Curb Your Enthusiasm
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Curb Your Enthusiasm is an American television sitcom starring Seinfeld writer & co-creator Larry David. Since its 2000 series debut, the HBO show has enjoyed wide critical acclaim and a steadily growing, dedicated audience that has helped it emerge from early cult status. Through 2004, it has been nominated for twenty Emmy Awards (winning one) and has won a Golden Globe for best television comedy (2003). The series was inspired by a 1999 one-hour mockumentary titled Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm, which David and HBO had envisioned as a one-time project.
Concept
Set in Los Angeles and loosely based on David's life as a semi-retired millionaire in the world after Seinfeld, the series is often described as a more subversive take on that hit program's "show about nothing" motif.The latitude afforded by cable television allows David to employ a darker comic palette while exploring many of his stock themes: the banal idiosyncrasies of daily life, the quirky entanglements of personal relations, and over-the-top social snafus. Curb Your Enthusiasm weaves ironic stories around the minutiae of David's sensitivities, his propensity for outrage, and misanthropic flouting of conventions — which turn out to reveal an unwitting knack for self-destructive behavior. This forms an interesting dichotomy with the fact that David often finds himself to be the victim of circumstance. These qualities are also shared by George from David's hit show "Seinfeld"
Shot on location with hand-held cameras, Curb Your Enthusiasm is produced unconventionally, eschewing traditional scripts in favor of detailed scene outlines from which actors improvise dialogue. Curb Your Enthusiasm develops ongoing story lines and in-jokes set around David's interaction with his patient but put-upon wife (played by Cheryl Hines). Larry's loyal manager Jeff Greene (played by Jeff Garlin) is always by his side through thick and thin. Jeff's outburst-prone wife Susie (played by Susie Essman) has a tendency to see right through Larry and Jeff's half-baked fiascoes.
The show is punctuated between scenes with music orchestrated by Wendall J. Yuponce (first season), and from a music library company called Killer Tracks (seasons two to five). The bouncy opening and closing theme song (not mentioned in the credits) is "Frolic" by Luciano Michelini.
Though many scenarios are drawn from his own experiences, the real-life David has downplayed the notion that he is like the character portrayed onscreen. However, in a Bob Costas interview, he did say the Larry David of the show was the one he can't be in real life due to his sensitivity to others and to social conventions. For example, he forbids characters in CYE to use insults that may personally offend the actors (for example calling Jeff Greene fat) unless the actor (in this case, Jeff Garlin) okays it.
Production on the show's fifth season began in January 2005, with the season premiering on September 25 of that year. According to HBO Chairman and CEO Chris Albrecht, David was asked to make the episodes run less than thirty minutes. Upon receiving the first two new shows, Albrecht discovered that David had turned in episodes clocking in at 29 minutes, 59 seconds with credits [link].
Characters
The show's natural, quasi-documentary style — together with the fact that David and many other characters play "themselves" — have contributed to the show's blurring of distinctions between fiction and reality, again echoing Seinfeld.
- Larry David (as himself) — The star of the show. The rich but inept David has terrible luck in social situations (with a few notable exceptions) and is often on the losing end of heated confrontations with "the help" — waiters, retail clerks, secretaries, etc. Politically liberal but socially obtuse, Larry is sensitive to offending others (such as the handicapped), but often does so inadvertently. He is a perpetual victim of not only his own petty neuroses and stubborn obstinacy, which render him incapable of admitting fault and accepting blame, but also of fate and circumstance (which seem to actively conspire against him) and, on occasion, the over-sensitivities and easily-offended natures (sometimes to a ridiculous degree) of those he happens to encounter.
- Cheryl David (played by Cheryl Hines) — David's wife. A foil for David, often exasperated by his eccentricities.
- Jeff Greene (played by Jeff Garlin) — David's manager. He doggedly sticks up for his client and friend. Among his character quirks is an obsession with sex, complete with hidden pornography collections and a string of infidelities.
- Susie Greene (played by Susie Essman) — Jeff's wife. Often reacts to Jeff and Larry's shenanigans with extensive profanity. Often shows more affection to her dog, Oscar, than her husband, whom she frequently refers to as a "Fat Fuck."
- Richard Lewis (as himself) - An ex-alcoholic and neurotic standup comedian. He is one of Larry's closest friends having also come to LA from New York and so perhaps relates to some of Larry's eccentricities. Like Susie Green, Richard Lewis does not appear in every episode but in many and perhaps most predominantly in Season 5, when Larry vows to donate Richard a kidney.
Plots
With the exception of Season 1 (2000), seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm are linked by a single overarching plot. Larry took a similar approach on Seinfeld during seasons four and seven.
- Season 2 (2001) — Larry David pursues a new television project, first with Jason Alexander, and then Julia Louis-Dreyfus. The premise: an actor who starred in a famous television show (Seinfeld being the obvious reference point) finds it difficult to secure work because of the public's strong association with their famous former character. David pitches the idea to initially receptive network executives who ultimately back away for a variety of reasons.
- Season 3 (2002) — David joins a restaurant venture with a group of investors that includes Ted Danson. The season ends with the restaurant's grand opening. Larry is cast in a Martin Scorsese movie.
- Season 4 (2004) — David works with Mel Brooks, Ben Stiller and David Schwimmer to star on Broadway in The Producers. He also struggles to fulfill his wife's tenth anniversary present to him — a one-time-only sexual encounter with someone else.
- Season 5 (2005) — Larry's friend, comedian Richard Lewis, is in dire need of a kidney; out of sheer feelings of paranoid guilt, Larry offers one of his own kidneys to Richard if he cannot find a suitable donor in time. Larry then makes many concerted, ridiculous efforts in finding Richard a kidney donor, including frequent visits to Richard's estranged, comatose cousin, in the hopes that he will pass away, resulting in a perfect kidney for Richard, and also befriending a heavily Orthodox Jew who happens to be the head of the kidney donation board. Larry also feels that he is adopted due to a misunderstood word his father said (and no longer remembers) while in the hospital; Larry hires a private investigator (ER
' s Mekhi Phifer) to look into it.
See Also: List of Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes.
Sixth season
Little is known about whether the show will return for a sixth season. There has been much confusion over the title of the fifth season's finale episode, "The End". No information has been disclosed from HBO or the show's production companies. If they officially announce an end to production, it will be recognized for going out in a rather discreet manner.In a January 2006 [interview with the New York Times and WCBS], David explained that he was still deciding on whether or not to begin a season six. He noted that the fans are hard to please, which according to his tone, was the reason that it could return. He explained that it will be hard to gather enough material to match what he had previously accomplished. He was, however, leaning towards a sixth season.
In April 2006 at the Tribeca Film Festival, Jeff Garlin confirmed that David is working on scripts, and it was "looking good" for another season [link].
In July 2006 Chris Albrecht, HBO chairman, said he was only "hopeful" that Larry David would be able to deliver a new season of "Curb" in 2007, and thought that that would probably be it for the series. "Larry was very unsure after last season...He needed to be inspired." [link]
Trivia
- The show's theme song was discovered by Larry David while watching a bank advertisement years before the show was created. The song is called "Frolic" and was written by Italian composer Luciano Michelini (see [Michelini's official site (in Italian)]).
- In 2003, Juan Catalan, a resident of Los Angeles, was cleared of premeditated murder charges against a material witness (a crime eligible for capital punishment) after cut-out footage shot for the "Carpool Lane" episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm showed him and his daughter attending the Dodgers vs. Atlanta Braves baseball event [some 20 miles from the scene.]
- The show is known for popularizing several terms, such as Stop and Chat and Trick or Treat Bang Bang, along with creating the popular "V" sign (using two hands) which alludes to women with unusually large vaginae.[[Citing sources citation needed]]
- In the 2005 movie The Upside of Anger, Kevin Costner and 2 girls are watching TV. The screen is never shown, and you can barely hear it, but closed captioning confirms the people are watching "Curb Your Enthusiasm". They are watching the episode where Larry is complaining about 2 girls defacing his house after he refuses to give them candy.
- In The Sopranos episode Where's Johnny?, Junior Soprano is seen watching the episode The Doll. Due to his increasing dementia, he mistakes Larry David for himself, and is confused as to why he is on television.
The Music
In May 2006, Mellowdrama Records released an official Curb Your Enthusiasm soundtrack, which contained much of the music used in the show.The Book
A Curb Your Enthusiasm book is due October 19, 2006 published by Gotham, though very little is known on what the book concerns. Early speculative belief is that it is either a behind-the-scenes look into the show, an adaptation, a collection of scripts, or something new and strange out of the mind of series creator Larry David (ISBN 1592402305).See also
- Larry David
- List of celebrities appearing on Curb Your Enthusiasm
- List of Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes
External links
- [HBO: Curb Your Enthusiasm]
- [Whyaduck Productions, Inc. — Curb Your Enthusiasm], executive producer/director Robert B. Weide's website
- [40-minute audio interview with Executive Producer Robert Weide] on The Sound of Young America
- [60 Minutes II interview with Larry David] hosted by Bob Simon which aired on August 11 2004 (there is also a link to a portion of the video from the interview)
- [Hour-long video interview with Larry David from January 2006]
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