Blake J. Harris on People Loving to be Yelled at by Larry David
[0:00]Welcome to Totally Booked.
[0:02]I'm Zibi Owens.
[0:04]I've interviewed more than 2,000 authors on this show
[0:07]and learned endless amounts about storytelling,
[0:10]reinvention, and life itself.
[0:11]Because when you talk about books,
[0:13]you're really talking about life.
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[0:24]Enjoy.
[0:27]Okay, who here watches curb your enthusiasm?
[0:30]I am a huge curb fan.
[0:31]I've watched so many episodes.
[0:33]And I am excited to tell you
[0:36]that I got to interview Blake J. Harris,
[0:38]who wrote Emperor of Nothing,
[0:40]The Making of Larry David, which was eye-opening.
[0:43]Blake Harris is the best-selling author of console wars
[0:46]and the history of the future.
[0:48]He is also the writer and producer
[0:49]of several high-profile documentaries,
[0:51]including Serling, console wars, and GameStop
[0:55]Rise of the Players.
[0:56]He has written for ESPN, IGN, Fast Company,
[0:59]and the AV Club.
[1:00]He lives in Colorado with his wife and two cats.
[1:03]Welcome, Blake.
[1:04]Thank you so much for coming on Totally Book
[1:05]to talk about Emperor of Nothing,
[1:07]The Making of Larry David, Congrats.
[1:10]Thank you so much.
[1:11]I'm so great to be here.
[1:12]Uh-oh.
[1:13]It's so fun, because you start the book
[1:15]with how much Larry David did not even want this book to be.
[1:19]How did this book come to be?
[1:21]I think a more accurate description
[1:23]is that he hated the idea of this book.
[1:26]Perhaps the prologue was even toned down.
[1:28]But yeah, I know he really, as fans of Larry might suspect,
[1:32]he was not a big fan of this book happening.
[1:35]But it happened for a couple of reasons.
[1:37]First and foremost, I got to give credit to Jeff Shafer,
[1:40]whose Larry's longtime creative partner, Larry likes
[1:44]to work with people whose initials are JS,
[1:45]so he had Jerry Seinfeld, and then his protege
[1:49]at Seinfeld was Jeff Shafer,
[1:50]and they've been working together for the past 20 years.
[1:53]Jeff directs every episode of Curve of Life, Larry,
[1:55]and pursue the one happiness and all that.
[1:57]Anyway, I knew Jeff vaguely,
[2:00]because I wrote an oral history of his great TV show, The League.
[2:03]And so I reached out to Jeff in January of 2020 and said,
[2:06]Jeff, I know we haven't spoken for a bit,
[2:08]but I'd love to write my next book about Larry.
[2:10]What do you think?
[2:11]And he said, call me.
[2:12]And so I called him the next day,
[2:14]and he said, you know, it's gonna be really hard
[2:16]to get Larry on board, but I think he was a right guy
[2:17]for the job.
[2:18]And so we sort of started this long con on Larry.
[2:21]Jeff sort of started working at him at some point.
[2:23]He did tell Larry about this,
[2:25]and that's the opening of the book.
[2:27]But flashing forward a little bit,
[2:29]I had started doing interviews.
[2:30]I was interviewing Larry's good friend
[2:32]and a comedy legend in his own right,
[2:33]Alan's Y Bell.
[2:35]And he wrote for the first season of Sorry at Live.
[2:38]He also co-created its Gary Shambling show with Gary Shambling.
[2:41]And so I was talking to Alan.
[2:42]It was like my second or third interview,
[2:44]and he said, have you spoken to Larry?
[2:45]And I said, no, not yet.
[2:46]I'm sort of kind of putting it off,
[2:48]because if that goes badly,
[2:49]then I don't really know what this book is.
[2:51]And Alan said, no, no, I'm an introduce to Larry.
[2:54]And I realized, oh my God,
[2:55]this is like the moment of truth.
[2:57]I just has to go well.
[2:59]And so it was also,
[3:01]it turned out to be one of my proudest moments,
[3:02]I thought, okay, how can I really make a good impression
[3:05]on Larry?
[3:06]And well, there's only like two things in the world
[3:08]that I could talk about without doing any research
[3:10]for hours and hours and hours.
[3:11]One is sign, follow the sign, following curb.
[3:13]And the other is the New York Yankees.
[3:15]And I know Larry is the Yankee fan.
[3:16]So I said to Alan, Alan, how about this?
[3:19]I'd love it if you introduce me to Larry,
[3:20]but tell him that for this first conversation
[3:22]of what I hope will be many.
[3:24]I only wanna talk about the New York Yankees.
[3:25]No sign felt no curb, just the Yankees.
[3:29]And it was a successful gambit.
[3:31]Larry and I had a great first conversation
[3:32]and he reluctantly agreed to talk to me again.
[3:35]And then we just kept on talking, him reluctantly,
[3:37]but quite frequently.
[3:38]So I don't know how reluctant he really was.
[3:41]Wow, very strategic.
[3:43]I like that.
[3:44]So I went by in, you know.
[3:46]Yeah.
[3:47]Oh my gosh.
[3:49]Well, you paint an interesting picture.
[3:52]All these things I didn't know.
[3:54]All these events in his life.
[3:56]And how, even how his catchphrase came to be.
[3:59]And just like all the, all this,
[4:02]all the times that a character in fiction
[4:06]came from a piece of his life.
[4:08]And now we get to know the backstory of that.
[4:10]Right? Like the people who lived here.
[4:11]That's really what your quote is about on Zivey.
[4:14]No, like that's kind of what the book is.
[4:15]It's sort of like the behind the scenes telling
[4:17]of where his ideas came from.
[4:18]And in his case, so many of the ideas came from his real life.
[4:22]And just as an example,
[4:23]you mentioned his catchphrase,
[4:24]the pretty, pretty good that we all know
[4:26]from Kerber and Susie as it was from a bit that he did
[4:29]in the 1970s when he was a stand up comic.
[4:32]And it was the premise of the piece was that, you know,
[4:34]you can never really tell your parents
[4:35]how you're actually feeling.
[4:37]And how even if your life is going terribly
[4:39]and your mom is asking how's it going
[4:41]and you have your head in the oven,
[4:42]you would still say, oh, pretty good.
[4:44]Pretty, pretty, pretty good.
[4:46]And that was in his act in the 70s.
[4:48]Never crossed his mind for the next 25 years.
[4:51]And all of a sudden just popped out
[4:53]when they were doing an episode of Kerber.
[4:54]But a lot of what we love on Seinfeld and Kerber
[4:58]came about that way either as part of his act.
[5:00]It was something that happened or it was something that he deliberately tried to get into a show
[5:04]Even Kramer next door like came from his apartment complex and everything
[5:09]I mean all of these people came from
[5:12]You know the person you yell at through the back. I mean everybody had a an origin story
[5:17]It's amazing isn't it?
[5:18]Yeah, so when Larry lived in Manhattan Plaza which is his own little story because it was this collective of artists in the late 70s
[5:24]That could you know it actually had a nice housing for a good rent Larry's neighbor was Kenny Kramer
[5:29]It was the inspiration for Kramer and I'll just quickly mention that you know
[5:33]We all know that Michael Richards ended up playing the role and doing a great job
[5:36]And Larry would be the first to agree that he did a great job
[5:38]But Larry also was the one holdout who didn't want to hire Michael Richards
[5:41]And it was because he was not enough like Kenny Kramer the real life Kenny Kramer in particular
[5:46]He didn't think that Michael Richards could pull off a ponytail, which is what Kenny Kramer had so
[5:51]That's just a good example of you know these things being based on real life
[5:55]But also you know you do what's funny. You do. It's good. It's not like it's not a documentary
[6:00]It doesn't have to be exactly one to one with real life
[6:02]Right, right. So much of it really just came comes from his life and it was not an overnight success story
[6:08]This isn't like the smash hit. It's like well that didn't really work out. Okay, let me try something else
[6:13]That didn't work out. No, I'm gonna try again
[6:16]I'm gonna walk off Saturday night like like everything was just very
[6:20]Like not the best for a long time
[6:23]You're so right. I mean, I I mentioned
[6:26]Explicitly a couple times in the book other comics saying that Larry was the least likely comic to succeed and you know
[6:32]I feel like that's sort of a trope of like oh this you know Michael Jordan
[6:35]He didn't even make his freshman basketball team. He was so unlike that a succeed
[6:39]But Michael Jordan then showed Flash just by the time he was at North Carolina Larry showed no flashes until very late in life
[6:45]And to your point, you know even when he got seemingly great opportunities like the chance to be on Saturday live as a writer
[6:51]He found a lot of ways to squander it and now he would say that he did it because that of principle
[6:57]Like, you know pulling his sketches from the show because they weren't doing it the way he wanted
[7:01]But you know, he really was so on-paste and not be successful before a science out and even Seinfeld was like you know
[7:07]Not an overnight success itself
[7:09]That was also a surprise like I figured
[7:12]That Seinfeld took off immediately, but it took a little bit. Yeah, I mean the book spends hundreds of pages
[7:18]You know, I love Seinfeld so I'm happy to write the definitive history
[7:20]But just for you know your audience the quick version is they did a pilot and typically either your pilot gets picked up
[7:27]And you get you know a half season order or season order or it doesn't and Seinfeld didn't get picked up and that should have been the end of the show
[7:33]But then somehow it got picked up for four more episodes, which is unheard of and there's a whole backstory to why that happened
[7:38]It's still to not do very well
[7:40]So then it got picked up for 13 episodes and there was not really any point where it seemed like this would go into be successful
[7:45]And to the extent that every whenever you quote season or episode ended Larry and Jerry thought, okay
[7:51]I'll never really see you again
[7:53]But then here we are all these years later
[7:55]Well, it's funny because Larry David almost tries to I'm not sure he tried he doesn't try to make himself
[8:01]Unlikeable, but by having no filter and saying you know what he thinks time and again
[8:06]Including on the show like that's like the whole funny bit to it, right? It's it's saying things like wow
[8:13]You know, yeah, that's what's funny, but that doesn't always fly in real life
[8:19]Like there's a fine line between
[8:22]Between crafted
[8:23]You know it could easily miss right? It's just he now he has the comic timing and everything
[8:29]Why do you think it went from like this guy is offensive to like the funniest guy ever?
[8:35]That's a great point and
[8:37]It's almost like this is kind of a tangent and I'll get back to your question
[8:40]But Larry started doing these a conversation with Q&A visits in every city and I'm in Colorado
[8:47]So when he came to Denver he he I went to his show at the Paramount Theater and and I mentioned this because
[8:53]One of the first questions to Larry was how come you know when you were working the church store episode
[8:59]It's I felt and then Larry cut off the audience member to say actually I wasn't at sign felt at that point
[9:05]That was returned the two years that he had left and the audience member said yeah, excuse me
[9:09]Can I finish and I was like well, that's kind of dumb to continue ask the question
[9:13]But then I don't think it's because people like getting yelled at by Larry even though
[9:17]So getting back to your question of I don't know how to go from offensive to endearing
[9:22]I think that it didn't really happen until curb
[9:25]But I think that there was sort of a breath of fresh air aspect to Seinfeld and to the honesty that he brings
[9:31]I guess it's a thin line between honesty and being
[9:35]Offensive slash unlikable and Larry and I have had many conversations where we debate what that line is and
[9:41]He even to this even last week when he called me
[9:44]We were talking about something and I was saying how in real life
[9:47]He was nicer than the character on curb and I said something like
[9:51]You know, I mentioned an example where he considered my feelings and I and he said I think you've a fundamental misunderstanding of Larry on curb
[9:57]And I like well I feel
[10:00]But you tell me what you think and he said Larry on
[10:03]Curbs not mean.
[10:04]He just tells the truth.
[10:05]And I said, well, I didn't say he was mean, but he does
[10:07]not consider other people's feelings as much as you didn't
[10:09]real life.
[10:10]So there's a real blargoy on there.
[10:12]Interesting.
[10:13]I kind of assume it's like the same person, right?
[10:15]That there was no differentiation.
[10:17]Well, I don't think you're wrong.
[10:18]I mean, I don't really get into the end of the book because
[10:21]I want to leave it up to the readers.
[10:23]But you know, the first question I always get asked is
[10:25]how similar is Larry to the character on the show?
[10:27]And Larry's mind, they're not alike at all, which is crazy.
[10:32]In real life, I would say they're 95% of the same, but Larry
[10:35]is actually a little bit of a sweetheart.
[10:37]And don't take my word for it.
[10:38]I was talking to his wife like two months ago.
[10:40]And we were about this question.
[10:41]And she said, oh, it's so crazy.
[10:42]It doesn't see the similarity because they're exactly the same.
[10:45]So it's funny that he does not want to admit how similar they are.
[10:51]And no one's saying they're exactly 100% the same.
[10:54]But they're pretty similar.
[10:57]If you spent an hour with Larry, David, I don't feel like you'd come
[11:00]away thinking that's a very different person than the person I've been
[11:03]watching for years.
[11:04]Well, so was there anything after getting to know him in this
[11:07]very intimate way to write the whole book?
[11:09]Was there anything you took away aside from the difference between
[11:12]the character and the real Larry?
[11:14]Like that you were like, oh, I'm so glad I did this project because
[11:17]now I know.
[11:18]I mean, a million things.
[11:19]I don't even know.
[11:20]Do you have a particular genre I should happen to?
[11:22]I should start off by saying Larry isn't many ways my hero.
[11:27]And I think that he's a hero to a lot of us, writers and artists
[11:31]just because he sticks to his guns.
[11:33]And throughout a lot of his unsuccessful in the 70s and 80s, a lot
[11:37]of it is because he's unwilling to compromise.
[11:39]And there's a part of us creative folks that we're always battling
[11:42]with how much should we compromise, should we compromise?
[11:45]And to some degree, you always need to, to reach your audience
[11:49]to, you know, sell a project.
[11:52]But Larry was so unwilling to compromise.
[11:54]I think that the stuff it started live is a good example.
[11:57]There's the famous story of Larry quitting on a Saturday night
[12:01]and then talking to the real-life Kenny Kramer and saying,
[12:04]why don't he just go back into the office on Monday like nothing happened.
[12:07]Larry did that on a side felt.
[12:09]But there's also another story there that I think kind of illuminates
[12:12]what 80s era Larry was like and what's, you know,
[12:16]he came as an artist and that's that he came up with a sketch
[12:19]when he got back into the office.
[12:21]And it was about a family of trapeze artists sort of like the flying
[12:25]way to Linda is the people who do like the death flying stunts
[12:28]on the, you know, up in the air.
[12:30]And the premise of the sketch was that they're boss who sort of like a little
[12:34]mobster type guy named Mr. Drexler and he says to his, to the act,
[12:39]hey, you know, my sister has a son and he's looking for a job.
[12:42]Can you put him in the act?
[12:44]And they're like, would he, is he an acrobat and he's like,
[12:47]no, no, no, just put him up there.
[12:49]Up in the air and he'll be part of the, the flying omenas.
[12:52]And obviously that's nuts.
[12:54]But, and so, you know, this was the sketch that Larry had.
[12:57]And he, in his mind, and I would agree with the more out of shape and
[13:02]non acrobatic, the nephew was the more the funnier it would be.
[13:07]And so instead of asking a cast member, Larry asked Andy Breckman,
[13:11]who was a fellow writer at senate live, also went on to then create monk,
[13:14]who was bald and out of shape.
[13:17]And Larry had famously had a lot of sketches cut from senate live at the last
[13:22]moment.
[13:23]And this was one that then, you know, executive producer, Dick Iber,
[13:26]so all this was during the years that Lauren wasn't there,
[13:28]was actually going to put on the show, but he had one request.
[13:31]He wanted to replace Andy Breckman with one of the cast members who's actually
[13:34]a performer and Larry refused to let it be anyone besides Andy Breckman.
[13:40]And that's just an example of Larry.
[13:43]And as much as I think that, you know, there's so much,
[13:47]there's like, we romanticize and there's so much to like about that idealism
[13:51]that it has to be a certain way.
[13:53]I think that a little bit lost in the idealism of Larry David,
[13:57]is that he was just an angry young man to some extent.
[14:00]Because, you know, that's an example of him sticking to his guns and
[14:03]being willing to lose having a sketch on the senate live.
[14:06]Two years later, he put on an off-road-way show of his sketches that got cut
[14:10]from senate live called the Bostens' Mate and other sketches.
[14:14]And in that performance, the person that he cast as that Andy Breckman
[14:19]fact character was a normal, good-looking guy.
[14:21]And he had no problem there.
[14:22]So I think a lot of it was just him wanting to fight with people
[14:25]because life wasn't going so well.
[14:28]I think that it's aligning well with the zeitgeist,
[14:35]so many people are so angry right now about so many things.
[14:39]They feel out of control.
[14:40]They wish they could say what they mean and they can't.
[14:45]And here's Larry who just says it like it is.
[14:48]And I think in a way that becomes heroic in a very quiet,
[14:52]understated way he is the voice for many people who have to tone down how they feel.
[15:00]I think that's a great observation because, you know, when I was, you know, outlining the book,
[15:05]it did strike me that Larry, exactly the proof sign fell in the 90s, and then he started
[15:10]curb in 2000, and then the show went on hiatus in 2008, and the show didn't come back for
[15:15]seven years. And during that seven year period when you would sort of expect the world to
[15:20]forget a little bit about Larry, that's when he actually started to become a really famous,
[15:23]like that's when he went on a certain live, and I think that culturally and in the zeitgeist,
[15:28]there was just something about him that cut on beyond just his shows, and I think that that is
[15:34]really interesting and telling, and also just to answer your question, you know, from before
[15:38]there's a million things I was so happy to write about in Earth, but since we're talking about
[15:42]Larry as the angry young man, we should talk about him a little bit as the happy, or at least
[15:46]affectionate older man, particularly with his daughters, you know, he has two daughters, and because
[15:51]the Larry on the show and the Georgia stands the character is like an avatar for Larry,
[15:55]I think that we sort of forget or don't really know that Larry has two daughters, Cassie and
[15:59]Rome, and they mean the world to him, like he is, I don't want to disparage my own dad,
[16:05]but Larry is in the running for world's best dad, my own dad's pretty great too, but you know,
[16:09]like just listening to Cassie talk about how, you know, Larry would come to the first grade
[16:15]parent readings, like he did all the normal dad stuff, and like, you know, she talks about how he
[16:21]he would go on the teacup ride at Disneyland, and he'd ride over and over with her, and you
[16:25]would see that Larry David expression, I feel like, why I can't believe that my life has come to
[16:29]this, but he loves his girls more than anything. They're like, the key to his heart, and I just
[16:34]want to get that out there, something that we know that there's a soft side to Larry.
[16:37]Oh, and Cassie wrote a book recently too. She wrote a great book. Yeah, it's her second book, yeah.
[16:42]Amazing. Well, Blake, thank you for this behind the scenes of all the ins and outs of Larry
[16:49]David's life and how he, on the unlikely success story, essentially, so unlikely, but that's even
[16:57]better, right? We want to root for an underdog and Larry, you know, it was just inspirational,
[17:02]because I think that, sorry, cut you off, but always, we always feel like, you know,
[17:07]did we miss our window or it's, you know, he was a late bloomer, and I think that gives hope to
[17:11]all of us, no matter how successful you are, you always think maybe I could do better and Larry
[17:15]ended up just ascending and doing better. Thank you so much for having me on.
[17:19]You just never know. It's not over until it's over. Congratulations, Blake. Excellent.
[17:26]Thanks, Libby. Okay, thanks. Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi,
[17:32]formerly momstone have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review,
[17:38]follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.