Why did all that hand sanitizer have to go up in smoke?
What adventures in people-alienating curmudgeonry await Larry next season?
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Larry is always noncommittal about continuing the show, taking it season by season.
HBO
Then you two start gradually talking about the possibilities of another season, and then we get another season.
Where are you at right now?
JEFF SCHAFFER: We’ve been doing a lot of FaceTiming, Larry and I.
We’re still in the talking about talking-about-it stage.
Between every season, we have to replenish.
Luckily, detailing the social shortcomings of the Westside Angelenos is pretty much an evergreen business.
But right now, we’re all just stuck at home.
So that’s a little disappointing.
What’s the best thing that’s happened during those FaceTime sessions?
They almost all start out the same way.
“Hey, how are you doing?”
“I gotta plug in.”
Although sometimes those daily complaints lead right into a new story.
Well, that’s good.
One can easily picture the idea of Larry doing social distancing and the phobia of catching the virus.
This guy was big on sanitizer way before everyone was using it.
It’s so insane how fast this came upon us.
But look, Larry tried to tell everybody how to behave.
He hadnt been a fan of handshaking for a long time.
He puts the Purell on the tables.
He doesn’t want you defecating anywhere near him.
And he was practicing social distancing long before there was a term for it.
I think he was born with it.
But right now, one would want to see Larry tackle that, in a quarantine or post-quarantine world.
Everybody wants to see how Larry would tackle these issues in this strange time.
But a situation like this isn’t just going to go back to normal, sadly.
No one wants to see us do the same thing that everyone just did.
That’s all we ever talked about.
And when they say, Why?
to just say, Because I don’t want to.
That’s true freedom.
He doesn’t want to attend another man’s poetry reading.
But we have such a problem as a society just saying No.
So what do we do?
It really gives you the ultimate excuse to get out of everything and lunch.
And by the way, that’s one of the issues for us.
We’ve just done a story where we’ve used something thats in the universe as a people repellent.
So we have to figure out a new way to do it with the coronavirus.
But rest assured, even in isolation, there are still a lot of very, taxing social obligations.
Anything social and mutual online it’s enough.
How hard was it to pull off these guest cameos for the spite stores in the finale?
And he goes, Oh, no, we should do that!
[Laughs] I was like, Okay!
All right, we’re doing that!
So we reached out to Jonah, whove I’ve known for a long time.
No one is better at being casually spiteful.
[Laughs] He’s so funny, just one of the funniest people on the planet.
We knew that this had to screw Larry up somehow.
And then we wanted a celebrity running a store that you would never expect him to run.
And our thoughts immediately went to Sean Penn and frozen yogurt.
We were thinking in our head about Sean Penn and frozen yogurt.
I know where you’re talking about.
At Wilshire and Centinela!
I was like, Oh my God!
I’m like, That’s right.
There’s a bird store.
Then there’s a tuck store.
Then there’s a bird store.
I feel like all of Los Angeles has two bird stores and theyre right next to each other.
What is going on?
So then it was like, Oh, well, this we have to do!
Sean Penn and exotic birds!
Let’s do that.
So we talked to Sean and he was like, Great, let’s do it.
He showed up and he wanted to get to know the birds.
And then we just let him fire off the store.
And it would be such a successful store.
[Laughs] Sean would do such a good job selling birds.
There’s some very funny outtakes that we didn’t use for time.
And then she says, Does it matter if I have a cat?
And he just looks at her with the iciest stare and just says, Get out.
After the fire, the big question is, Will Larry rebuild?
Will the spite go on?
Well, here’s what I’ll say about Larry.
It’s like the force, right?
Its like the spite is strong in this one.
[Laughs] It didn’t end well.
Hes got Mocha Joe right next door throwing parties.
He’s lost a lot of money.
But… yeah, I think he’d do it all again.
The spite is strong in this one.
I did want to ask you about Bob Einstein [a.k.a.
Marty Funkhouser], who passed away last year.
So a few things went to Leon and then Vince Vaughn came in and was amazing as Freddie Funkhouser.
The one thing we couldnt do was say he was gone because it was too sad for us.
And it was too sad for the show.
We didn’t want to admit that he was gone, so we said he was in China.
We just wanted him to be happy in China.
That’s a really nice sentiment.
Do you feel like it might never be addressed and hell just be happy in China?
I don’t know.
It’s a string that we havent fully tied yet.
We have to think about it.
It’s twice sad.
Were sad he’s gone, and we’re sad he wasn’t there to be brilliantly funny.
Finally, would you be surprised if therewasn’tanother season?
But I wouldnt bet on him running out of ideas.
