The New Yorker Radio Hour - Jerry Seinfeld Gets Technical

Episode Date: January 5, 2018

Jerry Seinfeld talks with David Remnick about his Netflix special “Jerry Before Seinfeld,” which is part standup show, part memoir. They discuss his “coming out” to his parents as a funny person, the labor that goes into an effortless joke, how cursing undercuts comedic craft; why George Carlin in a suit and tie was just as good as George Carlin the hippie; and why he thinks we esteem actors and writers too highly. Seinfeld compares his work as a comedian to that of John McPhee, The New Yorker’s elder statesman of long-form reporting. “He makes things out of ordinary life moments and making you see them in a different way,” Seinfeld says. “When he does it, it’s an art, because it’s the goddam New Yorker. When I do it it’s just an airlines peanuts joke.”   New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is World Trade to the Baroque. The Observatory is straight of the block for West Boulevard and makes that right? I basically just think it would be interesting to look at the emergence of a criminal economy. And also, I'm always amazed that there aren't more profiles of her out there. This really subversive, strange thing, in rap especially, and see what there was are like on that sites of the border. From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Today's episode, I hope, is a little treat, a live interview I did at the New Yorker Festival in the fall,

with somebody I've admired for quite a long time. When I went out on stage to introduce him, though, I was almost at a loss for words, as you'll hear, because this guy, if you'll excuse the cliche, it happens to be accurate, needs no introduction. Welcome to the New Yorker Festival. I'm David Remnick. You know who that is. That's Jerry Seinfeld. And no flash photography, no recording. Why not? You want them to flash your way?

All right. You feel like Jackie Kennedy or something? Yeah, it's okay, yeah. All right, get it out of your system now. So you've got this new special on Netflix, Jerry before Seinfeld, and one of the amazing confessional parts of it is that you begin talking about the construction of a joke. Your first joke. Mm-hmm.

What made you think you could do this thing, be a comedian, just from being funny in the house? I really didn't. The truth is I really didn't think that I could. And I didn't really care whether I could or I couldn't. I had, I just got to this point where I was so in love with it that I just decided, what's the difference? You know, what's the difference? It seemed much more important to me to do the thing you want to do than success or failure. This is 1975, you know, and we were still a little bit of the, you know, vapors of the 60s

where you did what, you know, you believed in. And it wasn't a success culture. It was more of a soul culture, I think. And you were encouraged to be like that by your parents? No. I really didn't have any idea if I could do it. What inspired you about comedy? What were you watching on television or listening?

Everything. Everything. I was not a very social kid, but I did get a TV in my room. When my parents got a new TV, I got them to get me the old TV. You got a TV in your room? Yeah, I had a TV in my room, and I never came out of the room again. And I just watched laughing and movies and get smart, and I just inhaled this stuff, and I just couldn't get enough of it.

Did you listen to Records, too? Records. I had all the comedy albums of all the great 60s comics. So was there anybody in particular of all those albums that you're putting on your record player or watching on TV that was really was the most suggestive to you about what's possible? George Carlin, AM, and FM. That was when he made his transition. Wow, very educated audience we have here.

That was when he made his transition from suit and tie, you know, kind of crowd-pleasing comedian to the counterculture tie-died t-shirt comedian, which, by the way, to me, the only difference was the clothes. He was just as radical in a tie. No, he wasn't, but he was just as funny. See, the political aspect of comedy, which people, for some reason, like to grind on, why don't you do more political things and this is political, this guy's not political. Who cares if someone's political?

All I care about is how funny is this guy? How much funny, really funny stuff does he have or she have that's going to make me laugh? That is the entire objective to me. So anyway, so like George Conn's famous seven dirty words you can't say on television, not a funny bit, really. Just cursing. Right. You know.

Which you don't like. Personally, it's not, it doesn't work for my style, no. Why? It takes me out of doing the more difficult things that I'm trying to do, which is to, I like to invent a new way of looking at something that changes the way you look at it permanently. Particularly language. Particularly language, and I like to find things in language. I do a thing in that Netflix special about when you grow up on Long Island.

You live on Long Island. We lived in the city, but then we lived on Long Island. That you can't live in Long Island. It's one of those places you just stay on it. So once you hear that bit, you know, you say, well, we get on the train. Even though there's nobody on the train, we're in the train. But you don't say, let's get in the train. Nobody says, come on, we'll get in the train.

You say, let's get on the train. Yeah. So once you find something like that and really explode it like a diagram is what I try to do, then now you see it that way forever. You talk about this first joke in the Netflix special, and let's listen to it, let's watch. And I only had one joke that worked, which I'm going to do for you right now. And if you ever think yourself that you might want to someday do comedy, this is not the way you do it. Don't ever say, I'm going to tell you a joke now.

So I'm left-handed. Left-handed people do not like that the word left is so often associated with negative things. To left feet, left-handed compliment, what are we having for dinner? Leftovers. You go to a party, there's nobody there. Would everybody go? They left. That was it. That was my first joke. That joke, which you poo-poo a little bit,

but that joke is very in your voice as many years ago as it was. Do you have any recollection of how it was conceived, how it came about? Well, I am left-handed, and I guess I just occurred to me that these left-words are negative, and then it's left-handed compliment. You know, you hear that. that. And then I thought, well, that's weird. Why are they putting that on us, you know? And I don't know, left, they left, you know. But I even, that was the joke. But the timing of it,

the delay. The rhythm of it, yes. The rhythm of it, yes. The delay. The rhythm is 90% of that joke. And how conceived is that, how mapped out is that, or is it rehearsed? Very mapped out. Very figured out. You know, where'd everybody go? They left. A question is always a very good springboard for a joke. There's another small thing. If you really want to get technical about comedy, which I think you do. I do.

It is true to say to the audience, I'm going to do this joke for you right now. You're really in that moment. You're in a hole right there with the audience. You've taken them out of a comedic atmosphere. And the reason I'm able to get back into it, which was a line that I had to write, which was, left-handed people do not like. That sentence freezes the audience. This is a, you're now talking about a group of people that don't like something.

This just clears their mind out to what is coming. Left-handed people are a group and they don't like something. And that is actually what enables me to do the joke. And that was the, you know, when I put the show together, I spent many hours on these little things, just because it's what I like to do. But that was the line that I needed, and that's why that thing actually works.

Because if what... Left-handed people do not like... So that enables me to do, which I'm going to do for you right now. I'm going to tell you my first joke, and I'm going to do it for you right now, which I knew they would like that because he's going to give us a little present. So the other...

I saw you with the beacon, and it was an hour? About an hour and 15. How much time goes into the construction of an hour and 15 minute piece of comedy? It's like asking God how much time goes into an oak tree? I don't know. I do it every day. I do it all day. I don't know.

I plant a tree. It grows. Eventually it's an oak tree. Who the hell cares? That's all I can do. I don't know. What were you like in high school? Were you considered a weirdo, an outsider?

You know what? I don't know why. It never bothered me that I was not, I had no normal social experience at all. But I didn't think I was missing anything. And even now, to this day, most of regular life doesn't interest me at all. No.

Now, your parents were both orphans. Did that create any unusual home life? What was that life? I think it did. There was a very, what I call a benign neglect in my house. I do this a bit in the show that I was like a raccoon to my parents. I mean, you kind of know it's around, but you don't really know where it is, you know. They had no interest in any of my activities, school, grades, social life, health, safety, or education.

Zero. And which was very fun and freeing, you know. And which I also mentioned in the show that I was never funny around them, ever. And so when I... On the dinner table? No, no, I couldn't want to make adults laugh. I don't know why. I just didn't know how to do it.

Was the goal, when you were a kid, did you want to... Wait, so just to finish that. So when I told them I was going to be a comedian, they went, okay, you know... Do whatever you want. That's amazing. Yeah. Why is that amazing? Jewish parents who just think, go be a comedian, get on the train.

Yeah, but remember, they were orphans. They didn't get married until they were in their 40s, which in, you know, 1950 was on, you know, they were wild dogs themselves. They didn't fit in any normal. How did they view, as you started to progress a little bit in the clubs, did they ever come see you? Mm-hmm.

How'd they react to it? They liked it, you know. I don't remember. I was such a nervous wreck myself. It was my gay closet moment was to tell them I'm funny. You know, I don't know this, but I'm funny. Heartbreaking. Yeah, and I want to live a funny lifestyle out.

But it must require to be a young comedian whose material is sketchy, a thick skin to the point of being almost a sociable. I mean, to adore that? It does. It does unless you just know you can't leave this world. You just can't. So it doesn't matter how hard it is or how much pain there may be. You know you have no choice.

You know you found your thing if you're lucky in life. If you find your thing, that this is my thing. I know how to do this. I'm good at this. I get the feeling that even though you were and have been, and have been an actor, that maybe acting is not a form that you hold in the highest esteem. Well, that's probably true. Yeah, it's very observant of you to pick that little raisin out of my rice pudding.

What I don't like, I think, is the, I feel the esteem to which actors are held is a bit high in our culture, a bit high. Did you write that? Did you think of that? You know. And remember, as comedians, we would go on the Tonight Show and, you know, some loser that's on some stupid sitcom who stinks and that's bad, comes out there and tells you a story about it.

He took a vacation in Mexico and how the pipe burst. You know, and then you come out there and you've got five killer minutes and you get that audience rolling. Then you go back behind the curtain. Get out of here. We want to talk with this guy. with his legs crossed and going,

and then I did this, and then I did that. And I just felt like, why, why is he so important? He didn't think of anything, you know, that we have... He just pretended to be someone. You're an actor. Stand over here. Here's the clothes you put on. Say what we're going to say.

Ready? And ready? And say what we told you to say. That's acting. There's nothing wrong with it. Oh. But I just hold comedians in much higher regard. It's a much, much more difficult thing to do.

Was doing the show as satisfying a stand-up? At that time in my career to pull that off, to do a sitcom and make it work, and I'm not an actor or a screenwriter, or an editor, or I don't know casting. Larry and we didn't know anything. So the excitement in that moment that we were making this show work

and the network didn't even want us to be making our own decisions because we had no experience until we proved to them that we knew what to do. What we knew was what's funny. We didn't know story. We didn't know character. We learned that as we went along, but we knew what was funny. So once we, they had confidence and yeah, that was exciting. But having done it, I would never want to do it again. So how was it conceived on the back of a napkin in a coffee shop? How did you come together and say, we've got to do this. Larry and I, and we were not really good friends, we were just kind of acquaintances. And he's more of a failed stand-up. He had a rougher time. He did. He did. But whenever we would

talk, it was never about anything important, and it was completely obsessive and hilarious and insane. And I thought, I want the show to sound like when Larry and I talk. It's about a sound. It's about sound, yeah. In the opening of the show, a lot of times Jerry and George would be discussing if you're captured by aliens and taken back to their planet, would you rather be in the zoo or the circus? You know, that is me and Larry talking. We're not talking about our families or politics or, you know, that's what we're talking about. And you're how old when this is starting to happen? 34.

You're talking about aliens and zoos and 34. The other great gift of comedy is you never have to leave childhood because you're rewarded for your most juvenile impulse. You had this incredibly intense, creative period of doing the Seinfeld show. And most people, to do another show after a big hit, and it went on for nine. Nine years. The idea of doing another show, it really blows people away.

David Chase did The Sopranos for I don't know how many seasons. And he just said, I can't. It's too consuming, too exhausting. Did you figure when you came to the end of that, there's just no way? Well, David Chase, I'm doing David Chase's job and James Gandalfini's job. Right. Okay, so, and I did that for nine years. So there's absolutely no way.

First of all, that experience was so, through my great good fortune, just came out so well. There was no way you would want to revisit that. When did you know it was going to work right away? No, no. I thought in the beginning, this might find a little cult audience somewhere in the cities and might survive that way. But I never thought this was a mainstream thing that the general public would like. I thought it was too eccentric.

Too eccentric, too ethnic, to odd. I wouldn't call it ethnic, but it was just the things, you know, being captured by aliens and zoos and circuses. I didn't think that's, you know, the biggest comedy was Alf. That's what a really big comedy is. And it was, in some way, it was the last comedy of that anywhere approaching that quality, but that had that kind of general audience. Oh, yeah, that was it. That was the end of it.

That was the end of it, yeah. Why did it blow up just because the profusional? of cable television? Mm-hmm. And do you think that's unfortunate in any way? I think it's... I always think it's possible. Something it's possible for someone to make another show

that could capture the whole country. I think it's possible. It just has to be that funny. You have to be just so goddamn funny that they love it. They can't get enough of it. But that's hard to do. To do that, you need, you know, you need all those actors.

You need all those actors. You need a perfect group of actors. And then you need 13 writers. And then you need this person running all that who's totally focused on making this whole thing work. And that's just a lot of relationships and a lot of little pieces of talent. I think it's a misconception that you've fed at times

that the show was about nothing. That was always the line. I never fed this. I never promoted this. It's so stupid. It's so... Everything's about nothing. There was an article in the...

It was in the Sunday Times Magazine, last Sunday. That writer, what was his name, Tate or something? And they talk about his great writing. He was a New Yorker writer. McPhee. Oh, that guy. McPhee, okay? I know him.

Right? Yeah. Okay. John McPhee. What is his name? John McPhee. So they're writing about this guy, and he writes for the New Yorker, and it's so fantastic that he takes these small moments of life

and makes them into these interesting things. It's the same damn thing. It's the end of comedy. I got to say the idea that John McPhee, Jerry Seinfeld, doing the same thing that never occurred to you. Well, according to the article, he makes things out of ordinary life moments, observing ordinary life moments

and making you see them in a different way. This is his great art. When he does it, it's an art because it's the goddamn New Yorker. When I do it, it's just an airline peanuts joke. Jerry, thank you very much. Thank you. Jerry Seinfeld.

He's doing a stand-up show in Louisiana and Alabama this week, and then he's in Illinois, Missouri, and all over the country. through April. Thanks for listening today, and if you haven't been to our website lately, please visit us at New YorkerRadio.org. We've just got to redesign for the new year.

And if we do say so ourselves, it looks pretty good. Every episode, every segment we've ever broadcast is there. And you can subscribe to our podcast so you never miss a thing. I'm David Remnick. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced with special help from the staff of the New Yorker Festival,

Rhonda Sherman, Alexis Goldberg, David Ohana, Bradley G., and Hillary Leicter Griffin. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.