The Hilarious Story Behind Larry Chowder The Magical Boy In Barry Season 4 Episode 5
This post contains spoilers for "Barry" season 4, episode 5.
In addition to being a frequently bleak, violent, emotionally heavy, and deeply disturbing drama, Bill Hader and Alec Berg's "Barry" can also be one of the funniest shows on television. A significant percentage of its humor comes from its pitch-perfect send-up of modern Hollywood, which reached new levels in the most recent episode, "tricky legacies."
After a surprising eight-year time jump, a majority of this episode is spent with "Clark" and "Emily" as they raise their son, John, out in the middle of the country, far from the show's typical setting of Los Angeles. Of course, Clark and Emily are actually Barry (Bill Hader) and Sally (Sarah Goldberg), who are on the run and eventually learn that they can't outrun their problems.
As the episode jumps back to L.A., Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler) wants to speak with the head of Warner Bros. to serve as an advisor on a movie the studio plans to make about Barry. At one point, we see an assistant walk across the studio lot past soundstages emblazoned with signs for upcoming movies. One is pretty straightforward — a superhero film called "Mega Girls 4," which stars Sally's former protégé (who has clearly done just fine without her mentor). The other is much more ridiculous: "Larry Chowder The Magical Boy," starring a grown man wearing glasses and a sport coat. (A voice, which I'm pretty sure is Hader's, also narrates the sign and calls Larry "incorrigible.")
It turns out the "Barry" writers didn't concoct that character out of thin air. It's a nod to a very funny true story that happened to one of the crew members and made its way into the writers' room.
A truly magical boy
Bill Hader appeared on an episode of The Prestige TV podcast to break down the episode, and when the conversation turned to those two movie posters, he explained how "Larry Chowder The Magical Boy" came to be:
"Larry Chowder The Magical Boy came from Oliver [Alling], our gaffer, was telling us that he worked at — I think he worked at a video store or his friend worked at a video store, and a woman came in and said, 'I want to rent Larry Chowder The Magical Boy' when she meant Harry Potter. [laughs] I laughed so hard at that. So we made Larry Chowder The Magical Boy, and that guy is Mark Ashmore, who was Alec Berg's assistant and who became essentially our script guru ... [the project is] weird, because I don't know what that show is, because he's just a regular guy ... he's not a boy."
Hats off to that video store customer with Big Mom Energy who butchered the Harry Potter name in the most hilarious possible way. Your goof made it into one of the best shows on television!
Of course, Hader and his writers weren't content with copying the joke and calling it a day. They gave it their own coat of paint and added some ridiculous (but not too ridiculous) elements, including a hashtag (#FeelTheMagic) and the fact that the man starring in the film goes by the name "@Tyler." Since this episode takes place eight years in the future, this is the "Barry" writers' way of predicting the future of Hollywood, and in typical "Barry" tradition, it's depressing as hell but still tinged with humor. In a way, this little background gag represents a microcosm of the show's approach to storytelling.