LarryDavidFan.com

Good news guys and girls, Sony have decided to be extra generous and given me five more signed Whatever Works posters to give away!

To be in the running  I want you to tell me what makes you the internet’s biggest Larry David fan. My top four favourite responses will win a signed poster. To increase your chances you will receive an extra entry for every friend you refer to this contest.  Email your name and entries to “contest at larrydavidfan dot com” with the subject line: “Whatever Works Poster Contest”. When referring a friend ask them to list your name and email at the bottom.

As for the fifth and final poster, that will be awarded to the fan who submits the best new banner for the recently redesigned LarryDavidFan.com blog. It needs to be 60 pixels high, so all you graphic designers out there this is your chance to win a a great piece of movie memorabilia and help support the web’s one and only Larry David fansite! Please host your submissions on Imageshack and then email the link to “contest at larrydavidfan dot com” with the subject line: “Banner Contest”. I’m looking forward to seeing what some of you talented guys and girls have to offer.

With the countdown to season 7 well on it’s way you will be seeing more frequent updates on the site I promise you, and once the new season begins you can expect the same lively discussion we had during season 6. Have a great week and good luck with the contest!

Conditions : No friends or relatives of mine are eligible to enter. Entries will close Sunday 30th August.

Update: You must have a US address to enter this contest. I am very sorry about this, I was only recently notified. Apologies to international fans, I will try to see if I can give something away personally for you guys.

Competition now closed.

Congratulations to LD fan Leonard from San Francisco. He is the lucky reader whom I randomly selected as the winner of a signed Whatever Works poster.

Thanks to all those who entered, and also my gratitude to the good people at Sony Pictures who provided the prize.

The answers to the questions are below. How did you go?

1. Whatever Works is not the first time Larry has appeared in a Woody Allen film. What are the 2 previous Woody flicks that had Larry appear in minor roles.
   Answer: Radio Days and New York Stories.
2. Larry left Seinfeld after season 7 but continued to voice a supporting character. Who?
   Answer: George Steinbrenner
   
3. In Curb Your Enthusiasm’s, “The Ski Lift”, what actually happened to Larry’s misplaced cell phone?
   Answer: It was stolen by Richard Lewis’ nurse Lisa and “hidden”.

Courtesy of the generous folk over at Sony, I will be giving away a poster like the one below, signed by none other than LD himself!
The competition will run for the next 2 weeks finishing on Sunday the 12 June.

To be in the running for this great prize use the form below to answer these three Larry related trivia questions:

1. Whatever Works is not the first time Larry has appeared in a Woody Allen film. What are the 2 previous Woody flicks that had Larry appear in minor roles?
2. Larry left Seinfeld after season 7 but continued to voice a supporting character. Who?
3. In Curb Your Enthusiasm’s, “The Ski Lift”, what actually happened to Larry’s misplaced cell phone?

Read more…

Larry recently talked to John Jurgensen from the Wall Street Journal about Whatever Works. In comparing his and Woody’s comedy, he said:

I am not nearly as ambitious or as smart as he is. I’m dealing pretty much with what people have to deal with in their everyday lives. I don’t take on big things. What I do, pretty much, is make the big things small and the small things big. It’s a comedic device. That works for me.

Mali Elfman from Screencave also recently covered a press conference that Larry attended for the film with co-stars Evan Rachel Wood and Patricia Clarkson:

Did you hang our with a lot of Jewish people to prepare for the role?

Clarkson: I mean you never do that.

David: I’ve never done that. So, yes, that aspect was really unusual. I tried to find as many Jews as I could and be-friend them and talk to them and see what made them tick.

Clarkson: Didn’t you go back and you were bar mitzvah-ed again?

David: Oh, my God (laughing). I went back to Brooklyn and walked the streets and interviewed people, what’s it like being a Jew? How do you behave?

In other news, Meg Ryan has been confirmed as a guest star early in the upcoming seventh season of Curb.

Apologies but I can’t embed the first YouTube video so just click through to view.

Update: The Youtube video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by NBC Universal.  I have added the official NBC video to this page but it may only work for those in North America. Apologies, my hands are tied.

Larry talks to Conan on June 16 about his role in the upcoming Woody Allen film Whatever Works.  He also discusses his divorce, dental hygiene and orgasm regret.

Not as good as his Letterman interview but enjoyable nonetheless.

For one reason oranother I can’t seem to embed the second video so click here to view it.

Curb cast member Jeff Garlin indicated on his Twitter account on the 2nd June that season 7 of Curb Your Enthusiasm will premiere on HBO on the 20th September. Thanks to fellow fan Jim for spotting it, he has been invaluable in getting Larry related news on here FIRST! I apologise for having been a bit slack on keeping the blog up to date but promise to be on the ball in the run-up to the big night.

Scott Raab of Esquire recently had a “An Extremely Awkward Encounter with Larry David” over a bowl of soup. Among othe things the two find time to discuss the health of their necks, vegetables, hummus, and the Seinfeld curse.

SR: So Curb’s seventh season is coming up. You’re starring in a Woody Allen movie. You’re here in New York City. You walked the red carpet last night at the Tribeca Film Festival. How does it feel to be Larry David?

LD: A lot better than it used to, I can tell you that. Better than having to walk from First Avenue to the West Side because I couldn’t afford to get home at night. Having to eat Chef Boyardee, emptying the pennies in a grocery at three o’clock in the morning to buy Chef Boyardee — it’s better than that. I feel good.

For those wondering, I’ve already wiki’d it and Chef Boyardee is a brand of canned pasta.

Also of note, last month Mark Haris from New York Magazine did a excellent feature on Larry, Woody Allen and the evolution/future of Jewish humour. Whether you agree with its assertions or not, if you appreciate the humour of Larry and where it came from, this is a really interesting read.

Stay tuned, more to come!

The trailer was released on Apple’s website recently. It features Larry quite heavily and from the short clips and one-liners it looks like Larry’s character is a combination of the classic Woody Allen character of past New York movies, and the more abrasive yet equally socially inept “fictional” Larry David we all know and love.

So far it would be fair to say that the reviews have been mixed, though the general consensus that I’ve found that it is mostly enjoyable and that Larry has breathed life into the Woody character that some feel has staled in recent years. I’m very much looking forward to seeing it once it opens in Australia and I’ll be posting my own thoughts as soon as I do.

Sara Vilkomerson of The New York Observer has an excellent feature article (and some wonderful artwork) discussing the film’s history and Woody and Larry’s relationship. The last paragraph of the article has some of the most encouraging words on the movie so far:

By reaching out to Larry David in Whatever Works, Woody Allen has added something to his canon that he might never have gotten on his own. He hired the one working comedian who could put a knife edge on the usual adorableness of the Woody Allen interpreter. Whatever Works may not be an uncompromising masterpiece, but it’s the astonishing collaboration of two uncompromising comic masters of the romantic and tortured New York psyche.

And it works.

Some of the other reviews I’ve been reading (not all positive, to be fair):

Woody Allen’s Whatever Works: preety, preety good - Ben Walters (The Guardian)

Don’t curb your enthusiasm for Woody Allen’s homecoming film – Whatever Works is engaging and funny, and in Larry David, he’s found a new kindred spirit to channel his sensibility.

Whatever Works Review -  Ronnie Scheib (Variety)

Allen the director loses sight of what works. The film lacks breathing room — it rushes forward like a stage play with pre-planned exits and entrances, soliloquies and asides.

Woody ‘Works” magic with new comedy – Roger Friedman (Showbiz411)

Whatever Works” is something of a comic masterpiece, full of trademark Allen raving and ranting but richer and fuller than any comedy he’s made since the days of “Hannah and Her Sisters,” “Manhattan,” and “Annie Hall.”

I leave you with a clip from the film that involves Larry’s and Evan Rachel Wood’s characters discussing his “genius”:

April 22nd. That’s the date Woody Allen’s upcoming film starring Larry will premiere in New York as reported by IndieWire. Tribeca Film Festival co-founder Jane Rosenthal was “excited we are opening this year’s Festival with Sony Pictures Classics for the world premiere of Woody’s Whatever Works,” calling it a “uniquely funny addition to his body of work.”

Also of interest, there was a very short clip of the film at the end of the Oscar’s coverage when they showed a few clips of the year’s upcoming films. Have a look at this Youtube video at about the 1:26 mark. You’ll see Larry limp in wearing a dressing gown after which Patricia Clarkson seems to collapse to the floor. It’s not much but its enough to get me excited for a wider release date!

Sony Classics has launched its official website for Whatever Works. At the moment there is nothing more than a single photo, a nice background, and a release date: June 19th Los Angeles and New York.

Evan Rachel Wood sat down with MoviesOnline.ca to discuss her role in Darren Aronofsky’s new film, The Wrestler. She also talked about her role in Whatever Works and her experience doing comedy with Woody Allen and Larry. The interview is lengthy but well worth the read. When asked how much like his Curb Your Enthusiasm character Larry is, Evan Rachel Wood had this to say:

He is that character. That is him. It’s so funny. I was so excited one time we went out for lunch and something happened with the waiter and she started doing the dirt thing and even wrote it down and said, “This would be good for the show.” And it’s like that thing you have where you’re hanging out with your favorite comedian. You’re like maybe they’ll write about this. He actually did. I don’t know if it’s actually going to end up on the show or not but it’s really funny.

She also confirms that Larry will be playing the “Woody” character that anyone familiar with Allen’s work will recognise, suggesting “he’s probably the only other person that could do that.”

SlashFilm has some of the first pictures from Woody Allen’s upcoming Whatever Works, where Larry will play “a highly eccentric character who runs into a girl from the South named Melodie” and gets “into a series of highly improbable, far out, romantic entanglements.”

That’s the title of Larry’s upcoming collaboration with Woody Allen. Duane Dudek from Journal Sentinel talked to Woody this week where he not only revealed the title of the movie but that it is a “comedy, but a slightly different one for me. It’s a blackish comedy.”

When asked about the similarities in his and Larry’s comedic sensibilities Woody had this to say:

“He’s got a great thing of his own. He’s got a great, what would you call it, sarcastic, sour or vitriolic, wonderful, wonderful, no nonsense sense of humor.”

“I think I’m more illusory than him. Hes a stronger personality. I’m more of a schlemiel, a dope. I would be the guy they would plant the microfilm on and I would never know it, and I would be out there wondering why people are shooting at me. Larry has a different quality.”