“Curb Your Enthusiasm,” has aired for eight seasons on HBO and has received widespread acclaim, but it all started as an idea Jeff Garlin told Larry David about one day over lunch.
“I had been on the road with Denis Leary and Jon Stewart directing and developing their HBO specials,” says Garlin, in a recent interview. “I thought it would be really funny to show an HBO special that was a behind-the-scenes of the making of an HBO special.”
That idea served as the plot for the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” pilot, which aired in 1999. Garlin says he wanted to work with David on the project because “anybody in their right mind who’s involved with comedy would want to work with Larry David.
“I was in a suite of offices developing a different show for CBS and Larry was working in one those suites of offices and one day we went to lunch. We were talking about comedy and I brought up my idea. I was just going to direct it originally, but Larry decided that I should play his manager and that I should be the executive producer because that’s better on a TV show than being a director.”
As a result Garlin’s character on the show, Jeff Greene — an unscrupulous yet likable adulterer that is David’s manager and right hand man — was born. Audience members will have a chance to see Garlin in person when he performs his stand-up comedy act at the Fox Theater at Foxwoods Resort and Casino on Friday, Nov. 2, at 8 p.m.
Garlin says the vibe at his comedy show has little in common with “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and his other film and TV roles.
“I’ll look the same and I have the same voice that’s about what’s the same,” he says. “They can expect me to be funny. That’s about all they can expect.”
A Chicago native, Garlin has been performing comedy professionally since he was 20 years old.
“I was always the funniest kid in school and so for my 20th birthday my friends took me to a comedy club and it was decided that night that I would come back the next week and audition,” he recalls. “My first time went very well, I didn’t bomb for a while. It took me about a month before I bombed and then when I bombed, it was a complete and utter shock.”
Garlin soon joined Chicago’s famed comedy troupe, The Second City. Performing with the group helped launch his successful comedy career. Garlin is also the author of “My Footprint: Carrying the Weight of the World,” a memoir that chronicles his humorous efforts to lose weight while reducing his carbon footprint during the filming of the seventh season of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”
One of the most popular recurring gags on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” is the way Garlin’s character’s wife, who is played by Susie Essman, verbally abuses Garlin and David. Garlin explains her hysterical rants against them began in the first season.
“We were filming a scene where a fresh air fund kid was living with us and stole stuff and tore up our house. I remember Larry Charles, the director, and one of our producers, telling Susie that she can’t scream at me enough and it sort of grew from there.”
Because the show features David and other celebrities playing over-the-top fictionalized versions of themselves, Garlin says that people often don’t realize he and his co-stars are acting on the show and are not quite so ridiculous in real life.
“Shockingly, too many people confuse me with the character. Considering the show is completely fictionalized I would think more people would understand that I’m not the character,” he says. He adds that also happens to Essman.
“We’ll be walking down the street together and people will stop us and ask her to curse at them, which is crazy.”
Though David writes out the scenes and situations for “Curb Your Enthusiasm” the dialogue is almost always improvised.
“Larry David writes an outline and the outline is probably seven or eight pages as opposed to like a 35-page script on a regular television comedy half-hour,” Garlin says. “Then we improvise the scenes. We create our own dialogue and we sort of do the scenes and find our way that way. Also we don’t rehearse so by not rehearsing and doing it from an outline it gives the show a very spontaneous feel.”
JEFF GARLIN will perform Friday, Nov. 2, at 8 p.m. at the Fox Theater at Foxwoods at 39 Norwich Westerly Road, Ledyard. Tickets are $30 to $50.. Information: 800-200-2882 or www.foxwoods.com.
