June 27, 2025 • 11 mins
Larry Charles is the brilliant dude behind so many groundbreaking projects: Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Borat, Bruno...he's just released a compelling memoir about his brilliant successes:
COMEDY SAMURAI - 40 YEARS OF BLOOD, GUTS AND LAUGHTER.
COMEDY SAMURAI - 40 YEARS OF BLOOD, GUTS AND LAUGHTER.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi, I'm Brett Sanders, excellent guest alert. The genius of
comedy Larry Charles joins me this week. He's promoting his
new book, Comedy Samurai Forty Years of Blood, Guts and Laughter.
He's worked on Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld. He directed
the movies Borat religious Bruno. This guy has an incredible career.
(00:22):
Larry Charles, Hi, Brett, how are you nice? To talk
to you? Larry. The last time we spoke, you were
promoting that Bob Dylan movie that you wrote and directed
with Bob Dylan, Masked and Anonymous.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Oh wow, that was quite a while ago. But talk
to you again.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
When I think of Larry Charles, I think of considerable quality.
Your book is Comedy Samurai forty Years of Blood, Guts
and Laughter. It seems whenever you're involved with something it
becomes this massive achievement in comedy. Well, there's this long
list of people you've collaborated with, Larry, David Seinfeld, Sasha
(00:58):
Baron Cohen for the Borat and Bruno movies, and the
matter about you people too. What do all of these
artists have in common and what do you have in
common with all of them?
Speaker 2 (01:09):
I think we all, all those people you mentioned and
me have been interested more than anything, more than money,
more than career advancements. We've been interested in doing great things.
We've had that crazy ambition to do something great, do
something unprecedented, something that hasn't been done before. And I
think that is that shared trade amongst us.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
So it's important for people to remember this isn't really
I mean, money's nice, but when you work with these people,
that's not the primary motivation.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
No, when I worked with Larry David, you know, we
were broke and we never you know, we needed money
to pay the rent, that kind of money, you know,
But basically we turned down a lot of things, and
we refuse to do a lot of things that might
have been more lucrative, and just in you know, the
weird way life works that worked out, those decisions wound
(02:07):
up being very sound decisions in retrospect.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Yeah, it's really inspirational when you hear about someone who
refuses to compromise their vision. Could you share an example
with me over the years of something that people really
wanted you to do and you said no way, man.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Well, for instance, there was an attempt after Borat to
do a sequel, and we set that that's going back
to like two thousand and six or whatever it was.
And you know, the idea of doing a sequel to
Borat just seemed to taint the purity and the integrity
of the original. And it would have been much more
(02:46):
lucrative if nobody really made much money from Borat. It
was a very low budget movie. I was paid minimum
and we still said no to that. And there's been
a lot of examples. When I was on a show
call Fridays, they wanted to do a primetime version. At
that time, I thought the idea of primetime TV was
(03:07):
just an athema to me. You know, I would not
even consider primetime television, and one writer, Bruce Kirshbauman myself
refused to do this primetime show, even though we'd be
paid for it. So I also another examplese I worked
on Seinfeld for four or five years and could have
(03:28):
worked there until the end of the show. I mean,
we had a great relationship and everything was good, but
I felt creatively stalled out at a certain point, and
despite the success of the show, I decided I would
leave roll the dice and see what else I could
do with my life. You know, so or even with
the Bob Dylan you know project. We originally intended that
(03:50):
to be an HBO half hour TV show, a comedy show,
and then Bob decided that he didn't want to do it,
and my manager said, You've got to get out of this.
This is crazy, and I said, no, I'm sticking with
Bob Dylan. You know, I mean, this is an opportunity
of a lifetime, regardless of what happens. And so I
stayed with Bob Dylan and that project eventually became Master Anonymous.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
What was it like to sit down and write with
Bob Dylan? Did the two of you sit down at
a typewriter and just get to work?
Speaker 2 (04:19):
No, you know that, you know, there was he had
a coffee He had a coffee house in Santa Monica,
and behind it you would go through the back door
of the coffee house and there was a boxing gym there,
and in the boxing gym there there was a cubicle
and we would sit in that cubicle twelve hours a day.
(04:40):
He was chain smoking at the time. I was not
smoking cigarette time, although I would have before that and
after that, but not at that time. And he filled
up the room with smoke. That little cubicle would smoke
and we would sit there and write all day. And
everything we wrote was handwritten. Either of us had a typewriter.
(05:01):
It was like really before like computers were popular, and
so I would handwrite everything, gather his scraps of paper
with notes on it, and then somebody would type it
up for us. One of the assistants, fortunately, you know,
took care of that, those secretarial skills.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
I can't imagine you telling Bob Dylan hey put out
that cigarette.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
I never did. I never did. I just inhaled it.
You know, I wouldn't have dreamed of asking him not
to smoke. It was such an important part of who
he was at that time. I mean, he was chain smoking,
so asking him to put it out was kind of pointless.
He was smoking almost NonStop.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
You filmed Borat, you directed Borat. You also made a
movie called Religious with Bill Maher. I always wonder, I'm
glad I get to ask you this. Were you ever
in any kind of physical danger when you were making
those sorts of confrontational films.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Oh my goodness, yes, all the time. You know, it's
funny not as much with religionists. Because Bill wasn't as
even though he could be confrontational, even though he could
humiliate the people he was sometimes interviewing. There was such
anger at times in Borat, but mostly on Bruno actually,
(06:20):
because people who did Borat, who were the targets on Borat,
they gave they Even though Borat was an anti semis
and a race a rapist and uh, you know, a
misogynist and ancestuous, there was something innocent about Borat and
he was straight on some level, and people therefore gave
(06:40):
him a little a little more wide birth. So the
violence didn't. It took a long time for things to
get to a violent level, and often it was just
like the police coming more than violence. Although the threat
was always hovering over us in Bruno because he was
a flamboyantly gay character who felt much more comfortable getting physical.
(07:02):
So there was a lot more physical confrontations, a lot
more pushing and shoving and throwing punches and guns and
stuff like that. That really was on the verge of
a dangerous violence with Bruno. That was probably the most
dangerous thing that I've done. I did a show for
Netflix called Larry Charles's Dangerous World of Comedy, and I
(07:25):
was in places like Somalia and Iraq, and those places also,
of course, were very very dangerous, but I don't get
scared in those situations. So somehow or another, I kind
of get calm, like kind of zen when I'm faced
with danger. I don't know why I could get very anxious,
(07:46):
you know, trying to catch a plane. But I was
actually pretty cool in Somalia. So but Bruno, to me,
was the movie that engendered the most violence.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
You are really a fearless dude. I mean, you really
led a remarkable career. Larry.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Well, again, you used the word career, and I appreciate that.
But I think one of the keys to my so
called career is that I never thought of it as
a career. I thought of myself as as somebody who wants,
you know, on the comedy Samurai, I was somebody who
just wanted to do cool things. I wanted to help
other people do cool things and then move on to
the next thing, you know. And I got to serve
(08:27):
a lot of really incredibly profound masters along the way,
like Bob Dylan and Sasha and Larry David and people
like that. So, you know, I consider myself very lucky.
I consider myself just somebody who was rolling the dice
and did cool things regardless of the outcome. I was
not so much worried about the outcome as the journey,
(08:48):
and so that's what I don't really call it a career.
I had no plan.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
What happened with your documentary about Larry David. Wasn't that
supposed to air on HBO, But it didn't.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
That's correct. I did an interview with him, and then
I cut it together and used a lot of Seinfeld
clips and curb clips to sort of illustrate a lot
of the things that he talked about and talked about
his child. So he talked about a lot of subjects
that were very revealing. At times he wept, you know.
(09:23):
He talked about his family, his children, We talked about death,
and we talked about spirituality, and it was very revealing
and very intimate, and I think he at that time
he said to me, this is the best interview I've
ever done. But I think when he found and he
when he saw it, he thought it was great. But
(09:44):
then he had second thoughts because he felt he was
revealing too much and he wanted people to still think
of him as TV Larry from Curb of this funny
guy who can handle anything, rather than a human being,
which is what he was. It's kind of very interests,
very wise human being, and he didn't want people to
(10:05):
really see that part of him at that point. And
he and I because of the way we are, you know,
I might be courageous when I shoot these movies, but
we're both he and I emotional towers from Brooklyn, and
I think that in some way he didn't want to
tell me that he was uncomfortable with it until that
(10:26):
he had no choice but to tell me, And so
the show got canceled. The movie got canceled the day
before was already being marketed, the commercials, the promos were
already on HBO. It was supposed to come out the
next day, and he called me and said he needed
to postpone it. He couldn't handle it. And his agent
(10:48):
threatened HBO and said, we will not do another season
of Curb. You broadcast this, and they pulled it off
the air. And I really have not spoken to.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Him since HBO needs to release the Larry Charles cut.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Hi I'm with You, ma'n.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Comedy Samurai forty years of blood, guts and Laughter from
Larry Charles. Nice talking with you again.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Larry, that was good man. Great to talk to you too.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Thank you for listening to this The Brett Sonders Podcast.
I'll see you next time.
Hi, I'm Brett Sanders, excellent guest alert. The genius of
comedy Larry Charles joins me this week. He's promoting his
new book, Comedy Samurai Forty Years of Blood, Guts and Laughter.
He's worked on Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld. He directed
the movies Borat religious Bruno. This guy has an incredible career.
(00:22):
Larry Charles, Hi, Brett, how are you nice? To talk
to you? Larry. The last time we spoke, you were
promoting that Bob Dylan movie that you wrote and directed
with Bob Dylan, Masked and Anonymous.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Oh wow, that was quite a while ago. But talk
to you again.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
When I think of Larry Charles, I think of considerable quality.
Your book is Comedy Samurai forty Years of Blood, Guts
and Laughter. It seems whenever you're involved with something it
becomes this massive achievement in comedy. Well, there's this long
list of people you've collaborated with, Larry, David Seinfeld, Sasha
(00:58):
Baron Cohen for the Borat and Bruno movies, and the
matter about you people too. What do all of these
artists have in common and what do you have in
common with all of them?
Speaker 2 (01:09):
I think we all, all those people you mentioned and
me have been interested more than anything, more than money,
more than career advancements. We've been interested in doing great things.
We've had that crazy ambition to do something great, do
something unprecedented, something that hasn't been done before. And I
think that is that shared trade amongst us.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
So it's important for people to remember this isn't really
I mean, money's nice, but when you work with these people,
that's not the primary motivation.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
No, when I worked with Larry David, you know, we
were broke and we never you know, we needed money
to pay the rent, that kind of money, you know,
But basically we turned down a lot of things, and
we refuse to do a lot of things that might
have been more lucrative, and just in you know, the
weird way life works that worked out, those decisions wound
(02:07):
up being very sound decisions in retrospect.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Yeah, it's really inspirational when you hear about someone who
refuses to compromise their vision. Could you share an example
with me over the years of something that people really
wanted you to do and you said no way, man.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Well, for instance, there was an attempt after Borat to
do a sequel, and we set that that's going back
to like two thousand and six or whatever it was.
And you know, the idea of doing a sequel to
Borat just seemed to taint the purity and the integrity
of the original. And it would have been much more
(02:46):
lucrative if nobody really made much money from Borat. It
was a very low budget movie. I was paid minimum
and we still said no to that. And there's been
a lot of examples. When I was on a show
call Fridays, they wanted to do a primetime version. At
that time, I thought the idea of primetime TV was
(03:07):
just an athema to me. You know, I would not
even consider primetime television, and one writer, Bruce Kirshbauman myself
refused to do this primetime show, even though we'd be
paid for it. So I also another examplese I worked
on Seinfeld for four or five years and could have
(03:28):
worked there until the end of the show. I mean,
we had a great relationship and everything was good, but
I felt creatively stalled out at a certain point, and
despite the success of the show, I decided I would
leave roll the dice and see what else I could
do with my life. You know, so or even with
the Bob Dylan you know project. We originally intended that
(03:50):
to be an HBO half hour TV show, a comedy show,
and then Bob decided that he didn't want to do it,
and my manager said, You've got to get out of this.
This is crazy, and I said, no, I'm sticking with
Bob Dylan. You know, I mean, this is an opportunity
of a lifetime, regardless of what happens. And so I
stayed with Bob Dylan and that project eventually became Master Anonymous.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
What was it like to sit down and write with
Bob Dylan? Did the two of you sit down at
a typewriter and just get to work?
Speaker 2 (04:19):
No, you know that, you know, there was he had
a coffee He had a coffee house in Santa Monica,
and behind it you would go through the back door
of the coffee house and there was a boxing gym there,
and in the boxing gym there there was a cubicle
and we would sit in that cubicle twelve hours a day.
(04:40):
He was chain smoking at the time. I was not
smoking cigarette time, although I would have before that and
after that, but not at that time. And he filled
up the room with smoke. That little cubicle would smoke
and we would sit there and write all day. And
everything we wrote was handwritten. Either of us had a typewriter.
(05:01):
It was like really before like computers were popular, and
so I would handwrite everything, gather his scraps of paper
with notes on it, and then somebody would type it
up for us. One of the assistants, fortunately, you know,
took care of that, those secretarial skills.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
I can't imagine you telling Bob Dylan hey put out
that cigarette.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
I never did. I never did. I just inhaled it.
You know, I wouldn't have dreamed of asking him not
to smoke. It was such an important part of who
he was at that time. I mean, he was chain smoking,
so asking him to put it out was kind of pointless.
He was smoking almost NonStop.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
You filmed Borat, you directed Borat. You also made a
movie called Religious with Bill Maher. I always wonder, I'm
glad I get to ask you this. Were you ever
in any kind of physical danger when you were making
those sorts of confrontational films.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Oh my goodness, yes, all the time. You know, it's
funny not as much with religionists. Because Bill wasn't as
even though he could be confrontational, even though he could
humiliate the people he was sometimes interviewing. There was such
anger at times in Borat, but mostly on Bruno actually,
(06:20):
because people who did Borat, who were the targets on Borat,
they gave they Even though Borat was an anti semis
and a race a rapist and uh, you know, a
misogynist and ancestuous, there was something innocent about Borat and
he was straight on some level, and people therefore gave
(06:40):
him a little a little more wide birth. So the
violence didn't. It took a long time for things to
get to a violent level, and often it was just
like the police coming more than violence. Although the threat
was always hovering over us in Bruno because he was
a flamboyantly gay character who felt much more comfortable getting physical.
(07:02):
So there was a lot more physical confrontations, a lot
more pushing and shoving and throwing punches and guns and
stuff like that. That really was on the verge of
a dangerous violence with Bruno. That was probably the most
dangerous thing that I've done. I did a show for
Netflix called Larry Charles's Dangerous World of Comedy, and I
(07:25):
was in places like Somalia and Iraq, and those places also,
of course, were very very dangerous, but I don't get
scared in those situations. So somehow or another, I kind
of get calm, like kind of zen when I'm faced
with danger. I don't know why I could get very anxious,
(07:46):
you know, trying to catch a plane. But I was
actually pretty cool in Somalia. So but Bruno, to me,
was the movie that engendered the most violence.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
You are really a fearless dude. I mean, you really
led a remarkable career. Larry.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Well, again, you used the word career, and I appreciate that.
But I think one of the keys to my so
called career is that I never thought of it as
a career. I thought of myself as as somebody who wants,
you know, on the comedy Samurai, I was somebody who
just wanted to do cool things. I wanted to help
other people do cool things and then move on to
the next thing, you know. And I got to serve
(08:27):
a lot of really incredibly profound masters along the way,
like Bob Dylan and Sasha and Larry David and people
like that. So, you know, I consider myself very lucky.
I consider myself just somebody who was rolling the dice
and did cool things regardless of the outcome. I was
not so much worried about the outcome as the journey,
(08:48):
and so that's what I don't really call it a career.
I had no plan.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
What happened with your documentary about Larry David. Wasn't that
supposed to air on HBO, But it didn't.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
That's correct. I did an interview with him, and then
I cut it together and used a lot of Seinfeld
clips and curb clips to sort of illustrate a lot
of the things that he talked about and talked about
his child. So he talked about a lot of subjects
that were very revealing. At times he wept, you know.
(09:23):
He talked about his family, his children, We talked about death,
and we talked about spirituality, and it was very revealing
and very intimate, and I think he at that time
he said to me, this is the best interview I've
ever done. But I think when he found and he
when he saw it, he thought it was great. But
(09:44):
then he had second thoughts because he felt he was
revealing too much and he wanted people to still think
of him as TV Larry from Curb of this funny
guy who can handle anything, rather than a human being,
which is what he was. It's kind of very interests,
very wise human being, and he didn't want people to
(10:05):
really see that part of him at that point. And
he and I because of the way we are, you know,
I might be courageous when I shoot these movies, but
we're both he and I emotional towers from Brooklyn, and
I think that in some way he didn't want to
tell me that he was uncomfortable with it until that
(10:26):
he had no choice but to tell me, And so
the show got canceled. The movie got canceled the day
before was already being marketed, the commercials, the promos were
already on HBO. It was supposed to come out the
next day, and he called me and said he needed
to postpone it. He couldn't handle it. And his agent
(10:48):
threatened HBO and said, we will not do another season
of Curb. You broadcast this, and they pulled it off
the air. And I really have not spoken to.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Him since HBO needs to release the Larry Charles cut.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Hi I'm with You, ma'n.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Comedy Samurai forty years of blood, guts and Laughter from
Larry Charles. Nice talking with you again.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Larry, that was good man. Great to talk to you too.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Thank you for listening to this The Brett Sonders Podcast.
I'll see you next time.
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