The New Yorker Radio Hour - Steve Martin and Jerry Seinfeld, and Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax

Episode Date: November 17, 2020

Between the two of them, Jerry Seinfeld and Steve Martin have nearly a century of experience in the delicate art of telling jokes. In a conversation with Susan Morrison during the 2020 New Yorker Festival, they discussed their long careers, learning how to adjust to new cultural forces, and the process of aging. Plus, Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax perform a piece of music that they have both been playing for more than forty years: Beethoven’s Cello Sonata No. 3 in A Major. “This is such open, hopeful music,” Ax said. Yet Beethoven signed one manuscript of the music, “amid tears and sorrow.” “I thought this was a good piece for this moment,” Ma told The New Yorker’s music critic Alex Ross. “Because people are suffering, and we do think that music can give comfort.” 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 The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. At the New Yorker Festival last month, Jerry Seinfeld and Steve Martin joined the New Yorker Susan Morrison, and they talked about the art of creating those little explosive devices that we call jokes. Now, I know that both of you feel very strongly about the technique and the craft of writing jokes. And I'd love to hear you describe each of you the process, your process, for coming up with a bit, shaping it, refining it. You know, how long does the whole thing take?

And how does it start? Well, that's an easy question. That's so easy. I'll let you go first. The thing I like about writing comedy or any kind of writing is there's no rhyme or reason to it. Nobody knows how to do it. Nobody has figured out anything. So everyone's free to do it.

And I kind of like that complete chaos of the process of, especially jokes. I was talking to somebody today and the guy said, quick question. And I just said, what is a quick question? Why is it any different from any other question? Is it going to be less words? Does it mean my answer is short? It's just one of these annoying little things that people say. So I will write something like that down and see if it annoys other people the way it annoys me by talking about it in front of an audience.

And if it does annoy them, I'll just play with it. I found that performing live, it's just an ongoing exercise with a line. You trim it, you make it longer, you do a different setup, you knock out part of it, and you keep trying it night after night. I think Jerry writes more perfectly than I could. Like, honestly, I feel about Jerry's lines. You go, that's so beautifully cadenced. But a lot of it, Steve, was done by the audience. Those are the final versions.

My original notes bear, you know, not too much resemblance to the final product. I've been reading this history of the Marx Brothers, and they would tour for five weeks, four shows a day with a movie script. Right. Four shows a day, they'd pick out like six or seven scenes from the movie script and perform them over and over again to find out where the laughs were to tighten it and shape it. I've really become obsessed with them reading this book.

Steve, did you ever meet any of the Marks Brothers? I met Groucho. I was at an event. He was very old, very old, and a woman came up to him. I happened to be standing there, and she said, can I shake your hand? And he said, honey, you can shake anything you want. So it sounds like what begins is a kind of something loose and lumpy on a yellow legal pad then just gets honed and honed and honed by performing it live.

Absolutely true. I did stand up for 18 years and honed it and worked it. But I had really honed everything down so much I no longer had any material. I took four hours and whittled it down to an hour and then I just quit. But I feel so much more at ease writing comedy now than I ever have in my life. It just seems to come easier. I can quickly write a punchline to something way, way easier than I used to. earlier in my life.

And I read something, it was in Hungarian, and it was unpronounceable for me, but translated to a relaxed brain. And it talked about people who are witty, they get a relaxed brain and their mind is more, and I realize I'm more relaxed because I've had a career and I'm not auditioning all the time. And it's enabled me to relax and feel very free.

Where do you think it would have gone? I know how you feel about your, the transition you made when you finished your stand-up work and moved into the movies. What if you had just not stopped? Because you would have had to transition from this character into someone that was more yourself so that you could be comfortable. And what if you had just kept going? Where do you think it would have led you?

My mind was so dry. I think it would have been very hard to start up a whole new. idea and the idea of my act was so vivid that it would be very hard to change. But what actually happened is I took 30 years off and came back with Marty Short. And I have a new persona when I'm working with Marty Short, which is kind of sort of distilled version of what I used to do. But I do have a new persona because of that. Right.

Wow. Yeah. Interesting. Well, so the title of the book, Jerry, is is this anything? And it's about the way comedians routinely, you know, in this honing process that we've talked about, they try out bits on each other and say, is this funny? Is this funny? And, you know, obviously that had to start somewhere in your lives. And I'm curious if either one of you can tell me the first time you met like another funny kid, you know, as a kid,

who was the person who you were able to bounce things back and forth with, who you were able to crack up. because that must be a real moment if you're a funny kid to find somebody who can do this with you. It's actually interesting that you would even ask that because I don't know, for me, that was a gigantic, gigantic moment in my life when I met another funny kid, which was in third grade.

I was so excited because you start laughing together in a way that you don't, you know, before that. Steve, do you remember meeting your first, funny friend when you were a little kid? Sure. Well, but I don't know if we were funny, but we laughed so much and so art. But I actually don't remember either one of us being funny, but we would, you know, engage in such a way or look around. I wanted to be a magician. And so I was 15 and I got a job at Disneyland's magic shop. And there was a guy there. I just saw him last year actually named Jim Barlin, he was a funny guy. And he would pitch magic tricks, and he had all this

patter. And it would just be for customers who'd come up in the fantasy land. And I was dying to do that. And I finally got the job. Somebody quit. And I got the job. I was 15. I couldn't believe it. And I just took, with his permission, I took all of Jim's patter. And eventually, I actually wrote every joke down on a three by five card, and there were 200 jokes. And I have it somewhere, all these little jokes. Like Jim would go up to a customer and say, may I take your money? I mean, help you? So, Jerry, do you know what your first funny friend is doing now? He's in advertising. I feel like those friends, I mentioned three guys.

that I went to a Queen's College with in the introduction of the book who encouraged me. And I thought we were all the same. And they, one day they said to me, you know, you're, you're funnier than us. And we had gone some comedy club in the city and they told me that they thought I could do that. That was a gigantic encouragement to me that I still remember. I mean, in the book, Jerry, you say that even today, when you're in the company of other stand-up comedians, you feel like you're rolling around in the litter of puppies. Do you still feel that way? Or you're just kind of home with the kids?

I'm sure, Steve, there's an energy around comedy people that is unlike any other social energy. I like to be with comedians because I feel an empathy. I feel we've both done the same thing and we understand something. Steve, do you think that when you have a comedic perspective, you kind of think that the entire human experience is just kind of this silly charade and it's all funny to you. Everything is funny. I must say, I've said this before,

but when I was younger, I could be an icon. And as I got older, I started to have empathy. And it's hard to tear down people and make fun of people because you kind of feel bad about it. So it's harder for me to be an iconoclast or a critic now than it used to be. If that's what you're talking about. Well, I'm more talking about the perception amongst comedians that everything is stupid. Every person is an idiot and everything that everyone does. deserves to be made fun of.

Yeah. I don't honestly have that. I think you've grown. I haven't. I would observe, though, that the kind of comedy that Cherry has always done is more, you know, they call you, what do they call it, observational comedy? You know, that. I've always hated that term, actually. Everything everybody talks about is based on something they've observed.

Are there comedians that do things, and they talk about things that they have not. Not observed? I don't think of, I don't describe Jerry as observational. I mean, I, when I see Jerry's show, and I've seen you live, even within the last couple of years, he's a very gentle comedian. And it's just this beautiful rhythm that flows and flows and flows and does all the things that other comedians have to pace the stage and yell and say the fuck and say everything. You know, it accomplishes all those things that other comedians get in different ways.

But Steve, that reminds me to think about your beginnings. During a time when a lot of the comedy was angry and political, you know, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, and you were the cheerful, clean cut guy, you know, and your comedy wasn't hostile. It was absurd and funny in a serious time. Was it, were you doing that intentionally? Yes, but that came as a reaction to the Vietnam War and the, you know, love revolution, that there was so much anger. Every comedian did politics, politics, politics, politics, and I just had this feeling once

about 1971. I thought, things are going to change. and I cut my hair and I shaved my beard and I put on a suit rather than my hippie clothes and I became like an accountant I think the nation was waiting was just kind of ready for something a little goofy but the amazing thing about what you did

it was an unbelievable act of self-design that you could see yourself in this other persona and you even knew this I don't know how you knew that suit, that the suit would work the way it did. It was like a pure invention of yourself, but it was an unbelievable piece of self-design. So I've heard one of the things that Lauren Michaels likes to say about comedy is that it's polite hostility, which maybe that's a Canadian take, but polite hostility.

And kind of a corollary to that, there's an old. line that the average comedian is three parts funny and one part Ethel Merman. But neither of you seems to me to have that Ethel Merman piece of it. Neither of you seems to have that needy, you know, that needy, angry, hostile thing. How are you so well adjusted and so successful at the same time? Oh, I don't think, I think the neediness is really not an ingredient at all. I mean, some people have some people don't. The aggression and the hostility or maybe a better word might be irritability is an essential ingredient. If you're not easily irritated, I think it's hard to be funny. There is a certain anger in it. That makes us laugh because we all have it, but the comedian

gives it a candy shell. You're right. For me in this sense, is that that now when I work with Marty, that's where my hostility goes. Like, you know, we get mad at each other in a very slight, subtle way, and we get irritated with each other on stage. You know, backstage, we're best friends in the world. And audiences really, they feel that kind of release,

you're kind of releasing that pressure for them. I once was backstage with that. Carl Reiner. And now it's five minutes before he's going to go on. He said, what are you going to do? Run by some of the jokes. He said, I have no idea. And I said, what do you mean? You have no idea. How can you go on with no idea? He says, I just go out and I say what they're thinking. Wow. Now, Del Close, the improv guru from Second City, apparently said on his deathbed, he was tired of being the funniest guy in the room. So I wonder for you two, is it a burden being these professionally very funny guys?

Do people always expect you to make toasts at weddings? And can you live a normal life without people expecting you to be cracking them up all the time? I don't really care about what people expect. I just like to be funny for the fun of it. But I find it difficult when I'm in normal situations to be funny. It was very hard for me when I first started doing my big act because it was so extreme and people would think I was that and I couldn't be that anywhere but on stage. So people were, you know, always disappointed. I had a haircuter, a young woman, just like 25 and she would cut my hair.

And she told me once, she didn't really know much about me. And she told me once that people would say, you cut Steve Martin's hair? Is it so funny? And she goes, no. Well, I'm just going to ask you one more question, and then we'll go. You know, comedians, as you know,

I mean, maybe more political comedians than you too, but they tend to look at the news through a special lens, you know, is this news story good for comedy? Obviously, Trump is better for comedy than Obama was. But what about this weird moment that we're in now? I mean, what about the pandemic? I mean, here we are talking about comedy

in these little boxes on screens. We have no idea if anybody has been laughing, I assume they have. But what do you two make of what we're all going through right now and what effect it's going to have on this business? No, it's not going to affect it at all. I mean, when we can come back, we'll come back, and people will make jokes.

about it and that'll probably be a huge catharsis, I think, for people to be able to laugh at something being in the past. I don't do political comedy. So I can't stand the idea of saying a joke. We've had this happen in our show. You do a political joke and then somebody goes, yay, and then somebody goes boo, and then suddenly the audience is not tuned in it anymore. No, my friend Jim Downey and also Seth Meyer like to talk. There's this term that they use that I think is great called Clappter, which is the audience response when they're not laughing.

You know, it's not a kind of bust of kind of involuntary laugh, but it's a kind of a, we approve. Yes, yes, I agree with that sentiment. I'm sure that's not really what you want as a comedian, right? Well, it's okay, but it's not where the money is. Jerry Seinfeld's new book is called Is This Anything? And Steve Martin is co-author of A Wealth of Pigeons with New Yorker cartoonist Harry Bliss. They appeared at the New Yorker Festival with editor Susan Morrison.

Stick around because in a moment, Yo-Yo Ma appears with a manual act to talk about Beethoven and the cello. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. We'll get back to that music in a moment because, well, far back. be it for me to talk over two of the great musicians on the planet. Recently, the cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the pianist Emmanuel Axe sat together on a stage in actual real life to play some of Beethoven sonatas for the New Yorker Festival.

We'll hear an excerpt from their performance, and then they'll talk together with New Yorker music critic Alex Ross, who was listening in from his desk far away in L.A. So, Alex, what did you think? I'm not here wearing my critic hat. Do you still like the piece? More than ever. Thank you so much. That was magnificent to hear,

and it's just splendid to see both of you from a distance. My first question was actually, when did you first play a Beethoven cello sonata together, and what is it like now to find your way to a new reading of the piece having played together so often. I'd like to start, and then I'd like Mani to continue, because I've known Mani, we've known each other for over 43 years. Yeah.

And we probably played this very early on in our, and so we've been playing this piece for over 40 years. Over 40 years. A couple months ago, Mani said, Yo-Yo, did you know that there's this dedication that I never knew about. This piece, one of the things that completely astounded me was this is such positive, beautiful, open, hopeful music.

And his patron, the one he dedicated the piece to, Beethoven sent him the copy of the manuscript with an inscription that said, amid tears and sorrow. So we were sort of asking ourselves, what gives. And we look up the date when he wrote this, which was in 1809.

1808, 1809, just the years when he was writing this. We realize that that's the year that Napoleon invaded Austria Vagram right outside of Vienna. So imagine you're living in this city and this foreign power comes in

and takes over your town. And just realizing the parallel, here's Beethoven, who has endured so many tough moments in his life. At just that moment, also the personal side, he's a musician, he's losing his hearing. And between that, what's going on around him in the city, what's going on in the country, there's this music which is hopeful, beautiful, generous, noble, all of those things. And I thought this is a good piece for this moment, because, you know, people are suffering, and we do think that music can give comfort.

Yeah, it has that quality of serenity and contentment and joyfulness, but it's not an oblivious kind of joy. No. It's sort of, you can see. Quite right. In the middle, there's a very, a very tearful spot, but it's just one place. I mean, that's terribly, terribly poignant, terribly sad. But again, it's just one episode in this, in this general feeling of hope, at least, at least to me.

I mean, these are all personal reactions for us, of course. Let's get into some of the nuts and bolts of certain gestures that are just so innately Beethoven that are present in this piece and elsewhere in the cello sonatas. And one thing you mentioned we were talking before is just this very basic musical gesture, which is sort of the most basic there is. 151, we call it a tonic dominant, the home key. And then the... As Yo-Yo said, tension. arrival, you know. Right. And he makes it incredibly plain, almost monomaniacal,

since we start in this key, and then he stops what's going to happen next. When are we going to get back home? And he does this five or six times in the movement. And there are so many examples through Beethoven of this sort of thing. Give some examples. The Walschstein piano sonata. What's he going to do next? Fifth Symphony.

Same idea. What I have particularly... How does he end the movement? What you mean? The Fifth Symphony? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he just in the... He finally decides he's going to let you have it with both barrels.

So you know, you know, you've ended on the right note. What I particularly love in this sonata is that we finally, the last time we do this, Now finally, he's going to say, okay, let the cello get. But then the piano says, are you sure? Yes, I'm sure. Oh, I'm so very sure. Yeah, we get it, we get it, we get it. What Manny's describing is, you know, it's technique.

Beethoven uses a certain technique to get to a certain point. We recognize that technique. So by really owning that technique, that gives us the freedom to be able to express and say, we actually know the guy. And I think I grew up, I don't know how you grew up, but I certainly grew up, but I think Manny also, you know, we say, okay, Albert Einstein, he's a genius.

There's no way we can approach. whatever he does. Beethoven. You know, certain people seem unapproachable. But with Beethoven, I think the more you know, you feel that with actually quite a number of composers, the idea that what used to be not ours becomes ours. And it's our music.

But it's also the opposite of familiarity breeds contempt. Right. It's familiarity breeds. more and more amazement. Let's step back and talk about the cello sonatas, and what sort of drove Beethoven to take up this form? And he really was inventing a form to some extent. I mean, there weren't examples of these sort of statements in this form

with the cello and the piano evenly balanced. And so what do both of you notice about how Beethoven is going about bringing all of his firepower to a form that had much less about track record than violin sonata, piano sonnought, and so on. Well, in this age of inequality and inequity, I think Beethoven felt that during his time also. The cello was a poor, poor relative to the violin and the piano. And so I think he took pity on the cello and decided that he wanted to spotlight the cello. So the fourth sonata... Also.

And then the piano responds. And the triple concerto, which is very much close to the... cello always gets to tune first. It's got to be intentional after a certain amount of time. Yes. I think there's a nobility to the cello sound that he somehow intuited and loved. And you get that in these pieces well.

And he was very concerned. We know in the A major sonata, we're lucky enough to actually have an autograph, a working autograph where he made changes. And he spent a lot of time not thinking about what the tunes were going to be, but who was going to play them? So he would very often, Che the piano would do this. No, I'm going to have the cello do this.

And this constant readjustment, and most of it in order to highlight the cello more. You know, he wrote 10 violin sonatas. He wrote 32 piano sonatas, but he wrote five piano cellatas. And I think each one is kind of a different invention. And in each case, it's to describe an even more effervescent universe as he got to later and later stages.

The middle one is the one where societal stresses got him to, to say, no, I'm going to actually do something unbelievably beautiful and comforting. There was so much change that happened during his lifetime. There's so much change that's happening right now. And how do we actually hold on to certain values? And Beethoven certainly was maniacal about holding on to the values he believed in, in spite of change. And that's something that we think about all.

Right, yeah. This issue of how Beethoven responded to the turmoil of his time mirrors what we are all living through now. And I'm wondering, as you've been playing in recent weeks and months, often in quite unusual circumstances, and I know you've been doing these pandemic outdoor distanced events riding around on a sort of custom-built yo-yo and man-y truck. to different places. First of all, what does the music sort of mean to you under those circumstances and has it changed how you have played it in any kind of palpable way? I would love to think that what I'm doing with music

is helping people in some way. It would certainly help me to play music and to listen to music. I hope that's true for, if not everybody, for some people. Well, I'd like to say that, you know, one of the things that we were asking ourselves is, well, what is our purpose? Right. And it's obvious that our purpose is not to say we only exist in the four walls of concert halls.

That music obviously exists in people's minds. It exists at funerals. It exists at bar mitzvahs, at weddings, at rites of passage, at teenagers. You know, it's like music is something. that keeps us going and not only gives us comfort, but actually puts us in very specific states of mind, as we were kind of showing a little bit with little bits and pieces of Beethoven.

And also, music, it's always individual. The aesthetic experience starts at the personal individual level. So you don't have to play for a thousand people. You can play for one person in a hospital room. And in that sense, we find our purpose by knowing how and when we can help. What we did in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, is that Manny had this wonderful friend

who's been moving pianos for 30 years, Stefan. He said, use my flatbed. And Blue Q in Pittsfield, this arts company said, fine, we'll build you a stage set, you know. And they came in in four hours, they built this. And the Yamaha dealer said, sure, we'll give you a little clavinova to put on this thing. And the BSO gave us the stairs. So this was a stone soup moment where we just all put in something.

And the city of Pittsfield said, you know, come, go to the UPS workers there. You can go to this elementary school. You could go to this. But you know what we discovered also, there's a lot of wonderful people in the world who are doing fabulous things. So for us, it was an amazing thing. And this all just strengthens like sort of our belief that our circumstances may change, our lives may change, but there's something in music that remains constant

and it offers something we should always respond to need. This was one of the pieces we played for essential workers. On the truck. Pop-ups. and we thought that this is, again, part of that same idea of in the midst of great discomfort, you can find certain types of comfort in music. Relax on piano and Yo-Yo Ma on the cello. They were playing Beethoven's cello sonata number three in A major.

By the way, it's the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth next month. They spoke with Alex Ross, music critic for the New Yorker, and his recent book is called Wagnerism. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, and I hope you'll join us 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 Garvis of Tune Arts, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Avae Carrillo, Riannon and Corby, Calalia, David Krasnow, Caroline Lester, Gofen and Putubuele,

Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino. This episode was produced with special assistance from Catherine Sterling and David O'Hanna of the New Yorker Festival, and with production help from Kyle Lawrence. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.