Interviewing Larry Guterman is like trying to yank wisdom teeth. It's hard enough to get him simply to talk about himself. It's virtually impossible to extract anything serious from his mouth.

But the parallel seems to end there. Wisdom teeth are not funny. Guterman is. With a wry, self-deprecating wit, he attempted to explain what it's like to be a physics major-computer science jock-animator-filmmaker-artist-Harvard student. "Harvard is a sunny day, a leisurely stroll through the Harvard Yard."

Lowell House roommate Roy Sinai '87 describes Guterman's casual demeanor. "Larry," says Sinai, "takes his work and his play very seriously, but he's never serious. his whole attitude is very relaxed. Even in the most horrible of nightmare situations he won't get too worked up about anything. And I can always relax in his company, just sit on his bed and talk." To this, Guterman pipes in, "We like to play nude nerf basketball in front of the Lowell courtyard at night."

A lunch with Larry and his former roommate Jeffrey R. Chapman '86 ("my collaborator," insists Guterman)--demonstrates more of the same. Sitting in the new Cambridge War Memorial Park, the pair face the requisite, serious kind of interview questions. The two, who co-wrote and co-directed Larry's latest film, politely respond with the requisite, serious kind of interview answers. Except that it was all in mocking tones. Chapman, asked to describe Guterman, replies: "Once in an atomic age a true genius passes through Harvard's gates. Larry encompasses the diversity of Harvard within itself."

A few facts did surface, however. Guterman spent his childhood moving around with his family from Maryland to Montreal to Calgary, finally settling in Toronto in 1976 and attending the Hebrew Day School there. He matriculated at MIT for his freshman year, but subsequently transfered to Harvard. Chapman explains his friend's reasons for abandoning East Cambridge. "Larry was under the impression that [MIT] was a good training school for the visual arts."

When Byerly Hall gave him the go-ahead, Guterman decided to defer the offer for a year instead and travel to Israel and Egypt. Then, once at Harvard, he decided to comp the Lampoon art board and learn Arabic, both of which he did with great aplomb. Sinai explains, "Larry is extremely broad-minded politically, and he's always conscious of political issues--that's an important part of him. It's hard to find someone so willing to listen to anybody else."

Although a declared physics major, Guterman has also managed to squeeze in four computer science classes for fun. And, for the past three summers, he has attended Sheridan College in Toronto, earning the equivalent of a junior college degree for his work in classical animation. Of these summers, he says, "First I was gonna work in a lab, a bio-chem lab. But then I thought that would be kind of a drag."

The dialogue between Guterman and Chapman continues. "Larry's always been torn between his technical and creative drives."

"I did work at a lab in MIT."

"What kind of a lab was that, Larry?" asks his friend.

"Just, um, it was, the stuff we were doing was..."

"Yes, Larry?" Chapman prods.

"Oh, okay, the intention of the project I worked on was to ascertain the effect of a Vitamin A-deficient diet on rats infected with the herpes simplex-one virus."

"Is that the 'herpes' herpes virus?" asks the naive interviewer.

With a stern and concerned deadpan look, Larry replies, "No, that would be the simplex-two."