Larry Charles - Episode 1103

Summary

Fitzdog Radio – Episode 1103: Larry Charles

Release Date: July 9, 2025
Host: Greg Fitzsimmons
Guest: Larry Charles

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Introduction

In Episode 1103 of Fitzdog Radio, host Greg Fitzsimmons welcomes veteran comedy writer and director Larry Charles. Known for his pivotal roles in shaping iconic shows like Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry Charles delves into his extensive career, creative philosophies, and personal anecdotes that have influenced his work in comedy and filmmaking.

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Career Beginnings and Early Experiences

Larry Charles reflects on his early days in the entertainment industry, highlighting his first writing job at the age of 20 on the show Fridays, where he collaborated with Michael Richards and Larry David.

"[Larry Charles]: He started out. He got his first writing job when he was like 20 on that show Fridays that had Kramer on it."
[14:25]

Larry discusses the transition from Fridays to Seinfeld, emphasizing the collaborative environment and the challenges of working on a groundbreaking sitcom.

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Influence of Larry David and Creative Philosophy

A significant portion of the conversation centers around Larry David's influence on Charles' approach to comedy and directing. Larry Charles credits Larry David with teaching him about integrity, discipline, and craft in storytelling.

"[Ryan Reynolds]: He taught me how to be a man, really. You know, he taught me about integrity and discipline and craft."
[19:48]

He elaborates on the importance of trusting instincts and the willingness to take creative risks, lessons he absorbed from working closely with David.

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Collaboration with Bob Dylan and Filmmaking Ventures

Larry Charles shares insights into his collaboration with Bob Dylan, particularly in the making of the movie "Master and Master Anonymous." He recounts the challenges of directing a film without a traditional script and working with an iconic musician like Dylan, who was new to acting.

"[Ryan Reynolds]: And so I had that experience. So I think once that was over, it wasn't like, hey, I'll call you next Tuesday, we'll get lunch. He's not that kind of guy."
[44:29]

Charles discusses the creative process behind "Borat," detailing how he helped shape the character and the film's narrative structure to balance humor with emotional depth.

"[Ryan Reynolds]: And so my idea was, like, Borat has to be the main character, you know, and give him an assistant, give him a sidekick."
[66:48]

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Personal Anecdotes and Reflections

The dialogue takes a personal turn as Larry Charles opens up about his childhood, family dynamics, and the impact of his father's experiences on his own career choices. He shares humorous yet poignant stories about his youth, including interactions with Stan Burns and his attempts at stand-up comedy.

"[Larry Charles]: He was a hellfire. She just came."
[14:25]

Additionally, Charles touches upon the complexities of parenting and grandparenting, offering a heartfelt perspective on balancing personal ambitions with family relationships.

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Evolution of American Sitcoms

A critical discussion ensues about the evolution of American sitcoms, comparing the blue-collar roots of shows like "Seinfeld" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm" to the more bourgeois themes that emerged in later seasons.

"[Larry Charles]: There are no other countries that are doing comedy the way we are."
[00:55]

Charles expresses his discomfort with the shift towards stunt casting and how it affected the authenticity of the shows.

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Auditioning and Character Development

Larry Charles provides an inside look into the auditioning process for "Curb Your Enthusiasm," emphasizing the importance of improvisation and authenticity in casting actors who can embody the show's distinct comedic style.

"[Ryan Reynolds]: You gotta produce. You gotta produce."
[21:03]

He describes Larry David's unique audition style, where candidates are given minimal scripts and must rely on their improvisational skills.

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Technological Reflection and Privacy Concerns

The conversation briefly veers into reflections on technology's impact on privacy, referencing George Orwell's "1984" and the modern-day realities of surveillance and data privacy.

"[Larry Charles]: So at the moment that Michael Richards went rogue, what was the sense from you guys on the stage? Did you know at that moment that this is great TV or were you kind of panicked?"
[22:14]

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Closing Thoughts and Future Projects

As the podcast wraps up, Larry Charles and Greg Fitzsimmons discuss upcoming projects and future collaborations. Charles mentions his experiences with high-profile shows and films, and expresses gratitude for the creative partnerships that have shaped his career.

"[Ryan Reynolds]: So I'm really tight with all my adult children. And they are adults at this point."
[47:04]

The episode concludes with mutual appreciation and encouragement for listeners to engage with their work.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• "People in power get away with stuff. We don't, you know."
  [00:35]

• "Larry David particularly... he taught me about integrity and discipline and craft."
  [19:48]

• "He wants to know what happens beyond the laugh."
  [24:27]

• "Master Anonymous had the most insane cast."
  [52:06]

• "We don't, you know, just back from Austin, Texas."
  [End segments not shown in summary]

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Conclusion

Episode 1103 of Fitzdog Radio offers an in-depth exploration of Larry Charles' illustrious career in comedy and filmmaking. Through candid conversations, Charles shares invaluable insights into the creative processes behind beloved sitcoms and groundbreaking films, the influence of mentors like Larry David, and the personal experiences that have shaped his artistic vision. This episode is a treasure trove for fans of comedy, aspiring writers, and those interested in the intricate workings of television and film production.

Transcript

[Larry Charles]

Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. With the price of just about everything going up, we thought we'd bring our prices down. So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer which is apparently a thing Mint Mobile Unlimited premium wireless. Better get 30, 30. Better get 30. Better get 20, 20, 20.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Better get 20, 20.

[Larry Charles]

Everybody get 15, 15, 15, 15.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Just 15 bucks a month. Sold.

[Larry Charles]

Give it a [e-mail] Switch upfront payment of $45 or 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month. Required new customer offer for first 3 months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes of network's busy. Taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com this message is sponsored by Greenlight. With school out, summer is the perfect time to teach our kids real world money skills they'll use forever. Greenlight is a debit card and the one family finance and safety app used by millions of families. Helping kids learn how to save, invest and spend wisely. Parents can send their kids money and track their spending and saving while kids build money, confidence and skills in fun ways. Start your risk free Greenlight trial [e-mail] Spotify. That's greenlight.com Spotify. Close your eyes, exhale, feel your body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today. Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts. Oh my gosh, they're so fast.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And breathe.

[Larry Charles]

Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste. Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order. 1-800-contact contacts. Hi, welcome to Fitz Dog Radio. I could not be more excited to play for you later. My interview with Larry Charles, who is like one of the comedic masterminds of the last 30 years in this country. And let's face it, any country. Are there other countries that are doing comedy the way we are? Literally? I mean, Canada's got some funny stuff. Um, I don't know, I guess ever. All the European countries are like pie in the face, red nosed silliness and, and comics come here, with few exceptions, they don't do well in this country. It's a very specific tone of American humor that we appreciate. There's that guy in Austin, he's from Estonia. Why do you forget his fucking name? He's so funny. Saw him in Austin this weekend. Um, anyway, welcome to the show. Please spread the word. Tell your friends about Fitz Dog radio follow, like, comment, do all that stuff. I'm watching. Everybody's talking about this Epstein case now. Like, it's so amazing to me. People go like, hey, you know this Epsi. There's a missing minute on the tape that they're. That Pam Bondi's not accounting for. There's a list. The list is missing. Yeah, my list is missing too. I had a to do list from a few days ago. My wife keeps asking to see it to see what I'm doing all day when I'm home alone and she's out. Can't find the list. Honey, lists are real easy to lose, especially when the biggest leaders of the world are on it. Yeah, yeah, let's preserve that list. Good luck with that. Good luck with the videotapes of Bill Clinton or whoever else doing whatever they did on that island. I mean, come on. You think they, they don't you, you think they don't have an assistant? You know, you don't think they all have assistance that are Navy SEALs? Come on, just. This is life. People in power get away with stuff. We don't, you know, Just back from Austin, Texas. Played the Mothership this weekend. Real blast, lot of fun. Worked with some really good comics. What are their names? Mason James was very funny and spacing the other guy's name. Anyway, great time, good shows we had. It is a town where, like, they have, they have, they. Speaking of Navy SEALs, they have Navy SEALs that work security. They all, like, all the, all the bouncers are like jiu jitsu pros and Navy seals. And I gotta take this out hat off. I'm hot. How about that? I got a nice tight fresh shave about an hour ago and. And they walk you from the Mothership back to the hotel, which is literally one and a half blocks away. But 6th street is so nuts. But it's also like, there is no town that per capita has as many comedy fans in it as Austin, Texas. Like, you get mobbed. Like me, I'm just a mid level guy and I walk down the street and like one out of four people stops me, wants a selfie, wants to tell me they watched my special. It's really nice. It's very, it's very flattering. God, I look pasty white. Jesus. And it's like being a comedian in Austin is like. It's like being a musician. I'm sure like a musician in Nashville probably feels this kind of, you know, sense of importance, you know, like a. Or a Civil War reenactor who lives in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Walks down the street, someone's like, hey, man, you kill yesterday? No, literally, you killed. You killed that Confederate soldier, which. With your. With your musket and your harpoon. What do they call it? The. What do they call the thing that sticks out of the front of the musket? The knife. Your. Garrett. Now what do they call that thing? God, my mind is gone. Um, and. And I hope they, you know, after. After spending a few days in Texas and seeing like, how much they hate Democrats and how much they hate just liberals in general, it feels like maybe those reenactors should keep the. It's good that we kept the uniforms because the new Civil war is gonna start. We get. We don't have to make new uniforms. Dust out those fucking woolen gray suits. And maybe that's. Why am I yelling? Maybe when we do the new war or the old war again, it's gonna be the same states. Let's not kid ourselves. Look at the fucking electoral map and look at the Civil War. And within one or two states, it's exactly the same. So let's have the war. But you can only use the muskets and the cannons. That's it. And you have to wear the uniforms and all. Everyone has to have lice and syphilis and you got to sleep in like canvas tents that weigh like 150 pounds each. None of this new camping shit. No cell phones. And, and, and it'd be great cuz I. Ken Burns. Ken Burns can actually be at something for a change. He doesn't have to dust off some old photos. He can take the photos himself of the new Civil War. Wolf Blitzer will be embedded with the Union side, and Tucker Carlson will be embedded with the Confederates. And there'll be drone shots like the media can cover. Cover it in real time, but the fighting has to be done with muskets. I like it. Anyway. All right. I watched the Pee Wee Herman documentary and oh my God, if you haven't seen it, it's amazing. I loved Pee Wee Herman. He was so magic. He was so silly and fun and yet at the same time such a pro, such an incredibly gifted character actor. And. And it was just so, such a shame because, like, you see the documentary and he was gay. Obviously he was gay. And he came out of the closet before he became Pee Wee and then he went back in when he became Pee Wee. And if he had just stayed out of the closet, they wouldn't have been able to make such a big deal out of him being in a gay movie theater. Cuz it's like, well, where else do you go? If you're a gay guy in the 80s, you're gonna go to a gay movie theater, a legal theater. I mean, is it legal to jerk off in the theater? No, but is it. Is it legal to fart in an elevator like you do? You shouldn't, but you do. We used to go to those theaters. Not the gay ones, but we used to go to the porn theaters. And in Chinatown. Not Chinatown, in Times Square. When we were teenagers, they were gross. We wouldn't sit down, but we'd walk in and stand in the back and look at the porn. And we'd go to the Chinese in Times Square. They had these Chinese shops where you could buy fake IDs. Man, they were so bad. But back then, anybody would take a fake ID literally. I had a Pennsylvania ID where they spelled Pennsylvania with one N. It was spelled wrong, but it had my picture and it had the right date. And I used to get into bars with it, you know? Used to go. There was a bodega downtown in Tarrytown, down in the projects. There was these, like, Colombian delis. And I'd go in there with my fake id. I had a moped with a big basket on it, and I'd get a case of Budweiser, and I throw it in the basket, drive it back up to the high school behind the bleachers. And we would drink. We were fucking 14 years old. I looked 11. I looked so young. When I was a teenager. We get. We get whippets from the Chinese shop and White Plains. I forget what it was called, but we would get whippets. You know, this little. What is it? Nitrous oxide? Whippets. Yeah. And then we get all our. The Chinese gave us all the fun stuff, all the fireworks. Happy fourth of July, by the way. I don't know if you. We. We used to. We used to drive down to Chinatown, and then they'd have guys, like, pop their trunks, and you'd buy. Not just firecrackers and rockets, but, like, M80s and blockbusters. And M80 is an eighth of a stick of dynamite. We used to fucking. We used to take those orange traffic cones and we put one under there, and it would shoot it like a mile into the sky. It was insane. And we blow up mailboxes because that's what you do. Fourth of July, Independence Day, independence from England. No more stamp tax. That's why we blow up the mailbox. It's symbolic. And one kid blew off his thumb when we were growing Up. Blew off his thumb at, like, 14. Never got to jerk off again. Maybe he went lefty. I guess he could. He could switch it up, but that feels gay. That might feel like. Not your hand, if it's the wrong hand. I don't know. Um, anyway, let's get to it. Uh, got shows coming up. Batavia, Illinois, which is about an hour west of Chicago. The Comedy Vault, July 25th and 26th. Pottstown, Pennsylvania. Souljols, July 31st. Point Pleasant, New Jersey. Uncle Vinny's. August 1st and 2nd. Then I'm coming to the LA. Just announcing I'll be at the Comedy Store in the. In the. What's that room in the attic? The. The belly room. I'm gonna just do one special show there for fun. August 16th. Then I'll be in La Jolla in August. Denver, Connecticut. Vegas, Chicago, San Francisco. Go to fitzdog.com, get some tickets to an upcoming show. All right. My guest today, he is. He started out. He got his first writing job when he was like 20 on that show Fridays that had Kramer on it. Michael Richards was on it, and Larry David was on it. So then Larry brought him on to work on Seinfeld. And then he. He was one of the original writers for the first five seasons. And then he went over to Curb youb Enthusiasm and he wrote. I think he later directed. He directed all of the. Not all of, but a lot of the Entourage here, I think. No, he was the showrunner on Entourage. And then I think he directed. Then he came back and directed on Kerr. We talk about all of it, but he's just a powerhouse and such a great dude. We're connected. Feel like I made a new friend. Which is one of the best parts about this podcast, is meeting somebody new and who you're just, you know, so in awe of. And then you realize they're just a. Just a good dude, you know, it's like me. I'm sure a lot of people feel like that when they meet me. Just a good dude. All right, here is my interview with the great Larry Charles. Larry Charles is my guest. He is just talking about his house being burnt down.

[Ryan Reynolds]

That's right.

[Larry Charles]

Which. Not by the fire. It was his ex wife, actually, which, you know, a lot of people.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Lost house. How close that is to the truth.

[Larry Charles]

But she's a hellfire. She just came.

[Ryan Reynolds]

She curse us.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah, but losing everything is.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Greg made that up, by the way.

[Larry Charles]

No, I did make that up. Yes.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Because I'm still paying Alan. I don't want to, like, create.

[Larry Charles]

I've Gotten a lot of my guests in trouble over the years.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Good.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah. Just. Just ask David Feldman. Do you know David Feldman?

[Ryan Reynolds]

I know who he is. I don't know.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah, he's a great writer, but I just lost my computer. Crashed and I lost everything on it. You know, you really. It's all your most current. But then, you know, like, today, I'm just like, you know what? How much did that really fucking matter in the end, you know?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Well, right here. Here I am. I mean, I don't have a house. I lost a lot of stuff, but I'm here. I'm talking to you. Everything is okay.

[Larry Charles]

Right.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I feel very lucky, weirdly enough.

[Larry Charles]

Do you feel lucky in general, or is that.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I might be delusional?

[Larry Charles]

Yeah, you're a little bit delusional.

[Ryan Reynolds]

But, I mean, I do feel lucky. I do feel lucky in general. Yes. I talk about that a lot in the book.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

There's a lot of synchronicities and a lot of luck involved. And me being here today, well, I feel.

[Larry Charles]

It feels like that's your microcosm and your. And your macrocosm. I think you feel like you're in your directing. It sounds very much like you live. It's funny that you. You connected with Rick Rubin, because immediately I thought of him when I started reading your book, in the sense that you are facilitators more than necessarily always generating the content.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Right, right. Although I do generate a lot of content. But that's the stuff. It's interesting. You know, you're judged as. You know, you're judged by your body of work that's produced.

[Larry Charles]

Right.

[Ryan Reynolds]

But how much of your. So much of my stuff. I've written dozens, dozens of screenplays that haven't been produced that I feel reflect me in some ways even more than the stuff that I. That's been produced. But I will be judged based on the stuff that is produced. So who am I based on? Perception. You know, that's an interesting kind of dichotomy that I have to live with. So I do. I am a facilitator of a lot of the stuff that's been produced, but I'm also a generator of a lot of stuff. But just people haven't seen a lot of that.

[Larry Charles]

Well, I guess. I mean, the distinction is when you start directing, it's more so letting it happen. And I guess Curb especially was your education into directing, which was like, okay, they're gonna improvise. You're gonna have to. The cameras are gonna have to find the action sometimes.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah. Well, and also, though you want to, I had the good fortune of being so close that I executive produced the show for a few years, and I would sort of help him with those stories. So I had a sense of where the stories were gonna go. Yeah, I kind of had a sense of where I wanted to push that comedy, where those lines were, you know, so there was more. It was a very immediate kind of spontaneous activity, which I really enjoyed, as opposed to, like, storyboards and knowing exactly what the shot's gonna be and what you're trying to accomplish. I like the idea as a director of not knowing what's going to happen, which is not always, like, what people think of when they think of directing.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah. And I guess it's, you know, it's a. It's a life philosophy as well. Like, you made some. You made some jumps in your career, which were based on gut as well. I mean, here you are on Seinfeld with a job that was paying, I'm sure, by most people's standards, an extraordinary amount of money every week. It's also pedigree. It's also, you know, all the perks that come with being a producer on a big show. Yeah, and then you fucking left it.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Larry Charles]

You know, you walked away. And then you walked away from Curb to work on Entourage.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Larry Charles]

And then you left Entourage to come back to Curb as a director. And each time you did that, it was a leap of faith, because in this business, that could be your last gig every time.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You know, the thing was, for me, first of all, I never thought of myself as having a career. Like, I always thought I just want to do cool things, and these are the cool things I wound up doing. Yeah. And the second thing is, I didn't really. I felt like I didn't get into this business for security.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

It's like I could have stayed on Seinfeld. I could have stayed with Curb. If I had done those things, I wouldn't have done Borat, or I wouldn't have done, you know, the Bob Dylan movie. There are things that it just. I never thought of myself as, like, having job security in show business. It seems like an absurd kind of equation, you know? So I was very comfortable gambling, rolling the dice, taking the risk, and seeing what would happen at a certain point, because I had already failed enough and survived those failures and also learned from people like Bob Dylan and Larry David that you can survive and thrive from failure, that failure is part of the success equation, that it didn't scare me to take risks and see what would happen if I felt it. I trusted that instinct.

[Larry Charles]

Feels like the lesson you got from them as well is you'll continue as long as you follow your vision of what your next creative thing should be, as opposed to trying to write to the network executives and figure out what they want, which never works.

[Ryan Reynolds]

No, no. I mean, that's one of the. I learned a lot from Larry David and Bob Dylan, but Larry David particularly, because I met him when I was still, like, I was 22 when I met him. And on Fridays, the show that we did, that Michael Richards was on also. And he kind of just taught me. I say this in the book. He taught me how to be a man, really. You know, he taught me about integrity and discipline and craft, you know, And I really learned those lessons. I absorbed those lessons, and I've applied that in my life, both behind the scenes and in front of the scenes. So it's like. It's an important thing to trust your instincts if you're going to try to be a, quote, artist, you know.

[Larry Charles]

Well, yeah, just a tv. I think it's become more art than it was. I mean, if you go back to when you were doing Fridays, I mean, the typical sitcom was extremely formulaic.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yes.

[Larry Charles]

There was. Nobody was pushing boundaries. And HBO came in and did that with dramas and comedies. And so, you guys, Fridays was way ahead of its time. It was way edgier than SNL at that time.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yes.

[Larry Charles]

And there's a great scene you talk about in the book, where the show was live, was Friday nights. Was it an hour or an hour and a half?

[Ryan Reynolds]

It started as an hour and a half, and I think it got cut back to an hour.

[Larry Charles]

So here you are with all this real estate that you're filling up with that week's work. I mean, you're not. It's not like you've got. You're going every week, so it's not like you've got a month's worth, right?

[Ryan Reynolds]

You gotta produce.

[Larry Charles]

You gotta produce. And so you come in and you put these sketches together, and the show is doing okay, but it's a battle. And then Andy Kaufman comes in, right? And he stops. He breaks the fourth wall in the middle of a sketch and starts saying, I'm not gonna do this. And at first, the other actors are trying to go with it, and they're laughing. And by the end, the crew doesn't even know what to do. And people are looking at each other and. And it was a brilliant. It was what he did.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Larry Charles]

And the craziest fucking thing is if you think your phone's not listening to you. I'm telling my wife about this scene in the book. The next day, that scene gets fed to me on my Instagram Live videos.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Wow, that is weird. Well, that is true. I mean, that's an experience that I've had as well. The phone is listening. It's quite. It's quite pervasive.

[Larry Charles]

So at the time when that happened.

[Ryan Reynolds]

We are our own big brother now, essentially.

[Larry Charles]

Well, yeah, because George Orwell said in 1984 that the government was going to take our privacy and our information. What he didn't know was that 75 years later, we were going to offer it to them.

[Ryan Reynolds]

That's right.

[Larry Charles]

We were going to just donate it.

[Ryan Reynolds]

All to carry it all in their pockets.

[Larry Charles]

Right, right. So at the moment that Michael Richards went rogue, what was the sense from you guys on the stage? Did you know at that moment that this is great tv or were you kind of panicked?

[Ryan Reynolds]

No, there was no panic at all. The writers actually knew that he was going to do something. Yeah, the writers were privy to that. Jack Burns, the producer, was privy to it. But beyond that, beyond knowing that he was going to do something, it was going to be. I mean, we had the deepest respect for Andy. He was a conceptual artist who. He was a performance artist who happened to work in nightclubs rather than art galleries. So we knew he wasn't worried about getting a bad response or people booing or people getting upset. That's kind of. He wanted to know what happens beyond the laugh. He was, like, exploring this netherworld beyond laughter. You know, it was really interesting experiment, and so we found it fascinating. Not necessarily funny, like in a kind of traditional way, but as a piece of television and also taking advantage. Live TV is so well planned and well organized. Every moment is really planned. So there's very little spontaneity on live tv, even though it's live, you know, like we're having a spontaneous conversation. But that's unusual, you know, on a talk show. They know the questions, they know the answers. Our producers come and talk to somebody about what they're going to be discussing. They know how long the segment's going to be. You know, this was breaking free of all of those constraints. We didn't know what was going to happen, how long it was going to take, what anybody was going to say. And we weren't really. We didn't have expectations of what's going to go this way or going to go that way. It just went the way it went, you know?

[Larry Charles]

Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah. So it was a very liberating moment in television and certainly for the show.

[Larry Charles]

And what's funny about Larry David is like, here's this guy who came up as a stand up and just my opinion, was never a really good stand up comedian. He just, he disliked the crowd. If he didn't like them, he'd walk off stage.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Right. I've seen him spit at this audience. I've seen him throw down the microphone and storm off the stage.

[Larry Charles]

Right.

[Ryan Reynolds]

So, you know, very Johnny Rotten like stuff.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah. Which stand up comedy has flavors of punk rock, but it's ultimately, it really is more of a trade than an art. I mean, you're there to entertain that crowd. They paid money, they got babysitters, they valet parked and you gotta give them a fucking show.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah. He was never comfortable with that before. I think now he's kind of like eased into finally that idea of giving the audience some laughs. He really didn't care about that earlier on in his comedy days.

[Larry Charles]

And it's funny cause New York at that time, because I would see him, I grew up in New York and I would go to all the clubs as a teenager on the weekends.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Sure.

[Larry Charles]

And I would see Belzer and Richard Lewis and Seinfeld and these guys were really buttoned down. Seinfeld. I would see him, his hand was in the same spot on the moose bit every time. It was choreographed, it was tight. And then Larry would come up and I never saw him walk off stage, but I definitely saw him mail it in when he didn't like it.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You could see him turn off if he didn't get the laugh that he. Sometimes he would get a laugh.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

But it wasn't the laugh he wanted. And that you could see him sort of turn off at that point.

[Larry Charles]

It was the wrong laugh.

[Ryan Reynolds]

It was the wrong laugh.

[Larry Charles]

Hilarious. Now, did you ever dabble in stand up because your father was a comedian?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, my father was a failed comedian.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

His stage name was Psycho the Exotic Neurotic. And he came out of World War II and that's. He tried that for a while. I did do stand up. I tried it and I had good material.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

But I learned that the best comedians are the people that could be the best versions of themselves on stage. And I just couldn't get to that point that I felt I was myself or the Persona that I was trying to project on stage. But I had good material. So that's when I started writing, sort of selling those jokes. Right.

[Larry Charles]

Right now I don't. Maybe I Shouldn't ask because it's sort of like, conspicuous in its absence. Is your childhood in this book?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Well, that's a good question. I wrote the original draft of this book was about 1100 pages.

[Larry Charles]

No shit?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Oh, yeah. Because I didn't know if I could write a book.

[Larry Charles]

Were you on Ritalin or something?

[Ryan Reynolds]

No, no. I just. I'm a disciplined writer at this point in my life. You know, I could write every day and produce. You know, I've been living with deadlines for the last 40 years.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah, but a book has no deadline.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Well, I felt like I wanted to make sure I could do it. I really felt like, wow, I don't know if I could write a whole book. So I started writing, and by the time I got to the end of my childhood stuff, I was 500 pages in. So the whole book was like 1000 or 1100 pages. And the editors and my agents all loved it, but they said, we can't publish a thousand page book. So it's like, well, what do you do at that point? Do you try to, like, cut down each chapter? And I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to sanitize it or clean it up. I liked it the way it was. So we made the decision to cut it in half. And so it starts with my career basically on Fridays and goes there. And so the second book, which will come out at some point, is going.

[Larry Charles]

To be from childhood. I'm so glad, because you're kind of haunted when you're reading it, being like. Because you mentioned your father just a few times, but when you talk about him, it's not positive.

[Ryan Reynolds]

No, no. And he's much more of a figure, obviously, in the first half of the book, right? Yeah. No, my father was kind of competitive with me. He was. He didn't encourage me, but he exposed me.

[Larry Charles]

Right.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You know, he went to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts on the GI Bill. Really? Yeah. And he. So he tried acting as well, and that didn't work out either. So that by the time I was born, he was out of show business, but he still had friends who were in show business. Jason Robards had been his teacher, if you remember Jason Robards. And he had a lot of guys who weren't actors anymore, but were now, like, lighting directors on variety shows and stuff. And a lot of that was still done in New York. So he would take me to especially. My main memory is going to the Ed Sullivan rehearsals because he was friends with the stage manager of the Ed Sullivan Show. So we Would go, like on a Saturday, not the Sunday when the show was being done, but the Saturday dress rehearsal. And I was, like, stunned, you know, as a kid, like to watch how a show was done. And he really exposed me to that stuff. And, you know, he was more concerned, you know, not so much about math or science, but like that. I memorized the dialogue from White Heat, you know, interesting things like that. He would like. He would always, like, kind of quiz me on that kind of stuff.

[Larry Charles]

Did you do it with the Cagney accent?

[Ryan Reynolds]

He did it. He was. My father was on all the time, so I was like his main audience, you know, So I was very exposed at a very early age. And so he really did. He didn't encourage me, but he exposed me. And then when I decided that I was going to do this, he kind of, like, shut down a little bit. And he did give me a couple of pieces of advice. He did tell me, for instance, if you have a second, I'll tell you a quick story.

[Larry Charles]

He.

[Ryan Reynolds]

A guy In World War II, he was in the occupation forces, and he did stand up for, like, the troops and stuff, you know, his troop or whatever.

[Larry Charles]

Captive audience.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Captive audience. And he had this guy write material for him, a guy named Stan Burns. Stan Burns went on to be a very well known, very successful TV writer. Wrote for Get Smart, the Carol Burnett show, the Tonight Show. He really made the rounds. He was a freelance comedy writer, which. And that I. I thought maybe that's what I would do.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah. So he said, did he write for Woody Allen also?

[Ryan Reynolds]

He may have worked for Woody Allen, you know, and he did a lot of stuff, a lot of credits. And so he had a show called Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp, you know, I mean, he. He had like. All. Because I used to follow his career because he was a friend of my dad's. So my father said, you go out to California, call Stan Burns, you know. And I'm like, you know, really? And I went out to California and just one day I opened the phone book. Because we still had phone books then.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah. Paper, Internet.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yes. And there was. He was listed, you know, San Burns was listed in Woodland Hills. So I called him Coles. And I said, hey, I'm Lefty's son. And my father was known as Lefty, you know. And he remembered, you know, from the army. And he wrote material for him and. And he was, like, really nice and really excited. He said, why don't you meet me? We'll go to Dupars, I'll buy you breakfast. We'll Talk, you know. And I met him at Dupars. He was the sweetest guy. He was working for the Dean Martin Celebrity Roast at the time.

[Larry Charles]

Wow.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And he said, write some jokes. Write some jokes and maybe we'll use them on the show. So I started. And I was maybe 18 at that point, and I started writing some jokes. I'd meet him, like, once every couple of weeks, have breakfast, give him some jokes. Some of those jokes wound up on the show, which was really encouraging. And we did this for, like, six months. And then one day I met him at Dupars, and he said, larry, I gotta tell you something. And I was like, what? He's like, I have no idea who your father is. And I was like, what? And he was like, you know, I've been racking my brains. I've been racking my brains since you called. You seem like a nice kid. You're talented.

[Larry Charles]

I didn't want to, you know, break down your buddy.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, yeah. But I don't remember your dad.

[Larry Charles]

And at that point, you realized you could call any guy in the industry.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Exactly. But I never told my father.

[Larry Charles]

Oh, my God. So the one good contact Chris gave you wasn't even really a contact.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Right, Exactly.

[Larry Charles]

Oh, my God, that's great. Why'd they call him. You never want a dad named after a boxer.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Right. He was like, my father was a lefty when you weren't supposed to be a lefty.

[Larry Charles]

Okay.

[Ryan Reynolds]

So they kept on trying to make him into. It would, like, hit him. They tried to make him into a. A righty.

[Larry Charles]

It was the gay of the 50s.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yes, exactly. Exactly. That's true. And so he was. He was called lefty by everybody. His family. Everybody called him lefty.

[Larry Charles]

That's hilarious.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Larry Charles]

So going back to. I mean, the way this book is written, it's interesting. And I know you love Bob Dylan. You work with Bob Dylan. Because his book Chronicles, which I loved, was just snapshots. It wasn't chronological. It was just like, chapter about Charlie Daniels. You're like, right, right, right. He loved Charlie Daniels. Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

He talk about, follow your instincts. I mean, he won't think twice not to quote one of his songs, you know, about what he feels like expressing himself about.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You know, if he feels it, he does it.

[Larry Charles]

Right.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And he will accept the consequences. Or he doesn't really care about the consequences. Yeah, yeah.

[Larry Charles]

Which has led to some flops. It's led to things that are transcendent. Mostly the latter.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah. But he's had. And it's true, and it is A life lesson. He's had public humiliations. Major public. I mean, he's been born again. He's been extremely Jewish at one point. He's done Victoria's Secrets commercials. He's done so much weird stuff. But he survived, transcended it all, and is maybe more popular now than ever.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah. Yeah. So glad this movie came out, because, I mean, my kids got into him from Big Lebowski. He's got that great song from Big.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Lebowski, the Man and Me.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah. And they just. And I had been pushing Bob Dylan on him since they were kids, but you can't play Bob Dylan for anybody under the age of 16.

[Ryan Reynolds]

They just don't.

[Larry Charles]

They don't get it. You know, maybe Subterranean Homesick Blues or something like, you know, catchy, but. But it wasn't until they heard that song, and then they started kind of going in, and now they're both Dylan fanatics. It's just like. It takes time, but.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And there's so much stuff to wade through. I mean, he's got so much material, you know, so, like, it's like an art. It's like Picasso. There are different periods, you know, you can get into this period or that period, an acoustic period, a bluesy period, more rock and roll. He got into this very cheesy period. He got into the gospel stuff. Yeah. So there's a lot to choose from. Actually.

[Larry Charles]

We flew out Tulsa last year to go to the museum when it opened.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, I've been there.

[Larry Charles]

Have you been there?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, we showed my Bob Dylan movie we showed there.

[Larry Charles]

Did you really?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, yeah. So that was. It was just at the opening of it, actually. Yeah.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah. If people don't know, Tulsa, Oklahoma, first of all, is a very cool town.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yes.

[Larry Charles]

It's got. Well, obviously, the Woody Guthrie Museum is attached to the Bob Dillon one. And then you've got. Leon Russell's got this recording studio called the Church there that you can take a tour of.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah. Kane's Ballroom. Did you get to that? That's. That's a great venue for live music. The Oral Roberts University is there. I don't know if she said that.

[Larry Charles]

That's right.

[Ryan Reynolds]

The Big Hands. It's very strange, but it's a. It's a really interesting town. And the Tulsa Massacre, also.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah, we went to that museum.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, that was heavy. It's a fascinating.

[Larry Charles]

I went to it with my friends Black, and we walked in to buy the tickets, and then he said to the ticket taker, is there a different entrance for him?

[Ryan Reynolds]

And they said, yes, of course they did.

[Larry Charles]

They were all black. Everybody that worked there was black. They laughed their asses off. And then we saw Springsteen there. Then we got this beautiful arena.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Wow.

[Larry Charles]

And you know, it's Tulsa. So, like, we had the nosebleed seats, and by the end we're standing four feet from the stage. But. So let's talk about the movie a little bit.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yes.

[Larry Charles]

It's misunderstood, I think is probably a good way of describing it. In some ways. I wish I could have seen the 3 1/2 hour version. I saw the hour and 40. I guess they made you turn it in at 100 minutes or something.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yes, that's right. We had a screening which was a poorly conceived screening. It was a screening of the three and a half hour version.

[Larry Charles]

This was at Sundance?

[Ryan Reynolds]

No, this is before Sundance. It got into Sundance right away. But that was later when it was already cut down. No, we showed it first. The three and a half hour version for what kind of people? A group of agents in suits after work in a UN air conditioned room. And they were like dying to get out. And they were like, this movie has no commercial potential whatsoever. You know. And so I was like, well, I don't care what they say, you know, it doesn't matter to me. You know, it's like, this movie's not made for them. And then they showed me the contract that I had signed which said you had to deliver 110 minute version.

[Larry Charles]

Right.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And so I had to cut it down. They gave me a great editor, Pietro Scalia, who had won Oscars with Bertolucci and Oliver Stone. And he was a good editor. But the movie changed from being this kind of much more comedic pageantry with a lot more music, to being a much more somber movie, actually. And so it was inevitable that it would be misunderstood. But people have. He doesn't care about that. That's one of the great conversations I had with Bob Dylan was he came one day, we were writing and he had a line. That's what the line was. I'm not a pig without a wig. And I was like, look, Bob, I reached the point where I could talk to him like that also. I was like, bob, no one's gonna, you know. You know, even in a movie like this.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

This kind of surreal, weird movie. No one's gonna understand that line.

[Larry Charles]

Right.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And he said, what's so bad about being misunderstood? And I was like, wow, man. Okay. You know. And he wound up not using it in the movie, but using it in one of his songs called High Water, which is A great song, but it even jumps out in that song in such a weird line. So he wasn't worried about. He's been understood. He's interested in what happens. Like Andy Kaufman, in a way, once you're misunderstood. Like what communication takes place by misunderstanding. You know, not knowing what people are meaning.

[Larry Charles]

Right.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You know, that's a kind of an important thing for him. He's always looking for the question, beyond the question.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah, you're right. And it seems like he's admittedly. Like, his lyrics don't always mean something.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Correct.

[Larry Charles]

Sometimes he's just sort of, you know, he's channeling some, you know, verse. I mean, it's like. I know Rambeau was like, a big influence of his. You know, a lot of it is just. It's meter and it's feel and its color. And it's also.

[Ryan Reynolds]

If I may, it's also like William Burroughs. William Burroughs pioneered a thing called the cutup technique, where he would take text from, like, one book and a magazine, and he would put it together, even if it was juxtaposed, and make it into some sort of coherent thing. And Bob. That's a very Beat Generation kind of practice. And Bob was very influenced by that stuff, too. So he takes scraps of different ideas that he's had, and he will kind of synthesize them into some sort of new idea, you know?

[Larry Charles]

Yeah. It's so funny. His music's probably. I mean, this college course is at Harvard about Bob Dylan's lyrics. Like, he would be the first one to go, like, cut the shit. It's not a class feel. What you're gonna feel, experience it.

[Ryan Reynolds]

But as a fan, you could see it. You know, there is some brilliant imagery, of course, brilliant language being used, and it's very singular. There's nobody really to compare it to.

[Larry Charles]

No, no. I mean, Joni Mitchell. I know. That's one of the things I took away from the Bob Dylan Museum is that there's one. If you've never been there, people go check it out. It's two floors, it's interactive. There's a jukebox where you can pick the songs. And it's got. You know, you walk in and there's Roseanne Cash singing. What is that song? Girl from the Country.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Girl from North.

[Larry Charles]

Country Girl from North Country. It's just like a meme. It's the first thing you see, and you're, like, in tears. But Joni Mitchell felt cheated by Bob Dylan. She felt like. Well, Joan Baez did as well. But Joni Mitchell felt Like she was.

[Ryan Reynolds]

As he cheated on Joan Baez.

[Larry Charles]

Right, right, right. But Joni felt that she was as prolific and as profound and as talented as Bus, certainly had a better voice and that sort of. She always felt like she had to live in his shadow.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, well, there are people who kind of lived in the shadow. There's also. I mean, Leonard Cohen, who was brilliant as well, also was kind of, like, overshadowed to some degree. John Prine. What was his name? Phil Oakes was a very big folk singer before. There was a lot of big folk singers before Bob came along who kind of got eclipsed because they just couldn't keep up the. You know, he was also ready to evolve. Bob, while they were very pure about their folk singing, he plugged in, he did electric. He did a lot of things that. Because he didn't care what the audience thought, really, which was a kind of a key to his success in a weird way. He was kind of not caring, you know?

[Larry Charles]

Right, right. Yeah. And also the way you talk about how we would interact with people when they'd ask him the same trite questions and he would just go, I don't know. How do you feel?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, yeah. It just throws people off so much, you know. How do you feel?

[Larry Charles]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I do that all the time.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

So also you say, I don't remember.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah, right, right.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Dismiss it that way.

[Larry Charles]

Right, right. So you say at the end of the chapter on him, the last. The last line of the chapter is, bob Dylan doesn't have friends. But I amused him for a while.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Right?

[Larry Charles]

Yeah. Is that. But it seems like the one guy, maybe that's the exception is his manager, who he.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Jessica.

[Larry Charles]

Jeff. He talks to.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Well, Jeff, I think, has finally retired, actually. And Jeff was maybe the closest person in his life. I still wouldn't necessarily say. And I'd be curious how Jeff would characterize it. I don't know that you could call him a friend. He was a confidant.

[Larry Charles]

He was on the payroll.

[Ryan Reynolds]

He was on the payroll. And so he was there, like, 247 for Bob. If Bob was in Norway at 4 o' clock in the morning and felt like talking, he could call Jeff. And Jeff had to be there. Jeff was always on call, and he was always there for Bob. And he was smart enough and eloquent enough and an articulate enough and literary enough person that he could talk with Bob and keep Bob interested and, you know, like, tolerant of Bob's indulgences, you know. But if you look at Bob's.

[Larry Charles]

Can I be that guy? For you.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Sure. Let's hang out. Of course.

[Larry Charles]

You saw how quick I answered the phone when you called me.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yes. No, it was great, man. I appreciate it so much.

[Larry Charles]

He.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I don't think that he really has friends in that kind of classic sense. He's not like a guy that goes, hey, how you doing? You know, he's not like a small talk kind of person, you know, but. And he's had very few collaborators also.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And so that's why I feel so lucky. I actually collaborated and made something with Bob Dylan. Not just one song like Sam Shepard did, who I admire immensely, or Jacques Levy, who did the album Desire with him and co wrote a lot of his big songs from that album. Like Hurricane. No, I actually wrote a movie with this guy and shot the movie. And it exists.

[Larry Charles]

Although the funny thing is it started as a sitcom and it started as the best part.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah. So I spent two years like in a room, in a cubicle.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

A Plexiglas cubicle in a boxing gym. That's what we wrote. And he was chain smoking. Like I was as far from him as you. And we were surrounded by the cubicle and he would be chain smoking. I wasn't smoking at that time. And the room would just fill up with smoke. And we were there for like 12 hours and he could keep going. He was amazing. So I had that experience. So I think once that was over, it wasn't like, hey, I'll call you next Tuesday, we'll get lunch. He's not that kind of guy.

[Larry Charles]

How do you think that translates to him as a parent? Because the funniest thing I ever heard was like, Jacob Dylan was. Yeah, his son was in a. Starting up in a little high school band. And he's out in the garage and he's jamming and they're making a lot of noise and Bob opens up the door and he goes, hey, keep it down out here. And then. And then this. And then Jacob goes, dad, you don't understand. And he goes, I'm Bob Dylan, I understand.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah. I think it must be a tremendous burden to be his child. Particularly like Jacob being a musician. I got very friendly with Jesse. In fact, if I was going to be friends with any of the Dylan's, I became friends with Jesse, his oldest son, who was my age. And you know, we hung out actually a lot. And we, you know, when I was married to my first wife, he was married to his wife at that time. And we would go out to dinner, we would hang out and he was like a person you could hang out with. He was a great photographer also, but so I think the burden of being Bob's children, by the time they became adults, they kind of figured it out. And then he's got a second set of kids as well.

[Larry Charles]

That's right, yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

So I don't know.

[Larry Charles]

And grandkids that he's very involved in.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Grandkids, yeah. So I think he's probably mellowed out a bit and maybe he's finally enjoying that aspect of life a little bit.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah. I have a friend who goes to school with his grandkids there. His kids go to school, his grandkids, and he's. He's like. At all the games.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Larry Charles]

You know, sometimes people are better grandparents than they are parents.

[Ryan Reynolds]

That's true.

[Larry Charles]

Their life slows down.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Trying to figure that out myself.

[Larry Charles]

You got grandkids, then?

[Ryan Reynolds]

I have two grandchildren.

[Larry Charles]

Oh, how old are they?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Seven and five. Yeah. Yeah.

[Larry Charles]

That's pretty sweet.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah. I was a little more impatient when my own kids around that age because I was so hungry and ambitious and unhappy, you know. But I have a great relationship with them now. But the grandchildren are very special, obviously.

[Larry Charles]

Was there a time when you had to sort of fight your way back into that relationship with them?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Well, you know, yes, around the time. Not so much fight my way back in, but there's certainly. I created a chasm by getting divorced, and it was something I dreaded, something I really, you know, I needed to do, but I was afraid to do and I didn't want to hurt them. And I remember my parents getting divorced and how devastating it was for me. And I kind of swore I would never do the things my father did, and there I was doing exactly what he had done. And so that was rough for me to sort of, you know, deal with them during that time, but I made it kind of a priority and wanted to make sure I bonded with all of them. And now I'm really tight with all my adult children. And they are adults at this point.

[Larry Charles]

And they're in la, all of them.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Except for my son is in dc, actually. He works for Ralph Nader.

[Larry Charles]

Really?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah. Very weird gig, but he's like a saint. Ralph Nader, but a pain in the ass at the same time.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah, that's what I've heard.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah. He doesn't use a computer. He doesn't use a cell phone.

[Larry Charles]

Oh, my God.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You know, he's somebody like that. But he's been, again, a very pure person as far as his politics are concerned.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah. My brother used to work for him when it was Nyperg.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Right, right, right.

[Larry Charles]

But so what would you just. I want to get back to Bob Dylan because I feel like I've never talked to somebody who had as much exposure to Bob Dylan before. Greatest Bob Dylan song.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Well, that is such a hard question. I personally. The song that popped into my head just now when you said that is a song that most people don't know. It's from the. It's from one of. It's from Biograph. Biograph was like a collection of sort of bootleg songs, and it's called Angelina. And I wanted to use it in the movie, and we couldn't find a place for it. And I finally had somebody just do an instrumental version of it, and it's kind of like. Plays through the end of the movie. It's like a hauntingly, achingly beautiful song. It's kind of a love song, but it's also very political at the same time. And again, he juxtaposes these things so well. So that's one song I would pop out, but I mean, you know, it's all over now. Baby Blue is a song that I love. You know, I could go back. I, like most people will get into a kind of a certain mood that a Bob Dylan's song or period. I could go. I love Lenny Bruce. He did a song called Lenny Bruce from Shot of Love. I like this new album, or it's maybe it's two albums ago now called Rough and Rowdy Ways.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Which has the. Is that the. Is that the one with. With the. The Kennedy song?

[Larry Charles]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Oh, my God. Like that song, that 18 minute chronicle video of it. I've seen the video. It's. That song made me cry the first time I heard it.

[Larry Charles]

Everybody says that.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, Yeah. I mean, so there's so many to choose from. That's the great thing about his body.

[Larry Charles]

Of work, because obviously, like a Rolling Stone. Only because Griel Marcus wrote that.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Incredible. Yeah. Also great.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah. I mean, to write a book, to be such a great artist that one of the most respected rock critics of all time writes a long book about one of your songs.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yes, yes.

[Larry Charles]

And it talks about how that snare drum hit at the beginning is the most iconic drum hit in history.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah. Well, there's great stories around even that song with Al Cooper just showing up and he sat down at the organ and you hear that organ in the song. It's such a iconic organ riff, you know, but it was kind of just made up there.

[Larry Charles]

It wasn't part of the song.

[Ryan Reynolds]

No, right, exactly. It wasn't part of the song. And he was there and sat down and just started doing it. And it became like such a crucial part of the song.

[Larry Charles]

You know, it's like Freebird wasn't originally. Didn't originally have that piano in it.

[Ryan Reynolds]

That's a break.

[Larry Charles]

And I forget who the pianist was. He sat down, he put that in and it made the song.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And he wasn't always the best judge, in my opinion of his music. Bob, he often. This is why his bootleg albums are so great. Because he often didn't put fantastic songs on the record. He would leave those songs off, or he would leave off much better versions of the songs that he would put on the record. You know, so that's. You have to kind of almost explore the. The bootleg tapes which have come out over the years now officially, because that music is also. It's like a whole second. It's like Bob, you know, I guess Bruce Springsteen just put out like a kind of a 73 song set or something like that. Bob has all the. So many songs.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And he. And they come from so many different places.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And they're all him, but very different versions of him.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah, yeah. So the movie we should talk about, what's it called?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Master and Master, Anonymous.

[Larry Charles]

Master Anonymous had the most insane cast. He got Jeff Bridges in there. John Goodman.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Penelope Cruz. Penelope Cruz, Jessica Lange.

[Larry Charles]

I mean, it was insane. And I know that nobody was making money on this. Everybody did it out of the love of Bob Dylan.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Even with all those people, we still couldn't get the money to make the movie. I mean, that movie was made for $4 million. We had a 20 day shooting schedule, which was unreal that we were able to get the movie made.

[Larry Charles]

Ye.

[Ryan Reynolds]

So Mickey Rourke was in it. Ed Harris, Cheech Marin was in it. Luke Wilson. Yeah, I mean, they're all. All really good.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

But we could not get the money, even with that cast to make that movie. That's how weird the script was.

[Larry Charles]

Well, it's weird, but it's also, you know, it does have a traditional three act structure.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yes, it does.

[Larry Charles]

And it's like, you know, it moves. I mean, it's like there are monologues in it. Like that kid sitting in the back of the bus talking about Giovanni Ribisi, how he killed his own village. I mean, there's some amazing monologues, but you can't look away. I mean, you can't look away from this movie. It may not, you know, it may not answer what most movies Give you. But it's worth seeing. You can see it on YouTube. I don't know where else you can.

[Ryan Reynolds]

See it, but it's been on Amazon and Tubi and all that kind of stuff. I don't know where it is right now.

[Larry Charles]

I couldn't find it anywhere but YouTube. But it's kind of a brainy version, but that's fine. Was it hard to shoot around Bob's acting? Because he had never really acted before.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Bob's. You know, Bob is all about Persona.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And so he was fantastic. He was. To me, he was like Clint Eastwood or something, you know, but he didn't have any experience, like blocking in. Blocking a scene or hitting his marks. So what I would do for that, first, I had Jeff Bridges kind of work with him. Jeff Bridges, very generous, very sweet person. And he. And I said to him, look, you're like the thespian, you know, and you've been on set since you're four years old.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You know, help, you know, improvise with him. You know, loosen him up, get him used to the idea of, you know, acting.

[Larry Charles]

Right.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Basically. And. Because he would come to me first, Bob, and he's like, I want to do an accent in this movie. It's like, don't you. Or I want. I want it all to be dancing. You know, it's like he called, like, Tony Basil, and. And she's calling me going, we're going to do. No, no, no, no. You know, come on. So. So what I did finally, was like, he would do, like. There was a scene with Jessica Lange and John Goodman, and Bob is in the scene, and Bob has lines, but Jessica and John Goodman are going at it. And when it's time for Bob to talk, he didn't talk. And we did it again, and he didn't talk. It's like, Bob, you have a line there. He's like, I was just enjoying watching them, you know, so things like that would happen.

[Larry Charles]

But that is what is so entrancing about the movie, is watching him listen. And that's all. I mean, that's the whole Meisner technique is it's all about listening. And he is engrossed. And just the way he kind of looks. He's listening, but he looks like he's half listening. But then you see that he actually is completely enraptured by it. And his character is like. It's like, right out of, like, a Cormac McCarthy novel.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Exactly. He knows his lines also. Just like he knows you never see him with a teleprompter. On stage. He's 80 years old, you know, he knows every lyric of every song, even the alternate lyrics if he wants to use them. So in the movie was the same thing. And he wanted, you know, like, Chris Penn was in the movie. Who. The late Chris Penn, who was a great guy, but he was like, do I have to do the lines? As can I? It's like, you could try, but I'm going to guarantee you Bob's going to hear you do the variation on the line and he's gonna come over to me and say, make sure he does the line as well.

[Larry Charles]

Right, right.

[Ryan Reynolds]

So he was very much like that. And to get back to the blocking thing, I didn't know what to do because he wouldn't understand. Like, you gotta get over there by that line for us to shoot that close up, whatever it was. So I had the stand in during the rehearsals. I would have his stand in. He was a great guy. Do the scene with Jeff Bridges and Jon Gumman. And Bob would watch and then Bob would imitate the stand in in order to do that.

[Larry Charles]

Except he'd forget to do the line.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Then he would forget to do the line anyway. Yes. Yeah.

[Larry Charles]

And this movie was not good for your career. You didn't direct it.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Killed it.

[Larry Charles]

It killed your.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, yeah. Killed my move, my directing career.

[Larry Charles]

And you didn't get paid. They made you give your money back.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I had to give. I had to give. I got paid very little. I got paid DGA minimum.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And they want. They said, look, we can't shoot this whole script. It was like 150 pages. That's why it's a three and a half hour movie. And Bob was like, I'm not doing it unless we shoot the whole script. And so they came to me and they said, you know, if we're going to do this whole thing, you've got to kick back. You got to kick back your salary. Like that really made a difference. They needed to get some victory, you know. And so I said, sure, I don't care. I'm not doing this for the money, you know. And I kicked back the money. And so I made zero on that movie. My agent almost like shit his pants. Arianny, that was not Ari Emanuel at that time. That was another guy whose name, of course, I can't think of right now.

[Larry Charles]

Harry still your agent?

[Ryan Reynolds]

No, he hasn't.

[Larry Charles]

I wouldn't think so, because you talk some about him.

[Ryan Reynolds]

He hasn't been. He hasn't been.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah. I love that you're in a Position where you can talk an agent who's probably top three biggest agents in Hollywood.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Well, let's hope I survived.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah, I think you're gonna do all right.

[Ryan Reynolds]

But, yeah, that movie. That movie stopped my directing career dead.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And that's why I kind of scurried back to Curb, where it was kind of a safe haven. I could go back to doing straight comedy, the improv stuff, and have fun and be accepted. And everybody's in their own bubble, so they weren't really. They didn't really care that the masked anonymous kind of faded so precipitously, you know?

[Larry Charles]

Right, right. So at one point, you were executive producing Curb and Entourage at the same time.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yes.

[Larry Charles]

How does that possibly work? And one's in Santa Monica and one's in Hollywood.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Larry Charles]

Which is a good 35 minutes.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah. I started through feel very stretched, obviously.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And I felt like, am I doing the best for both shows? You know, it's like I had agreed to do Entourage because Curb, Larry would finish Curb, and then he might take a couple of years off. There were four year breaks at times with Curb, you know, so I had time to do other stuff. But this was one season where everything started at the same time. So I was racing back and forth, back and forth from. From Santa Monica to Hollywood, trying to make it work. The difference was I had been promised by Ari Emanuel that I would get to direct Entourage. That was one of the reasons I wanted to do it. And I never got around to directing it because there was so much other work to do with the casting and the writing and the editing that I never got to direct it. Whereas Curb, I was directing and I wanted to sort of pursue this directing thing. And so eventually I made the decision to go back to Curb.

[Larry Charles]

So it seems like there's a lot of cooks in the kitchen with Curb in a way, because you've got Larry, who seems like he must be very much. He's a force of nature. He's gotta be. Even when he's not directing, he's gotta be sort of ghost directing, right?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Well, I wouldn't say ghost directing, but he is the driving force, the creative. He's the auteur of that show, for sure.

[Larry Charles]

And then you got Jeff Garland, who's a co creator, but Jeff Garland didn't.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Have a lot to do with the production. Yeah. With the creative choices of the episodes, that kind of stuff.

[Larry Charles]

Got it. Got it.

[Ryan Reynolds]

He was the one that said to.

[Larry Charles]

Larry, tell Jeff Garland that.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, well. Yeah, well, I'm sure at some point I'll have to. Jeff Garland's a great guy, but I would say that he wasn't as involved in that, the behind the scenes sort of discussions of the show. He had the great idea that made Kerr brilliant, which was Larry was gonna go back into Stand up, and Jeff said, well, you should film it. And that' I was there. Yeah, that's what Curb. Really. Curb. That's how Curb began.

[Larry Charles]

He was at Largo. He used to come down. I remember he was wearing like, a high school varsity jacket.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Larry Charles]

Go up and bomb.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Larry Charles]

And I was like, what is this? I go, what? What? What is. What is? This is nothing. I had no idea it would become my favorite sitcom in history. Right.

[Ryan Reynolds]

It's amazing. It's amazing. Yeah.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah. And it's. What's funny is like, you know, it's called Seinfeld. Jerry's gets, you know, the credit, but then you see Curb happen and you go, oh, interesting.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's a very. These sort of creative partnerships are sort of like unholy alliances in a way. You know, Jerry had the great wisdom to ask Larry to. When he got a chance to do a pilot, to ask Larry to write it with him. That was a brilliant move on Jerry's part. You know, Larry would have been still toiling in obscurity, most likely, if Jerry hadn't asked him to do that. You know, so. And then if Jeff hadn't said, film your standup, there would be no Curb. So there's these little moments that really. It's like the butterfly effect. It just changes everything that precedes it.

[Larry Charles]

Right. And so with Curb, it seems like the. The first few episodes, first few seasons were about finding people that people didn't know. Like your JB Smooths. Even Wanda Sykes wasn't that big at the time. And then it seems like as you got into the later seasons, it became very much about stunt casting and getting big names.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, I think that was one of the challenges of the show was, you know, it happened that a lot of the people that were brought on at that time were willing to sort of play a kind of very dark version of themselves. Like Ted Danson, he was willing to be a bad guy in the show. And so that became kind of like a funny revelation to see Ted Danson behaving badly, you know, and so that was kind of fun to play with that idea. But you're right. I mean, that's one of the things that, you know, I talk about it with Seinfeld. Like, at a certain point, Seinfeld to me, was a very working class show. Everybody was struggling. You know, Julia's struggling for a job, or Elaine and George is struggling to get work. And how does Kramer make a living? And Jerry is not supposed to be a successful comedian. But eventually, after a few seasons, they're going to the Hamptons. The people have second houses. They're getting better jobs. He's working for the Yankees, she's working for Jay, Peter. You know, it got a little bit more bourgeois, and I was a little bit more uncomfortable because to me, I liked it when it was more Bukowski and Harvey Picard and it had that kind of influence to it. Right, right, right, right. And the same thing with Curb. Curb, as you point out, was much more about finding people who seem like real people who were in the show, you know, who turned out to be successful actors later on. Bob Odenkirk and people like that. But eventually, it was like Larry's life. It reflected Larry's life and Larry's life. Larry became a successful person, and he was hobnobbing with the people, and those people wound up being in the show.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah. The fact that you've got. I mean, so much of American sitcoms have been about blue collar, you know, Roseanne, up to a certain point.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You don't see it today as much.

[Larry Charles]

No. Now you've got Larry belongs to a golf course.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Exactly.

[Larry Charles]

And half the episodes are like.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And you know, the thing is that, of course, he's poking fun at all that, but he also is in it still going everywhere. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[Larry Charles]

So walk me through the. I've never auditioned for Curb. I don't know why.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Why? That's interesting.

[Larry Charles]

My age never got me anything terrible. Ari Emmanuel is my agent.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Come on.

[Larry Charles]

No, but walk me through that.

[Ryan Reynolds]

He would have gotten it for you, then taken all the money.

[Larry Charles]

Exactly. Yeah. So walk me through the audition process for somebody coming in for that show. Because I know there's no script, so there's no sides.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You get a paragraph. You get like a little paragraph, a couple of sentences that tell you what's gonna happen in your scene. And then you come in. And one of the great things about Curb auditions, and they're all taped, it would be great to just put these out, because Larry auditions with every actor. Every single actor.

[Larry Charles]

That's exhausting.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Through the entire run of the show, he would do the improv with the actor. And so some people come in, they get very intimidated. Some people come in, they're trying too hard. But some people come in like JB Smooth and It's just like, wow, this is magic. He had us on the floor, you know, and so that's how the auditions work. A little piece of paper. A slip of paper, literally. And then Larry's sitting there when you come in, waiting for you to sit down next to him and do the scene.

[Larry Charles]

Crazy. And is there an NDA involved with that?

[Ryan Reynolds]

You know, I don't know. I don't recall there being anybody having to sign anything.

[Larry Charles]

You did a couple little bits on the show, right?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Not on Curb. On Entourage, I'd say. Yeah, yeah, okay.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And on Seinfeld, I had a couple little cameos.

[Larry Charles]

Right, right. He walked past Elaine in a doorway or something.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I came out of the. The bathroom smelling on the airplane.

[Larry Charles]

Right.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You know, things like that.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I was in. There was a. We. There was a episode where Bob Balaban, who was playing Warren Littlefield.

[Larry Charles]

Oh, right.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Falls in love with Julia, Elaine, and he joins Greenpeace, and Larry and I play the other Greenpeace guys, you know, so we did little things like that. In the parking garage, she has. Elaine has these goldfish that she's bought that are dying because they can't find the car. And she's, like, asking me as I walk by if I would help her find the car, and I just ignore her and walk past.

[Larry Charles]

That's such a perfect dramatic device to have. Like, that's your ticking clock goldfish in the end.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, it was good.

[Larry Charles]

It's hilarious. All right, so let's. I don't want to keep it too much longer, but we should obviously talk about Borat a little bit and all the other projects that you've done as a director and collaborator, like Sacha. Baron Cohen is a guy that obviously you had already seen. He had pilots for his movies because he'd done these characters on the show before.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Correct.

[Larry Charles]

So how did you draw that out into a script with him? Were you sort of involved from the inception on writing the script, or did he write it and then you came in and directed it?

[Ryan Reynolds]

He originally started the movie and started shooting the movie. Movie with Todd Phillips.

[Larry Charles]

Oh, okay.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And they shot for about a week or so, and they did not get along. Yeah, and he was very upset with Todd Phillips. And Todd Phillips left the project, and the movie was going to be shut down at that point. Yeah, and then Ari was my agent and Sasha's agent, and so they set up. And I had met Sasha at a boxing match, of all places, down at Staples center, and we hit it off. This was a couple years before. And so they Called me up. Sasha called me up and said, would you be interested in directing this? And I knew the Borat character from the TV show.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And I was like, yeah, man. I knew how funny he was.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And so when I came in, the movie, as originally conceived, was really Todd was the lead character, and he was kind of bringing Borat around to these places, so it was still funny. But you had Todd there, and he was. Every time he came on, the movie would just die. Right, right. And so my idea was, like, Borat has to be the main character, you know, and give him an assistant, give him a sidekick. And that was the first big change. And then we found Azomat, which is a funny story, too. And then the other thing was, it can't be just episodic scenes. You know, that would be funny, but you would get tired of it after a while. There's gotta be some sort of emotional through line. And finding the emotion, the three dimensions in the character of Borat was very important to me and something that I was able to infuse into the movie that I think helped make the movie a movie rather than just a series of sketches.

[Larry Charles]

Pam Anderson.

[Ryan Reynolds]

He had to find Pam Anderson.

[Larry Charles]

But you know what's so amazing about that choice is that Pam Anderson is so much in all of our hearts, like, yeah, she was sexy. Yeah, we all whacked off to her. But she also was represented something very. Even though she's Canadian, something very American, you know, as this lifeguard. And she was kind of all American. And so him desiring her was just. I think it was stakes that every certainly male American could relate to.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And that was a challenge because some scenes had to be manipulated to a place where he could find out that, oh, Pam Anderson's in California. Like, he was doing the scene with the feminists. And part of his goal in that scene, besides making fun of them and telling them they had brains like squirrels or whatever it was, was to find out where Pam Anderson lived. And one of them finally said, in exasperation, I think she lives in California. And he just got up in the middle of the interview and split, you know, so we would get the plot points that way as well, you know, so the story was driving the story as well.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah. Now, the scene with Pam, it's so funny because it was so obviously she was in on it, but there was real talk about that. She had no idea that that was going to happen.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Well, the original ending, which we shot, I never liked and I felt was so contrived and did not deliver after this whole movie, it was, you know, she was having a wedding. It turned out to be her dog's wedding. Borat somehow got a boat and he sings her a song from the ocean. Cause she's got this house on the ocean there. And it was just like very contrived, very unfunny, very long and convoluted. And when we watched it, we were like, this doesn't work at all. And the good thing about Sasha and his writers was they would throw things out. They didn't care. They love doing things again. They love trying to top themselves. And I would encourage that, you know, let's find a better version. And so I brought in Jeff and Alec and Dave, who were from Seinfeld and from Kerr, Alec Berg and Jeff Schaefer and Dave Mandel. I brought them in and we all sat together and tried to pitch on a better ending and came up with this book signing, this thing in a record store. And it seemed much more real. It seemed like something you would stumble into, you know, like imagine you could imagine that she was just there and we just showed up, you know.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah. And it's that book signing, is that like very like tenuous wall between celebrity and the public?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Correct.

[Larry Charles]

And they're always overstepping, so perfect for that.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And you also have the built in tension of him being on the line, waiting to get the chance. So people know, shit, something's about to happen.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And then she was great, she was totally game. And he grabs her and puts the bag on her and they run out into the parking lot. And these guys, of course the security guys didn't know we were all running with.

[Larry Charles]

Oh, the security guards didn't know?

[Ryan Reynolds]

No. Oh, shit. They're running after they tackle him in the parking lot. Pretty rough actually. And finally we were able to say cut. And I also was somebody. I didn't like saying cut. I wanted to make sure we got it, you know, so. But. So that had a kind of a verite feeling to it. That really kind of was a perfect sort of ending to the movie.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So did you see her in the Last Showgirl?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Have not seen that yet.

[Larry Charles]

It's pretty good.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, I bet it is.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah, she's interested in it.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I did think she was a really cool person actually, with time we spent. And of course she had supposedly had been married to Kid Rock at that time and that hanging out with Sasha had made Kid Rock jealous and ended that marriage, which is probably for the best.

[Larry Charles]

Yes, absolutely. So I have to ask you, I was very flattered about, I don't know, four or five months ago, you followed me on Instagram. How did that happen? This is before I asked you to do this.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah. You know, I don't know the reason why. I remember seeing you and realizing, oh, yeah, I know who you are. And, you know, I like. I like following comedians. I like comedians. You know, I'm friends with a lot of. If I have friends, I would say a lot of them are comedians.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And you were somebody who sort of, like, had fallen through the cracks of my life, and again, I trust my instincts, and so I followed you, and here I am. I followed you all the way to here.

[Larry Charles]

You did well. Thank you for doing this.

[Ryan Reynolds]

My pleasure, man. Thank you for doing it.

[Larry Charles]

The book is unbelievable. I mean, Comedy Samurai. It's sort of like you as a samurai, how you come in and you save projects, you support projects. It's very Zen like. And again, there is, like, a Rick Rubin comparison. People will.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Rick Rubin and I used to be very close friends at one point. Yeah. Also, we hung out quite a bit.

[Larry Charles]

Yeah. So check it out. The book is everywhere. And go back and watch the movie. And I hope when your next book comes out, you'll come back.

[Ryan Reynolds]

My pleasure, man. Even before that, if you want.

[Larry Charles]

Oh, great. Okay.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Larry Charles]

Thank you.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Of course.