Larry David—the character, not the comedian, though it’s often hard to tell—tried his hand at Late Night writing this week, joining Seth Meyers’ writers room for a pitch meeting before his Tuesday appearance—as the comedian, not the character—on the show.
Late for the Late Show pitch meeting because of an “extra-long urination” (record-setting, in fact), Larry’s Late Night visit could have been a scene straight out of the upcoming season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Larry didn’t want to bother with the unnecessary social convention of going around the room and learning the names of his co-workers, as Meyers suggested, or learning the Late Night writers room protocol. He decided he’s just going to “hey!” at everyone, with even Meyers himself not above a “hey!”.
The accommodating Meyers’ patience began to wear thin as Larry complained, incessantly and very much in character, first about his lack of leg room and then his chair, twice asking to swap with the writer beside him. And when it was Larry’s turn to pitch, Meyers made the mistake of accepting and sipping from a mug of tea as he spoke, causing an indignant Larry to lose his flow. “Do you have to have tea right at this particular moment while I’m doing my first pitch? Could that be any ruder?” Though he was invited to start over, the moment—and the pitch—was gone.
“Go back to the pitch? … You can’t go back to a pitch. The pitch has emotion and you interrupted the flow. I can’t go back. That pitch is gone. There’s no flow. You can’t try and recapture a flow. You just can’t go back. You can’t go back in time and pretend I wasn’t interrupted.”
He made sure his new foe was done drinking hot liquids before he tried again. “No tea drinking? Huh? You got the tea out of the way? No coffee? No lattes? Soup? What about some soup?”
But it was when the living lie detector got up from his chair and stared deeply into Meyers’ eyes over his comment that his pitch was great, that Larry was truly in his element.
“Okay, I just looked into your soul,” he sad. “You know what I discovered, Seth Meyers? You’re a liar. That’s right. You’re lying to me, you’re lying to them, you’re lying to everybody!” he raged before storming out and taking the whole staff with him.
Curb Your Enthusiasm will be back for its ninth season on October 1 on HBO. Catch the trailer, which is devoid of anything remotely caring or empathetic, here.
