It may be a little disturbing to see a long haired bearded man making cranky observations about modern life in the HBO movie “Clear History.” It’s more disturbing that the man behind the beard is obviously Larry David, postponing any progress on his “Curb Your Enthusiasm” to make the film that debuts Aug. 10.
In a good natured exchange that closed the HBO sessions at the TV Critics Association summer press tour, David says, “I was thinking about ‘Curb’ or thinking about doing a movie, and I thought, you know, perhaps it’s time I tried something else. So I decided to do the movie.”
Although some of its observations may be familiar from “Curb,” David says, “it’s not like, ‘Oh, I have these ideas that I can use on “Curb,” but I want to do them in a movie.’ Because I wasn’t I wasn’t thinking that way. I was thinking either of doing either one or the other, and I just thought it was time to try something else.”
Director Greg Mottola says the film, about a guy who is fired from an innovative car company and gets away to change his identity, was, like “Curb” based on a 35-page outline on which the impressive cast that includes Jon Hamm, Kate Hudson, Danny McBride, Michael Keaton, Bill Hader, Eva Mendes, Amy Ryan and J.B. Smoove.
All were comfortable with the improvisation. “Ninety percent of actors love to improvise,” David says, ” and everybody in the movie just took to it so easily, and a couple of them had experience with it before, but Jon was great and so was Eva.
“I didn’t quite know that Eva Mendes could improvise as great as she was able to. And so she was a really pleasant surprise, and she loved playing that character.”
Also a part of the film is the group Chicago.
“Chicago seemed funny to us because it’s a large band and we didn’t really imagine them having these kinds of relationships with their fans,” Mottola says. Besides, he added, “We like the songs.”
“Actually, my first choice was the Bee Gees,” david says. “But then a Bee Gee died. So we were down to one Bee Gee,” he said with a shrug. “Didn’t seem that great to do it with one Bee Gee.”
The beard and hair were essential to the story, David says.
“We didn’t want we didn’t want Jon Hamm’s character to be able to recognize me, so it had to be extreme. And actually, as conceived, it was supposed to be the opposite, where I was going to be bald and myself at the beginning and then grow the beard and the hair. And thank God we didn’t do it that way because the makeup was intolerable to get to sit in that chair for an hour every morning to put that on, it felt like I had 10,000 insects on my head. I couldn’t stand it.”
Another source of torture, it would seem, is figuring out the future of “Curb.”
“I don’t I don’t know. I really don’t know. I couldn’t say. Ask me in six months,” he responded to inevitable inquiries about when it’s coming back.
It’s a big decision, by the way, to decide to do a season of that show,” he says. “I don’t take it lightly.”
Of the delays in deciding whether to go ahead, common before the last couple of seasons of “Curb,” David admits, “I’m just an indecisive fellow. You should see me at a restaurant.”
“Clear History” premieres Aug. 10 on HBO.