."

You look around. There are definitely no cameras rolling.