- 7/2/2025
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00:00How are you, Jim? Nice to see you.
00:02Comedy Samurai is such a cool book,
00:03but I have to start with something
00:04that I don't think most people are going to touch on.
00:06I cannot believe you are a writer for Mad About You
00:09that so doesn't fit.
00:11Yeah, I worked, I was a showrunner, actually,
00:13on Mad About You,
00:14so I kind of was in charge of the entire show.
00:17That came off of Seinfeld.
00:19I had done Seinfeld for a few years.
00:21I had kind of hit the wall creatively.
00:23I could have stayed there forever,
00:25but I'm a gambler, and I wanted to roll the dice
00:27and do a new challenge,
00:30and I was in the middle of kind of a difficult marriage,
00:33quite honestly,
00:34and here was a show about a marriage
00:36that was kind of ideal that I just didn't buy.
00:40Like, whose marriage is like that?
00:43No one's.
00:44It was like a fantasy,
00:45and I thought, what if I could do
00:47like a kind of a scenes from a marriage,
00:49like a sitcom that isn't necessarily as funny as Seinfeld,
00:52but gets into the reality and the truth
00:55of what being married is about,
00:57and the two actors, Paul and Helen,
01:00were great, and they were totally into it,
01:03and that's what we did for the couple of years
01:04that I was there.
01:05I love it.
01:06I love it.
01:06This book is so cool.
01:07I have so many questions,
01:08but there's a theme through here I wanted to touch on.
01:10I was thinking about,
01:12you talk about counterculture comedians
01:14when they're at their best.
01:14You kind of push the envelope.
01:16Like, you know, growing up for me,
01:17it was Richard Pryor,
01:19and my dad used to listen to Red Fox in the car,
01:22and I don't think people understood.
01:24His stand-up was, wow.
01:26Yeah.
01:26He really pushed it,
01:28and, you know, you go back to Carlin.
01:30When I watched Shane Gillis go on SNL,
01:32and half the room is like,
01:35he made him so uncomfortable during that.
01:37Do you, as a writer and as a comedian,
01:40do you appreciate what he did?
01:41I'm not, you know,
01:44I'm not afraid of people crossing the line,
01:47of people offending people.
01:48I remember, and I'm sure you do too,
01:50when Andrew Dice Clay was on Saturday Night Live,
01:52and Nora Dunn walked off the show.
01:56That's kind of what's supposed to happen in comedy,
01:59in my opinion.
02:00You know, you're supposed to risk offending people
02:03because your ideas are so radical
02:05that some people are going to be uncomfortable with it,
02:08and right or wrong,
02:09I think that is the role of comedy,
02:11is to push that barrier.
02:13And so you talk about Richard Pryor and George Carlin,
02:15but there's a lot of comedians,
02:17Sam Kennison, Clay, you know,
02:20maybe Shane Gillis is an example of that today,
02:23who are pushing those boundaries in one way or another,
02:27and you're not going to get universal acclaim.
02:30That's not a bad thing.
02:31Think about Andy Kaufman, you know?
02:33The great comedians risk that alienation with the audience.
02:38I think it's necessary to find the new language of comedy.
02:42I thought Mulaney,
02:43when he talked about his rehab and his issues,
02:46for a guy who was really, I wouldn't say milquetoast,
02:49but a very safe, kind of fun comedian,
02:51for him to go where he went,
02:52that took a lot of courage,
02:54because he could have just grenaded his whole career
02:55by doing that.
02:56Well, it's very analogous, don't you think,
02:58to George Carlin,
02:59when George Carlin was doing that straight stuff
03:01on Ed Sullivan, the hippy-dippy weatherman,
03:04and then suddenly he was doing
03:05the seven words you can't say on TV.
03:07So comedians, like musicians, like artists,
03:10evolved, some of them do,
03:12and those are the ones that we usually
03:15have the most kind of personal connection to.
03:18Were you guys aware,
03:19when you were working on Seinfeld,
03:20that I wouldn't say you aspired to stir things up,
03:24but it always, there was an undercurrent
03:26to watching Seinfeld going,
03:28there's an edge to this show,
03:30and the men and women who are writing this
03:32know exactly what the hell they were doing.
03:34Well, I will tell you that at the beginning
03:37of the show, you know, Larry David said to me,
03:40you know, we'll do 13 episodes,
03:41we'll make a little money,
03:43it'll get canceled,
03:44then we'll move on with our lives, you know?
03:46And throughout the entire show,
03:47while I was there,
03:48Larry wanted the show to get canceled,
03:50he couldn't take it anymore.
03:52So, you know,
03:54we didn't worry about what the impact was,
03:56we were just worrying week to week
03:58of what we were going to write,
03:59what the story was going to be,
04:01but we were attracted
04:02because we didn't have any sense of it succeeding,
04:05we were attracted to the things that made us laugh,
04:08and as it turned out,
04:09the things that made us laugh
04:11made the world laugh too,
04:12and it worked out.
04:14Yeah, what's the old thing as a parent,
04:16is sometimes it's easier to ask for forgiveness
04:17than permission?
04:18Was that kind of the mindset
04:20when you were writing that stuff?
04:21Well, our motto was,
04:24no hugging, no learning.
04:25So that was kind of,
04:27we were free in a way
04:29to write what we thought was funny,
04:31and because the show wasn't doing well,
04:33it was losing in the ratings to Jake and the Fat Man,
04:36which you remember also,
04:38we felt like, you know,
04:39we're just going to do what we think is funny
04:41and try to do the funniest show we can
04:43and not worry about the consequences.
04:45And then only in retrospect did we realize,
04:47oh, wow, this became Seinfeld, you know?
04:50This show became Seinfeld.
04:52Seinfeld did everybody,
04:53the institution of Seinfeld.
04:55So, Larry, in the book,
04:56you talk about Borat, obviously.
04:57I mean, that's one of those movies,
04:5850 years from now,
04:59we'll be watching and laughing our ass off.
05:01And I was thinking about
05:02the anniversary of Spinal Tap.
05:04Now, Spinal Tap, a mockumentary,
05:06they knew what they were doing.
05:07Everything were set scenes.
05:09Everyone was in on it.
05:10You're going around the country.
05:12How do you direct that?
05:14How do you, I mean,
05:15you have to pretend you're really filming a documentary.
05:18That had to be challenging and scary at the same time.
05:23Yeah, I mean, Spinal Tap,
05:24I love Spinal Tap,
05:25but everybody in Spinal Tap was an actor.
05:27Right.
05:28There was no risk of violence or police action.
05:31When we did Borat,
05:33there was only one person,
05:35Sasha,
05:35who actually was somewhat scripted
05:38and only somewhat scripted.
05:40We didn't know what these other people
05:41were going to say.
05:42We didn't know how they were going to react.
05:43And that unpredictability,
05:45that volatility comes off the screen.
05:49And I think that's one of the reasons
05:50the audience related to it so much.
05:52It's like, this is more than a movie.
05:54This kind of spills out
05:55outside the screen itself.
05:57And I think the audience really appreciated
05:59a humor, a comedy,
06:02a new sort of voice of comedy,
06:04a new language of comedy,
06:06which is what that was.
06:08Your book to me is,
06:09I call them coffee books.
06:10Sometimes I get a good book
06:11that I want to sit down and read,
06:13get a nice cup of coffee,
06:15turn my phone off,
06:16and just disappear.
06:17And I'm not going to kindle this.
06:18I need the book itself, Larry.
06:20I want to read this.
06:20Comedy Samurai,
06:22The Mostly Epic Quest
06:23of a Mostly On-Time Jewish Comedian.
06:25That's a great title.
06:26That's a great title, man.
06:28There's so much in this book to think about.
06:30And you got me thinking about comedians
06:32more and more as well.
06:33Do you like the direction we're going
06:36with comedy, with podcasting?
06:38Are we getting back to maybe people
06:39being a little more aggressive,
06:41for lack of a better word?
06:42Or are we still in a cancel culture?
06:44Well, you know,
06:45the way I look at it,
06:46I see very little true,
06:49funny comedy in TV and movies.
06:54I think because they have to be filtered
06:56through this kind of corporate culture now
06:58with a lot of people,
07:00you know, a lot of cooks,
07:02as they say.
07:03It gets sanitized,
07:05and it gets flattened out,
07:06and it gets very derivative.
07:08And so the only place that I actually see
07:10comedy with integrity,
07:12people trying to push those boundaries,
07:14is in stand-up.
07:15I think stand-up is flourishing right now
07:18because it is free.
07:20It's much a freer medium
07:22than TV or movie comedies are right now.
07:26My son is 21.
07:27He is a big film, movie, music guy.
07:30We talk, I always,
07:31he always asks me,
07:32he goes, give me a movie.
07:33And he's a college student,
07:34and I'll send him stuff.
07:35I had him watch the movie MASH,
07:38and he texted me back and went,
07:40this is nothing like the TV show.
07:42I'm like, yeah.
07:44Yeah, you, it's totally different,
07:45but that's to your point, Larry.
07:47I mean, you can't do that movie now.
07:49You can't even touch that movie now.
07:51Right, but you can get on stage
07:53and talk about anything.
07:54Exactly, yeah.
07:55That's the difference now, I think.
07:58You know, and the live audience,
07:59once again, as I've been saying,
08:00the live audience really appreciates
08:02the liberation of hearing somebody
08:05talk the truth in some kind of venue,
08:08and stand-up is where you hear that.
08:10Seinfeld was a place where that happened.
08:12Borat was a place that that happened.
08:14Curb was a place that that happened.
08:16But it's very rare today to see it
08:18on a TV screen or a movie screen.
08:20But if you go to see stand-up,
08:22you will see some very liberating comedy.
08:25When someone says,
08:26thank you for your service,
08:27I'm a veteran.
08:28When they say it, I say thank you.
08:29But at the same time,
08:30in the back of my head,
08:31I laugh my ass off
08:32because of the Curb moment.
08:33That's one of the funniest things.
08:35To your point,
08:36you got to know where you're going with that,
08:38or you're going to really
08:38piss off a lot of people.
08:40Yeah, no, that became,
08:41and that's Larry.
08:42You know, Larry is somebody who,
08:44you know, I think that's an important point.
08:45With Seinfeld,
08:47with Curb,
08:47with Borat,
08:48with things like that,
08:49questioning the common wisdom.
08:52You know,
08:52like, thank you for your services.
08:53It had a lot of meaning at one time,
08:56and now it's kind of lost its meaning.
08:58It's almost become a cliche.
08:59It's a crutch.
09:01And so that's why Larry in that episode
09:03was, you know,
09:03didn't bother saying it.
09:04He just said hello.
09:05And he was more sincere
09:07than all the people that said,
09:08thank you for your service.
09:10But it had consequences.
09:12You're awesome.
09:13Larry, I really do appreciate the time.
09:15You get me thinking about stuff.
09:16I like books that make me step back
09:17and digest it
09:18and what you're doing
09:19with Comedy Samurai.
09:20You're always welcome here
09:21in the Motor City.
09:22You know that.
09:23And I'd love to talk more, man.
09:25I know our time is short,
09:26but yeah, this is a great read.
09:27Congratulations on the book.
09:29Thank you so much, Jim.
09:30And I can't wait to come out to Detroit
09:31and see you in person.
09:33Come on.
09:33Come on to Ridley's.
09:34We'll set it up.
09:35Talk to you soon.
09:35That's good.
09:36Thanks.
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