He must regret every day of his life.
As a screenwriter, Larry David has only been given one stab at big-screen glory, and that was with 1998's Sour Grapes, his sole directorial effort. A curdled comedy about two cousins who differ over the dispensation of a sizable casino jackpot, it was not to the moviegoing audience's taste and was effectively stomped flat by the critics. Since then, David has made his home at HBO, first with a decade-plus stint as creator and star of Curb Your Enthusiasm and now with the TV movie Clear History, which he co-wrote and starred in. As much as his fortunes have changed in the decade and a half since Sour Grapes, though, money is still very much at the heart of the matter.
Clear History opens in 2003 at an electric car startup where a long-haired, bearded David -- who has multiple Clios to his name, which is presumably why people put up with his eccentricities -- is the marketing maven. After he has a falling out with company president Jon Hamm over Hamm's proposed name for the car (the "Howard," after Howard Roarke from Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead), David withdraws his 10% stake in the company just before it goes public in a big way, whereupon he's branded "the man who gave up a fortune" and becomes a laughingstock. After that, he's compelled to change his appearance (to one that's a lot more familiar), take on a new identity, and try to live under the radar on Martha's Vineyard (where he doggedly holds on to his old gas guzzler). The past catches up with him ten years later, though, when Hamm buys a house on the island and begins major renovations, angering some of the locals. Then a chance viewing of the Hollywood version of The Fountainhead gives David an idea about how he can exact his revenge. He just needs a little help carrying it out.
The supporting cast is stacked with familiar faces, including Danny McBride (as David's best friend), Amy Ryan (as his ex-girlfriend, who may or may not have gone down on multiple members of Chicago 20 years earlier), Philip Baker Hall (as the building contractor who has earned the ire of the locals), Kate Hudson (as Hamm's wife), Michael Keaton (in Dogberry mode as one of the disgruntled), and Bill Hader (as Keaton's second). Curb fans will no doubt also recognize J.B. Smoove, whose main function in the plot is to accuse David of being racist (a running joke that bears little fruit) and to take it badly when Eva Mendes leaves him on David's advice. Thankfully, there is much more amusement to be gleaned from the sequence of events that follows David's fender bender with Chechen contraband supplier Liev Schreiber (whose association with director Greg Mottola goes all the way back to his debut feature, 1996's The Daytrippers). What it really could have used, though, is a lot fewer Chicago blow job jokes. As a matter of fact, I would have even accepted none.