From KCRW, I'm Kim Masters, and this is The Business.

Larry Charles made his name as a writer on some of TV's most memorable shows, including Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

In his memoir, Comedy Samurai, he also recalls directing Sasha Baron Cohen in both Borat and Bruno, and he doesn't mince words.

I think he had always been like a control freak, but was able to sublimate it, and then

slowly as success came along, he started to assert more control over things without really

having a strong idea of what he wanted.

That created kind of chaos in the process of making the movies.

Larry Charles joins me to talk about his years behind the scenes of some of comedy's most groundbreaking shows and movies.

He reveals the ego clashes, the betrayals, and the absurd moments that defined his career,

including an early morning phone call from Ari Emanuel, pulling the plug on his Larry David documentary the day before

it was supposed to premiere on HBO. But first we banter, stick around. It's the business from

KCRW. I am joined by my partner in banter, Matt Bellany. Hello, Matt. Hi there. Well, so,

I have some things to say. As you know, Paramount has now coughed up $16 million to appease Donald Trump in his meritless lawsuit, claiming that 60 minutes done him dirty. We've talked about this ad nauseum, and I mean that literally. So there was no apology, which is a big sticking point. People at CBS News and

probably elsewhere, nonetheless, are very unhappy. I just want to step back and say, I'm thinking

at this moment about Bob Iger, because Bob Iger settled that lawsuit against George Stephanopoulos,

arguably quite winnable lawsuit for $16 million,

as you know. And it turns out that set a precedent here because the other media companies

then started to pay up. And, you know, Disney may argue, and I think Bob Iger does argue,

that one of the reasons for settling was because if this turned

into a lawsuit that went before the Supreme Court, it could overturn precedence. The Sullivan case,

very important for us, reporters. And that would be bad. And I can say we cannot be confident

what this Supreme Court majority will say on any subject because they've been very

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