For all the plaudits that Curb Your Enthusiasm received over its lifespan, for how funny and daring and groundbreaking it was, people seem to have missed the fact that it provided Larry David with the perfect opportunity to conceal his true self.
The main character in the show (wealthy former Seinfeld showrunner Larry David) was so superficially similar to its creator (wealthy former Seinfeld showrunner Larry David) that people started to assume they were one and the same. And David seemed to welcome this, shying from most opportunities to reveal himself. On talkshows, he likes to retreat behind the same clutch of anecdotes. When former Seinfeld writer Larry Charles made a two-part documentary about David for HBO in 2022, David had it pulled from schedules the day before broadcast. When I interviewed him for a book I wrote about baldness last year, he only agreed on the proviso that the line of questioning never strayed from hair loss.
So the publication of No Lessons Learned, a new book about the life of Curb Your Enthusiasm (“as told by Larry David and the cast and crew” but written by Lorraine Ali) offered a shot at showing us the machinations of the real David. So, what does it teach us about Larry David the man?
He really was that miserable once
The oft-repeated talkshow anecdote about his pre-fame stint as a blind woman’s chauffeur gets fleshed out in the book. “It was a very, very sad time in my life,” he states. “Bad jobs, no money, living in a dump. By all accounts, I was a failure and the future was bleak.”
His first script was also bleak
As Robert Weide, who would later go on to direct Curb episodes, describes, it was a film called Prognosis Negative, about a sour man who begins to date a terminally ill woman, because it meant he could enjoy the possibility of being in a relationship without the pressure of any long-term commitment. “It was very, very dark,” Weide says now.
He often gets his way
Larry David as Larry, wearing hat and glasses, standing in downpour on a golf course. Photograph: Contract Number (Programme)/CHANNEL 4 PICTURE PUBLICITY
At an early screening of the Curb Your Enthusiasm pilot – then only known as the Larry David Vanity Project – the audience was handed a sheet of paper with potential titles, including The Shame Must Go On, Dead Inside, and Regrets Only. The title Curb Your Enthusiasm received no votes. “Too bad, I like that one,” David said at the time. “That’s what we’re calling it.”
Larry and Richard Lewis were like that all the time
Tracey Ullman describes a moment, towards the end of Lewis’s life, when she overheard the pair of them quietly talking while a scene was being shot. Lewis was performing shows in New York, and was angry that David hadn’t been to any. David’s response? “When are you gonna die?” “I turned around, and Richard’s face, he was trying so hard not to laugh,” Ullman says.
The glasses were a major source of stress
When Curb began, David had two pairs of his now-iconic glasses, which were made by Oliver Peoples in the 1990s. Production required more than that, so someone had to literally scour the globe looking for more. Eventually they were able to find someone “in a small cabin in Switzerland” who could make four extra pairs. Props master Rose Leiker describes the glasses as “the property department’s daily heart attack”.
Larry David wasn’t above using the show as revenge
In 1998, Roger Ebert gave David’s movie Sour Grapes a thumbs down. And so, in season three, David wrote an episode about a restaurant critic with a passing resemblance to Ebert. David ended up breaking his thumbs.
The real Larry is softer than his screen counterpart
Producer Erin O’Malley recounts an episode where Larry takes two lesbians to task for adopting an African baby. “‘I’m gay,” O’Malley says. “Between takes, he came up to me behind the monitors and said ‘Hey, is this too offensive?’ He was asking me earnestly. He would be mortified that I’m telling you this right now.”
Bryan Cranston thinks Larry David hates him
During an appearance in season nine, David asked Cranston if he’d ever appeared on Broadway. Cranston replied positively, and soon David was starring in his own self-written Broadway show, A Fish in the Dark. “I went backstage after the play one night and I said ‘Larry, that was fantastic!’ Cranston recalls. “And he said ‘Oh my god, I’ll never listen to you again. I hate doing this!’”
