Being a movie star ‘Works’ for Larry David

Miki Turner Entertainment writer

LOS ANGELES - Playing a variation of himself on HBO’s hit sitcom “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” isn’t too much of a stretch for Larry David. That show, which is essentially unscripted, allows “Curb’s” executive producer and creator, to just flow and go with it. No lines to learn, no lines to flub.

He’s the man and his co-stars have to keep up with him.

In “Whatever Works,” a new Woody Allen comedy that hits theaters on June 19, David is the leading man but not the Man. That honor is reserved for Allen who picked David to impossibly cantankerous and pessimistic Boris Yellnikoff, a character not so loosely based on Allen himself.

So, not only did David have to give up his manhood, he also had the tedious task of actually having to learn lines — including an opening monologue that is almost as long as President Obama’s inaugural address.

“It was hard,” the Brooklyn-born comic said during a recent interview. “I opened the script and saw the first page and it was full of Boris and then I turned to page 50 and I saw Boris on page 50. And then I went to the last page and I went ‘oy vey.’ So, yeah, it was kind of daunting to have to learn all that to tell you the truth. I was thinking initially that there would be some sort of teleprompter.”

‘I don’t really care for challenges’
And even though he’s the reigning king of improv on TV, David wasn’t exactly comfortable going off the page either.

“Yeah, that was another aspect to it that I found daunting because I am used to improvising and making it up most of it as I go along,” he said. “It was challenging and I don’t really care for challenges.”

David was, however, pleased that Allen didn’t object to him throwing a little bit of himself into Boris, a world-renowned physicist who has lost his wife and his job. He would have lost his life had a well-placed canopy not thwarted his suicide attempt from the window of a high-rise apartment building.

Just as things were looking impossibly bleak for Boris he stumbles upon an impressionable young runaway from the South named Melody (Evan Rachel Wood) on the stoop of his downtown Manhattan loft. Despite the differences in their ages and temperaments, Boris and Melody somehow find love much to the chagrin of her seemingly proper southern mother (Patricia Clarkson), who soon embarks on her own rather nefarious adventures after moving to New York.

You’d think that an older man married to a younger woman would be jumping her bones at every opportunity. That might be the case with Boris and Melody off-screen but they didn’t wrinkle any sheets onscreen. David thinks that was probably a good thing because, “I don’t think anyone wants to see me having sex with anyone in the movies.”

He does, however, feel that he and Wood connected on a different level.

“I have immediate chemistry with pretty much everyone whether it’s good or it’s bad,” he said. “I can tell right off. It doesn’t take me long to get to know somebody. There’s a very visceral reaction, very quickly. We were very comfortable with each other.”

Wood concurred.

“He was just so easy to be with,” she said. “He had me laughing all the time. And we were all kind of in the same boat because everyone was a little intimidated working with Woody for the first time.”

David not interested in impersonating Allen
Working with Allen might have been a bit daunting, but David had the added pressure of not becoming a caricature of his fellow New Yorker. That was a rather difficult avoidance considering they are seemingly cut from the same irreverent cloth.

“Well I know that’s a concern,” David said. “People would say to me are you going to be doing him and I would think that they were out of their minds when they were asking me that. I’m going to try not to do him. It never occurred to me to want to do him and he doesn’t want me to do him.”

But there were some similarities that just seeped through with David playing Allen as Boris. According to David he and Boris “have the same disdain for the human race” an they were “both Bar Mitzvahed, I’m sure.”

Their differences, however, outweigh their common bonds. David feels that Boris, a man who was once nominated for a Nobel Prize, is much smarter than he is. Conversely, he thinks that he is more personable and has more style.

“We’re different in that I am way more normal I think than he is. I enjoy life,” said David, dressed in a blazer, khakis and V-neck sweater. “I play golf. I like having sex. I have normal wants and needs. He’s insane, really. He’s really on the edge. I don’t wear shorts. I’m a much better dresser than he is.”

Now that he’s had a taste of what it feels like to be a leading man in a big-time feature film, is David, whose TV show returns to HBO in September, ready to do it again?

“Yeah, of course, I would. I would definitely do it with Woody Allen again. Would I do it with someone else again? Yeah, if I liked it. I haven’t been inundated with offers yet.”

Since Allen isn’t the type of director that coddles his actors, David had some performance jitters early on before determining that Allen’s silence was an indication that he “was doing OK.”

“I was waiting to get fired,” David said. “I was expecting it the first couple of days.” David, however, felt totally validated the one time he did ask for some feedback. Typically, Allen curbed his enthusiasm.

“He said to me once ‘it wasn’t horrible.’”

Miki Turner can be reached at

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