Patton Oswalt Shares His Favorite Larry David ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ Stories

Patton Oswalt has a theory about why Larry David is funnier than almost everyone else who has ever tried improv, and it has nothing to do with the punchlines Larry delivers.

Sitting down with Rich, Oswalt broke down what separates David from the rest of the improvisers who have cycled through "Curb Your Enthusiasm." The short answer: Larry is not trying to win the scene. "A lot of times when people are doing improv, they're trying to win the scene with the funniest line," Oswalt explained. "And he is, if anything, setting you up to be even funnier."

The result, Oswalt said, is that Larry ends up being hilarious anyway, almost by accident, precisely because he is so focused on the other person.

Oswalt offered a specific scene as evidence. Larry had handed him a cover story, told him to tell someone he was a competitive eater. The person bought it. And then came the payoff: Larry's reaction was pure delight that the lie worked, completely unconcerned with how thin the lie actually was. "That was like a Gerbils level lie," Oswalt recalled Larry saying, referencing the Nazi propagandist in the same breath someone might casually drop a pop-culture callback. "Gerbils is the goat of lying."

The absurdity, Oswalt pointed out, is that Larry is so pleased with himself that he does not even register he is complimenting a Nazi. That obliviousness, played completely straight, becomes the funniest thing in the scene.

Oswalt also singled out what happens when Larry puts credible improvisers across from him, naming Richard Kind and Vince Vaughn as examples. He argued that Larry understands something fundamental about comedy structure: the straight man drives the scene. "It's the guy that's incredulous," Oswalt said. He pointed to JB Smoove as the clearest example, describing those scenes as Larry simply not being able to believe what is coming out of JB's mouth. "He's like, wait, what?"

Then there is the other version of Larry, the one Oswalt said he loves just as much: Larry in public, trapped in an exchange that should be completely inconsequential. "You can see him, he can't help but make it worse," Oswalt said. The bit spirals. A number. Some food. A question that did not need to be asked. A scene that did not need to happen.

What makes it resonate, Oswalt argued, is that it feels autobiographical. The real Larry David has probably lived every one of those moments. And what is remarkable is that he had the self-awareness to step back from his own chaos and recognize it as material. "The fact that he has the wherewithal to go, 'Actually, this is comedic, even though I'm burning my life to the ground,'" Oswalt said. That is the whole show, compressed into one sentence.