People like to talk about Seinfeld! Here are some places it has been recently:
I talked Seinfeldia with my smart friends at Vulture.
Particularly great excerpt (i.e. I like the bits they chose) about “The Junior Mint,” “The Contest,” and others in The Guardian.
I also talked Seinfeldia with fellow Seinfeld geek Jim Turano at WGN (in my hometown, Chicago!).
A Salon.com discussion about the antiheroes of Seinfeld.
And ‘How Seinfeld Became About Something,’ from NBC online.
Jeremiah Bosgang was on Seinfeld duty as a staffer at NBC from the show’s earliest days, when it was still called The Seinfeld Chronicles. For my upcoming book Seinfeldia, I interviewed him about how his boss Rick Ludwin, the network’s senior VP of specials, variety, and latenight, nurtured the strange little show that was about little more than a comedian talking to his friends.
It’s unusual for a sitcom to be developed in the latenight department. How did that happen?
That department is really like the step child. The really cool places are comedy and drama development. I joined Rick as a program associate, which is this special program that NBC had where they bring people in as development executives. You have maybe two years and they see if you’re somebody who can go on to become an executive. I joined in the late ’80s. Rick Ludwin had identified Jerry Seinfeld as this up and coming comedian. He thought this guy is the next thing to really break through. He called Jerry and his managers in for a meeting and asked what he wanted to do. Jerry was like, “I don’t know.” They came up with this idea that Seinfeld was supposed to be a hybrid show. The idea became: I’m going to do these three pods of standup, and then after those standup pieces, we’ll have these little scenes that show how I got the idea. And the pilot was very heavy on that. The first four to six episodes were like that.
How were you involved with the show?
I came in when the pilot was done. I had really always wanted to write and perform comedy. He said, “You’re gonna be the point person.” It was my first job as a network executive. I was probably 28 years old. After we’d do a table reading of the show, I was one of the guys giving Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld notes. What the hell did I know? They were always really very nice to me.
How did it change from The Seinfeld Chronicles for the first episode to Seinfeld after that?
I still remember [NBC President] Brandon Tartikoff talking about how Jerry was unhappy with the title of the show. at the time the show was not any huge success. There were strong advocates for the show at the network, chiefly Rick Ludwin and myself. I remember Brandon coming down to Rick Ludwin’s office when I was in there. He said, “I caved to Seinfeld, it’s gonna be called Seinfeld now.”
What was the relationship like between the network and the show then?
One of the the things that I learned from Rick Ludwin was that Rick really empowered Jerry and Larry to do the kind of show that they wanted to do. Even if there were times when we were scratching our heads at those early episodes, what I learned was this was their show. NBC hired a real voice and talent and vision and then created an environment so they could do what they do. Rick and I had to fight internally to give Seinfeld its due. At the time the show that was supposed to be the big show was Wings. The people at NBC really believed in Wings and the creative people behind Wings. Seinfeld was this thing where even when it wasn’t a perfect episode, you’d go, Wow, that was kind of cool.
How did being involved in Seinfeld help your career?
The big upstart then was Fox. I ended up leaving NBC to become the head of comedy development at Fox largely due to the halo effect of Seinfeld. Even though there were lots of other successful sitcoms built around a comedian, there was nothing that had the kind of storytelling and pacing that Jerry and Larry created.
Peter Mehlman was the first writer hired for Seinfeld outside the core production staff, starting with the 13-episode season that was basically the show’s second. (It began with one episode in July 1989, four episodes the next summer, and 13 the following year.) He was also one of the rare Seinfeld writers who stuck around for multiple seasons—in fact, he didn’t leave until the penultimate season, when he left to develop his own show, the gone-too-soon It’s Like, You Know …. Here, some highlights of my interview with Mehlman for my upcoming book Seinfeldia (out July 5, available for pre-order now!).
So what was that like, being there for most of the show’s run?
It was so amazing to be on that ride. The show was so good, it was like I couldn’t believe the show could possibly fail. After my first script, when we shot it, Larry said, “If by some off chance we get picked up, you’ve got the job.” And it was like, there was no doubt in my mind that this was going to get picked up. It was just so good. I didn’t realize, of course, that being good is actually a detriment to your chances. At that time, I didn’t realize all that.
Did your life change as the show got popular?
Not so much in day-to-day work life. But you could feel things changing. Like all of a sudden the show started getting a little bit of notice and tons of agents started showing up. And none of us knew what we were doing. Larry and Jerry hadn’t even done a sitcom before so we would just let the agents hang out on the floor. So the floor of the Seinfeld set got to be this weekly party. It was like a mob scene.
They were trying to sign writers, especially me because I was with a boutique agency. I would say almost more like a bodega agency. I later found out that CAA and ICM, they literally had agents assigned to me, to try to get me to leave my agency.
Did you ever?
Not until about two years ago.
How did you initially get your agent?
I wrote one spec script for The Wonder Years, not even really planning on getting into the business. I was a freelance magazine writer at the time. So I moved to Los Angeles and I’d seen a few episodes of The Wonder Years and I thought, “Oh, you know what I should do? I should write a freelance script for them and make all this money!” I thought it would really help me out because moving is expensive. I had no idea that your chances of having a script bought on a freelance basis like that are basically next to zero. And obviously it never got anywhere near the show, but somebody passed it on to somebody who passed it on to somebody and it got to my agent. And then somebody met with me and I had an agent!
Did he help you get Seinfeld then?
No, he had nothing to do with it. Agents never really get anybody any jobs. They negotiate when something falls in their lap.
So how did Seinfeld happen?
I met Larry in New York a couple of times. And then I moved out [to L.A.] in ’89. I was still just freelance magazine writing. And the year I moved here, I bumped into Larry. He was doing this little show with Jerry Seinfeld. And maybe I could write a script? He had no idea that I’d never written dialog, really. And so I gave him a writing sample. It was an article from The New York Times, an “About Men” column that was kind of a bittersweet, funny essay. And he passed it on to Jerry. And Jerry just liked it, so… they gave me a chance to write a script.
For more, check out Seinfeldia, on sale July 5.
I have a book about Seinfeld, called Seinfeldia, coming out July 5 (and available for pre-order now), and I’ve already done a handful of interviews about it. The natural question that comes up is: What is your favorite episode? I think I answer this differently depending on my mood because there are so many good ones. If I’m feeling geeky, it’s “The Chinese Restaurant” because that represented the show’s first risky departure from sitcom conventions. If I’m feeling feminist, I go for Elaine’s “spongeworthy” plotline. If I’m feeling indecisive, I start rambling about how I really love the entire arc in which George and Jerry make a sitcom called Jerry, which ultimately fails. If I’m feeling contrary, I go for the much-hated finale, which I’ve loved upon re-watch.
I do, however, know my favorite scene, and that’s George’s monologue explaining how he saved a whale after pretending to be a marine biologist while on a date. (“The sea was angry that day, my friends …”) If I were an actor who had to do auditions, this would be my go-to material. It displays Jason Alexander’s special skill as an actor that made this character so great—the dramatic talent he brings to comedy. He plays George as a guy who’s quite serious about the cosmic joke he knows life is. I also remember this scene as possibly the first time, during the show’s original run, that I as a young viewer really got how brilliant Seinfeld was, the way it brought all the crazy plotlines together at the end of an episode in one comic quadruple-pirouette. Let’s enjoy:
Against all odds, O.J. Simpson has become the biggest TV star of 2016. He is the main attraction in the two best TV series this year, FX’s excellent drama The People vs. O.J. Simpson and ESPN’s currently running documentary O.J.: Made in America. The latter is so good that even though I watched the FX show twice through, I’m still riveted by every second. Simpson’s story is so layered, so Shakespearean, so laden with the massive issues of race and class and gender, that it bears repeated tellings.
But back in the ’90s when Simpson’s trial was dominating TV for the first time, it inspired lighter cultural offshoots, the parodies that usually serve as our first mass processing of major events. The trial was rife with characters so huge that they often seemed like parodies already: the permissive Judge Ito, the brittle Marcia Clark, the preacher-like Johnnie Cochran, the bumbling Chris Darden (alas, his biggest moment was one of the prosecution’s biggest downfalls, the disastrous glove demonstration). There were the standard Saturday Night Live sketches, of course, but one of the most fully realized—and, it turns out, enduring—depictions came from Seinfeld.
Seinfeld often took inspiration from real life, but for the most part it stuck with the little irritations its writers encountered in the course of mundane tasks: the valet with body odor that lingered in your car, the coworker who liked to insult you during meetings, the girlfriend whose name you can’t remember, the cranky chef whose soup is so delicious you’ll put up with his yelling to get it. There were a few famous-name characters, most notably George Steinbrenner, the back of whose head was played by an actor and whose voice was provided by creator Larry David. But that portrayal was hardly a hot topical bit; it was simply a nod to the real New York City, which the show depicted so perfectly despite shooting in Los Angeles.
In fact, the arrival of the Johnnie Cochran-like Jackie Chiles on Seinfeld was Los Angeles’s way of sneaking into the show. The entire nation was mesmerized by the case, but it was beyond inescapable at its Los Angeles epicenter. And so a little piece of the Simpson trial made its way onto Seinfeld in the form of Chiles. (This was in addition to a one-off joke about Kramer participating in a low-speed police chase in a Ford Bronco during the 1994 episode “The Big Salad.”) He first showed up in the episode “The Maestro,” in which Kramer sues a restaurant for making his coffee too hot. The episode was shot in August of 1995, but it aired at a perfect time: October 5, just two days after the incendiary not-guilty verdict in the Simpson trial.
David and Jerry Seinfeld had, like most of America, been obsessed with the Simpson trial. In interviews for my book Seinfeldia, many of the writers mentioned them watching it or talking about it on the set. And it makes sense that they’d become particularly enamored of Cochran. Other trial characters were entertainingly bumbling, excitable, dramatic, and pompous, but Cochran had a speaking style that made him perfect for Seinfeld. He exclaimed. People in real life do not often exclaim. If a writing student of mine tried to use “exclaim” as a verb in a stretch of dialogue, I would likely question it … unless that student were describing the speech of Johnnie Cochran or a Seinfeld character. George exclaims almost constantly. So do his parents. Elaine and Jerry are known to exclaim. So is Kramer, in his own way.
Significantly, though, Cochran also had something special to bring to the exclamation party, a key factor in making it as a recurring character on Seinfeld. He rhymed. He had his own distinctive rhythm. He seemed to almost always be speaking in verse, a quality he obviously borrowed from Baptist preachers, to great effect. David and Seinfeld have a particularly musical sensibility to their comedy. (This is what brings humor to a line as simple as, “These pretzels are making me thirsty,” or to repeated phrases like “master of my domain.”) This gave Jackie Chiles, the character based on Cochran, license to deliver such classic monologues as this balm-related directive:
Actor Phil Morris has discussed his secret to nailing the character: He used to go to the same barbershop as Cochran, so he had his speech patterns down. The character soon took on a life of his own, returning for law-related shenanigans in six episodes. He essentially starred in the controversial finale, defending the four main characters in their trial for violating the Good Samaritan law. I’m a fan of the finale — another argument for another time — and one of its greatest moments is Chiles’s “innocent bystander” speech during opening arguments. It is both very Cochranian and very Seinfeldian:
In retrospect, it seems right that Seinfeld and the Simpson trial would remain linked, not only in our memories of the time but also through a specific character who lives on forever in reruns and Hulu streaming. Both the show and the trial helped to define the decade. So much so that Seinfeld showed up in an excellent scene in The People vs. O.J. Simpson, in which the jury differs along racial lines as to what they want to watch while sequestered: Seinfeld or Martin. They vote and Martin wins, a nice foreshadowing of the trial outcome.
In fact, Simpson’s infamous house guest Kato Kaelin showed up at the wrap party for Seinfeld‘s finale. Given how David’s friend Kenny Kramer described David’s reaction to Kaelin, it’s no surprise that he didn’t get the homage treatment Cochran did.
Seinfeldians, I need your help in getting the word out about SEINFELDIA as its July 5 release date approaches! To that end, I am recruiting a special ten-person launch team. In exchange for your help, I’ll send you a free, signed copy of the book. You’ll agree to post something about the book (a pic of the cover, a link to order it online, something fancy like a gif or a meme, a rave review) on whatever platforms you use—blog, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, etc.—every day for the week of the launch, July 5-12.
If you’re interested, tell me in the comments here, ping me on Facebook or Twitter, or email me here.
UPDATE: This offer is now closed. Thank you all for your interest!
The brochure for Kenny’s bus tour.
Last week I shared some of my interview with Rochelle Rochelle model Chela Holton. Today some snippets from my chat with the man I consider the mayor of Seinfeldia, Kenny Kramer. He inspired his former neighbor, Larry David, to create the indelible character of Kramer for Seinfeld. He continues to lead a successful bus tour of Seinfeld sites in New York, Kramer’s Reality Tour, which I highly recommend. Here are a few choice snippets from my interview with him; for the whole story, pick up Seinfeldia on July 5, or pre-order it RIGHT NOW.
What did you think when you first heard Larry David wanted to base a character on you?I thought that Larry David is going to write a network television sitcom for primetime and nobody’s going to put it on the air. He was living across the hall while he did the pilot and when they shot the four test episodes [the second year it was on].
When did you actually finally get the idea that maybe this was going to change your life? Around the second and third season of the show. The second season was 13 episodes. The third season it really started getting a buzz. Kramer became this unbelievable character.
Do you have any favorite moments from actually going to the set? Bonding with Michael [Richards, who played Kramer] is special. He and I have a lot in common. We were both single parents raising a daughter; we had so much in common that it was really strange. We never really became friends who always were friendly. But when I go out [to Los Angeles], he and I will sometimes hang out a little bit. It was a kick for both of us.
What was it like being there for the finale? It was very exciting. I had VIP access. The moment I’ll never forget is they had the wrap party afterwards, and they did it at House of Blues. Jerry, Larry, myself, Larry’s wife, Jerry’s friends, maybe 20 of us had a special wristband that could get us into the VIP room. I was in there and I will never forget Kato Kaelin was there. And this was not long after all that shit went down in the trial. Kato came running up to me, he recognized me, he was very excited to meet me. Then Larry comes in and I said, “Larry, say hello to Kato Kaelin.” The look on Larry’s face, it was priceless, like he was just despicable human being.
What do you feel like is the best part of being the real Kramer? The fact that I can make a living without too much work.
Street artist Jayshells made this reproduction of the poster featured on the show and hung it at an abandoned New York City theater in 2013. He gave Holton a copy.
Seinfeld‘s fictional movie titles were always a special treat — Sack Lunch or Chunnel, anyone? — but the one with the most mystical staying power has to be Rochelle Rochelle, “a young girl’s strange, erotic journey from Milan to Minsk.” First, George sees the film at the theater. Then he’s renting it in a later episode when he runs into his ex, Susan, and her new girlfriend at the video store. It even eventually becomes a stage adaptation in an episode guest-starring Bette Midler.
And all the time, the movie poster remains the same: a hazy, moody black and white portrait of a beautiful young woman.
She was “played” by an uncredited extra named Chela Holton. Though Holton did lots of Hollywood background work during the time Seinfeld was on, she now lives a low-key life in California. I was lucky enough to be the first to interview her about her Seinfeld experience for my upcoming book Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything, which is out July 5 — and available for pre-order right now.
Here, a few highlights from our interview … for the rest of the good stuff, please check out the book!
How did you end up as Rochelle? I was an extra, but I had been hired specifically to pose for this picture. They needed her to have a summery dress on. I had to borrow one from a neighbor. They dolled me up a little bit. Outside the soundstage, there was a little park area where I posed for pictures.
Were there multiple set-ups? We did a lot of different things. They had me walking with my suitcase. The idea was that it was supposed to be a dark and dreary setting but then here’s this girl in her sundress. Most of the pictures they took were of me standing, but the one they used was a crop. The idea was how out of place this girl in her sundress is. I think the day was perfect, because it was overcast.
Since you were hired as an extra, did you appear in any other scenes? By the time they were done with my mini-photo shoot, probably a couple of hours had passed; they had me change and then I was an extra in the bar scene. My back is to the camera and my hair is back, so you can’t tell that it’s me. And by the time that scene was done, there was my picture on the poster, eyebrows all unkempt. It was so fast. It was like a drill. Everyone knew what they were supposed to do, and they just got it done.
Did you get a copy of the poster? Way back when the show aired, I was told, “Call back next week and ask if you can get a copy.” When I called, they said, “Sorry, it’s studio property.”
Do people in your life realize the significance of Rochelle? I have two beautiful stepchildren. [My partner] took a screenshot [of the poster] from the show and blew it up to hang in his office. So the kids asked about it once or twice. They think I’m famous. Realistically, I very rarely bring it up. It was 20 years ago. Vanity overcomes, and who wants to be as old as that?
There are also people in the office. There’s this young boy who recently moved onto another position. But he’s obsessed with Seinfeld. So much so that he would bring up a quote or say something Seinfeldesque several times a day. We even started a Seinfeld jar. He put a dollar in every time he said something about Seinfeld. He’s young, so he would have been a little kid when it was on. I have not told him. That’s my little secret.
Michael Dann was not the hero of The Mary Tyler Moore Show‘s origin story. In fact, he was something of the villain—the quintessential anti-creative, anti-progressive television executive. He shot down producers James L. Brooks and Allan Burns when they pitched their original idea for the show in 1969: Mary would play a divorced woman. Dann, who was obsessed with ratings and with protecting Moore’s image, would have none of it. He invoked the network’s research department findings: “American audiences won’t tolerate divorce in a lead of a series any more than they will tolerate Jews, people with mustaches, and people who live in New York.”
Bringing all of this up might seem like an odd way to pay tribute to someone who has just died at the age of 94. But what I loved about Dann was that when I interviewed him a few years ago for my book Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted, he was honest, self-aware, and funny in recalling all of this. He was still scoffing over the annoyances of dealing with comedy writers and all their feelings. But he also understood that, in retrospect, he’d been a little behind the times in writing off the divorce idea. In 1969, he explained, he still thought then that a divorcée was “kind of a loose woman. … I think you could classify me as a prude at that point. I was worried about keeping a perfect image of her.”
He also delivered a lesson for any executives negotiating with “creatives”: “You never are too enthusiastic [about their show] when you’re dealing with them. As a consequence, the creative people think they know everything, but they don’t. While my career depends upon them, at the time they make the deal, they’re the opposition.”
I so appreciated his willingness to share his insights with me long after the fact. And either way, he gave us the Mary we came to love: a single woman getting over a mere breakup, not a divorce.
My upcoming book Seinfeldia—out in less than two months!—tells the history of Seinfeld from its inception up until now, with heavy emphasis on the ways the two-decade-old show continues to infiltrate current everyday life and culture. That’s where the “Seinfeldia” concept comes in: Seinfeldia is the name I gave the special dimension between Seinfeld and reality that never dies. It’s there that the actor who played the “Soup Nazi,” Larry Thomas, continues to make his living playing the character (the central figure of just one episode) at events and the real-life inspiration for the Kramer character, Larry David’s former neighbor Kenny Kramer, continues to give sold-out bus tours of New York sites from the show.
Well, yet another opportunity to live in Seinfeldia has presented itself: The clothing company J. Peterman, a real-life phenomenon that inspired the Peterman character on the show, wants to bring to life the Urban Sombrero, Elaine’s terrible fictional creation during her time working for the fictional version of the company, with a little funding help from fans.
You can contribute to the madness at the company’s Kickstarter page.
