Curb Your Enthusiasm: 8 things about Larry David's hilarious series

By Jennifer Van Evra

Imagine you create and write the most popular TV comedy series of all time. Then what do you do?

That was the question comedian, writer, actor, playwright, and TV producer Larry David, who co-created and wrote Seinfeld, asked himself after the legendary show's lengthy run.

The answer began with a return to standup comedy, then a documentary about that return, then a documentary-style show, which became Curb Your Enthusiasm.

The bitingly funny show features David playing himself as he navigates his post-Seinfeld world, including friendships, family life and professional ups and downs.

It ran from 2000 until 2011, and now, after six years of being asked if and when it was coming back, David finally gave fans what they wanted.

The new season kicks off Sunday night (Oct. 1) on HBO — so to get you ready, here are eight things you need to know about the series.

1. It's Larry David playing Larry David — as he wishes he could be

The central character of Curb Your Enthusiasm is Larry David, and it's played by Larry David. But not everything in the show is accurate: the real David plays the curmudgeon he wishes he could be — or as he calls it, "my version of Superman."

"The character really is me, but I just couldn't possibly behave like that," said David, who often does inexcusably bad things on the show, like pushing over a perfume salesperson in a department store or eating a Jesus Christmas cookie in a nativity display. "If I had my druthers, that would be me all the time, but you can't do that.

"We're always doing things we don't want to do, we never say what we really feel, and so this is an idealized version of how I want to be. As crazy as this person is, I could step into those shoes right now, but I would be arrested or I'd be hit or whatever."

2. Curb Your Enthusiasm came back because David learned never to end a show

People reacted so strongly — many negatively — to the finale of Seinfeld, which David co-wrote, that he decided to never again officially lay a show to rest.

"I got so much grief from the Seinfeld finale, which a lot of people intensely disliked, that I no longer feel a need to wrap things up," said David, who also recently gained fame for his Bernie Sanders impressions on SNL. "I wouldn't say I'm mad about it, but it taught me a lesson: that if I ever did another show, I wasn't gonna wrap it up."

So when he decided to do another season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, it was partly because the show had never really ended — and partly because he got sick of being asked when it was coming back.

"I'm not a misser. I don't really miss things, people that much, but I was missing it and I was missing these idiots so I thought, 'Yeah, what the hell?'" he said. "And I got tired of people asking, 'Is the show coming back?' I couldn't get asked that question anymore and I wasn't ready to say, 'No, never.'"

3. The show has always been unscripted

Curb Your Enthusiasm began as a documentary about David's return to stand-up comedy, a one-off special that would feature his standup routine with a small amount of backstage footage. From the start, there was going to be an element of fabrication, with actors playing David's manager and his wife, but most of it would be real.

Eventually the concept morphed into a mockumentary, where almost all of the footage would be backstage with small smatterings of standup sequences — and, as with a documentary, it would be entirely unscripted.

That has held true ever since: actors have a rough sense of what the scene will be about, and the rest is improvised.

"The idea was to do this unscripted so that actors could improvise dialogue and it would feel more genuine," said Robert Weide, the documentary filmmaker who directed most of the episodes. "And we'd also leave room for things that might spontaneously happen on camera, and weave that into our storyline.

"Larry wanted me to do it because of my documentary background, figuring I'd know how to apply the rules of documentary filmmaking to this odd hybrid. I was very excited by the idea of purposely blurring the line between the real and the fabricated, so that viewers would actually be trying to figure out what was real and what wasn't."

4. People assumed it was real

Because it's shot in a handheld documentary style, features David playing a version of himself, and top actors playing versions of themselves, many viewers have mistakenly assumed it's real.

"Although it wasn't purposely our intention to fool people, I figured if it happened, fine," said Weibe. "My attitude was that unless you personally knew enough about Larry to say, ''Wait a minute, that's not Larry's real manager,' or 'That's not his wife Laurie,' there should be no reason not to assume it's real."

That confusion, it seems, has even caused rifts with friends of the cast members.

"The highest compliment was relayed to me by Cheryl Hines, the actress who plays Larry's wife, who was also called Cheryl in the special. She had friends in Florida who saw the show and were upset to find out that Cheryl had married a big TV producer and they were never invited to the wedding."

5. It once helped a man accused of murder prove his innocence

In 2003, a 24-year-old father named Juan Catalan was charged with murdering a 16-year-old girl in Sun Valley, Calif., in a drive-by shooting.

But Catalan insisted that, at the time of the murder, he was at a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball game, and he had the ticket stubs to prove it — but that evidence wasn't enough. He offered to take a lie detector test, but was refused, and he was sent to jail to await trial.

Then Catalan remembered that a TV show was being filmed at the game, and that Super Dave Osborne was one of the actors. Defense attorney Todd Melnick then contacted the Dodgers, who sent them to the HBO team behind Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Melnick convinced the producers to allow him to watch the episode and the outtakes — but at first he didn't see Catalan. Then, in several shots, he saw him in the stands with his six-year-old daughter.

Catalan was released and later received an undisclosed settlement for the five months he spent in jail, and the personal damage he suffered as a result.

In a later TV interview, Catalan reflected on his good fortune. "One of the crew members, he let me go in front of the camera," Catalan said. "I mean, if that's not a miracle, I don't know what is."

6. Cheryl David is not based on Laurie David

David's on-screen ex-wife is not at all based on his real-life ex-wife. In fact Cheryl Hines, who plays Cheryl David, never even met Laurie David until after the show began production.

"It was confusing to people because people would ask me what kind of research I did on Laurie before I started playing her. And I had to say I wasn't playing her," Hines said.

"I always looked to Larry because I figured he knows what's best because it's his show and his world that he's creating. So I just looked to him, and I would ask him from time to time, 'Should I be talking to Laurie or spending time with her?' and he said, 'No.' [Laughs.] So, that was that."

7. It's packed with guest stars

From the start, Curb Your Enthusiasm featured a stream of celebrity appearances, some of them recurring.

Among the stars set to appear this season are Carrie Brownstein, Richard Lewis, Susie Essman, Bryan Cranston, Andrea Savage, Jimmy Kimmel, Elizabeth Banks, Nick Offerman, Nasim Pedrad, Lauren Graham and Elizabeth Perkins.

Some have a background in improv, while others have never worked without a script, so it's sink or swim.

"We've also had great success with standup comedians who tend to be good at thinking on their feet. Richard Lewis is a semi-regular, playing himself—a longtime friend of Larry's, which he is. Watching them together is really a treat because they are drawing from a personal dynamic that goes back 40 years. We've also gotten wonderful performances out of actors who've never improvised professionally," said Weide. 

Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen also guest starred as themselves, and are returning this season. "They both admitted to being a little nervous performing without a script. But they had such a good time and found it so liberating that by the end of the shoot they were joking that they never wanted to work with a script again."

8. The show's title is partly a directive

David named the show Curb Your Enthusiasm for two reasons.

One was to say, "Don't expect another Seinfeld." The other was to tell people to keep their day-to-day enthusiasm in check, as his curmudgeonly character most certainly does.

"People should keep enthusiasm curbed in their lives," David said in an interview. "Always keep it. To not is unattractive. It's unseemly."