Larry David: 80/20 Genius

There's an interesting bonus track on the Curb You Enthusiasm: Season Three DVD where series creator and star Larry David confesses his writing process. To paraphrase: he does not write dialogue, he merely writes the "story" of each episode, weaving a dense of web of things each scene must accomplish. His actors and many quest stars (Ted Danson, Julia Louise-Dreyfuss, that "Crazy Eyez Killah" dude) are on their own when it comes to touching all of the bases of a scene, getting from Point A to B in their own interesting, idiosyncratic way. As his co-stars attest on the bonus track, this makes shooting an episode of Curb Your Enthusiam a whole lot of fun. It's a far more laid-back approach than he took with Seinfeld, where every scene was tight as a drum, and the loose style shows in the inner-scene laughter of the actors and the weird, life-like turns the dialogue will take.

This reminds me of the struggle I'm having with music right now, where we're wrestling between having an established list of pre-written songs, versus "scenes" where we have a few chord changes in mind (and the desire of getting from point A's badly-fumbled opening chords to point B's musical silence and audience applause), but the lyrics and solos and tempo changes and instrument swithcheroos are left up to how we feel in the moment. The trick is to have a group of players who can read each other for cues, not an easy task when certain players are only available once a week, whereas the dense core (me and my bro) play more or less every night. When you've got a team familiar with each other's habits (as well as strengths and weaknesses) the band can stop and turn on a dime. If you've got session players who can only make it every once a while, a script is usually needed. "We have this song, with these chords, and these lyrics, and this many verses/choruses." Does this kill musical innovation (Curb Your Enthusiasm) or make for a better, more-conventional show? (Seinfeld).

Not sure.