Acquired
02:07:27 · Ben Gilbert
[02:07:27] S0: So this is all going really well, but what's going on inside is basically killing the people who are making it. I mean, the the obsession that is going into this. The, like, every word and the writing and the rewriting and this obsession with the the joke, nothing else matters. It is these, like, real auteurs that attracted other people as psychotic as them to obsess with them. And they needed to because at this point, Jerry and Larry, after five years of existing in writing a television show, they're not experiencing the real world anymore. So they need to keep bringing in young writers because they need to mine those people's brains for stories that happened to them. They need to find, like, mini Larry and Jerry's who still live in New York, hopefully, so they get some element of that. But what ends up being an amazing bed to recruit from is the Harvard Lampoon, where it's these young comics, super smart, except that they actually are experiencing the world. So every year for a while, they were bringing in a completely fresh crop of writers because they would basically steal all the best material from everyone's life and then move on to the next one. I mean, Festivus was a thing from someone's life. George's whole thing about is he gonna put a tip in the jar when they're not looking because he doesn't get credit for the tip. That's a thing from someone's life. You kinda need all this fresh blood to come in and get material. Okay. So how did it work to actually produce the weekly Seinfeld episode? Thank you to Alec Berg and David Mandel for talking us through this. They were writers on the show, and then there's some great interviews with Jason Alexander that share a lot of the detail too. So the typical sitcom schedule would start its life on a Monday with rehearsals leading up to a Friday shoot. And on Seinfeld, they realized, well, actually, we could start the week on Wednesday and shoot the following Tuesday. And when the actors go home for the weekend, that means we can get some extra time coming in and rewriting the episode to make it better, which is fine since then they weren't married. They didn't have kids. Like, they had no personal life to speak of. They were obsessed with this. So that's just what they did. So day one, it starts with a table read. Everyone is there.
02:09:43 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
There's producers, writers, NBC executives, Castle Rock representatives. And, as Jason Alexander put it, they would then have a go big powwow after table read. They would give their notes, then Larry would quit. Then the notes would be thrown away. Then Larry would agree to stay, and then he would come back tomorrow. [02:10:03] S1: Sounds about right.
02:10:04 · Ben Gilbert
[02:10:04] S0: So that's day one. And the actors start trying to do some rehearsing, but it's all gonna change so materially, and they kinda know it. So they're not taking that rehearsal that seriously. It's just, like, familiarizing themselves with the material. So Larry and Jerry would then go do a bunch of rewrites overnight. The scripts don't really have stage direction. It's just dialogue because they're comedians. That's that's what they write. And so then the actors had to figure it out. So Seinfeld had this really unique collaborative way where the actors would stay on set even when it wasn't their scene so they could work through it together, and they could trade. Say, oh, actually, I think it would be more funny if Kramer's at the fridge right now with the door open going through, or or then maybe George is, and and trying to figure out the blocking together. Yep. So then day three, more full rewrite overnight, more rehearsing, still just internal to the team. The network's not there yet. The actors, they're there, the writers, Larry, Jerry. This becomes more or less the shape of the final script. Then at the end of the day, NBC and Castle Rock come in. They watch a full run through. They give their notes. As Jason Alexander says, Larry would quit. Yep. Their notes would be diminished, and Larry would come back. Day four is camera block day. So this is when the cameramen come in and start learning their shots. Who's taking what? The episode is sort of finalized enough to figure out what shots do we need and which cameras are we assigning. It's a very difficult thing because it's not like the four cameras just sit there and don't change. Let's say you're camera one. You're responsible for a wide shot. It comes off you and goes to camera three. You have five seconds to scramble, shift, zoom, get a two shot on two characters because then when it flips back to you, that's where you're supposed to
02:11:45 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[02:11:45] S1: be. Yep. [02:11:46] S0: So it's this, like, real ballet and art. So they all rehearse as a unit, the cameramen and the actors, because the next day, they're in front of a live audience. [02:11:54] S1: Yep. [02:11:55] S0: On day four also, especially as the show got bigger and they were doing more on location filming where they'd shoot outside the permanent sets, the the coffee shop in Jerry's apartment, they do things like go to the fake New York street on a different lot to do the sort of outdoor street shots or actual filming locations like the cemetery where George visits Susan. [02:12:18] S1: Oh, boy.
02:12:18 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[02:12:18] S1: Oh, boy. [02:12:19] S0: Yeah. Then day five is rehearsal in the morning, then you bring in the live audience to film in the afternoon. They'd run the entire show in chronological order. And if there's any scenes that were not on those permanent sets, because the audience is just sitting there in front of the coffee shop in Jerry's apartment in in big bleachers, they would bring down a screen so the audience could watch a rough cut of what was shot outside. And that way, they could record those laughs just like we talked about earlier. If they didn't get a laugh... Do you know about what they would do, David, if they... If it wasn't going as expected? Even with the live audience there, they would pause production. They would huddle all the writers and the actors and the director on stage. They would bring out a live band who... That was just, like, waiting on set to entertain the audience. And they also had, like, comics and stuff warm up the audience. And they would huddle and try and figure out, like, a better joke [02:13:11] S1: Yeah. [02:13:11] S0: Why is this fucking joke? Live. The best example of this is in the marine biologist. Yeah. So the episode is supposed to end with George walking into the ocean. And if you've seen this episode, that is not the end. [02:13:24] S1: This is the best story.
02:13:24 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[02:13:24] S1: This is the best story. [02:13:25] S0: It's so good. They bring down the screen to show the on location shot. George walks into the ocean. Audience is kinda confused. There's been, like, a lot of buildup, but there... There's no joke here. So they all huddle. They come up with this idea for George to have the additional scene in the booth where he does a monologue. And then he finally produces the golf ball out of his pocket, which is, of course, tying in a plot from earlier in the episode where Kramer's hitting golf balls into the ocean, and that golf ball turns out to be lodged in a whale's blowhole in George's storyline, which is why the whale needed a marine biologist in the first place that George was pretending to be. So [02:13:57] S1: It's so good. [02:13:58] S0: Larry goes off after their huddle, and he writes a full page monologue on the spot, which Jason Alexander tells Larry, yeah. I can do that. I'm a Tony award winning actor. [02:14:09] S1: Yeah. [02:14:09] S0: Like, I'm a theater actor. Yeah. This is... Put me in, coach. Like, this is what I do. Give me a moment. [02:14:15] S1: It's already late at night here at this point [02:14:16] S0: in time. [02:14:17] S1: So, yeah, he memorizes it, performs it on the spot. It's incredible. [02:14:21] S0: It's the first time it's ever been read. There was no rehearsal when George goes, the sea was angry that day, my friends. [02:14:27] S1: Oh, so good.