Seinfeldia

by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong

  He told his friend and comedian Colin Quinn that he wasn’t even sure he’d know when his routine was working anymore, it had been so long since he’d built it from scratch. “When you’re killing, and while you’re up there killing, you’re miserable,” Quinn answered. “Then it’s back to where it used to be: When you’re like, ‘Eh, big deal, I made these idiots laugh.’ ”

  Seinfeld was met with standing ovations just for showing up, but he insisted that his life as a comedian hadn’t gotten any easier since his earlier days. Sure, they knew who he was and were primed to like him. But in the end, he still had to be funny. That was, after all, the beauty of stand-up: Whatever happened was between the comedian, the audience, and the microphone, and the only thing that made it work was laughter.

  This return to the basics did not go perfectly for the $5 million man. He found himself in the middle of a story onstage at Gotham Comedy Club, only to lose track of his thoughts. He paced, he checked the notes sitting on a nearby bar stool. “And now my point here . . . Goddammit.” After several rounds of nervous, supportive laughter, the room grew quiet. “And I didn’t even want to say what I just said,” he told them, irritated at his gaffe. “That’s the ugly part.”

  “Is this your first gig?” a British woman asked from the audience.

  “As you can see,” he said, “this is quite painful.”

  If his mere rustiness didn’t ground him after the lofty heights of Seinfeld, the democracy of comedy clubs did. When he performed at Governor’s in Levittown, New York, at a time when the Seinfeld finale was still fresh in most Americans’ minds, the club owner came to Jerry’s dressing room. “I need you offstage by nine fifteen,” he told the comedian. Seinfeld was a little shocked—here he was, a big star, coming to this tiny club in this Long Island town to polish up his brand-new act. Then he realized this was why he’d gone back into stand-up: to be treated like any old comedian again, not the major star of the most major TV show. “Stand-up is a life of just brutal reality,” he said, “which is the opposite of the life I had been leading in L.A. and that I missed.”

  Of course, Seinfeld continued to take advantage of his stardom when there was a new project he wanted to do, like Halloween, his 2002 children’s book. It was the ultimate trendy celebrity side project at a moment when everyone from Spike Lee to John Lithgow was also doing it, though Seinfeld maintained his distinctive comedic flavor in kid-friendly form: “Bing-bong, come on lady, let’s go! Halloween, doorbells, candy, let’s pick it up in there.” He enjoyed his growing family life, too, as wife Jessica gave birth to their second child, son Julian Kal, in 2003, and their third, son Shepherd Kellen, in 2005. Though Seinfeld would never quite be a regular dad: All three kids’ arrivals were announced on the air by morning-show host Regis Philbin.

  As the years since Seinfeld passed, it became clear that part of Seinfeld’s job would always be stoking the fires of Seinfeld mania. From 2004 to 2007, he and his fellow cast and crew gathered to record commentary tracks for the in-demand Seinfeld DVD sets. He shot several webisodes in 2004, sponsored by American Express, titled “The Adventures of Seinfeld and Superman,” with Superman voiced by Patrick Warburton, Seinfeld’s Puddy. He played “himself” in a 2004 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

  SEINFELD WAS A DREAM RÉSUMÉ line, and it got the former Seinfeld writers meetings with networks that they had long wished for. Though they soon realized that nothing would ever compare with their experience on Seinfeld, their years of being on a top show that got no network notes. They found themselves summoned to networks to deliver “the next Seinfeld” only to be met with the same confusion and blank stares that David and Seinfeld once encountered in their early TV days. The Seinfeld writers found themselves trying to explain jokes, to no avail, and rebutting objections to the exact sorts of stories and characters everyone loved on Seinfeld. “Well, what about likability?” the executives would say. “Something with more emotion?”

  “No,” the writers countered. “We’re going to love the person for being neurotic.”

  “But we’d really like this person to say, ‘I love you,’ at the end of the scene.” Hugging and learning were back.

  Spike Feresten, meanwhile, landed his own talk show on Fox in 2006. It became the network’s longest-running attempt at a talk show thus far, because it lasted more than one season; it ultimately lasted three. Feresten had learned everything he knew about being a performer from watching Seinfeld; and everything he knew about running a show from watching Seinfeld. It helped that Seinfeld himself appeared as a guest in the pilot.

  But no matter what happened, Feresten was known foremost as “the guy who wrote the Soup Nazi episode of Seinfeld.” Larry Thomas, who played the Soup Nazi, did promo spots for the show in character.

  Writer Andy Robin chose the most unexpected path: He went to medical school and became a doctor. He continued to write on the side, but he didn’t have to write something unless he wanted to. He didn’t have to pitch anything to anyone. He could just go about his business, healing the ailing of Rhode Island, three thousand miles from Hollywood, never thinking of “The Junior Mint” again.

  JUST FOUR YEARS AFTER SEINFELD ended, TV Guide named it the best show of all time, holding it in higher esteem than I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, All in the Family, and The Sopranos.

  And yet the “Seinfeld curse” clung to its former stars. Alexander, Louis-Dreyfus, and Richards all attempted starring in their own sitcoms, but struck out within their first seasons. In 2000, The Michael Richards Show featured the former Kramer as a private detective and was created by three former Seinfeld writers, Feresten, Kavet, and Robin. But it lasted only eight episodes on NBC. Alexander played a motivational speaker in Bob Patterson, which premiered to negative reviews and faded out after five episodes—though it also faced the impossible task of being a comedy that debuted ten days after September 11, 2001. Alexander’s 2004 show, Listen Up!, about a sportswriter, fared better with critics and viewers, but still wasn’t able to stay on the air for longer than a year. Louis-Dreyfus headlined an innovative sitcom called Watching Ellie, which premiered in 2002 and showed the title character, a cabaret singer, in real-time, twenty-two-minute segments of her life. It lasted sixteen episodes.

  Larry David called talk of the curse “the most absurd, silliest, stupidest thing to say. . . . It’s so annoying to hear something like that. There was no curse. It’s crazy. So there were two TV shows attempted that didn’t work? Big deal. How many TV shows work?” And as Alexander said, “It’s not a Seinfeld curse. It’s a success curse. There’s a reluctance on the part of the audience and producers to put you into another role. . . . The problem with Seinfeld is that measuring up is no easy standard.” The stars seemed to also be, at least in part, victims of changing trends in television. In 2002, reality show Fear Factor, in which contestants ate bugs, was a hit, and sexy spy drama Alias was a critical favorite—hardly an environment ripe for masters of the sitcom. Meanwhile, they were appearing constantly, at all hours, in their best-known roles, thanks to syndication. Elaine, George, and Kramer were harder to live down than ever, and that didn’t seem to be abating as time passed.

  However, Louis-Dreyfus finally “broke” the curse with the 2006 premiere of the solid The New Adventures of Old Christine, in which she played a neurotic divorced mom. When she won an Emmy for the role in 2006, she said in her acceptance speech, “I’m not somebody who really believes in curses, but curse this, baby!” The series ran until 2010, long enough to reach syndication—the industry benchmark of true success. She won another Emmy for her role as narcissistic vice president Selina Meyer on HBO’s Veep in 2012, going on to win two more Emmy Awards for that performance.

  She declined opportunities during interviews to whine about the difficulties of having played a famous character, and instead used her Seinfeld clout to her advantage, securing producing credits on both Old Christine and Veep. She saw it as critical to guaranteeing authority over her projects and using her extens
ive experience.

  Of course, there was one cast member who managed to bring a curse upon himself, and it was a doozy.

  THE LAUGH FACTORY ON SUNSET Boulevard in Los Angeles had hosted almost every major comic in America since opening in 1979: At one time or another, Tim Allen, Roseanne Barr, George Carlin, Kathy Griffin, Bob Hope, Andy Kaufman, Jay Leno, Howie Mandel, Richard Pryor, Paul Reiser, and Jerry Seinfeld had all stepped onto its stage, in front of its distinctive sunset logo, to attempt a night of making audiences laugh.

  It’s here that we see Kramer—that is, Michael Richards—all lanky body and wiry hair, pacing the stage and screaming: “Shut up! Fifty years ago we’d have you upside down with a fucking fork in your ass. You can talk, you can talk, you can talk. You’re brave now, motherfucker. He’s a nigger, he’s a nigger, he’s a nigger. A nigger, look, there’s a nigger!” It’s here, on a cell phone video that millions saw online in the days after Richards’s 2006 comedy-club meltdown, that you can hear audience members gasping. Now Richards mocks not only the two African American men with whom he was originally sparring but also his entire audience: “Ooh, ooh. All right, you see, this shocks you, what’s buried beneath you stupid motherfuckers.”

  “That was uncalled for!” a voice yells back.

  “That was uncalled for? It’s uncalled for you to interrupt my ass, you cheap motherfucker! I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. They’re going to arrest me for calling a black man a nigger.”

  The voice again: “That was uncalled for, you motherfucking cracker-ass motherfucker.”

  “Cracker ass? You calling me ‘cracker ass,’ nigger?”

  “It’s not funny, that’s why you’re a reject, never had no shows, never had no movies, Seinfeld, that’s it.”

  The vicious tirade became one of the Internet age’s first major scandals perpetuated by cell phone camera, video-driven gossip site TMZ, and YouTube. Millions saw Richards’s rant and were disillusioned by the sight of one of America’s favorite sitcom characters spewing such vicious words.

  The club banned all future use of the word nigger. Less than a month later, Damon Wayans paid a $320 fine, $20 for each use, and was banned from the Laugh Factory for three months. Richards had returned to the club the night after the debacle and did his scheduled set (no finable offenses this time). But as word of the confrontation spread, he would stop doing comedy altogether. Seinfeld, though he’d always admired Richards as a comedic genius, was forced to release his own statement on the issue, saying he was “sick” over what had happened. “I’m sure Michael is also sick over this horrible, horrible mistake,” Seinfeld said in his statement. “It is so extremely offensive. I feel terrible for all the people who have been hurt.” At first Richards declined to comment beyond expressing his regret.

  Seinfeld was booked to appear on Late Night with David Letterman that week—to promote the release of the seventh season of Seinfeld on DVD—and requested Richards appear with him via satellite to apologize publicly. “He’s someone that I love, and I know how shattered he is” about the incident, Seinfeld told Letterman.

  Richards appeared beamed in from Los Angeles, looking tired and washed-out in a black button-down shirt against a stark, gray backdrop, his trademark hair slicked back. “I lost my temper onstage,” Richards said in the appearance, adding, “I said some pretty nasty things to some Afro-Americans. . . . You know, I’m really busted up over this and I’m very, very sorry.” When a few audience members—either confused by the serious tone on the usually comedic show, or struck by the retro term Afro-Americans—giggled, Richards said, “I’m hearing your audience laugh and I’m not even sure that this is where I should be addressing the situation.”

  Still, he continued to ramble: “I’m deeply, deeply sorry. And I’ll get to the force field of this hostility, why it’s there, why the rage is in any of us, why the trash takes place, whether or not it’s between me and a couple of hecklers in the audience or between this country and another nation, the rage . . .” Finally, he concluded, “I’m not a racist. That’s what’s so insane about this.”

  As racists embraced Richards as their truth teller, he became radioactive waste to Hollywood, impossible to cast—there was little hope of recovery after an “N-word” incident. “Once the word comes out of your mouth and you don’t happen to be African American, then you have a whole lot of explaining,” said fellow stand-up Paul Rodriguez, who was at the Laugh Factory during the performance. “Freedom of speech has its limitations and I think Michael Richards found those limitations.” Publicist Michael Levine told the Today show: “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. I think it’s a career ruiner for him. . . . It’s going to be a long road back for him, if at all.”

  Jason Alexander was guest-starring on a black family sitcom produced by comedian Chris Rock, Everybody Hates Chris, when the controversy was unfolding. He worried about his former costar, who he thought was struggling with “anger issues.” The day after the news broke, Alexander discussed the incident with Chris cocreator Ali LeRoi. “I don’t know what to tell you,” Alexander later recalled telling LeRoi. “I’ve talked to Mike. I know he is devastated.”

  “I know exactly what happened,” said LeRoi, who is black. “I get it. Let’s offer him a part on the show.”

  “I can’t imagine Michael’s in a place where he could physically do it,” Alexander said. “But even if you called him and made that gesture, it would be an amazing thing.” Alexander was correct; the deal never worked out. A 2007 episode contained a minor joke at Richards’s expense, with Rock as the narrator saying, “Because I was planning on cutting school, I was acting guiltier than Michael Richards at an NAACP convention.”

  Even the “real” Kramer experienced some blowback from the incident, from fans who couldn’t discern the difference between Kenny Kramer and the man who played Cosmo Kramer. He got hate e-mail calling him a “racist piece of shit” and worse. Seinfeldia was not immune to controversy.

  In 2012, Jerry Seinfeld began a true cultural renaissance when he launched a web series, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. The first season included ten episodes, each featuring a different comedian in conversation with Seinfeld over coffee. (The “cars” came in when Jerry picked them up in one of his extensive collection of vintage automobiles.) The series was a hit for the new millennium, racking up 10 million viewers per episode.

  The first season’s finale brought Richards back into the public eye for the first time since his meltdown. Here, he atoned more than he had in the six years that had passed. “I think I worked selfishly and not selflessly,” he told Seinfeld. “I should’ve been working selflessly that evening. I busted up after that event. It was a selfish response. I took it too personally, and I should’ve said, ‘You’re absolutely right, I’m not funny.’ ” Then he added, to Seinfeld, “Thanks for sticking by me. It meant a lot to me. Inside, it still kicks me around a bit.”

  WHEN JASON ALEXANDER FIRST HEARD Larry David’s idea to reunite the Seinfeld cast on Curb Your Enthusiasm, he balked. Why should HBO get such a golden goose? The cast could make gazillions on a Seinfeld movie—it was all anyone asked them about in interviews, besides the damn “Seinfeld curse.” Now they were just going to give it away, and not even to the network that made the show in the first place? Not to mention the question of whether they could pull it off. They were eleven years older, it was eleven years later, and they hadn’t worked as a group since. Would it really be up to their standards?

  Then again, they’d be in David’s hands. Alexander talked to Louis-Dreyfus about it, and they decided: For Larry, they’d do it.

  And as they discussed the idea, it seemed so natural that they couldn’t resist it. Jerry and Larry, working together, their desks facing each other, just like the olden days. As they began to shoot what would become a string of 2009 episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm—directed by former Seinfeld writer Jeff Schaffer—it looked and felt just like the olden days.

  The meta-plot setup
was simple: Larry would agree to get the gang back together for a Seinfeld reunion on NBC—a gracious nod to their home network—in an effort to give estranged wife Cheryl, an actress, a part on the show as George’s wife.

  In the resulting episodes, they all gather for table reads, rehearsals, and a taping in front of a live, laughing studio audience, a jarring departure from Curb’s quiet, single-camera approach. The first scene they shot was the faux table read. They returned to their old space at the CBS Radford lot, where the old sets for Monk’s Café and Jerry’s apartment had been reassembled. Even the people who would have been at the table read in 1998 reappeared to play themselves—director Andy Ackerman, crew members, Castle Rock and NBC executives. It was the closest thing to time travel any of them would ever experience. The series finale shoot felt like it had happened five minutes earlier, not eleven years.

  As they prepare the show within the show, we get glimpses of what the Seinfeld characters have been up to in the ten years since the show ended: Jerry donated sperm so Elaine could have a daughter. George got rich off his invention of the iToilet, an app that helps you find the nearest decent public restroom anywhere in the world; but he lost all his money by investing it with Bernie Madoff. His ex-wife, played by Larry’s on-screen ex Cheryl, kept her half because she pulled out of Madoff’s investments when she saw him on the street wearing a quilted jacket that bothered her.

  As they discuss all of this in Jerry’s old, familiar living room set, fake cameras surround them. Real cameras surround the fake cameras. As the faux Seinfeld scene unfolded before him, Schaffer realized he had a note on the scene, and started to walk out onto the set to tell David and the actors, just like he would have during a rehearsal when he was twenty-five years old. Berg grabbed him and held him back: “No, idiot,” he said, “we’re shooting.” Right. This wasn’t the real show. This was on camera, pretending to be a show—which, all together, was the show.