TVSquad

Larry Charles, director of Borat and a writer and producer for Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, is teaming up with comedian Bill Maher (HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher) for a new film about God and religion. Their goal: make it funny.

To quote Variety, quoting Maher: "this movie will make you laugh so hard you'll pray for it to stop."

Maher and Charles traveled throughout the Middle East, interviewing people to try and find humor amongst the tragedy. It was undoubtedly a rough undertaking, but the result was hundreds of hours of footage that Maher and Charles are currently paring down to a feature-length film.

Most TV viewers don't know who Larry Charles is, but fans of the shows Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm are well aware of him. As one of the more underrated members of Larry David's team, he wrote some of both shows' most memorable episodes. His last project, as the director of the Borat movie, also earned him praise, even if he toiled away deep in Sacha Baron Cohen's shadow.

But the success of Borat has been good for everyone, including Charles: Variety is reporting that he has signed a two-and-a-half year deal with the ABC TV Studio for what the industry rag said was in the "mid-seven figures." In the deal, Charles will write and direct a number of projects, including "scripted and hybrid comedies and possibly even animation," according to the article. This will be the first time he has worked for broadcast TV in a number of years.

Larry Charles, director of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan and a writer/producer for Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm is developing a new reality series for HBO centered on the life of rapper and producer Kanye West. According to Reuters, HBO has declined to comment on the untitled project.

Since I'm not a fan of reality TV in general, any new show with that label really has to prove itself to me in order to get me to watch it. I'm also rather indifferent to West himself. Still, having Larry Charles attached to the project does pique my interests somewhat, so who knows? All in all, I'm mildly curious to see how this reality series sets itself apart from the fold.

(S03E18) Larry Charles, one of Seinfeld's primary writers, mentions in the DVD commentary for "The Limo" that it is one of his favorite episodes; he feels that it's one of the first episodes in the series to take a silly premise -- what if George and Jerry take the limo of a Neo-Nazi? -- and find humor in it by grounding it in reality. Well, the reality of Larry David, but at least it's someone's reality.

Personally, this is one of my least favortie episodes of the show's entire run. Sure, there are some funny moments, but the whole "pretending to be someone else" plotline comes right out of Sitcomland, and could have been taken right from an episode of Three's Company -- well, not the Neo-Nazi part, but you get the idea. At this point in Seinfeld's run, especially after the brilliance of "The Boyfriend" the week before, audiences were expecting more. And, to be honest, there wasn't a lot to laugh at in this one.

(S03E15) It's kind of interesting that many people remember this episode fondly, but most of their good memories revolve around only one sequence: the back-and-forth scene as Jerry and Elaine go over the physical attributes of Cynthia and George. Of course, Jerry is talking to George and Elaine is talking to Cynthia. It's a scene that sets up so much of what Seinfeld riffed on in future years, that to see this play out in the context of the show at the time is seeing Larry, Jerry and the writers discover comic gold.

(S03E05) Phillip Baker Hall is The Man.

It doesn't matter how many times I see "The Library", or even how many times in the span of an hour I see Hall's scenes as library investigator Lt. Bookman (like I did when I watched the epiosde on DVD just now... once with notes, once with writer Larry Charles' comments, and again in a mini-featurette about the episode). I laugh out loud every single time.

And how can you not? Bookman's Joe Friday-inspired speeches are a complete riot. The intensity that Bookman has for his seemingly mundane task -- investigating overdue library books -- comes through in Hall's performance, especially in the long rant directed towards Jerry in his apartment. More on that a little later.