The Misfit The United States of Television: America in Primetime

Television is most certainly here to stay.

New eyes, new vision for the world.

Primetime is the showcase

for the best that American television can be.

And so, when America sits down to watch,

it demands more than stock characters going through the motions.

To flourish in primetime,

these shows have to reflect America in all its individuality,

diversity and eccentricity.

And that's how some of the most high-risk characters

in the primetime crowd are born.

This is the awkward squad,

the ones who can't, or won't,

or aren't allowed to fit in.

Geeks, freaks, misfits.

But though they may march to a different drummer,

in primetime, they become one of us and we become one of them.

Hey.

I think TV has always been a fantastic medium

for taking characters who, yeah, they're outrageous....

I'm passing a gallstone as we speak.

..they're slightly inappropriate.

People who are socially awkward

or people who are missing an etiquette or a filter.

Schlubs. Nerds. Weirdos.

It's not a normal person.

Someone who has almost zero self-awareness. Kind of zero wisdom.

Expressing things that they've thought of, but would never say.

Someone who doesn't fit into the world that the audience belongs to.

In television, for some reason, they've all found homes.

Whether you are pushing that to comedic extremes for laughs

or reaching for a kind of drama, both things are appealing.

They are, in fact, misfits with a capital M.

It's fun to see institutions undone in some sort of inappropriate way

by somebody who just dares to be there doing it.

Comedy by its very nature is derisive.

You are picking on somebody - some body.

It doesn't matter who it is.

It can be an ethnicity, it can be a physical feature,

it can be bald people, fat people, short people. I've got all three.

It can be just about anything, but in order to get a laugh,

you are actually pointing at and shining a light on

some sort of either generic or specific foible.

When you do it with the misfit, and the misfit doesn't crumble,

everybody feels better.

Knock off that smile. Tighten up that face.

I want to see them lips white, I want to see them tight.

"That guy has it worse than me, he's being treated worse than me. And he's not dying."

-I don't like you. Do you like me?

-Yes, sir.

Misfits in television shows,

that's like every show I ever watched.

You can't be too careful these days.

There are a lot of strange people in this world.

I'm a big fan of just the classic TV shows.

What does that sign say?

It says Beverly Hills!

Did you hear that, Granny?

I don't even care what the episode is about,

I just like to see those characters be those characters.

Gilligan was a misfit. He was this kind of knucklehead.

I'll save you!

Corporal Agarn in F Troop was an idiot.

There have been so many versions

of a certain kind of a comedy character who just doesn't get it

and in an exaggerated, comedic way,

kind of relates to how a lot of us feel. That's what's funny.

People love a character who is needy or hapless

or is kind of evil or horny or greedy.

I'll get it. Allez-oop!

Gomez Addams, he was horny and greedy and multilingual.

That was living, mon ami.

Whoooo-oooh! Tish!

When you speak French, you drive me wild.

Speak some more French.

Anything. Tout alors!

La plume de ma tante! Mademoiselle from Armentieres! Anything!

When I was a little boy,

I was probably bothered by my strangeness.

And one day, someone laughed

and I thought, "You know, let's go for it."

-Wonderful.

-For a minute there, I thought I was going to miss.

The Addams Family was a world that operated by its own set of rules.

People talked a certain way, there was a certain style.

BELL RINGS

There was a certain mystery,

you just never knew what was going to happen next.

It's kind of like Alice In Wonderland in the form of a TV show.

These businessmen, always in such a hurry.

When we look at the '40s, '50s, '60s,

the '40s were filled with war and its aftermath.

The '50s, everybody wanted to be very straight.

There were efforts to force conformity.

'Yes, indeed, both Don and Sue look like the kind of people you would like to know, don't they?'

The ordinary '50s television family, they're unnatural.

The people were a little bit phoney. A little too perfect.

A little too stiff. And they begged for loosening up.

The premise of the Addams Family was they were insane,

but tried to live this suburban life.

I think some of them were in different states of being alive.

Was Lurch alive?

They're misfits, but they have a confidence about who they are

and the fact that they are so different.

You just absolutely adore those characters.

While they seem to have a strange exterior,

underneath, they are the healthiest family on television.

Parents really doing something with the children.

Sending a rocket through the roof.

It went right through Uncle Fester's room.

Too bad he's not home, he'd have got a bang out of it.

That's an activity.

Any show, I don't care if it's Star Trek, or a Western, or a cop show,

or set in the office or set in the taxi depot, is about a family.

Taxi was amazing in who it brought together.

Thank you very much.

You had this melting pot of all these different characters.

They weren't a family, but they became a family.

Taxi was about this family of misfits

who had dreams that were greater than working in this garage.

It's going to be OK.

Take your application to the counter and they'll give you the test.

It was this beautiful metaphor for life.

< Pssst.

(What does a yellow light mean?)

(Slow down.)

OK.

What ...

does...?

You look at that show and there's a wild card, a crazy character.

Your friend Wheeler is a loser, Reiger!

And I'm going to tell him he's a loser!

And I'm going to love telling him he's a loser!

Louie De Palma is like the gnat that's always in somebody's ear.

The guy that's really pushing and egging him on.

You never saw anybody on television be that nasty.

This is the worst boss, teacher, friend, relative.

The reveal of him in the pilot, yelling these nasty things, and that cage opens and he comes down...

Hold everything! OK, I'm going to get tough with you guys.

LAUGHTER

Ye-eah!

Mostly broadcast networks were strongly suggesting

that every character needed to be likeable

and they can't do anything that is going to upset anybody

because we need to root for them.

I always use Louie De Palma's example of...when I get the note,

"This character is not likeable."

"Really? Have you seen the show Taxi?

"Did you see Louie De Palma? Was he likeable to you?"

He was lovable.

Because he was really funny.

They played up just how unlikeable he really was.

Just a great, great sitcom villain.

And then they did a brilliant thing where they began showing episodes

where you began to sympathise with him.

I would be on my way to some event and I would have to change.

He's peeping at Elaine's character

dressing in the locker room and gets caught.

-It's absolutely untrue.

-Oh, yeah? So why are your eyes tearing?

Because I'm hurt.

I'm hurt that you would even think that I could do such an awful thing.

So how come only one eye is tearing?

Well, it's not the end of the world.

It's like, "I'm sorry." And I go, "Haven't you ever been violated?"

And he tells this heartbreaking story

of having to buy clothes in the children's section.

The only way I can get anything to fit me is, er...

..I have to go to a men's store

and walk straight to the boy's department.

That made me feel for him in such an interesting way.

He says, "Is that how I made you feel?" And I say, "Kind of."

So then we had this really sweet moment.

God, I'm sorry.

It's OK.

And of course, he grabs me on the butt.

I think misfit characters succeed

when they say something very true,

almost by accident, about everybody who fits.

Comedy often is meant to provoke, to agitate a little bit,

to push some buttons.

Certain characters entertain us in that way and they actually,

in their own way, they do provoke some thought.

Using misfits to break taboos,

to shout the things that the mainstream thinks but never says,

was deployed to greatest effect in a sitcom

that, according to its creators, was about nothing.

What's the matter?

My mother caught me.

-Caught you? Doing what?

-You know.

I was alone...

If the misfit can ask the question that nobody else can

because they're either dumber

or from other land or whatever it may be,

then clearly the Seinfeld four could talk about masturbation

when nobody else on television could talk about masturbation.

I tell you this, I am never doing that again.

What? In your mother's house or altogether?

-Altogether.

-Give me a break.

-You don't think I can?

-No chance!

-You think you could?

Well, I know I could hold out longer than you.

Care to make it interesting?

It was absolutely brand-new territory.

I was convinced they would not let us get away with it.

The Contest had us absolutely scratching our heads going,

"OK, no-one gave us advance warning of this."

NBC had no inkling that The Contest was coming

because I didn't disclose it until the day of the read-through.

Everybody was madly trying to get up to speed with the subject matter

and, "Can we do it, should we do it?"

Did you make it through the night?

Yes, I'm proud to say I did.

-So you're still master of your domain?

-Yes. Yes, I am.

Master of my domain.

I worked myself up into this lather

where I was actually intending to quit the show

if they did not put it on the air.

-There is a naked woman across the street.

-Where?

-Second floor from the top. See the window on the left?

-Wow.

"I'm quitting, I'm going to quit. If they don't let me do this, I'm done."

I'm out.

I was shocked when they said,

"Hey, we love it. Just have a couple of things."

-You're out?

-Wow, that was fast!

Seinfeld was an experiment. It didn't have traditional structure.

It certainly didn't have traditional characters.

Writers somehow felt they had to present characters that were

more honourable, more respectful and somehow they weren't nearly as real.

It used to be that the misfits had a certain..."I am who I am,

"but I have to fit into the real world."

The Beverly Hillbillies did try to adjust to Beverly Hills.

The Seinfeldians and, you know...

the newer groups are not trying.

The world has to work according to them.

I'm not sure television dared to do that before.

PROLONGED BELCHING

We like to think of ourselves

and our society as being a lot smarter than it is, maybe.

Do you want to be expelled outright?

Er...

Kicked out of school for good?

Condemned to a life of stupidity?

-Er...OK.

-Yeah, me too.

When can we start?

I remember reading a statistic,

it was something like 30 percent of high school students in America

can't locate the United States on a globe if it's not marked,

and people being horrified and surprised and I was thinking,

"Yeah, that sounds about right."

Now, remember the rules.

I throw it at you, then you throw it at me.

I don't get it. How do you win?

It is easy and good practice to use the misfit

which is, again, the person that is lesser than us,

they're the ones we can look down on in some way, that is the misfit,

to use them, as Shakespeare said, hold the mirror up to society,

and ask people to take a look at themselves.

What do we do now?

Er, we could do homework.

THEY LAUGH

Audiences can connect with that behaviour because we are flawed.

We are all flawed and, in fact, the offensive, creative material

is that which doesn't acknowledge our flaws,

where people behave well and are perfect.

Would you like a copy of my butt?

A lot of the '80s television was very kind of, um, there was

a lot of very goody-goody stuff.

I mean, I liked The Cosby Show, but everybody's going to Princeton

and everybody is smart and good.

Beavis and Butthead to me,

maybe it was partially a reaction to all of that.

And now you should be able to see

the inherent beauty of the Dewey decimal system.

-I see the beauty.

-Oh, yes.

Some characters have no desire

to get better, or they're just stupid. They're just dumb

and they just can't get it.

Cracks me up.

DISTORTED SPEECH

Mark Frost and I got together and would have coffees...

I think we started at Du Par's on Ventura Boulevard.

And...

Somewhere along the line, this idea came of this kind of setting

in a small town in North Western United States of America.

Twin Peaks, this town has a mood.

It's near the woods.

It's a small town bunch, so there's people in a diner,

people at a gas station, people in school.

BELL RINGS

They're all normal, but just like when you get to know people,

you discover many, many, many peculiarities.

-Who's the lady with the log?

-They call her Margaret.

My log has something to tell you.

Do you know it?

I don't believe we've been introduced.

Creating these people and this world, it's just,

you know, first blush, that's just insanity.

You could say we all have a television set in our brain.

And you can turn the channels and see what comes on.

You just, it's just there. There it is.

It's not as crystal clear as the story,

finally when it's finished,

but it's like that, it's so much like that.

David Lynch's use of Americana,

that disparity between the dark underbelly

between our expectation of what that world is like

and what it's really like, you know, there are murders in small towns,

people have been killing teenagers and jealous wives

and drug use and all of that,

behind that Norman Rockwell painting for ever, he just zeroed in on that.

In my dream, Sarah Palmer has a vision of her daughter's killer.

Deputy Hawks gets this picture.

I got a phone call from a one-armed man named Mike.

-The killer's name was Bob.

-Like in Bobby?

No, it's a different Mike and a different Bob.

They lived above a convenience store.

They had a tattoo, "Fire...

"Walk with me."

Twin Peaks is a constant frame of reference in writers' rooms.

You will constantly hear people bring it up.

What?

The feeling of it was just...

You felt it viscerally.

Twin Peaks was not that you felt emotions like sadness or happiness,

you just felt this visceral feeling of dread and strangeness.

The dream sequences...

You know, I just... I give up.

'I bow down to that.

'I couldn't, I could not believe those dreams.'

They just seemed like real dreams.

Nightmares.

And we did a lot of dream sequences on The Sopranos,

we never got close to that.

'Twin Peaks showed that outsider-dom

'could be fuel for drama as well as comedy.'

It's so heartening that Twin Peaks is now considered a classic,

because it's one of those shows that is so strange

you wouldn't have thought audiences would be able to swallow,

you know, surrealism in prime-time television and they did

and they loved it.

'I really, am not really interested in characters who AREN'T outsiders.'

I think I sort of grew up with an outsider's perspective

for a variety of reasons and I still have it.

As a writer, I love writing about characters who are misfits,

whether they know that they are misfits or not.

I find characters who are insiders who are getting it right,

who are doing the right thing, who are

well-adjusted and organised, and motivated....

Life's winners are...

not that interesting to me.

I just think they're really boring.

Stop, stop.

'David Fisher in Six Feet Under is a gay man,'

afraid to acknowledge who he is, so he's living

in a sort of outside bubble.

I'm gay, so of course I take those struggles seriously.

Please, God, help me.

Take this pain away, please.

Fill this loneliness with your love.

'I felt a sense of responsibility

'when I was cast in the role of David because I did recognise'

he was totally unique at that point...

a fully fleshed out, central...

gay character with a... a complex relationship,

a complex relationship to his work, to his family, to his sexuality.

He wasn't incidentally gay, he wasn't comic relief,

he wasn't the neighbour upstairs with the little dog.

He was David. He was,

he was right there in the middle of it all.

Mom?

Mmm?

You do have to write what you know, because then you can bring this,

you bring a knowledge to it and a depth to it

because those emotions are real.

Are you OK?

I have a terrible headache.

Well, maybe we can talk later.

What?

What?

I'm gay.

My relationship with death and characters' relationship

with their own mortality has been a big theme for me.

My sister was killed in a car accident

when I was 13 years old and that sort of, you know, cut my life in half.

I've been very fortunate in that I have been able to...

you know, focus that through my work.

'TV writers today have seized on the drama of the minority position.

'Maybe that's because so many Americans these days

'feel that they're in a minority of one.

'Prime time has a reassuring message...

'Everyone's got rights and even a vampire's got feelings.'

Humans are usually more squeamish about vampires than you are.

Who am I to be squeamish about something out of the ordinary?

I always think it's interesting when somebody has a knee-jerk

reaction of fear towards something that is different.

What do you have? A death wish?

No, I don't have a death wish,

I just happen to think that judging an entire group of people based on

the actions of a few individuals within that group is morally wrong.

Well, I will not let you put yourself

or this bar in danger, I won't.

I guess that is why horror as a genre can be such a potent

arena in which to explore these kinds of things.

Vampires often turn on those that trust them, you know?

We don't have human values like you.

Well, humans turn on those who trust them, too.

True Blood is about what is normal

and why do we fear people who are different than we are?

The American people, they know these are creatures of Satan. Demons.

Literally, they have no soul.

But Reverend Newman, you must be aware of polls that show consistently

-growing support for vampire rights?

-Those polls are fixed.

It challenges the idea of what's normal.

But what's your idea on a world where there's vampires

and werewolves and shape shifters.

BARKS

There is a running theme in the show about vampires

struggling for assimilation, which I think makes it fun to

sort of look at that struggle in a way that is not really earnest

or heartfelt about the real struggles that minorities face.

A lot of Americans don't think that you people deserve

-special rights.

-They are the same rights you have.

-I'm just saying there is a reason things are the way they are.

-Yeah?

It is called injustice.

It is a supernatural world.

It makes you think about how often people don't feel

exactly in synch with everyone else.

It's about being an outsider, being different.

The big theme in my work is the struggle to be

authentic in an increasingly inauthentic world.

United States of Tara is about a woman who is a wife and mother

who also happens to have dissociative identity disorder.

Which is also known as multiple personalities.

SHE SIGHS

Oh, God. Oh, Jesus Christ, it's happening again.

It's happening, I'm losing time again.

There are a lot of rules pertaining to mothers on television.

People like to see good mothers. And it's a note that you get a lot.

I'm, I want to, I want to up my medication but I don't want

Max to think that there is anything wrong with me.

So, to me it was kind of revolutionary to be able to

say this woman is deeply flawed and she is also a good mother.

Deal with that.

I want my real mother

and only my real mother and none of you other freaks. Just her.

Everybody else, go away.

Tara obviously realises that she is unusual.

She is definitely struggling to fit in.

We always jokingly call ourselves a traumatic comedy,

because it is a funny show

but it is rooted in something that is really quite disturbing.

Wonderful, now I have got Tab on my dress.

There is this belief that characters on television need to be extra

relatable and extra sympathetic

because they are coming into your home week after week.

The idea of normal has definitely been skewed.

I think now we are realising that abnormal is normal.

We really are in the age of the nerds.

The people that we all look up to,

someone like Bill Gates,

you know, one of the most famous Americans.

He is this dorky kid from Seattle with a computer start-up.

The nerds are kind of revered in new and different ways.

I mean, you ask people like, oh, are you really popular

and you fit in and you got along with everyone?

It is a pretty small percentage of people that go, yeah!

We relate to that - it is a universal experience.

-You should get one of these.

-No, thank you.

I grew up in suburban Seattle as quite a nerd.

For instance in my sophomore year of high school

I was playing Dungeons and Dragons, I was on the debate club, Model United

Nations, computer club, marching band where I played the bells.

BELL RINGS

Whoosh.

I know that nerd world pretty well.

America and Britain, as someone once said,

our two nations divided by a common language.

And so the translation of Wernham Hogg in Slough into Dunder Mifflin

in Scranton, Pennsylvania was always going to be a major undertaking.

Not least was the delicate question of how you turn a plonker...

Pow, pow, pow...

..Into a nerd.

Dwight to me is the most bizarre character. I mean,

he could exist in so many different times.

One of the great things

that we did was to incorporate some of Rainn's life story.

PUFFS

He brought in, I remember a photo album of relatives of his who

were pretty rural.

And that helped -

we passed that around and we really saw what his stock was.

When we discover,

on around season two or three that Dwight is actually a farmer.

Welcome to Schrute Farm!

It all clicks, it all falls into place, because I don't know how much

time you have spent with farmers, they are kind of weird people.

We think, oh, farmers are salt of the earth, you know.

I have a lot of family that are farmers.

Not really salt of the earth, they kind of are,

but they can be just weirdos.

And just as you have planted your seed in the ground,

I am going to plant my seed in you.

The nerd, the social misfit, the antagonist,

the clannish person that comes from a very Germanic love of rules.

I have decided to shun Andy Bernard for the next three years.

Which I'm looking forward to. It is an Amish technique.

It is like slapping someone with silence.

I love The Office characters.

I think they are, they are all of us and none of us at the same time.

HE PUFFS

-OK, you know what? How much is that?

-It's only 25 bucks.

-Wow.

Um...OK.

AIR HISSING

I used to make this joke where I said, you know,

I love The Bourne Identity.

But I would like it more if it starred George Wendt.

-Norm from Cheers.

-Why don't you sit down, Norm?

LAUGHTER

I just think that it is funny to see people trying to succeed in life

and they have bigger obstacles.

Man, I hate high school.

# I don't give a damn about reputation... #

I had a friend recently, whose son is very nerdy,

doesn't really fit in school.

I had my DVD box of Freaks And Geeks, I was like, I tell you what,

I will give you this box, you sit down with your son,

you watch Freaks And Geeks from beginning to end,

watch all 17 episodes, and I guarantee you things will change.

High school is a time that one has to start to face

whether they fit in society.

Why are you always the one who is out of step?

Is there something the matter with you? What makes you the outsider?

That's what I always found interesting about high school,

it is this kind of great social, I don't know,

experiment in which you lump all these kids into a building

and the only thing we all have in common is we are the same age.

Well, if you were one of the popular people in high school,

you were in the centre of the action and you weren't observing it and

you weren't having thoughts about it really, because you were living it.

And the envy and resentment and all these emotions

kind of make the creative person want to do a satirical take on it.

You are dead, weird.

I'm sick of being called a geek.

I mean, what is so geeky about us anyways? We are just guys.

To me, it is all about rooting interests.

You want to root for the person who has the least chance to succeed.

Freaks And Geeks was my attempt to recreate my actual experiences in high school.

Paul Feig grew up as a nerd in Michigan,

so he wanted to make a high school show that was about what his high school life was about,

which was a lot of beatings, apparently, a lot of humiliation.

Oh, I'm sorry, did I crush your twinkies(?)

What I did was on the first day I created this questionnaire

that I handed out to the writers and it said,

"What was the most humiliating thing that ever happened to you in high school?

"What is the worst drug you took?

"What's the maddest your parents ever got at you?"

We literally sat in a room for two weeks

and just told personal stories and mined that for the whole season.

It became a collective spewing of pain.

Buy this garment and I guarantee you will be

perceived as a man of distinction by the ladies.

The Parisian jumpsuit was actually something that I really did.

He claims that when he was a kid,

he thought it would be cool to have this Parisian night suit.

I think he wore it and he was humiliated.

The minute I walked in the door I knew I had made a horrendous

mistake and I was stuck in that thing all day and I couldn't get out.

It does seem that you have to go through

a bath of pain to become a professional comedy writer.

Most stories ended with, and he was humiliated.

(COUGHING) Homo! Homo! Homo!

Homo! Homo! Homo!

Hey, hey, hey! Now, Sam wearing something different

to express his individuality makes him a homo?

Well, then, I guess we should all be proud to be homos.

Now, you go ahead, Sam.

Problems we have as teenagers,

we continue to have through our whole lives of trying to figure out,

who am I? How do I fit in? What am I doing? Am I doing the right thing?

It seems like everything turned out all right.

But when I go and drop off my kids at school,

just even interacting with the parents,

I feel as goofy and worthless as I did when I was 11 years old.

I can feel that while people are APPLAUDING me.

You know, in the middle of it I can just go, I'm a piece of crap.

CHEERING

People assume that if you succeed in this business,

let's say like a Letterman or a Leno, and have tremendous success that

you'd have every reason to think that you are going to be secure.

How do you feel about that Haiti situation?

Erm...where's that?

-That is right next to the Dominican Republic.

-Oh, right, right.

That's a great shop.

Those people are inconceivably insecure.

That curtain is a perfect metaphor for how someone wants to be

seen when they come through the curtain, it's like how we are in

life when we want people to think of us a certain way,

and then on the other side of the curtain is

when we are our real selves.

It's all over. You did good. You did good.

Oh, God. I hope we beat Leno.

What he's doing, how he's doing it, how he's saying the line,

it is just...just the vanity of the whole thing.

It is just the inflation of ego that needs to be deflated.

Beverley, somebody has been sitting in my chair.

Did they also eat your porridge too?

-You know, like Goldilocks And The Three Bears?

-Oh, right.

Beverley, somebody has been sitting in my chair. Would you please

-send out a memo to tell them not to?

-I certainly will.

Thank you.

'Going past the joke into what is a character'

and these are very vain characters and very driven and very human.

Which one of these do you like the most?

-Oh, this one.

-Yeah, me too. Yeah, me too.

Larry Sanders is one of showbiz's sacred monsters -

attractive and repulsive in equal measure.

A rampant egotist with low self-esteem.

An insider with all the insecurities of an outsider.

'I played myself when I came on the show.'

I had had sex with his wife after they got separated

and he found out about it.

Listen, you don't have a problem that she and I, you know,

-after your divorce?

-No, I have no problem with that.

The phrase be my guest comes to mind. Know what I mean?

-Everything is OK with you and me?

-It couldn't be better.

-I'm thrilled you're here.

-Fantastic.

-Don't worry about it.

Listen, let's not bring this thing about Francine up on the show,

-all right?

-Wouldn't dream of it, Larr.

And try to talk up when you're out there on the air.

'Rip Torn was his boss'

and when they broke for commercial,

'Garry looked at me and said, "I'll be right back,"

'and he walked over to Rip, and he said,'

"Every time I look at him, I keep seeing him having sex with Francine

"and Francine is on top," and Rip Torn goes, "The lazy bastard!"

And I just remember that they...

'That show...I mean, Larry just has this'

really sophisticated level of patheticness.

-Larry, you and I have something in common.

-Yes. Yes, we do.

LAUGHTER

A lot of you probably don't know that Alec and I...

Well, Alec used to actually date my ex-wife Francine.

AUDIENCE: Oooh!

No, I was referring to our charity work with multiple sclerosis.

LAUGHTER

I know.

People would say, "He's such a fool."

I never thought he was a fool. I just thought he was terribly needy.

Let's take a little commercial break.

I was there for about five years and everything I learned

about storytelling

I mainly learned from being around Garry,

and Garry used to say that The Larry Sanders Show is about

a group of people who love each other but show business gets in the way.

'So that was the secret.

'Those characters were all seeking love.'

They're just covering it because it is not safe.

-What's wrong?

-Oh, nothing.

Nothing. It's not you it's just...

'It's safe to have an audience'

and you just... There's only so much of yourself that they can reject.

Maybe we should watch a little TV.

'But getting that love from a camera...'

-HE LAUGHS

-..is awfully desperate.

For the iGeneration - that lonely crowd, each one lost

in an I world of their own invention -

dysfunction is the new funny.

There's certain elements of comedy that always...

They always have to be there. Narcissism is one of them.

Every character needs to have a fatal flaw,

or a series of fatal flaws.

It's an inability to see something about themselves.

The very definition of narcissism is you can't see beyond

the tip of your own nose. The centre of the universe is you and only you

and everything else revolves around you.

Take it back! If I wanted something your thumb touched,

I'd eat the inside of your ear!

I would say Arrested Development was very heavily informed

by the idea of narcissism as kind of a modern problem.

Every one of those characters was self-involved and they had

gotten there because they had had the finances to do that.

Bluth Development Company president George Bluth was arrested tonight

for defrauding investors using the company as his personal piggy bank.

It's all about greed.

It is how do I look, what do I have?

At the time, the big story in the news was Enron and WorldCom.

And they were just ugly, public

meltdowns where well-to-do

families were fighting each other, suing each other,

stealing from each other, lying about each other

and it was just horrible, and we thought it was pretty funny.

They are going to keep Dad in prison at least

until this all gets sorted out.

Also the attorney said they are going to have to put a halt on the company's expense account.

THEY GASP

Interesting, I would have expected that

after they're keeping Dad in jail.

It's interesting to think whether narcissism

will always be funny in comedy.

It might be a temporal thing, it might be right now.

I am absolutely consumed about narcissism.

It does seem to be a very, very strong voice in comedy right now.

I think this stuff about Twitter and Facebook is very odd.

I don't think it's about communication.

I don't think it's about communication

when you say, "I've just bought a grape."

Who cares if you bought a grape?

Narcissists never have any idea that they're, you know,

that they're raging assholes.

They have their logic, they see the world a particular way

and if you are as gifted as Mitch Hurwitz is,

you can present that in a way that is somehow still not only funny

but kind of appealing, kind of winning.

You've seen George Bluth on videotape.

You have got to learn to be alone.

I cheated and I lied and I whored around.

Caged Wisdom changed my life.

Now is your chance to own the entire George Bluth...

A lot of the comedy came from people truly not understanding

why their behaviour was antisocial.

I'm Jack Donaghy,

new VP of development for NBC/GE/Universal/Kmart.

We own Kmart now?

No. So why are you dressed like we do?

When a narcissist is not a sociopath,

not beyond redemption, not incapable of functioning in the world,

but is still a narcissist, still kind of out for number one.

I'll call Rebecca. Is she at the White House line? Great.

Tell them I need a 4am tee off time.

Five inches, but it's thick.

There is a correlation with how normal people relate

and interact, but it doesn't jibe completely.

I just swung by to see if we were still on for tonight.

-Oh, yeah, of course.

-Good. See you tonight.

It is pretty interesting to see that somebody kind of vaguely

knows where the out of bounds lines are

and manages to stay on the playing field.

Well, well, well. Lemon, Steven is a good man,

he is on partner track at Dewey and he is a Black.

A black? That is offensive!

No, no, that's his last name. Steven Black.

-Good family.

-Oh, yeah, of course.

-Remarkable people, the Blacks.

Musical, very athletic, not very good swimmers.

Again I'm talking about the family. Black is African-American now.

Well, I don't care about that.

Well, I know that is the type of thing we tell ourselves but trust me,

when I was dating Condoleezza, there were genuine cultural tensions.

I mean, we would go to the movies and she would yell at the screen.

You know, Jack views sensitivity to other people,

I don't know where... "I have just exactly the right amount I need."

I call.

'There is a level of self-awareness that he could obtain'

that is a greater level of self-awareness.

He doesn't care about that.

And I will see that with... this thing.

-I call.

-A pair of Jacks.

-Ace high.

Three cowboys.

Oh, my God, my wedding ring. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

-You should all learn from Pete's mistake.

-My wife is going to kill me!

I think for Jack, America is like this big golf course,

and you play 18 holes and you have a good score,

and, "I want to go to the clubhouse and I want to put my feet up

"and I want to have a drink and I just don't want to have to

"worry about poor people and racism and pollution and recycling.

"I played a great round of golf and I want to sit back

"and savour my victory."

That has been the evolution of the misfit, is that they no

longer think little of themselves or think that they are odd.

They take it on.

The crown prince of misfits is Larry David,

a character played by, er...Larry David,

one of the creators of that grand opera of outsiderdom Seinfeld.

For Larry, being in a majority of one is the only way to roll.

Smile!

Hey, mind your own business! How about that?

"Larry", the character, sees himself as being right...

"I'm right, you're wrong."

..in almost all situations.

What is that banana thing?

These people they come here, and they get ten samples, you know?

And it's not right for the woman working back there.

She's got better things to do than just scooping out samples for them.

They're awesome!

He doesn't like to follow conventions.

-You've got a long wait.

-Oh, could I try the tiramisu?

It's good. That's a good one. That's a good one. Get that. Get that.

-I think I will. Thank you.

-Get that.

-And I think I'd like to try the banana, please.

-Banana?!

It might taste like, let me guess, a banana?!

On the show, I have the freedom to say anything that I want,

anything that occurs to me, anything that I would never say in my life.

-You're like a sample abuser.

-What is the matter with you?

You are abusing your sampling privileges.

One sample, two samples the most.

-You can't just go on sample after sample.

-Yes, I can!

-No, you can't!

You know what? I'm just going to have the plain vanilla, please.

-Thank you.

-Oh, a decision has been made! We got vanilla! Enjoy.

Thank you.

That's not really who Larry is,

but I think it's like who Larry might like to be.

Vanilla! She winds up with vanilla, you've got to be kidding me!

How is the vanilla?

The person on the show is the real person.

This is the fraud, this one is the fake, this one's fake

and that one is real and it is as simple as that.

If you don't relate to a character, at first you just say,

"Oh, that's just a jerk. Just a jerk."

But if you stay with it long enough,

at some point I will guarantee you that the writing of that show

is designed to force you to relate.

A little travelling tip - try not to wear shorts.

It's not all that attractive to look at for five hours. Honestly.

-Are you kidding?

-No, I am not.

I wear these on every flight when I travel because

it is very comfortable. These planes, if you notice, get very hot.

I'm sorry, I did not see where I had to check with the person

I am sitting next to what I should wear.

I am comfortable in pyjamas but I don't wear pyjamas on a plane.

I like to sing, I like to whistle, I like to play the bongos

on my leg, I like to imitate horses, but I don't do it, OK?

-Because there is somebody sitting next to me.

-OK.

Larry's gift in life is that everything offends him,

everything challenges him, everything diminishes him.

He perceives everything as a threat.

-HE LAUGHS

-Not everything offends me.

There is not a moment where you think that Larry David

the character on Curb Your Enthusiasm is over-thinking

what he is going to say and who he is going to be.

He walks through life and he has an experience and he reacts to it.

-It is not long distance even if it is in India.

-So I am on the 14th hole.

OK, Lloyd has got these great Cuban cigars,

so we are smoking the cigars.

The Larry in Curb has actually become the bull in a china closet.

..I was trying to brush my teeth with an apple, it was horrible.

-Horrible.

-Excuse me, who are you talking to?

-Myself.

-Well, you are doing it really loud.

-Oh, really?

-Yes.

-You're kind of talking loud yourself.

-To a person!

What's the difference?

'Instead of being the guy that walks into a situation'

perceiving some sort of an attack that was never there,

Larry on Curb now walks into situations and ignites the flame.

To the outside observer it is the same level of annoyance.

I need to talk to my friend, I can barely hear him.

If you talk lower to your friend, I'll talk lower to my other self.

-Great. Good plan.

-All right.

-Jesus Christ.

What a schmuck! He's been talking on his cellphone...

Sometimes, there are these outsiders who you would label as misfits

or dysfunctional, but really peel it away and you keep finding

very, very human relatable

aspects of that misfit's personality.

BELL RINGS

-She's got my vote.

-She's such an inspiration.

It is nice to see someone like me on a poster for a change.

I have two boys, 14 and 16, and everybody is a freaking geek now.

It is great.

-What are you doing?

-Hey, I am running for prom queen.

-As a joke, right?

-Does it look like I am joking?

When your name appears on that ballot, everyone will think it's a

laugh riot and you may just get enough votes to win.

That is sort of the idea.

Look at what Glee has done. The normal kids are the oddball ones.

Hit it.

# ..Disabilities left you outcast Bullied or teased

# Rejoice and love yourself today Cos baby you were born this way... #

I think if you scratch anybody, we are all the misfits,

we are all the stranger.

There has been an evolution that is reflected on television that

people are starting to understand that humans are flawed.

That is why we like the oddball, the outsider.

There isn't as much emphasis on conformity as there used to be.

Now it is almost cool to be weird.

I don't even know what a misfit is any more.

# ..Right track Baby I was born this way... #

How many people actually relate to Brad Pitt?

You know, how many people look at him and go, "That's me!"

Thank heaven Thing is still normal.

In great storytelling, you feel close to the world, you feel close

to humanity and that is why we like these shows

because it reflects most people's struggle.

It has to have some element of truth that we recognise.

I had a pretty dysfunctional family

and we didn't really talk too much or interact too much, but the

thing that did bring us together was gathering around the television

after our dinners were done and watching television comedies.

That was really, really important to me,

the family sitting round and laughing together.

There is just something very intimate about watching television.

It is in your house, it is this far away from you,

you are in a relationship with what is happening on the screen.

It can, at its best bring, people together

and help define a culture.

We strive all our lives as writers, artists, actors

to connect with other people through what we do.

TV at its best connects with you directly,

personally because it is a small box in your house.

Maybe even in your room, maybe next to your bed.

There is no more intimate connection that you have with anything

other than the people next to you.

But the TV, because of its size

and because of the smaller nature of the stories that are being

told for the small screen, actually get in a little deeper sometimes.

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