January 17, 2004

There's a nice piece in The New Yorker about Larry David:
“It was a Korean deli, and we were waiting to pay, and we started making fun of the products they kept by the register,” Seinfeld says. “You know, those fig bars in cellophane, without a label, that look like somebody made them in their basement?”

David turned to Seinfeld and said, “This is what the show should be—this is the kind of dialogue that we should do on the show.”
The first season of his HBO show has finally come out on DVD, which I bought, preferring HBO on DVD to HBO on cable, even if I have to wait years for the shows, because I simply cannot tolerate the decoder box. I love Tivo but I hate the cable decoder box.

According to the New Yorker article, David once wrote a screenplay called "Prognosis Negative." That title, I note, was used as a fake movie title in two Seinfeld episodes ("The Dog" and "The Junior Mints").

The phrase "Prognosis Negative" is used to dark comic effect in the movie "Dark Victory," by the way. It's weird when cultural references get out of order, so that you already think saying "Prognosis Negative!" is funny, then one day you're sitting around watching "Dark Victory," and Bette Davis comes out with "Prognosis Negative!," and you're like "Hey! That's from Seinfeld!" There should be a word for that backwards allusion effect.

The New Yorker seems to think that if you wanted to read about Larry David, you'll want to read about The Simpsons.

UPDATE: Anachrollusion?

1 comment:

Icepick said...

Now that you have both a bigger audience and comments enabled, you should reblog the stuff about the proposed "Anachrollusion".