The series begins with Seinfeld’s most obvious guest, Larry David, with whom he co-created one of the most successful sitcoms of all time, “Seinfeld.” There seems to be some effort on Seinfeld’s part to pick a car that reflects his guest’s personality, as in this first episode, in which he chooses a 1952 VW bug as a symbol of David’s humble, unassuming nature. David, along with his other dietary idiosyncrasies, slightly messes up the premise right off the bat by ordering tea, but he offers one of the series more interesting insights. Discussing the difference between cigars and cigarettes, he suggests that a cigar imbues the smoker with an air of wisdom because of the time it takes to smoke, which lends itself to a “contemplative” posture.

Another very intelligent guest is “Mystery Science Theater 3000” creator Joel Hodgson in episode 5, who offers some interesting insights about nostalgia and economics. On the former, he says that the reason people love to look back at the past is that “You know what you’re going to say … you know what to say about the past, and you don’t know what to say about the future.” When Seinfeld brings up the mysterious economics of a restaurant, Hodgson offers a musical analogy: “The guy who sells the guitars makes the money, and not the guy in the band … How many guitars have you bought over the years … I’ve bought … six, and I don’t play the guitar.”

One of the series’ most enjoyable episodes is the third, in which Seinfeld’s guest is the great stand-up comic Brian Regan. The reason it works so well is that their conversation throughout feels like a joke-writing session, as if the two comedians are co-writing a sitcom or a stand-up set, often finishing each other’s sentences and collectively brainstorming jokes on each topic that comes up. Another especially good one features Alec Baldwin, whose overall attitude toward Seinfeld is playfully hostile, though he shows great humility when he credits the cast and writers of “30 Rock” for teaching him how to be funny. His story of a Rip Torn bar fight is not be missed, and this is where “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” excels: it presents very funny, interesting people just being naturally funny and interesting.

Bullz-Eye: Not that you haven’t been asked this more than a few times, but…what’s your very first memory of experiencing the Three Stooges?

Peter Farrelly: You know, the God’s honest truth…? I don’t remember it. Because they were always there. I’ve been watching the Stooges since I could turn on a TV. But I guess the thing I recall the most is, for some reason, I went through a period when I was, like, a freshman in high school where they were on every day from I think 4 – 5 PM, and I just remember it being the highlight of that winter. [Laughs.] Every day, because it was freezing out, you’d just get in the house and turn on the TV. Every kid in my school at that time was watching. For some reason, they were going through some sort of a renaissance. Everybody was watching them that year.

BE: Not that you guys have ever been afraid of testing boundaries, but it would seem to be pretty daunting to update the Three Stooges. I think the last time anyone tried it was with “The Three Robonic Stooges.“

PF: Yeah, we knew it wasn’t gonna be easy, but we love the Stooges and…the God’s honest truth is that we felt like they were going away. I had little kids…well, they’re 11 and 13 years old now, but the last few years, I asked their friends, and two-thirds of them did not know the Three Stooges. Or they had heard of them, but they didn’t really know who they were. And that bothered us, because we’re huge Stooges fans – they’ve given me more laughs than anybody – and we wanted to bring them back. But we knew that…you know, look, anytime you do anything like this… There was a huge, huge opportunity to fall on our faces, but I did believe that it should be done, the movie should be made, and I felt very confident that we could pull it off.

BE: Who came up with the idea of dividing the film into three Three Stooges shorts as a framing device?

PF: Um…that’s really one of those questions like, “Who came up with this joke?” I never remember, honestly, if somebody says, “Peter, who came up with that line?” Because you’re kind of bouncing things around. It was our call, Bobby’s and mine and Mike Ferrone’s, who we wrote it with. We had struggled with it for a long time. “How do you do this?” Because the Stooges were 18-minute shorts, so how do you turn it into a movie and make people not lose interest? So we thought, “Well, wait a minute, what if we break it into two shorts, and each one picks up where the last one left off, so it holds together as a movie?” And originally, by the way, we had four shorts. There were four of ‘em, and they were more like 18 minutes…just about that, actually…and the problem was that when you got to the fourth short, there was feeling of, “Are you shitting me? There’s another one?” [Laughs.] “Three’s plenty.” So we extended each one and broke it into thirds. And now it’s nice, because when you get to that third short…we have on the beginning where it says, “Final episode,” so you know this is it, but you’re only 55 minutes into the movie, you’re thinking, “Jesus, this thing’s wrapping up!” Psychologically, it makes people happy. [Laughs.]

BE: To say that the Stooges themselves went through a few different casting incarnations would be a bit of an understatement…

PF: Yeah.

BE: …but did it ever reach a point where you began to wonder if the thing was ever gonna get made?

PF: [Long pause.] Nah. There were many points when people said, “It’s not gonna get made,” and the studio said, “No, we’re not doing it,” but I always figured someone else would do it. I never thought, “Nah, it’s just not gonna happen. It’s not meant to be.” I couldn’t go there, because I’d worked on the script too long. We really put a lot of time into the script. I’m proud of that script because it’s original. They look the same, think the same, act the same, sound the same, and we have some of the hits, some of the moves, but the stories are original and Stooge-like. And they weren’t easy to do. They took a lot of work, because it’s not like writing a normal movie, where you can just go in any direction and it doesn’t matter, where as long as it’s working, it’s fine. With this, there were a lot of times where we came up with something that was funny, but we thought, “The Stooges wouldn’t do it. The Stooges wouldn’t do this. The Stooges wouldn’t do that.” So it took…it was a hard, hard script to write, and that’s why I was very reluctant to give up on it. Too much work was put into it. I just couldn’t see quitting on it.

BE: Not to cast any aspersions on the final three guys, but was there anyone from the process of casting the film who was a real heartbreaker when you couldn’t get them into the film?

PF: You know, I know this sounds like bullshit, but, Will, I’m telling you the truth: I take a very Zen view of casting, and I’ve never had my heart broken casting, because…with “Dumb & Dumber,” Jim Carrey was about the 150^th guy we offered that movie to. Everybody had passed. Every single person had passed, and finally we got Jim Carrey, and it worked out in a way that was just beautiful. You can’t imagine it any other way. So throughout our career, we’ve been passed on in just about every movie by lots of guys, and I just always tell ‘em, “It’s okay, man, you gotta do what you gotta do. I don’t want you to do a movie that…” Because, you know, I always try to talk ‘em into it. I give them the old hard-sell, why they should do it. But at the end of the day, if they say, “I dunno, man, I just don’t feel right about it,” I’m, like, “Great! No problem! I have more respect for you than ever!” [Laughs.] And then we move on. Because I do believe that if you get everything in this world that you could imagine, then it’s gonna be as good as you could imagine it. But if you don’t get everything that you want, then sometimes the universe opens up and it gives you things that are better than you could’ve even imagined. And that’s how it’s been. In this case, everybody passed, ultimately, but it finally allowed us to do what we had asked to do in the beginning, which was to cast the three best people. And when we did a worldwide casting call, I guarantee you there’s no actors out there that could’ve done better than these guys. These three were geniuses.

BE: For me, Chris Diamantopoulos was the greatest surprise. Somehow you don’t expect a guy who’s successfully played Sinatra (in “The Kennedys”) to be able to turn a performance as Moe Howard.

PF: He’s a…I’m telling you the truth that he’s maybe the most talented guy I’ve ever worked with. He’s Jim Carrey talented. He can do anything. And I’d never heard of him before! He just came in, and apparently he’s well known on Broadway and has done a lot of Broadway stuff. I’ve met people since then who work on Broadway and said, “Do you know Chris Diamantopoulous?” “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah…” But I’d never heard of him. [Laughs.] But he blew us away. And not just his acting, but his total knowledge of the Stooges and of what we were trying to accomplish. It was sort of like having a third director on set, having him there, because he really did know about what Larry and Curly should be doing as well, and he would walk them through things. Everybody was great, but he was the guy who kind of made it all happen.

BE: How did Larry David find his way into the project? I figure he’d be someone who you’d either really have to twist his arm, or else he’d say, “Oh, yeah, I got a nun’s habit right here, I’ll be right over.”

PF: I think when he heard “Sister Mary Mengele,” he giggled and said, “Ah, okay, lemme look at it.” [Laughs.] And then with Larry, y’know, he’s an old friend. We’ve been working him for years trying to get him in a movie. I said, “C’mon, man, if you don’t do this one, you’re never gonna be in one.” So he said “yeah.”

BE: Has the Catholic Church had any official response to Kate Upton’s performance in the film?

PF: There was some response, actually. The Catholic League came out, and they criticized her, and they criticized Larry David and his portrayal of Sister Mary Mengele. But, y’know, it wasn’t a…it didn’t pick up any steam. But the day the movie opened, there were a couple of press releases.

BE: Did you take any hits for the “Jersey Shore” cast potentially dating the film in the long haul?

PF: You know, the truth is, I don’t read reviews. [Laughs.] So I’m not exactly sure. And I also stay off the internet. Because I’ve gone on the internet enough for my friends to see that if they’re saying that about them, what are they saying about me? I don’t wanna know! Like, I went on for Seth MacFarlane, I was looking at some of his reviews for Ted, which I loved, and I couldn’t believe the amount of hatred and anger. Anyway, I avoid that kind of stuff, so I’m not exactly sure. I haven’t heard too much backlash. I had one guy…I did an interview with a radio guy up in Chicago, Mancow, and he said, “Look, I loved this movie, it blew my mind, I couldn’t believe how good it was, I wasn’t expecting it, but the fucking ‘Jersey Shore’ ruined it for me! As soon as they came on, I was, like, ‘Goddammit, why’d they have to do that?” And, you know, my argument is, well, if you don’t like “Jersey Shore,” that’s who you should want in that role, given that we just beat the shit out of them for the whole time that they’re on there. [Laughs.] Didn’t that give you some satisfaction?

BE: A bit, yes. [Laughs.]

PF: By the way, I do have to say this about the “Jersey Shore” people: when they were coming, we were bracing ourselves for the worst, because, y’know, you read things about how horrible they are, how annoying, they seem like a lot of work, but they showed up on time, worked their butts off, and couldn’t have been more easy-going. No problems, no whining, did everything we asked. I really liked them. I’m probably the first person in the world to say that. [Laughs.]

BE: Over the years, do you have a favorite project that you’ve worked on that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?

PF: Wow. Ah, boy, that’s really… [Long pause.] Yeah. Y’know, it’s funny, people ask me, “Well, what are your favorite movies?” And you’d expect it to be, like, “(There’s Something About) Mary” or “Dumb & Dumber,” and I love them, but…making movies is sort of like having kids. You feel closer and more protective of the kid who never made it than the kid who went off to Harvard Medical School. That kid’s gonna do fine. But you worry about the other kid who, for whatever reason, didn’t do as well. And you tried just as hard on that one, but…so, yeah, “Kingpin” was a crusher when that came out. It did nothing. Well, it did $25 million, but that was…I went into a dark place after that. I felt that “Stuck On You” could’ve done a lot better, too. I really liked “Stuck on You.” You know, those two come to mind. And I wish “The Three Stooges” had been released in the summer. It was a terrible time to release this movie. They released it in mid-April, and the kids weren’t even off on Spring Break. They were all done with Spring Break, and…on the weekend, it opened great, but in the week, it did zero, because kids were in school. And it did okay, but I believe that if they’d released it June, July, or August, it would’ve been double. But on the other hand, you can’t control the world, you can’t control everything, and, y’know, maybe nothing mattered. Maybe it could’ve been released at the best time ever and nothing would’ve changed. But, yeah, you do feel like some of them deserved better.

BE: How was the “Unhitched” experience for you? Would you go back to the small screen after the way that series was received on Fox?

PF: Well, I didn’t…you know, “Unhitched” was something that we executive-produced, and, honestly, it wasn’t my baby. It was friends of mine who I really admire and like, and they did it, and I helped them get it made, and they went off with it, so…it didn’t leave at all a bad taste in my mouth. Yeah, I would still consider going off and doing a show. I’ve never really done a show on a day-to-day basis. I’ve never really created a show and then worked on that show. That’s something that I could see myself doing in the future, without question. But, no, “Unhitched,” I thought it was a valiant effort. I loved the guys who did it, Chris Pappas and Mike Bernier and Kevin Barnett. They’re sensational guys and sensational writers. It was fun. I believe if they’d given the show a little more time it might’ve done better. Who knows? But I have no bad feelings about it.

BE: To kind of bring this full circle by bringing up Larry David again, Wikipedia suggests that you guys wrote “Seinfeld” episode “The Virgin,” but IMDb says you just wrote the story.

PF: Yeah, we didn’t actually write the script. We pitched the idea and sold it. We went into a room and pitched it to Larry and Jerry (Seinfeld) and Larry Charles, and they bought the idea. We were given story credit, and they wrote it. So it was… At the time, we were trying to get in and wanted to get on staff with “Seinfeld,” but they didn’t hire us for that, but they bought that. When we look back in retrospect, if we’d ever been hired as writers, we would never have been able to go off and make “Dumb & Dumber” and those things. So it all worked out.

BE: Is there anything that you would’ve changed about the way “The Virgin” came out? Anything that veered way away from what you’d envisioned when you pitched the story?

PF: Nah. I thought it was great. Again, we had very little to do with it beyond the idea of…our idea was, “What happens when you go out with a woman who’s a virgin nowadays?” If the ‘50s, that was a great thing, but now, it’s, like, “What?” It raises so many questions. Why is she a virgin? Does she not like sex? Is it a religious thing? Is she nuts? I mean, what’s going on here? [Laughs.] It was the idea of taking it from the other angle and being horrified about having a virgin in your life and not knowing how to deal with it. And, of course, that led them into the next week, which was the masturbation episode. So I think it all worked out for the best for everybody.

BE: So what do you guys have on your plate for the future?

PF: Well, we’re hoping to do “Dumb & Dumber 2” next, but right now the studio and Jim Carrey are having…uh, they’re having some negotiating issues. [Laughs.] Basically, what happened is that New Line had released the original “Dumb & Dumber,” and when we got together to do “Dumb & Dumber 2”…and, by the way, as a reminder, we had nothing to do with “Dumb & Dumberer.” We never wanted to do that with young guys. We only wanted to do it with these guys. So, anyway, when everybody got together and we said, “Let’s do it,” we went off to write, and New Line cut deals for all of us. And then we gave the script to New Line, they loved it, they gave it to Warner Brothers, and Warner Brothers said, “Great, but what’s with these deals? We don’t like these deals!” And that caused a problem, because they started renegotiating deals. But I hope and think it’s going to all be resolved. But right now we’re sort of in a holding pattern, waiting to see what happens there.

BE: I’ll keep my fingers crossed. I write for the Onion AV Club, and I talked to Jeff (Daniels) right before “The Newsroom” premiered – in fact, I was talking about the range it takes to jump from “Gettysburg” into “Dumb & Dumber” – and when I asked about the status of the sequel, he said, “Oh, I’ve read the script, it’s funnier than hell, and as far as I know, we’re just working out a deal.” And then two days later, Jim Carrey said, “Sequel’s off, we’re not doing it.”

PF: Yeah, well, I think it could all be fixed. They’re still talking. Right now, as we speak, it is off. But that could change any day.

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.]