There’s Little Daylight Between Larry David and “Larry David”

At an event on Friday billed as “An Evening with Larry David”—in anticipation of the Curb Your Enthusiasm finale, which airs Sunday on HBO—I found myself sitting near Edward Decter, who I overheard identify himself as David’s college roommate. I asked Decter if he has ever experienced a Curb moment with David.

“His whole life has been a Curb Your Enthusiasm moment,” Decter replied. “All this is his existence.”

Decter, an orthopedic surgeon, has a connection most people in that room would only dream of: He said that decades ago, Decter’s wife-to-be was the one who told David he should be a comedian. David also called him for medical advice when writing the Curb episode when Larry trips Shaq. (If his name sounds familiar, it’s because David also used it in the episode of Seinfeld where George thinks his elbow is spasming.) But he’s a fan of David’s, too. “Sometimes I would be in the operating room and I would just start laughing thinking of Larry,” he said.

Hearing that I was also a fan, he gave me a shirt he had made that had David’s Trumpian mugshot on it. He had a bag of them, and was planning to give one to David himself.

If Decter confirmed that David has always been this way, the event at HBO’s Hudson Yards headquarters, cohosted by the Tribeca Festival, proved that he still is. David was in rare form. He refused to divulge anything about the upcoming finale, reacting with scorn to an audience member who dared ask about it. But he did riff on any number of other grievances and topics.

On the water bottle next to him: “It’s my observation that everything is hard to open these days.”

On the day’s unexpected earthquake in New York: David didn’t feel it, but he did remember being in Los Angeles for the Northridge earthquake in 1994. “I just wanted to play golf,” he said. “What am I going to do? Clean up?”

When asked by moderator Ari Melber if he feels more Jewish in Los Angeles or New York: “I don’t think I can feel more Jewish. That’s maxed out.”

On texting someone “thank you” the day after a party: “The next day ‘thank you’ text, what is that? How many fucking thank-yous do you have to give in this world?” Speaking of: If you invite David to a dinner party, you better tell him who else is going. He recently got uninvited to one for asking, because he didn’t want to have to spend time with someone he hates. “You have to ask,” he said. “I might be sitting next to somebody I hate for three hours.”

The appropriate time to leave after a dinner party? “You finish dessert, 10 minutes, get out.”

David was similarly blunt with Melber. At one point, he told the MSNBC host, “I don’t think that’s your best question.” When Melber whipped out an AI chatbot’s assessment of David, David said, “This is stupid.” And he didn’t spare the audience members who eventually asked questions, either. When someone asked about how Steve Bannon made money off of Seinfeld, David quipped, “Can somebody remove him?” before adding, “It’s sickening.” Another eager questioner asked David what his favorite restaurant in New York is. The answer he got? “What kind of question is that?”

When discussion turned to the show itself, what was most clear is David’s relentless pursuit of comedy—although he doesn’t think too much about how that happens. When asked to explain how certain scenes came about—like Cheryl Hines and Larry’s discussion after Wanda Sykes tells them there’s an impending terrorist attack in Los Angeles—he said, “we just make it up.” Pressed to comment on his style, David said: “I have a lot of people asking me, like you asked earlier, why is the show, why does it work and all of that. I don’t put any thought into that whatsoever. I just try and write funny shows. I never analyze it.”