Larry Charles
Larry Clive Charles (born December 1, 1956) is an American comedian, screenwriter, director, actor, and producer. He was a staff writer for the sitcom Seinfeld for its first five seasons, contributing some of the show’s darkest and most absurd storylines. He has also directed the documentary film Religulous and the mockumentary comedy films Borat, Brüno, and The Dictator. His Netflix documentary series Larry Charles’ Dangerous World of Comedy premiered in 2019.
Charles was born in Brooklyn, New York City, New York to a Jewish family. He was raised in Trump Village, located between Brighton Beach and Coney Island in Brooklyn.
After graduating from John Dewey High School, he attended college at Rutgers University in New Jersey, but he left school to perform comedy routines.
CAREER:
Charles performed stand-up comedy during the 1970s until he was hired to write for the short-lived sketch comedy show Fridays, where he worked with Larry David. This began Charles’s career in television writing that included The Arsenio Hall Show and eventually Seinfeld. David gave him the job as a writer on Seinfeld and his directorial debut on Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Larry charles is the only comedic director to be so brave that he even joked with ISIS and asked the terrorists to tell him jokes that he could use in Curb Your Enthusiasm.
‘I’m always looking for comedy that really isn’t funny’ … Larry Charles with Special Forces, a former Liberian child soldier, in his Dangerous World of Comedy. Photograph: Netflix
At one point in his new documentary series, Larry Charles’ Dangerous World of Comedy, he visits a prison in Kirkuk, northern Iraq, to meet a captured Isis fighter who says his new guards are much funnier than the humourless terrorists he’s used to hanging around with. “He seemed sweet,” says Charles. “You realise there is a face to terrorism that is not the face you think.”
In terms of what can and can’t be said in 2019, Charles says he believes in “absolute free speech”, yet some of the most illuminating moments come when he has to reckon with what that actually means in reality. In Liberia, he meets the former warlord General Butt Naked, who earned that nickname after claiming to have taken troops into battle naked.
The general talks about murdering children, and reminisces about how charred human remains taste “like pork ribs”. He then reveals prosaically that he is a big fan of Kids Say the Darndest Things, the US comedy series hosted by Bill Cosby that ran in the late 1990s. Who would have thought one man could share a taste for both Cosby and human flesh? “Well, to me it’s not that far removed,” Charles says drily. “I never thought, when I was a child, that connection would be made. But here it is.”
Later, Charles finds himself on the receiving end of a determinedly unfunny antisemitic rant by the white supremacist hacker Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer. Then the alt-right troll Baked Alaska tells him that Borat – a movie in which Baron Cohen says of a Jewish woman “you can barely see her horns” – is one of his “biggest influences”. Baked Alaska tells Charles he was excited to meet him because “if anyone’s going to get me, it’s going to be you”. In voiceover, Charles says: “Oh, really?”
By this we are brought to the fact that Charles is not afraid to make his comedies in such a way that is easily forgettable and he is for sure is not afraid to make jokes on something that is sensitive in the society. Not only did charles discuss about this but he also showed this in the movie that he directed along with Sacha Baron Cohen, Larry David and so on , called The Dictator.
The dictator is proved to be the greatest work of Larry Charles to ever exist in the eyes of many. Mixed with Dark humour and the fact that it is influenced by the founder of Al-Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden.The movie goes by showing the era of democracy and showing that this era was not to be uplifted and the current Dictator is trying his best to do so while being childish and being an immature adult.
This political Satire is the best way to show how Larry Charles tries his best in the movies that he makes and tries to make everyone laugh. Although criticised by many on the fact that his work is not great only on the fact that society does not uphold the standards which are shown in his movies he keeps making them with dark humour and does not care on what you might say to him.
His work keeps on getting better and as the years have passed he keeps trying his best in his work without letting others trying to get to his head. This is to such an extent that he even started his show on Netflix called Larry Charles’ Dangerous World of Comedy.
Larry Charles’ Dangerous World of Comedy is an American documentary television series that premiered on Netflix on February 15, 2019. The 4-part series follows the comedy writer and director Larry Charles as he “travels the world in search of humor in the most unusual, unexpected and dangerous places,” such as Iraq, Somalia, Liberia, and Nigeria. He interviews comedians including Ahmad Al-Basheer, Trevor Noah, Brace “PissPigGranddad” Belden, and Hatoon Kadi. He also spends time exploring the American alt-right and its relationship to comedy, interviewing internet figures Anthime “Baked Alaska” Gionet and Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer.
Right off the bat, the show’s premise risks exemplifying a troublesome duality. On the one hand, it is extremely well-researched, and deserves credit for putting the spotlight on non-Western comedy in a way that is far more interesting than re-litigating American comedy’s cultural ubiquity again in the safest possible environment, as, say, a show where comedians ride around drinking coffee might.
Covering the comedy scenes in both Iraq and Liberia, the first part of the show is extremely successful when it comes to communicating the environment in which these comedians find their voices. In Iraq, where comedians can be assassinated for joking about the wrong thing, one TV host describes being kidnapped, and subsequently having to joke his way out of more extreme forms of torture.
Ayaan Ahmed 