Comedy Samurai
Forty Years of Blood, Guts, and Laughter
-
-
3.0 • 23 Ratings
-
-
- $16.99
Publisher Description
From Peabody, Golden Globe, and Emmy Award-winning writer and director Larry Charles, a rollicking journey through modern American comedy, as he shares behind-the-scenes stories from his life's work.
To tell Larry Charles's life story is to tell the story of modern American comedy. Over the last 40 years, few comedians have been a part of so many iconic, beloved projects. Larry was one of the original writers and producers on the first five seasons of Seinfeld, executive produced both Curb Your Enthusiasm and Entourage while directing 18 episodes of Curb, and served as the showrunner for Mad About You. His film directing credits include Borat, Bruno, and The Dictator, the comic documentory Religulous starring Bill Maher, and Masked andAnonymous, which he co-wrote with Bob Dylan who stars.
In Comedy Samurai, Charles pulls back the curtain on the making of his successful projects, offering sharp, never-before-told anecdotes about Jerry Seinfeld, Sacha Baron Cohen, Bill Maher, Bob Dylan, Nic Cage, Mel Brooks, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, and Larry David, among many others.
Perfect for fans of Seinfeldia and lovers of comedy in general, Larry promises to offer new insights about many of the most beloved shows, films, and actors of all time.
Customer Reviews
Surprisingly poorly written
Seems odd for a comedy writer’s memoir to be this poorly written and not amusingly told.
Specifics-wise:
- Really? You’re surprised at not being able to freely use clips from Curb and Seinfeld and the Fountainhead for your Larry David interview?
- The Dictator: could it be possible that Sacha was leaning into acting dictatorial/buffoonish behind the scenes as an extra meta/method technique to further explore and even inform the movie? Would you put it past him to do that versus attributing it to just the cliche’d big ego?
- Pajamas? In all seriousness LC would have benefited from someone staging an intervention. The self-sabotage was pathological.
- Borat seems like it was a once in a creative lifetime magical aligning of LC’s punk/guerrilla/gonzo filming inclinations with Sacha at his still under the radar peak. Thinking that production method would be reproducible again (let alone 3 or 4 more times) to other subject matter is just silly.
LC was improbably lucky enough to be around multiple people/projects which caught lightening in a bottle (Seinfeld, Borat, Curb). He likely added some side ingredient/spice to the dish, but was certainly not the irreplaceable force/vision he thinks he was.
TLDR; LOTS of airings of grievances. Just not in a fun way.
Extremely entertaining and inciteful
I love this book. Larry Charles is a new hero of mine, creative, imperfect, and ultimately, brave. His sharing of the making of Borat, which he directed, was fascinating and hilarious, and as a Dylan fan, I couldn’t ask for a better insider’s account of the time he spent working with the legend. The penultimate chapter is the most impressive and profound in the book. Fans of American tv and film culture of the last 40 years couldn’t do much better than to read and soak in this book.