“I know him,” Larry David conceded, when asked about his friendship with former President Barack Obama during a Friday SXSW panel. “Don’t look down on him because of that. We play golf together from time to time.”
More than a casual friendship, the duo are producing a forthcoming sketch comedy series (also starring David) for HBO about American history pegged to the country’s 250th anniversary. The show puts David in various famous scenarios throughout the county’s history. It’s a weird time to be celebrating the U.S., longtime David collaborator Jeff Schaffer noted during the event, but they seem proud of the work all the same — previewing a clip of David as a bit of a sexual predator in the famous VJ Day photo of the soldier kissing a dental assistant in Times Square.
“It’s sort of like throwing a birthday party for your friend that’s in rehab,” Schaffer said of America. “He’s fucked up. But I love him.” (The comedy scribe’s barbs were not reserved for the country, he also referred to HBO, in the process of being acquired by the Larry Ellison-backed Paramount along with the rest of Warner Bro. Discovery, as “the cool division of Oracle.”)
Their series, by the way, now has a title. It’s called Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness: an Almost History of America. It’s essentially “Curb Your Enthusiasm in costumes,” the pair noted. And it premieres June 26.
But beyond the details of the project, which included news of cameos from the likes of Jon Hamm, Susie Essman, Lin-Manuel Miranda and many, many more, the highlight of the panel was unquestionably Schaffer interrogating the manner in which David engaged with his fellow producer — again, that’s President Barack Obama — while working on the show.
Schaffer said their time in the room together included plenty of Obama ribbing David. “He was ragging on your golf game, ragging on how much sunscreen you wear,” he observed.
“I said, ‘I’m sorry my father wasn’t born in Kenya,’” said David, as perhaps only he could get away with saying.
But the real delight of the event had to be an anecdote about Obama trying to give a note on one of David’s proposed sketches. His disagreement with the humor of the bit, which Schaffer said followed a solid 45 minutes of Obama praising David, was not well-received by the famous curmudgeon. Obama, as Schaffer told it, then stressed that throughout his presidency he deferred to the guidance of experts in their fields.
David, he said, was unmoved. “On Curb and Seinfeld, I’m used to being the boss,” David elaborated. “Obama is also quite used to being the boss. We came to bit of a loggerhead there.”
At that point, David said he turned to Obama and offered the following compromise: “I said, ‘I’m president here.’”
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