Larry David became a client of business manager Matt Lichtenberg in 1984, shortly after David landed a writing job on “Saturday Night Live.” David wasn’t looking for representation at the time, but Matt Lichtenberg cornered him outside the Improv comedy club in New York and insisted that David take him on as a manger. A year later, when David was let go from “SNL,” he began a four-year run in which he “did not earn a penny.
” The memory of how Lichtenberg kept him on as a client and kept paying his bills in those lean years caused David, the wildly successful co-creator and showrunner of “Seinfeld” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” to choke up slightly when he presented Lichtenberg on Wednesday with the kudo as Business Manager of the Year at Variety ‘s Business Managers Breakfast presented by City National Bank. Back in the late 1980s, “I called him up and said, ‘Look, you’re wasting your time with me. Nothing’s going to happen.
My mother’s told me this a thousand times,'” David recalled telling Lichtenberg. “Let’s just end this business relationship. We’ll still be friends.
I don’t care. It’s not a big deal.” But Lichtenberg wouldn’t cut David loose.
When asked why, Lichtenberg told David that he could see his talent and influence in the fact that other top-tier comedians flocked to David’s standup performances. When David told the crowd that his association with Lichtenberg “is one of the few relationships that I never had any.