Music alone couldn’t keep the coffers filled, alas, which forced the Aquabats into second position in favor of a gig that actually paid the bills with more regularity, so Jacobs returned to TV, this time working behind the scenes. In doing so, he was responsible for co-creating one of the most successful kids shows in recent years: “Yo Gabba Gabba!” Flush with the excitement that success brings, Jacobs and company have used a combination of creativity and show-biz connections to simultaneously kick-start a new series for the youth of today and fulfill a dream.

Ladies and gentlemen: The Aquabats! Super Show!

Bullz-Eye: Having seen the first two episodes of “The Aquabats! Super Show!,” it seems safe to suggest that Sid and Marty Krofft have been a major influence on you guys.

Christian Jacobs: [Laughs.] Definitely! I’m glad you caught that point of reference, for sure.

BE: So what are the origins of this “Super Show”? Was the idea of doing an Aquabats TV series always in the back of your mind, or was this a recent development?

CJ: No, it’s always been there, really. I mean, you know, it’s one of those things where…we started the band in ’94, and at the same time, I was doing video production, making music videos and skateboard videos, so I was in production already. And I grew up working in television as well, so we started the band, just for goofing around, but pretty much within a year I was, like, “This could be an amazing kids show! We could incorporate all those fun things we used to watch that were weird and trippy and action-packed…” We were influenced by shows from Japan, too. Those were there right away. So we started to incorporate them into the band, and from there we immediately set out to try and start a TV show…and this was, like, ’95 or ’96. [Laughs.] So it’s taken some time to finally happen, but it was one of those things where, right away, we were telling people, “We’re gonna make a TV show!” And it started to feel a little bit like that book The Carrot Seed, where there’s the little kid and no one believes the carrot’s gonna grow, but the kid does, and he knows the carrot’s gonna come up at some point. I feel like that was us a little bit. It was just up to us to stick it out and keep trying and keep trying and keep trying. But, yeah, it was definitely something that we always wanted to do.

BE: When did it first look like it was going to become a reality? Certainly the success of “Yo Gabba Gabba!” couldn’t have hurt.

CJ: Well, I think that’s what finally took us over the hill. But back in ’98, you know, we did a pilot for this studio, and then in ’99 or 2000, we did another development deal with a different studio, and…it was one setback and weird thing after another. And then we had pitched it to all of the networks by 2002 or 2003 – we pretty much ran the table, so to speak – and no one was biting, so it just seemed like a dead project. But in the back of our minds, we were, like, “I know this can still be a great kids show, but let’s focus on something else.” And that’s when we came up with a bunch of ideas, and one of those ideas was “Yo Gabba Gabba!” And just from pitching the Aquabats so much around the industry, we had some contacts, so we started pitching “Yo Gabba Gabba!,” and we immediately realized that we were going to run into the same problem unless we just took matters into our own hands and independently did it ourselves. And that’s really where the ball started rolling, and we realized, “Hey, if we’re going to do this, then we’re just going to need to go and make it on our own somehow.”

BE: Just as a sidebar, I’m a member of the Television Critics Association, so I’ve been there to witness “Yo Gabba Gabba!” walk away with the Best Children / Family Programming for two years in a row, which has been pretty cool.

CJ: Yeah, I mean, two years in a row…? That’s awesome. And a highlight of my life, to be sure. The first year, we were sitting next to Bryan Cranston from “Breaking Bad,” and then the next year we were, like, two tables away from Tom Hanks. So that was just totally weird. It was, like, “How did we get in a room with all of these awesome people?” [Laughs.]

BE: Yeah, I’ve actually got a picture – if not a great one – of Tom Hanks standing with Muno, Brobee, and the gang.

CJ: Oh, yeah, I was right there at ground zero with ‘em, just going, “This is totally bizarre and weird and awesome.” [Laughs.]

[Writer's note: That's kind of where I'm at when I look at this picture of myself from the same evening.]

BE: As you say, it was a lengthy evolution from concept to fruition for the series, but when you finally got down to brass tacks for the Hub incarnation of “The Aquabats! Super Show!,” presumably you guys pretty well had it down as far as what you wanted it to be.

CJ: Yeah, well, by the time we got through with the pilot of “Yo Gabba Gabab!” and had shot a whole season of it, I think we all felt that “Yo Gabba Gabba!” was… We really believed in that show, and this was even before the TCA Awards, but right away we thought, “Okay, we know this show is awesome, so let’s try to make the Aquabats’ show.” So at the end of Season One, we got some money together and went out and independently shot a pilot for the Aquabats’ show exactly how we always wanted to shoot it. That was the big difference. When we’d developed it before for networks and studios, there’s always a little bit of a compromise, because you come in, you pitch them on your idea, and then they buy your idea, and that idea becomes their idea, and they change it all around.

So we shot this pilot between seasons of “Yo Gabba Gabba!” and started pitching it around, and it took a little while, but it finally landed in the hands of the people from The Hub, like Margaret Loesch and Ted (Biaselli) and Donna (Ebbs). They’re all very creator-friendly, they’re producers themselves, they come from the world of production, and when they saw the show, they were, like, “This is perfect: it’s risky, it’s crazy…let’s do it!” And Ted was also an early big fan of “Yo Gabba Gabba!” We actually met Ted when we were pitching the pilot for “Yo Gabba Gabba!” He was working for Disney, and he really wanted to pick “Yo Gabba Gabba!” up, so a couple of years later when we came in with the pilot for the Aquabats, he said, “Guys, we gotta finally work together and do this.” [Laughs.] So, y’know, luck and time and effort and blood, sweat, and tears, and…there you go!

BE: For those who haven’t seen the series yet, Sid and Marty Krofft are – as already noted – clearly a very strong influence, but what are some other points of reference that might help viewers decide if they’d be into “The Aquabats! Super Show!”?

CJ: Well, I think there’s a lot of TV being made today that… [Hesitates.] For this show, we’re really building a lot of the influences from TV of the past, and it’s a lot more cinematic, like “Batman” or the old “Wild Wild West” with Robert Conrad. You know, those single-camera action shows from the ‘60s or the ‘70s that we all just grew up watching and idolizing. Even “The Twilight Zone.” Like, very single camera, very set up. And it’s tricky, because we’re trying to do so many set-ups in so little time, but there’s definitely an influence from there, there’s also an influence from across the water, like Japan. There’s a huge influence from “Godzilla” to “UltraMan” to all those early Power Rangers shows. They’re just ridiculous. And, y’know, there’s Shaw Brothers stuff in there from China, like the weird kung stuff, which we get into a bit more as the season goes on. But, also, the Aquabats are very self-deprecating and silly, yet we try to make a good balance between action and crazy and then just silly and random. [Laughs.]

We’re all really big pop culture fans and geeks and love all those action shows, or the attempts at action shows, so many that we watched try and fail. Like, there’s references to super-obscure stuff that I remember watching and being so excited about, like “Supertrain” or “Manimal.” All those weird shows around that time, with talking motorcycles and “Knight Rider.” So there’s a good 30 years worth of television culture packed into these 22-minute episodes for kids. And I think what makes it exciting is that, y’know, I have kids myself, so showing them some of the shows from the past…they’re not that interested, sadly. I mean, some of them they really love, but part of it, I think, is the pacing. So with the Aquabats’ show, my kids love it and they’re really into it because I think the pacing’s more attractive to them. They’re so used to things coming so fast and hitting them so quickly, whereas with shows like “Wild Wild West” or “The Twilight Zone,” it’s not so instant. It takes some time to build. So you put in all those stylish references and cool things from Japan or from here or there, and you fire them out a mile a second, and…I think it’s working. Either way, it’s been fun. [Laughs.]

BE: As far as the band itself goes, it seems rather insulting that the Aquabats tend to be lumped in with a group of artists described as “third wave ska.”

CJ: Yeah, you know, we’re not, really. We were all originally in different bands – I was in an indie rock band, Chad (Larson) was in a punk band, I know Ian (Fowles) was in a punk band – and we all got together and kind of formed a Voltron of bands. [Laughs.] And it was kind of a satirical take on a ska band, we invited our own uniforms or costumes, and we all played different instruments. We liked ska, but it more kind of having fun by playing with it, satirizing it, spoofing it, and generally not taking it super-seriously. Most ska shows were fun, the people were having fun and dancing, but then there were the people who were taking it so seriously, and that just seemed ridiculous to us, so we were, like, “Okay, let’s make this giant ska orchestra,” making it kind of a joke, but as the band evolved over the years… It was never a deliberate thing, but I think it just naturally happened, because there’s a lot of different styles of music that we play.

I’ve always been into bands like Ween and things like that, that can chameleon-like drift from genre to genre and play whatever music they want. I mean, even Weird Al: you add a little bit of humor in there, and you kind of have a license to do that. You have the opportunity write a country song, write a hip-hop song, write whatever you want. And that’s always been more attractive to me, because there’s no boundaries. If you set yourself up as a punk band, then you pretty much just have to play punk. Or if you’re a ska band, you just play ska. So that was a natural evolution that was always going to come out of our band. We do still get lumped in with that because that’s where we began, playing with other ska bands, but we were secretly always having a laugh, so to speak. [Laughs.]

BE: With the music for the show, will it be strictly new songs, or are you going to be reviving some of the older songs?

CJ: I think we’ll bring some of the old songs back. I don’t think we did any for this first season. No, wait, I take that back: there are a couple of older songs. But, y’know, I think we were just so happy to be able to do the Aquabats full-time as a job this year… [Laughs.] …that the amount of music that came out was pretty significant, and we just came off of writing an album that came out last year, so I guess we were just kind of in that mode of writing new music and being excited about it. Because, y’know, we haven’t been full-time as the Aquabats as a job since the very beginning. I think in 1997 we had a record deal that permitted us to be the Aquabats for about two years full-time, but then that was it. For this whole time since then, it’s been a part-time thing and very much more like a hobby. So, yeah, there’s lots of new stuff as a result of that, but we do want to bring back some of the old classics and weave them into the fabric of the show, for sure. If we get the chance to do a second season, that’d be awesome.

BE: This really must be a case of living the dream for you: not only do you get to do the Aquabats full-time, but you’re also able to utilize this other career you’ve built in TV production at the same time.

CJ: It is literally a dream come true. This is something that we always thought… I mean, we’d be on the road, going out and playing for maybe only 50 to 100 people, and having a great time, but we’d be thinking, “Man, this would be awesome if we could do this full-time.” There was just no way to sustain it. But we always thought, “If we could turn this into a television show and get some exposure and grow the Aquabats…” It just seemed like something that could take off, so that’s why it’s always been a goal to make into a TV show. We’d be, like, “We’ll be the Aquabats during the day and sleep in our own beds at night!” [Laughs.] So it is. It’s the dream job. And we’re also doing “Yo Gabba Gabba!” at the same time, so it’s been crazy. I’ve never been so busy and slept so little and been so happy.

BE: To bring this conversation full circle, it’s pretty fantastic that the first episode features Rip Taylor playing a genie, given that he played Sheldon the Sea Genie in “Sigmund and the Sea Monsters.”

CJ: [Laughs.] Of course! See, you got it. It’s perfect, right? We wrote these really elaborate scripts for every episode, then we looked at our budget and realized, “Wow, we’re basically writing cartoons that we can’t possibly pay for.” So we slimmed and trimmed and cut stuff down – the character of Man-Ant had this elaborate back story that we had to just cut out – and then someone just made the suggestion, “Hey, what if, like, Crash found a lamp, and there was a genie in it?” “Beautiful. Go with that.” And then it was, “Well, who’s gonna play the genie?” And everyone said at the same time, “Rip Taylor.” [Laughs.]

BE: Are there any other guest stars in upcoming episodes?

CJ: Oh, yeah. There’s Rip Taylor, Lou Diamond Phillips is in an upcoming episode, “Weird Al” Yankovic is in two episodes, and we’ve got Jon Heder from “Napoleon Dynamite.” Samm Levine’s in an episode, too. It’s similar to “Yo Gabba Gabba!” in that, like, on that show, you’ve got guys like Mark Mothersbaugh, who’s a music legend, and then these new up-and-coming bands. With the Aquabats’ show, we’re doing the same thing, except with guest stars. So you’ll have someone like Rip Taylor, and then we’ll be spotlighting some newer and more underground comedians who are really good as well.

BE: Having “Weird Al” Yankovic as a guest star certainly makes sense, given his own history with a kids show.

CJ: Oh, yeah, and that was fun talking to Al about that on the set, not only his experience making “The Weird Al Show,” but how much we loved it. And, of course, “UHF” is in my top-10 movies of all time, for sure. And it especially was at the time it was released, because, y’know, it spoofed everything, it was silly, and, most importantly, it was just Weird Al on film. [Laughs.] And Al’s so down to earth. He actually cameos as two different people in the series…or he could be the same person. We kind of leave that open. But he’s great. We’ve got such a tiny budget on this show, but we’ve had such a great response from people. It’s just been really, really cool.

The Aquabats! Super Show! premieres at 11 AM EST / PST Saturday on The Hub.

David Steinberg began his career in comedy with Chicago’s Second City, quickly gaining fame as a stand-up through his appearances on “The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson” while also courting controversy by performing comedic “sermons” on “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.” In 1981, Steinberg began to shift his focus from performing to directing, starting with the Burt Reynolds film “Paternity,” and has gone on to become one of the more prolific sitcom directors in the business, but he recently stepped back in front of the camera to host the new Showtime series, “Inside Comedy,” which airs Thursdays at 11 PM. Steinberg spoke with Bullz-Eye about his new gig, detailing the trials and tribulations of securing classic clips to accompany his interviews, while also discussing some of his past efforts as an actor, director, and stand-up comedian.

[NOTE: All photos appear courtesy of TheDavidSteinberg.com.]

Bullz-Eye: This is certainly not your first time hosting a show where you interview comedians: you also brought us Sit Down Comedy with David Steinberg. Not that there isn’t still plenty of material yet to mine, but what inspired you to take another crack at it?

David Steinberg: I felt that I hadn’t really done it the way I wanted to. That’s why we first started this as a film. Starting it as a film was really good, because then you get so much material, and it’s sort of looser or whatever. And then I settled on this notion of putting two people together and how they connect, but not in any specific ways. They just go together by what they’re talking about. And once I arrived at that, I thought, “This is gonna be good!” [Laughs.] Of course, making it that good…it was time consuming, but it was great, great fun. I worked with some incredible editors, and there was a lot of archival stuff that we talk about that…well, they know that they’re talking to another comedian. That’s the bottom line. And then, archivally, I didn’t just do the clichéd version. I handpicked the clips that I wanted and then begged people to let me use them. [Laughs.] Archival stuff takes so long to get people to sign off on.

BE: Was there anything you wanted to use that, even with all of your pleading, you still couldn’t get?

DS: Yeah, for Jonathan Winters, I had a clip of him in an old Dean Martin roast where he’s roasting (Ronald) Reagan, and in it there’s a wide shot where you could see Dean Martin, Reagan, (Don) Rickles, Phyllis Diller, and… [Sighs.] You know, it’s generally not the original inheritors of the celebrity estates that are the problem. It’s the grandchildren, who don’t even know or understand what it means to be celebrating Jonathan Winters. They asked for so much money everywhere that we couldn’t use it. I ended up having to go with just a tight shot of Jonathan instead. So, y’know, just stuff like that drove me nuts. For the most part, though, I got everything I wanted. Some were just so exorbitant that I just couldn’t do it. But I’m happy with it.

BE: Speaking of Jonathan Winters on Showtime, he also appeared on The Green Room with Paul Provenza not so terribly long ago. It’s great to see people as yourself and Paul continuing to give him the props he deserves.

DS: That’s right, yeah. I will say that the younger comedians tend to look after the older ones. Richard Lewis goes out to Santa Barbara and spends time with him, and Sarah Silverman has done that with Phyllis Diller. It’s very interesting, the comedy community. It’s more surprising and tight-knit than you would imagine.

BE: When it came time to pull together your guest list for the show, did you have an even blend of close friends and a wish list?

DS: Yeah. A lot I knew, and a lot I didn’t. Like, I didn’t know Chris Rock very well, and he proved to be one of the more interesting interviews. There are a whole lot of interviews that are still in the can that are so good: Judd Apatow, Ben Stiller, Lily Tomlin, Carol Burnett, Dick Van Dyke… I tried them in the first round, and…they’re great, but it was how things matched up. But I’m optimistic that we’ll get a second year. The level of celebrity in these people is huge. They’re all the best and the biggest.

BE: What’s the percentage of Canadian content?

DS: [Laughs.] Well, Martin Short and I are the Canadian content. But I would love to have gotten Eugene Levy. I do use a lot of SCTV. You know, I put that group together in a show that I did in the ‘70s (The David Steinberg Show). So, no, not a big percentage of Canadians for someone like me, who’s so pro-Canadian. [Laughs.]

BE: When you appeared on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, you stumbled into some controversy with one of your bits on the show.

DS: Yeah, well, I was doing sermons. [Laughs.] It was something I’d developed at Second City: I’d take a suggestion of any Old Testament personality and do a sermon about them. I’ve got the background in that from my family and from having been at a yeshiva and all that, so I really knew it well. For a comedian, anyway. [Laughs.] Not for a scholar. So I did an album of the sermons, and it was very popular, but it was also very controversial even then. Tom and Dick (Smothers), Tom especially, just couldn’t get over the uniqueness of it, and he said, “Let’s put it on the air!”

So when he put one of the sermons on the air – I think the first one was Moses – I’d gone to New York, and I came back a week later and, because we were friends by this point, we were hanging out, and he said very excitedly, “I want to show you something!” And he opened up the door to this room, and there were just bundles and bundles of mail. And I said, “What’s that?” He said, “It’s your hate mail!” [Laughs.] As if I should be so pleased and excited by this! He was thrilled that it created such an uproar. But then he was told not to do another sermon. Of course, he says, “We love Steinberg, we’re going to have him on again!” Anyway, after I did another kind of Second City sketch with Tommy, he said, “God, the audience still wants more of you. Why don’t you do another sermon?” And the one I chose to go with was Jonah. And the rest is history: it became the reason they were thrown off the air.

You know, there were other political reasons. History sort of rewrites itself, and they say that…Tommy and Dick have sort of been playing down how the sermons were the reason for them going off the air. Because when you listen to them now, they don’t really sound that controversial. But having been the person who did it, it was a completely irreverent presence on television, probably the likes of which had never been there before. So they walked right into the trap of giving the network what they wanted, which was a reason to throw them off, because who isn’t offended by religion?

BE: Before you appeared on Comedy Hour, you were actually a writer on its predecessor, The Summer Brothers Smothers Show, correct?

DS: That’s right. Yeah, Bob Einstein and I wrote for the show. And before that, I was…I sort of broke as a stand-up comedian a couple of years before that. I was already on The Tonight Show as a sort of regular. In fact, I’d already guest-hosted The Tonight Show by the time I was working with the Smothers Brothers.

BE: You were – and, I guess, still are – the youngest person ever to guest-host The Tonight Show.

DS: Yeah, still am. [Laughs.]

BE: How weird was that, to find yourself in such a lofty position at such a young age?

DS: You know, I was so stupid. [Laughs.] You know, with the stupidness of youth, I thought, “Oh, this is pretty great, now I’m hosting The Tonight Show.” Only when I look back now do I go, “Oh, my God, what an incredible thing has happened to me…” At the time, though, I was, like, “Okay, so this is happening.” I was not a guy that was after stardom in any big way. It was just, like, “How do I get really good at this?” And so was the whole community that I was with. Tommy and Dick, they were happy to be stars and all that, because we needed that to be able to do what we wanted to do, but what we really wanted to know was, “How do we get better and better and better?” Comedy was breaking from its old formula, and we were sort of exploring new avenues in the late ‘60s.

BE: The Smothers Brothers managed to blend both comedy and music on their show. You did somewhat of the same thing not much later, when you hosted Music Scene.

DS: Oh, and the performers on that show were unbelievable. It was B.B. King, Janis Joplin…I mean, it was the biggest music stars of the era. Smokey Robinson. John Sebastian. It started out with a group of us from Second City – The Committee, which was a Second City offshoot – but they ended up firing everyone except for me and Lily Tomlin as the hosts. And we were married to Billboard’s Top 100, so every week, no matter what was the popular song, we had to parody it. It was kind of an early Saturday Night Live sort of thing, really. But what we never counted on was that “Sugar, Sugar” would be the number-one song for five weeks in a row. [Laughs.] After three weeks of doing increasingly lame parodies, we just couldn’t figure out what to do with it. But then Lily was whisked away to do Laugh In, and I was left as the host, and…we knew the show was going to be going off the air in about eight weeks, so they said, “You can have anyone you want as a co-host.” So I got Groucho Marx to be my co-host one week, Steve Allen another week…it turned out to be a pretty trippy show in the end.

BE: How was Groucho as a co-host?

DS: Groucho was incredible. We were really good friends. I wrote a draft of the play Minnie’s Boys, and I spent about six months with him. He was lecherous and funny…up to form, basically. [Laughs.] There was a thistle in his kiss, so to speak. He was as acerbic as could be.

BE: Of your standup albums, I think 1974’s Booga! Booga! is probably the best known, if only by virtue of the fact that Sony reissued it in the ‘90s, but there are three others. Is there any one of that bunch that particularly stands out for you?

DS: Well, Disguised as a Normal Person has pretty good material. It’s all the material I was doing in the late ‘60s, and that came out in 1970. Booga! Booga! is very honed. I’d started to get it down good. Before that is The Incredible Shrinking God (1968), a not-easy-to-get album, but that was just the sermons, recorded at Second City. But the last album I did, which got really good reviews and I think maybe even a Grammy nod, was a concept album I wrote with Don Novello. It was called Goodbye to the ‘70s, and we wrote it in 1975.It was about an Arab takeover in America, and I became the sell-out, the Bob Hope type sell-out who was best friends with the Arab President. And that was…maybe we smoked a little bit too much grass. [Laughs.] But I remember it as being very good at the time.

BE: You mentioned The David Steinberg Show earlier. I have to admit that I’ve never actually seen it, but I’ve often seen it referenced as a precursor to The Larry Sanders Show.

DS: It was. In fact, I think Garry (Shandling) even talks about it. But it was a precursor by so many years that you can’t really think of in those terms. But, yeah, I played a character who was an egotistical version of myself – which some people would say is a redundancy – and it was a show within a show. I was sort of copying the old Burns & Allen show. Marty Short plays sort of a sleazy lounge-singer cousin of mine, and John Candy played the Doc Severinsen of the show, Spider Reichman, who worshipped Dizzy Gillespie. It was written by Ziggy Steinberg, one of my closest friends, and…we loved it. We loved doing it. It was just great. It’s sort of an iconic show. Marty’s particularly amazing it. But, then, he’s just amazing, anyway. He’s the funniest human being ever.

BE: I know Dave Foley is also a big fan of the show.

DS: Yes, he is. And then he and I worked together on The Wrong Guy, which is probably one of my favorite things that I’ve ever directed.

BE: Yeah, he’s said it’s one of his favorites as well. But it’s a film that earns decidedly mixed opinions: either it’s a comedy gem, or it’s not funny at all.

DS: That’s absolutely true. You never know what people are going to like or not like. It was a real comedy writer’s film. I got more work as a director from that, just from show runners and comedy writers who knew that it was good. Good or bad, though, it probably still would’ve done better if the company hadn’t gone bankrupt.

BE: Speaking of directing, your first time behind the camera was for Paternity, with Burt Reynolds.

DS: Yes. Burt gave me my first directing job, which was not a little thing. He had to fight Paramount to get them to let me direct it. But it started my whole career. He and I were really good friends, and…I think Burt Reynolds was one of the most underrated comic personalities of the ‘70s. He was as good on The Tonight Show as any comedian who was ever on the show. Things sort of took a turn later on, but at his peak, he was quite remarkable. Yeah, Paternity was first, and then Going Berserk… [Starts to laugh.] It’s not a good movie. But it became a cable stable, and it was also shown as a midnight movie in places like Washington. Not quite Rocky Horror, but…

BE: What made you decide to make the shift from actor to director?

DS: Well, you know, I never really liked acting that much. I did like standup, but I just couldn’t be on the road anymore. I always thought I could direct, though. I always felt…I liked, when I was on the set, to help everyone. And I was a fan of films. I know my movies very well. So I just got interested in it, and…I was still doing comedy, doing gigs all the way through the ’80s and up through the ‘90s. I was still doing The Tonight Show every six or seven months or so. But the directing just built and built and built, and all of a sudden it was a career.

BE: You’ve worked on just about every major sitcom at this point. Who would you say was the most surprising person you’ve worked with, someone you knew about but, when you got the show, left you thoroughly impressed?

DS: You know, from an acting point of view, the women were so impressive that it was unbelievable. I mean, on a show that’s a little broad, like, say, Designing Women, Dixie Carter and Annie Potts, Judith Ivey and Jan Hooks, they were unbelievable to me. The acting chops were incredible. I always remember that in particular. I couldn’t get over the comic abilities and sensibilities of Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt on Mad About You, either. I’d ask them to talk faster, and they talked faster, to the point where it felt like we were doing a Howard Hawks film. That was great.

BE: Lastly, you’ve helmed several episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Given his seemingly natural state of crankiness, is it even possible to direct Larry David?

DS: [Laughs.] It is possible. It’s totally possible. Larry’s very collaborative, actually. He’s a much more generous guy than he plays on TV. [Laughs.]