Cringey Larry David Stories That Somehow Never Made It on to ‘Curb’
Going all the way back to his days on Seinfeld, Larry David’s creative process mainly involved repurposing real-life experiences for TV storylines — like the time he participated in a masturbation contest, or when he quit Saturday Night Live then returned the next week as if nothing happened, or the fateful evening when David and Jerry Seinfeld waited 22 minutes for a table at a Chinese restaurant.
Curb Your Enthusiasm made this arrangement even more explicit, with Larry playing a fictional version of himself. But as Curb comes to a close this year, we’ve noticed a handful of actual, appropriately cringey Larry David anecdotes that didn’t make it to the air, such as…
As David recounted to Conan O’Brien, a friend once showed him a picture of a new dog, asking “Isn’t he cute?” To which David replied, “Eh, he’s alright… he looks like a dog.” David later regretted hurting his friend’s feelings, believing that he’d been “influenced” by his fictional alter ego. Unlike “the TV guy” the real David actually apologized.
He Obsessed Over One Heckler at a Yankee Game
When David attended a Yankees game with Curb Your Enthusiasm collaborators Alec Berg and David Mandel, they put his face up on the jumbotron and played the Curb theme music. The whole stadium “stood and cheered” for David. But when they were leaving the game, a guy drove by and yelled, “Larry, you suck!” He spent the whole ride home obsessing over that one guy, asking “Who would do that? Why would you say something like that?” completely forgetting about the applause from 50,000 fans.
He Scrapped a Documentary About Himself at the Last Minute
The two-part documentary The Larry David Story was finished and ready to go, that is until David had it pulled the night before it was scheduled to air on HBO. The baffling move reportedly “strained” his relationship with director Larry Charles, and, come to think of it, parallels the events of the special that first led to Curb Your Enthusiasm, in which David bails on his own HBO show at the last minute.
He Made an Ad for Crypto, and Got Paid in Crypto
David raised a whole lot of eyebrows by appearing in a Super Bowl ad for the cryptocurrency exchange FTX. No word on whether or not he took the job as some kind of elaborate spite scheme.
In true Curb fashion, things didn’t go well. He ended up being named in a proposed class action lawsuit when FTX collapsed, and recently claimed in an interview that he “lost a lot of money” because part of his salary was paid in crypto.
He Assaulted a Muppet on Live Television
I mean, they could have built a whole season around this.
You (yes, you) should follow JM on Twitter (if it still exists by the time you’re reading this).
