Larry Charles: Jake and the Fatman

0:00I've been doing this show a long time, my podcast podcast. That might be one of the great show business stories.

0:17Hey, everybody. Welcome to literally one of the man responsible for one of my favorite moments ever, ever in a movie theater is with us. responsible for, among some others, for some of my favorite moments watching TV. Larry Charles, who directed Borat, who is one of the producers on Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Seinfeld works with Larry David for years and years and years. Just one of the funniest visionaries ever on the show. And really excited to have him.

1:05welcome welcome to the pod how are you oh it's a pleasure to meet you man i'm a big fan and uh deepest respect and admiration for your career so it's great to meet you thank you for having me i feel the same um i uh i i have to say that my greatest moment i really do believe my greatest comedy moment other than being probably an eight-year-old kid and seeing Blazing Saddles was seeing Borat. Thank you. Thank you. It is. Blazing Saddles was also a big movie for me as well, by the way. That was a seminal movie to experience. Very groundbreaking. Well, that's the thing. It's just that notion of being in a theater and feeling, I can't believe what I'm seeing is so impossible to capture.

2:00I mean, it's so rare. And it's also, it's getting more rare. I mean, the idea of going into a movie theater and having a large mass of people all collectively responding to something without people getting offended, without things breaking down, just getting movies into movie theaters has become a much more rare experience, unfortunately. How much of Borat was, I know you get asked this all the time, and I think I know the answer, but how much of it was scripted? Was it, we're going to go into this place, and we're going to do this, and we're going to do that? But you don't know what's happening until Sasha's interacting with the people in the rodeo or wherever it is.

2:43Sasha had questions. I mean, there was a script of sorts. You know, it wasn't a traditional script and it was pretty thick actually, because it was filled with the questions that he would want to be asking of these various targets. And then of course you couldn't script what that person was going to respond. And then things would start to unravel and you couldn't script that. so there's like a third of a third of it would be script and the rest of it would be sasha having to improvise based on what the target was saying and yet we knew we wanted to go because it was also amazingly enough a story about him wanting to find pam anderson in california so we had he had to be able to manipulate the conversation to get somebody to help him with a clue to get to the next point in the story also.

3:36And if that didn't work, we had to do that scene all over again with a new group of people, sometimes in a different state, depending on how it ended, you know? So it was, it was a very complicated process. And, and the releases, how, how did you handle getting the releases of the people on the regular people on camera who didn't come off so great, potentially has America laughing at them and they still signed the release? Well, it was It was always done, or as often as possible, it was done prior to the scene under a kind of a ruse, honestly. They didn't realize who Borat was. We would say, you know, he's from Kazakhstan.

4:20He doesn't really know English. He doesn't know American mores or customs. This is for Kazakhstani television. And people, you know, one of the keys to the success of Borat is ego and vanity. Everybody has a lot of ego and vanity. And when you say, hey, you know, saying it to you is one thing, but saying it to average people in the country, they are very flattered very easily and they love talking about themselves. People are just like that. And so when you go, wow, you would be great on TV. Have you ever thought about doing TV? Oh, no. And then you go, well, we have this Kazakhstani journalist who would love to talk to you.

5:01And oh, yeah, sure. And you have to kind of be patient with him because he doesn't really speak English. He doesn't even know what a chair is. And people would believe all of that. And they would sign the releases very, very happily and then be extremely bitter at the end of the scene.

5:23I love hearing that pitch of introducing Borat to some unsuspecting rube. That's how it works. He doesn't even know what a chair is. I'm so sorry. You're just going to have to really just tolerate it if you can. Yes. And with Borat, you know, the thing was that with Borat, it really worked because there was, even though he was a rapist and an anti-Semite and a misogynist and, you know, all those things, there was a certain innocence to him and people gave him a lot of slack and um and that allowed the scenes to unravel in these very very funny ways when we did bruno because he was a flamboyantly gay character people were almost immediately hostile to him and it was really much harder to get people to that same place because they were immediately ready to like reject him or or even get violent with him, get physically violent with him.

6:17And so the response was very, very different between Borat and Bruno. And it had nothing to do with that Sasha's now more famous. The people didn't realize that Bruno was Sasha. It hadn't gotten to that point yet. Nobody ever recognized him. We went out on Melrose when we were going to do Bruno. We took our phone cameras and just went out on Melrose with him dressed like in a cheap CVS wig or something, you know, a chemo wig and just had him, you know, kind of sashayed down the street, you know, like divine and pink flamingos just to see how people would respond to it. No one recognized him, even on Melrose Avenue.

6:57So we thought, wow, it's amazing. People don't really, they don't observe that carefully. You know, it's, you learn a lot about the human psychology when you do movies like this. You realize people are not looking that carefully at things. That's why eyewitnesses have to be questioned, because what they're seeing is not necessarily what happened. And so they didn't recognize him, and we felt like, wow, we could actually get away with this again. The minute the sort of Kazakhstani came up in the theater, I knew this was going to be one of the great film-going experiences. I think it's definitely in my top...

7:38well listen it's in my top five comedies ever made and in my top might be in my top 20 movies of all time easy well it's i mean for sure it's unbelievable thank you well you pointed out i was going to say you pointed out a very interesting fact about the movie which is that opening it's the icebreaker like when the stand-up comes out and he wants to get that first lap having that logo of the Kazakhstani television that broke the audience up right off the bat. And they were like strapped in and ready to take the ride. And that really like loosened the audience up. And it really wound up being like a great opening to the movie.

8:21Did the famous horse falling down with the flag is just a happy in the rodeo. That's just a happy accident. You had one of your camera guys on it, correct? Well, I'll tell you the truth about that. You know, initially Todd Phillips was the, he was the original director of the movie and he and Sasha did not get along. And after like a week or so, he left the project and we couldn't really use most of what they had shot, but they did shoot that scene. And so Todd Phillips actually directed that scene. And that was a happenstance moment. And that's the reason why I wanted to keep it when we started over again, because I thought the chances of doing that rodeo scene and having the horse fall down in the background, you know, it's never going to happen again.

9:04So we used that one scene from Todd, and I'm very grateful to him for that. Now, that image is one of those things, Vigo, that is the happy accidents in filmmaking or in any time. That's the goal. Do you have a favorite sequence in Borat? Do you have one that's particularly dear to your heart? Well, there are so many. I mean, the original assembly was like six hours long. Please release it. Please release it. Please. I wish somebody would. I really do. I don't have any control over it, unfortunately. So there were scenes like Borat getting healed in a church where he came in. It was one of these evangelistic churches where people are speaking in tongues and rolling on the floor.

9:55And they heal him. He comes in, he's looking for Jesus. And they take him in. And they were very sweet to him, actually. But it's an amazing, crazy, like beyond comedy kind of scene. And they heal him. And at the end, even he said to me, Sasha said, I don't know, I did feel something. So that was an amazing scene. But I also love like just the kind of slapstick, you know, silliness. Like we went to a antique store in Mississippi and he goes through almost like a Buster Keaton or a Charlie Chaplin kind of destruction of the store where he slips on something and breaks this thing. And that causes this to break.

10:39I mean, I love the construction and the choreography of stuff like that also. So I was constantly personally amazed as I was watching, as I was directing, and seeing these things kind of unfold. It was kind of miraculous. He's a genius. He just is an absolute genius. People also don't realize how tall he is. He's a giant. Yeah, you would think that's why we thought with Bruno that, oh, now he's done Borat. Now here's this weird-looking guy walking down the street. Aren't people going to realize who this is? but they still didn't. Yes, he towers over everybody.

11:32You started back in, was Fridays, which you wrote on in this, I remember Fridays, by the way. That was everybody who was trying to be Saturday Night Live after Saturday Night Live. I know. We'll make a show called Friday. No, how about Wednesdays? No, no, Fridays for sure. Right. The writers, as you can imagine, hated. We were brought in and told we were going to do a late-night comedy show. We wanted it to be as far from Saturday Night Live as possible, and they asked us to come up with names, and we came up with these crazy Monty Python-esque names for the show, not even words. Some of the suggestions weren't even words.

12:09We wanted it to be as distinctive as possible. And then one day we came into work and the binders and the jackets, they were all set Fridays on them. So we never had a chance to really have our input. My favorite story about that is there was a great show of all places on MTV, these amazing geniuses. And when I tell you the title, you'll know exactly what it is. But they had a title that they wanted. The network hated it. And so they came up with what they thought was the worst title ever, knowing it would be rejected. It wasn't rejected. And so there is a show called Wondershosen. Uh-huh, sure, of course.

12:52I love that show. Which is one of my all-time... By the way, I think Wondershosen and Borat are in the same... What genre would you even describe Borat and Wondershosen? Because they're not really improv. They're not even scripted improv, although obviously that's a huge part of it. I feel like it transcends being called that, but I don't know what I would call it. I think, you know, we do have a tendency to want to label things, but I do think that Borat defies labeling. I mean, it's called mockumentary, but like Spinal Tap to me is a mockumentary, you know? Spinal Tap is like set up situations with actors.

13:30It's not really dealing with real people. It's not like an X factor like there is in Borat. So it doesn't really fit into any category, particularly, in my opinion. Are we excited about the new Spinal Tap sequel? I'm very excited for this. I am, too. I mean, I remember when the first one came out, and it took a while for it. Like, The Big Lebowski had the same issue. When it first came out, it did not have the excitement. And slowly people, which is great when this happens, because it's rare, people found the movie, you know, and kind of like own the movie finally. The audience finally owned the movie in both those cases.

14:10And I'm not a big fan of sequels, generally speaking, but something like Spinal Tap does make me laugh just thinking about the sequel, which is a good sign, I think. I saw a clip of the sequel, and I was like, oh, how is it going to be? And I knew it was going to be great when it's Michael McKeon, and he's going, one time, okay, one time, we got lost backstage. It's very unfair. It was only once. And I'm like, oh, yeah. The notion that they're bitter about the... I mean, it's funny how the same joke actually can work for an entire movie. Like, the bit that they're bitter about being misrepresented...

15:01If that's all it is, that's plenty for me. Yeah. Well, it resonates also. I mean, you know, there's so many old rockers now, you know, everybody, all these guys, how did they live? You know, uh, don't trust anyone over 30, you know, uh, my generation, all these guys, Pete Townsend, Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, they're all out there, you know? And so the idea that there is a group that's still out there, but bitter is hilarious. You know, so I, I, yeah, I think it'll be funny. I've heard, I'm kind of obsessed with bitter musicians talking about stuff. The most recent one is, I saw Daryl Hall being so angry that Hall and Oates was considered yacht rock.

15:43Right. I saw that too. I saw that too. Well, even the fact that he's angry at Oates seems kind of silly to me, you know. You know, I don't know why. I have a question for you, because they're separately touring. If you're a fan, do you go see, do you go, hey, I'm going to go to a concert. Who are you seeing? I'm going to see Hall tonight. Or like, or like, what are you going to say? Oh, I'm going to Oates. Like, what do you, where do you, where do you, where do you draw the line? What camp do you go to? I wonder. Do they advertise as Hall and nothing? You know, how do they, what does it say on the news?

16:15The Hall with the ampersand, which is nothing, nothing next to it. Just nothing on the side, a little blank or something. Yeah. I went on a, on a tangent during talking about Fridays. Is it my imagination or was the logo also really bad for Fridays? The whole thing, it was, I'm telling you, Rob, when we came, we were all young guys, you know, and we really wanted to do something radical. And it had this really lame font and it was called Fridays. And it was like, wow, now we have to kind of double our effort to be alienating to the audience. Just to show them, you know, we're not trying to copy Saturday Night Live, you know.

16:54It could have been worse. It could have been, remember the Howard Cosell show? I do remember it. I think it might have been called Live on Saturday Night or something like that. It was really bad. It might have been even Saturday Night Live. I'm not sure. It was something like that for sure. And I do remember it very well. Yeah. And I loved Howard Cosell, but thought, wow, that's a bad idea. No. Cosell being, Cosell's not Lorne Michaels. No, not at all. And not even a good host for that kind of thing. I, until I was doing a little bit of research on you, I didn't, for some reason, realize that you were early in Arsenio's show.

17:33And that there was, is it true that for six months you wrote jokes that didn't get on the air? That is true. I mean, first of all, I was desperate for a job when, because I had come off Fridays and I thought, oh, the world is just my oyster. And then I couldn't get a job for like seven years. And no one would hire me. And I, when I was being offered was terrible. And I was like, wow, this is it. It's over already. And then I got, I got recommended to Arsenio and went to see him and he was cool. And I got hired. I told him I wanted to write like Richard Pryor type monologues for him. And he was really into that.

18:09And at first he tried my material and it didn't do that well. And he already was getting so much controversy just by being black, you know, By being a black host on TV, he got so much hate mail, so much abuse from, I mean, it was before the internet. And I used to read his fan, so-called fan mail, and it was violent, threatening. It was incredible, the racism and the violence of the racism, you know, wanting to do things to him that were beyond my imagination. And also, like they used to say, written in crayon a lot of time. things like that just scary and we had to have metal screeners up at the audience so that people would come in they would take weapons off the people when they came in to see the show so he had a lot of pressure on him and he could not he just could not do controversial material and get away with this so he started doing much safer material i could not write it for whatever reason and i just couldn't do it and for six months i i continued to write material but could not get a joke on the air knew my contract was about to end and when it ended i got let go you know that show was so big for that moment where it was so big it was really what's that's bill clinton saxophone yeah that was the that was the i mean you could you could not argue it's the truth that was the beginning of of uh politicians who used to be presidential can used to be above even commenting on movies or sporting events like they were above it you they didn't they didn't deign to comment much less participate in the popular culture that was the first moment of it Bill Clinton was very savvy that way.

20:10And also, you know, it's hard to imagine today, but Arsenio had music on that no one else would touch. He had guests on that no one else would touch. I mean, he would have Public Enemy or NWA. Those kind of bands were on, and there was an audience that was craving that, you know, and he tapped into that because the other talk shows were not touching that kind of talent. And Arsenio and I used to hang out a lot together back in the 80s. We had a lot of, in my wild days, we had a lot of like Forum Club, you know, Jerry Busk, Laker girl. I remember he had some apartment off of like Fountain Avenue.

20:58And it was just, it was too good. I haven't seen him in years, but I love that guy. He was the absolute greatest. He's a survivor also. So, you know, he's around, he's doing stand-up, and, you know, he kind of made it through that period and kind of still standing, which is always, you know, always something that I find admirable and so difficult in show business. Yeah, making a mark and then, like, going to the next chapter that doesn't evolve that mark you've made is, it's very, very hard to do. Very few people do it. I'm not even sure how people do it, but they do. And then Seinfeld is obviously amazing because of all the amazing things to talk about about that show.

21:46My favorite thing is it was, what was the original order? Six episodes? What was the original? Well, there was the pilot and then there was four episodes and then 13. So over the course of like three or four years, there was one pilot that took a year for them to decide to do a few more shows. They did four more shows another year before they finally picked it up for 13. And then after that, they got their first full, the first full pickup of like 22 shows. I remember driving my car and hearing someone, I don't think it was Jerry, must have been Larry, maybe it was you, on a local, like, KABC radio station promoting the show.

22:34I'd never heard of it. It had been on for, like, six episodes. And, man, whoever was doing the interview was like, yeah, I don't know. We got six episodes. We'll see how it goes. When you're out flogging to the local affiliate, you know you're out there selling. And then it comes full circle to years later, I'm pitching NBC in Warren Littlefield's office, and he's on the phone with Jerry, offering him more than a million dollars an episode to say they don't stay. It's the greatest journey in TV history, that show. Incredible arc. I mean, you have to keep in mind, in those early days, it was losing in the ratings to Jake and the Fat Man.

23:24that was the show that was kicking its ass at that time and we you know but what was good about the show under those circumstances under the circumstances of failure we're all used to failure you know and we thought well we'll just do the show that we think is funny you know and we'll it'll get canceled we'll make a little bit of money we'll move on with our lives and in a way that was liberating and i think that is the key to the show becoming such an original thing was we did not really kowtow to the sitcom tastes of the time. You know, we just did the show that we thought was funny. And that worked out, you know, strangely.

24:04And I don't even understand how you're able to do even that. I get that it was, the show was dead man walking. And so fuck it, let's just go. I understand the setup of that. But yet, isn't there always some phalanx of junior executives at the table read? Going, I don't know. I don't know if that whole serial bit really works. And I don't know. There was a lot of arguing after the table reads. Warren Littlefield often came to the meetings after the table reads. You had all the NBC executives. You had the Castle Rock executives. And there was a fight every week about the show, about putting more story in, of, you know, the moral at the end, the kind of traditional sitcom things.

24:54They wanted it to fit into that mold and the resistance to that. And in a way, because it was doing so poorly, there was a kind of a lack of concern about it ultimately. And so they let it, they sort of let it just be what it was. And Larry eventually wisely felt like, well, if you want us to do stories that are sitcom stories, there have to be funny stories. And we started to then construct from nothing. You know, again, there was no Seinfeld to speak of. Like we look at it today in retrospect, we started to construct stories that involved all the characters and that were funny and farcical on their own and very different from what was on TV at that time.

25:40And then it got moved from Wednesday night where it was being killed by Jake and the Fat Man to after that must-see Thursday kind of lineup. It got moved to after Cheers. And that's when the audience really discovered it. And it kind of exploded at that point. Can you just, because it makes me laugh again, please say Jake and the Fat Man one more time. It's the greatest title ever. Jake and the Fat Man. Jake and the Fat Man. It was just about a fat cop, you know. That was the hook. That was the hook. Like he had to run after people, you know, and he couldn't really catch them, you know. And that was a drama, by the way.

26:20You can't make it up.

26:37So you now have your memoir coming out. Yes. It's an epic, Rob. Good, good. Glad to hear it. It's telling the story of my career, basically, starting just before Fridays and going up to about 2022 or so. But it's also talking about comedy and my theories of comedy. And it's also talking about my personal life as well, which has been a very sort of rocky, volatile, unpredictable sort of path on its own and how all these things dovetail and intersect. So it covers a lot of ground. It covers the culture. It covers things beyond the things that I've worked on and the connections between those things and my place in the world, trying to figure that out as time goes on.

27:33and have a kind of some sort of life that makes sense with some significance. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. I can't wait for it. Oh, shit. Okay. This is what's about this show. The show rambles. It goes in different directions. That's okay. But I need to come back. I'm making a note. Come back to Bob Dylan co-directing. I'm coming back to that. I directed that myself, by the way. That wasn't co-directing. Oh, okay. Okay. Yes. Bob co-wrote it, apparently. Yes, we co-wrote it. Yes, that's true. But your book, I want to go back to your book first. Yes. And then we're going to get back to the Bob Dylan pseudonym, Rene Fontaine, maybe my favorite pseudonym ever for a celebrity.

28:18So do you have any Ten Commandments about comedy or Three Commandments or a commandment that I can take away from this interview? Well, one thing, and I think you've learned this yourself in your own career is that almost anything can be comedy. You know, the most horrible subjects can be humorous if you find the right angle. You know, I think that there is no subject that is out of bounds. A lot of people think there are things that you just don't touch. But I'm very influenced by people like Lenny Bruce and, you know, people like that. And I believe you can take any subject and if you find the right angle, the right hook, you'll find comedy in that.

29:02That's probably my first rule of comedy is don't be afraid. You know, I'm a believer in free speech, absolute free speech, and let the audience decide, let that dynamic between the comedian or the comedy and the audience, let that be the deciding factor. You know, let's not censor that. And let's, I think you need to keep breaking those boundaries and breaking those barriers in order to find the language that makes people laugh. And you see today, there's a struggle going on about what is funny. And the audience is kind of fragmented as we start to evolve this hopefully new language of comedy that will bring an audience back together again, like Blazing Saddles or Borat, which would both be very difficult movies to get made today.