S1: Hey , San Diego. I'm Andrew Bowen in for Jade Hindman. From Seinfeld to Curb Your Enthusiasm to Borat. Larry Charles has been making us laugh for decades. A new memoir reflects on 40 years in comedy. This is KPBS Midday Edition. Connecting our communities through conversation. Chances are you've laughed at the work of Larry Charles. Whether it was a joke from the groundbreaking 90s sitcom Seinfeld , a scene from HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm , or from directing films such as Borat and The Dictator. He has been an influential voice in American comedy for decades now. He's the author of a new memoir called Comedy Samurai 40 Years of Blood , Guts and Laughter. He'll also be a headliner at the inaugural KPBS San Diego Book Festival on Saturday , August 23rd. KPBS. Andrew Bracken spoke with Larry Charles last week about his book and career. Here's that conversation.
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S3: First of all , my dad had been a failed comedian. He came out of World War Two on the GI Bill , and instead of like , you know , buying a house , like a lot of people did and practical things , he went to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He did stand up. His stage name was psycho , the exotic neurotic. And so when I was a young kid , my father was like , on even though he was already at a show business , he was like on all the time. And he was always doing shtick and doing jokes and being funny , and he was hilarious. And so I was like his audience , you know ? and that got me. That was my first real kind of exposure to comedy , was just hanging out with him. And , um , and , you know , I gravitated to the usual comedy that was on TV at the time , The Three Stooges , Abbott and Costello , things like that. And I really felt a kind of kinship. And he had a friend who was a writer , uh , who wrote some material for him back in the late 40s , who went on to write for Get Smart and The Tonight Show. And I was fascinated by that. And I would look for his name in the credits. And I thought , well , I wonder how you do that. How do you get into that ? You know , and then he would take me. He had friends from drama drama school who weren't actors anymore , but they worked in show business as , for instance , he would take me to the Ed Sullivan rehearsals because his friend was the production manager , and I got to see how TV shows are put together when I was a real little kid , you know ? And it really all these things had an impact on me. And then later on in high school , I mean , I thought about comedy. I loved comedy , but I met a friend in high school who was a comedian. He was a comedian working professionally in high school , and he and I became very close , and he was kind of like my Fagin and kind of like led me into , um , a stand up comedy. And , uh , and we wound up being a team and we traveled the country and , um , so I got a taste of it that way. So it seemed almost like , you know , how like the sons of football coaches become football coaches. I was kind of like , bred to be in comedy , you know ? Yeah.
S2: So , I mean , you grew up in Brooklyn , you grew up in New York around that comedy that you mentioned there. But you pretty early on went out to Los Angeles , went , you know , did the Hollywood chase your Hollywood dream ? You write you sold your first joke to former Tonight Show host Jay Leno. Can you tell us that story ? Yeah.
S3: I didn't know how to break into show business. I really didn't , and , um , but I knew I had to come out to California. It seemed like that's where the action was. And , um , what I used to do , I didn't have a typewriter. I used to , uh , handwrite jokes on a legal pad. And I knew that Woody Allen. I had read that Woody Allen sold jokes to comedians , and I thought , oh , well , maybe I could do that. So I wrote jokes on a legal pad , and then I would go to the Comedy Store , and at that time at the Comedy Store was a very golden era. At the Comedy Store , you had , uh , um , you know , um , Robin Williams was doing stuff. Then , uh , Richard Pryor was doing stuff that and the two biggest comedians at the Comedy Store at that time were Jay Leno and David Letterman , ironically enough. And so I would go to the Comedy Store and I would literally stand in front of the Comedy Store , and when I would see a comedian that I recognized , I'd walk up to them and say , hey , you want to buy a joke ? And the comedians were very receptive. They always needed material. And Jay Leno looked at my material , looked at a joke like that joke. Said , I'll try it out on stage. It was he I he bought it on consignment. I'll try it out on stage. If it gets a laugh , I'll give you $10. And I got a laugh and I got $10.
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S3: There was a commercial at the time about Delta Airlines , the airline run by professionals. What did they have on the other airlines ? Amateurs. It was something along those lines , you know , it wasn't it wasn't the strongest joke , but it was very much in his wheelhouse. And , um , so I started writing jokes for comedians , um , and got kind of a reputation. And one of those comedians got cast on this TV show Fridays , and he recommended me to , uh , submit my material. Yeah.
S2: Yeah. And Fridays. That was a pretty influential show , I'd say. You know , um , I think it was something of a maybe you can break it down , but something of initially kind of like a competitor to Saturday Night Live in the late 70s. Right.
S3: And , um , but we the writers , um , especially we were kind of like radical young guys , and we really did not want the show to resemble Saturday Night Live in any way. We didn't want people to accuse us of being a rip off of Saturday Night Live. We wanted our own identity. So , you know , we immediately were like coming up with very extreme , radical ideas. And the producers said to us , why don't you guys come up with the name for the show , in fact. And we all went back and we wrote these really crazy names for the show , even , like , not even like words sometimes just symbols , like prints , you know. And , um , we came in the next day and they had there was the binders and the jackets and the stationery , and it also had Fridays on it already. And it was like , well , they made the decision without even consulting us. And now it's how you could ever escape the shadow of Saturday Night Live with that name. And so it kind of like , even emboldened us even more to try to find a radical separation from Sinai , live as much as possible. And for quite a while , while we were on , it was probably Saturday Night Live's , um , weaker seasons. And so we were able to really get an audience and we were doing things that they weren't doing. And and it was the Los Angeles vibe. And , um , we were able to kind of establish an identity for a while , but it didn't last too long.
S2: But , you know , part of your experience on Fridays is it introduced you to Larry David , who you later worked with on on Seinfeld , Curb Your Enthusiasm , you know , on those Seinfeld years , you know , of which I could probably recite most of the series at this point.
S3: So that's where I met him as well. Um , no , not at all. Not in the least. Uh , do we have any idea that you and I would be sitting here today still talking about the show ? Um , we were in a in a desperate , you know , kind of , uh , state of mind at all times. Larry used to beg. Beg the production company and the network to cancel the show in those first early seasons , because it was so much work , and coming up with stories was so hard. And there was no Seinfeld. We didn't know what a sign Feld was at that point. We were still figuring out what the what the formula was. We were trying to crack the code so we didn't know anything. About what ? What is this show ? What is it going to be ? You know , we just made a decision because we thought the show's going to get canceled. You know , and it's never going to survive. Let's just do what we think is funny. Let's just make the funniest show that we can. The show that we find funny. And inadvertently , by doing that , we made Seinfeld.
S2: One of the main takeaways from this book that I took from it is , you know , comedy is is not all about laughs here. You know , far from it. It comes across , even in the book's title comedy samurai 40 Years of Blood , Guts and Laughter. What is it about comedy that makes it so serious for you ? And you know , even that order of those like it starts with blood , guts.
S3: It's maybe a cliche , but comedy is a serious business. I mean , it's there's a lot of people are drawn to comedy because of dysfunction on some level. You know , um , they usually don't find that many happy people going into comedy. You find a lot of happy people who love comedy , but you don't find a lot of happy people who make comedy because it's a very desperate sort of job. There's a lot of anger amongst comedy people. There's a lot of fear year amongst comedy people , a lot of neurosis and anxiety amongst comedy people , and that's what fuels the comedy. Ironically enough. So there is a price that you pay for coming up with funny stuff because nobody really knows what's funny , and that's a very scary thing. Mel Brooks once said , you know , the scariest thing is looking at that blank page. And it is. And it never gets easier. You never think , oh , well , I figured it out. I know how to be funny now. No , every day is a challenge and you don't know what's going to be funny. You don't know why something is even funny. You have to trust your instincts. And your instincts could be wrong. It's a very , very , um. It's a battle. It's a battle within you to figure out what's funny and how to then execute it in a way that other people might find funny. So there is no real formula. People are constantly trying to quantify , you know , comedy. Well , if you do this , it'll be funny. If you do that , it'll be funny. But there are no guarantees. And the greatest comedy is the comedy that surprises , that doesn't deliver what you expect , but what you need. A movie like Borat or a show like Seinfeld. People didn't realize they wanted that until they had it , and then they went , wow , where has this been all my life ? You know ? Yeah.
S2: You mentioned Borat there. I mean , you know , that's an example of a few of your films that you've done with Sacha Baron Cohen , specifically where they're fictional stories , but they take place in the real world. Everyday people are in them. And I imagine , you know , it gets pretty risky mixing that fiction with reality.
S3: And Sasha was so amazing. I mean , he would get up in the morning , and when he came out of his hotel room , he was Borat. And that was it for the whole day. And we would shoot It's quite often 16 hour days. And he had to be Borat all the time. He couldn't break character. It's not like regular acting. This is why I thought he deserved an Oscar , because it's not like regular acting. When you're acting with other actors and you have takes. If things don't go well and there's a crew around. We were very surreptitious , you know , we had to be and we had to create this alternate reality. So everybody played a role. I played a role in the movie. Even though I wasn't on camera. I had to talk to the people that he was about to talk to and sort of get them in the state of mind of accepting that this person from Kazakhstan was going to come in and talk to them , and it was real. And you wove this sort of , um , you know , this kind of alternate reality. It was almost like a trance that you put people into so that they would believe that what was happening around them was real , and that was the key. And they wouldn't realize that it wasn't real until we were gone , and then maybe they would snap out of it at that point. And sometimes they didn't find out until , like , their kids saw the movie like six months later and said , hey , dad , you're in this movie , you know ? So , um , that was kind of that was the key , I think , to the success of Borat was creating this trance state so that people would not realize that they were , you know , they were in the middle of a comedy movie.
S2: One thing you do in this book , you know , is you kind of pull back the curtain a little bit on this comedy world , warts and all. Um , and it's really , you know , a lot about the relationships between those who create it.
S3: Um , this was a this is a journey. You know , there was a lot of emotion , uh , involved in it. There was a lot of conflict involved with it , and it kind of transcended comedy itself and became about life , my life specifically. But but life in a way that I think other people can connect , whether they're doing comedy or not. You know , the interaction between people , the personalities , the conflicts that sometimes get resolved and sometimes don't. All those things I thought , that's real. And that's really the resonance of the book , is that it's about life more than it's even about comedy. And that's , you know , that's the blood and guts part , you know ? Yeah.
S2: And on that , I mean , you do document a lot of painful moments in your journey , you know , including you're falling out with longtime collaborators like Larry David , like Sacha Baron Cohen.
S3: I mean , it would have been easier for me to just write a book of anecdotes. Uh , but I thought , that's kind of like a very superficial book. It's not. Again , like with Seinfeld , we wanted to make a show that we would watch. And I , in the same way , I wanted to write a book that I would read. And for me , it needed more substance. It needed truth , even harsh , unvarnished truth. And I thought , I can't I can't sanitize these stories. I have to tell the truth to make the book worthwhile for me and then hopefully for an audience as well. And so facing those things and writing about them and writing about them in a way that that wasn't like pointing a finger , but taking some of the responsibility myself , that was that was the most challenging part of the writing of the book.
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S3: Most people that I have talked to , or I have bumped into or that have been exposed have loved the book for one reason or another. A lot of people just love , you know , the showbiz anecdotes. But more people , I would say , really connected to the philosophy that I talk about and the ethics that I talk about and the life experiences that I talk about , the emotional part of the journey. And like I said , that really transcends the comedy and transcends the show business. So I have been very gratified by people picking up on that part of the book , that aspect of the book which is woven in with everything. So it's all part of , you know , it's part of the whole. It's not a separate thing. I can't tell the story of Borat or Curb or Seinfeld without without interweaving the the emotional journey that I was going through at the time. So I have found it very gratifying that people really picked up on that and have found that satisfying and fulfilling on on a much higher level , I think , than just a book about show business.
S2: You know , the comedy world you write about in your book doesn't seem to be an easy one to survive. To me.
S3: I mean , I don't really have a definitive answer. I know that I was resilient at times when others fell by the wayside. I knew that I could. Here it is. I learned how to fail. You know , I had grown up with a lot of failure , and I wasn't afraid of failure. And I realized early on that comedy was there was a lot of failure. Failure was part of the equation of success. You couldn't have success without failure. And you better learn how to deal with failure. If you wanted to succeed. And so when I failed , which was often and many of my role models in life , from Larry David to Bob Dylan , have failed publicly many , many times. But when I failed , I didn't quit. I kept going. I had a certain resilience. I was able to bounce back. It made me. It made me even double my efforts. Sometimes when I fail to make sure that it was , my success would be indisputable the next time. So , um , I think , you know , that's the kind of , you know , um , energy you have to put into this to succeed at it.
S2: You know , much of your work is is pretty , pretty ubiquitous. I'm sure sometimes you might , you know , turn on a TV and see an episode of Seinfeld playing or , you know , Borat being on there somewhere.
S3: And I have kind of lived that philosophy myself. I never watch my stuff after I'm done with it. And , um , but yes , I have stumbled here and they're switching the channel and there's Borat or Bruno , or there's a episode of Seinfeld that I wrote or , um , an episode of curb that I directed. And I might stop for a moment and laugh because I think it's still pretty funny and have , you know , in my memories will come flooding in of that experience. And , um , but that's the extent of it. I try not to be too tied up with the past , and that's what. So what was so cathartic about writing the book was I got all those memories out. I , you know , I really am somebody that's focused on the future to a large degree and the present. And so I don't really dwell on the past , but I have a good memory. And that was sort of the the impetus of the book as well. You know , I don't I don't dwell too much. I know it's funny. I know people love it. People tell me all the time how much they love it. And I'm really , really happy when people tell me that it makes me feel really great. But for myself , I don't give myself. And it sounds weird , almost perverse. I don't give myself the pleasure of watching my own , my own stuff.
S2: Larry Charles's book is called Comedy Samurai 40 Years of Blood , Guts and Laughter. He'll be a headliner at the inaugural KPBS San Diego Book Festival on Saturday , August 23rd. Larry Charles , thanks so much for being here.
S3: Oh , thank you for having me , Andrew. It's great to meet you. Thanks.
S1: And that's our show for today. I'm your host , Andrew Bowen in for Jade Hindman. Thanks for listening to Midday Edition. Have a great day.
