“I hate all kinds of writing.”
Larry David
Before Larry David created Seinfeld with Jerry Seinfeld, he failed to impress his parents or comedy club audiences with his comic genius:
I told my parents about wanting to be a comedian and my mother said, ‘You’re not funny, Larry. I’ve never heard you say anything funny.’ And my father backed her up, ‘She’s right, she’s right. You’re not funny. Why do you think you’re funny? You’re not funny.’ So, I started doing [stand up comedy] . . . but I was not all that successful. My therapist at the time said I wasn’t really temperamentally suited for it for the simple reason that if the audience didn’t laugh I would scream and curse them.
‘You stupid, f–king morons. You don’t know anything!’ I remember even walking the streets in New York looking for good spots to live in case I ever became homeless. I would mentally note them. Yeah, yeah, 44th between 5th and 6th. Good steam vent, there’s an overhang. I got to remember this. I bombed all the time. Got heckled unmercifully. People threw things at me. I wallowed in self-pity. ‘Why me? Why? Why can’t I do anything? I don’t understand. It’s not fair.’
“And then in 1988, Jerry Seinfeld asked me to develop a show with him. I’d never written a half hour before. I didn’t even know the format. The number of pages, I had no idea what I was doing.”
Larry David, creator of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Seinfeld
2010 Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for Television acceptance speech
(H/T Speakola)
P.S. Larry David not only avoided being homeless, but today his net worth—thanks to the syndication deal of Seinfeld alone—is estimated in the mid-hundreds of millions of dollars.
great read! Thanks for posting!
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