Curb Your Enthusiasm Theme Remixes

About

Curb Your Enthusiasm Theme Remixes refers to a series of video remixes that use the theme song to the American television comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm to express inevitable failure in different contexts. Generally, the meme starts with a viral video of the subject about to create an awkward or uncomfortable situation, before abruptly cutting to the theme and the show's end credits, beginning with the credit "Directed by Robert B. Weide."

Origin

Curb Your Enthusiasm premiered on October 15th, 2000.^[1] On the series, each episode's plot ends with a situation about to escalate, before cutting to the end credits and title theme song, "Frolic" by Luciano Michelini (example below, left).

The earliest known usage of the remix was posted on June 23rd, 2008 by YouTuber WTFTheater. The post featured an edit of the ending of the film Se7en that includes a cut to the Curb Your Enthusiasm at the end of the clip. The post received more than 606,000 views in less than 12 years (shown below, right).

Spread

On October 16th, 2011 by YouTuber Nikolaj Christensen, who posted the video "The ending of The Mist (Curb your Enthusiasm edition)." The clip replaces the bleak ending of the film The Mist with the upbeat theme to Curb. The post received more than 23,000 views in seven years (shown below, right).

Over the next few years, the theme became internet-shorthand for a bad situation. On November 8th, 2015, Twitter user @seinfeld2000 tweeted a clip from a Donald Trump-hosted episode of Saturday Night Live. Larry David made a guest appearance on the episode, and @seinfeld2000 edited the ending of Curb Your Enthusiasm over a closeup of David at the show's conclusion. The post received more than 9,800 retweets and 14,000 likes in three years (shown below).

On December 21st, 2015, YouTuber Jake Rasmussen posted the video clip of comedian Steve Harvey's mix-up of the winning pageant at the 2015 Miss Universe ceremony, which was based on a post by YouTuber oskararnarson about 24 hours earlier^[4]. The post received more than 861,000 views in three years (shown below, left).

On December 22nd, Redditor SNAFU01 created the subreddit /r/memeyourenthusiasm^[2] to catalog various remixes that soon followed afterward.

During the 2016 United States Presidential Election, the meme was used to express the look of dread on Chris Christie's Face. On March 2nd, 2016, YouTuber Seinfeld Current Day (Seinfeld2000) posted a video mixing the press conference from the meme with the theme. The post received more than 72,000 views in less than three years (shown below, right).

On March 24th, 2016, Dan Brill and Phillip Pastore, New York City-based ad agency copywriters, launched Curb Your Enthusiasm^[3], an audio-video mashup generator website that allows its user to create custom remix videos by cueing the tune during playback of any YouTube clip.

@Seinfeld2000's Response

On December 24th, 2018, the New York Times interviewed Jason Richards, better known as @Seinfeld2000, on the Curb Your Enthusiasm meme. Richards, who refers to himself as "the social media guardian of Larry David and HBO slash Warner Media’s intellectual property," expresses the opinion that the meme is frequently misused and overused. In many of these situations, he says, the subject of the video has the power in the situation, unlike Larry David at the end of an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Additionally, he claims that as of January 1st, 2019, he will be retiring the meme.

He closes the interview by giving tips for using the meme. He says:

Choose good moments. In today’s always-on culture, cringe-worthy events happen all the time. Be a good editor and pick only the moments that will work best. Usually these will have to be drawn out and painful enough to accommodate the first 12 seconds of the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme and have a character suffering in the center of it all. Have you found a moment where an athlete laughs awkwardly for a moment? That’s not quite right. I know, but everyone on Twitter is laughing about it. Still, be strong. A better moment will come along soon. Let the hacks take this one on.

No sloppy iPhone screen records. Download the video and open it in iMovie and use the Ken Burns effect, just like the professionals do. This is the Curb Your Enthusiasm meme, not amateur hour at Captain Johnny’s Two-Cent Peanut Circus. Have some respect.

Stay true to “Curb Your Enthusiasm." No juxtaposing credits over the video or cutting the shape of the video square. Is that what the show is like? No. Do you even watch the show?"

Larry David's Comments

In the interview, the New York Times published a comment on the meme from Curb Your Enthusiasm-creator and -star Larry David. He said in an email:

"I don't know anything about this. Every now and then someone will send me something with 'Curb' music at the end. Some of them I find mildly amusing, some not. Have never really given it any thought except for wondering why anyone would do it."

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References