Robert B. Weide

Just as Larry David worked closely with pal Jerry Seinfeld during the NBC run of "Seinfeld," so too has producer Robert B. Weide worked with David for the subsequent six-season run of HBO's subversive and largely improvised hit "Curb Your Enthusiasm." Weide was a producer on the original 1999 one-off pay cable network special, which was never intended to go beyond that form. But it did well enough for HBO to order a series spinoff, which helped popularize to a much broader audience the intricate narrative construction talents of David. On both "Seinfeld" and "Curb," seemingly unrelated sub-plots all come together in the end. Weide is a self-professed fan of the Marx Brothers, and it makes sense that his adulation of Groucho and the gang eventually paved the way for a classic collaboration with the very grouchy David. Weide's other major comedy achievements are the 1998 documentary "Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth," which was nominated for an Academy Award, and the 1986 Emmy Award-winning PBS special "W.C. Fields: Straight Up," to which he contributed as a writer. He has also worked intermittently as both a director and editor, in 2008 guiding the failed feature comedy "How To Lose Friends and Alienate People."