Originally published at: What's the deal with Jerry Seinfeld's comedy writing | Boing Boing
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it’s crazy how good the closing line of the bit is “they can’t go stale, because they were never fresh”
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Great interview. Another excellent item that brilliantly describes the comedy process is Steve Martin’s autobiography Born Standing Up. I used to think that comedians were just naturally funny people who could wing it in front of a crowd and get laughs. It’s amazing to discover the amount of work and trial & error that goes into making a joke just right.
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In the video above, Jerry Seinfeld, a titan of standup comedy, details his process for writing jokes
There’s a very interesting discussion by the otherwise-execrable John Cleese about a routine in the Fawlty Tower’s episode “Gourmet Night” from the first season. At the end Basil Fawlty is thrashing his car with a tree branch. Cleese uses this to discuss comedy writing, and how the scene wasn’t very funny until they found exactly the right branch. “It’s not that an idea is funny. It’s that an idea done exactly right is funny.”
Scene and interview:
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Yep. I used to write for an underground satire publication that targeted a power group. We had a writing team with exactly the right chemistry. No ego involved in story ideas, and a complete willingness to have your “great piece” thrashed to bits and come out the other end as an actually-good piece. (All Single Malt drinkers, which helped).
Even though it was a paper publication we worked very hard on word and phrase cadence, and how the proper cadence could make the joke, and a weird cadence could ruin it. We would go through an enormous number of revisions, even after it all seemed just right. It was a lot of work. But, fun.
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And for those who like coding in a nice, Turing-complete Jerry Seinfeld-ish programming language, then here’s a “Hello, world” program:
You ever notice this?
What's the deal with this thing? It's kinda like this.
What's the deal with airline food?
What's the deal with it?
It's kinda like this thing. Just like it.
Let's talk about this thing. It's kinda like this thing. It's kinda like this.
Yeah, Just like this thing. Just like it. Not like this.
What's the deal with pilots? Just like it. Not like this. Just like it. See?
Let's talk about this thing. Not like this.
What's the deal with baggage claim? Just like this thing. Just like it. It's kinda like pilots.
What's the deal with luggage? Just like baggage claim. It's kinda like this. It's kinda like this. Not like it. See?
Let's talk about baggage claim. See? See? It's kinda like this thing. Not like this. See?
Let's talk about it. Um, See? It's kinda like this. Not like this thing. Not like it. See?
Let's talk about baggage claim. It's kinda like it. Not like this. See? It's kinda like this. Not like it. See? It's kinda like this thing. Not like this.
See? Not like this thing. Not like this. Not like this. See?
Let's talk about luggage. Not like this. See?
Let's talk about it. Um, It's kinda like this. See?
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There was a New Yorker podcast from months ago (maybe a year ago?) where Seinfeld and Steve Martin were discussing comedy writing that touches on stuff he says here. They describe how the Marx brothers used to take their film scripts on tour and perform parts of them for live audiences, listen for audience reactions, then rework them later that night in the hotel room like they were honing a blade.
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I found this very unsatisfying. He starts telling us about his process at the point where he’s already got pages of jokes, and this is mostly about refining the lines he’s already decided will go in. I would have liked to hear why Pop-Tarts, and why make it about childhood, what other perspectives or ways into talking about Pop-Tarts he thought of and rejected, and how many different jokes he comes up with that he throws out, and examples, and why he threw them out. Maybe also hearing the whole bit in the video.
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Seinfeld’s last Netflix special was the worst performance of standup comedy I’d seen in years. His material has always been mundane and his performance was lazy and uninspired. He’s small minded and seems to have little imagination. He wasn’t even the funniest writer on his own show.
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Agree to disagree.
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It’s funny because it’s true.
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Because it bears repeating:
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I would laugh at this Pop Tart bit, but I’m boycotting Kelloggs.
or
I would laugh at this Pop Tart bit, but it was never funny.
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Almost tempted to try and get it chatting to an Eliza bot to create the most mind-numbing conversation. Almost.
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NO! What’s he done? I love Cleese and always have, since childhood.
He got old and conservative. Old-money-senility.
Still he has done brilliant stuff and is one of the comedic greats. I don’t think any of his brilliant older work gets any less brilliant because his current old-fartyness.
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He’s not like super-evil. He just turned into one of the people he made a career out of mocking.
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