Acquired
03:38:23 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[03:38:23] S0: So in the pilot, on my DVD that that I have, you can hear the original pilot with the original theme music, which is not what you are familiar with. The bass riff composed by Jonathan Wolfe is something completely different, and it interferes horribly with Jerry's stand up at the beginning. You... It just like is tonally overlapping each other, and you you almost can't make out his words. So when Jonathan Wolfe got the call about it, he said, oh, I know exactly what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna treat Jerry's voice like the lyrics of a song. Yes. And I'm gonna compose around that, like he's kinda carrying the melody. And he even felt like there was a tempo that Jerry did stand up to, and it came in around a 110 beats per minute. That, like, that's how his jokes were told in that rhythm. So he didn't create a theme song, he created a theme song system where he could uniquely compose on a synthesizer in front of him that had the bass guitar riff, you know, mapped to a bunch of different keys and also all the little sounds, like all the mouth sounds that he makes. And he uniquely composes a theme for every episode that is slightly different that fits in around Jerry's jokes in the intro. And so he has this great quote on this. Every monologue was going to be a variation of the theme. So whatever I did, I needed to architect it modularly so that it could be shiftable, changeable, like LEGO music. It needed to not conflict with his voice. So great. So great. [03:40:08] S1: And so distinctive. I mean, it's it's part of what makes the show.
03:40:08 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[03:40:08] S1: And so distinctive. I mean, it's it's part of what makes the show. [03:40:13] S0: Yes. It's so different at the time too. Of course, like everything else, the network execs hated it because it wasn't like anything else in the market. [03:40:19] S1: Of course. That's a signal of quality when the network executives hate it. Alright. That's number one. Number two, this has come up on Acquired before. Julia Louis Dreyfus is, yes, from that Louis Dreyfus family, the, very large French, commodities trading family. [03:40:42] S0: Yeah. Big multigenerational business.
03:40:44 · David Rosenthal
[03:40:44] S1: Has made an appearance before on acquired in the Ferrari episode because Giulia's grandfather was one of Enzo Ferrari's first clients and raced his privately owned Ferrari one sixty six, like the, you know, the first cars that Enzo made in Le Mans at the, you know, beginning of Ferrari. Amazing. Alright. That's number two. Number three, NBC had a corporate relationship with Nike. And so any of the stars of any NBC sitcoms could just go to the Nike warehouse in LA and get all the swag they wanted. So how do you think Jerry Seinfeld started wearing Nikes Oh. On Seinfeld episodes. Freebies. But, yeah, we talked about this on the Nike episode that, like, you know, they had their athlete strategy, and then they got into entertainment. And this was part of it. Jerry Seinfeld was one of the first, you know, the... Or big parts of Nike's, get into entertainment strategy. Alright. Alright. That's what I got for trivia. Carve outs? Carve outs. So I decided for this one appropriately enough, I gotta just do Seidfeld episode recommendations. Perfect. So the marine biologist, number one, by far, it's it's just the most, like, masterful piece of twenty two minute episode crafting I've ever seen. It's great. Couple deep cuts that I'm partial to. One, the jacket, which I already mentioned. And two, the first Seinfeld episode I ever watched, I vividly remember this like it was yesterday. I was nine years old when this episode came out. I saw it air live on TV. I had a babysitter for the night. My parents were out. I got to stay up late, and I had the TV on. It was the dinner party airing live, which is the episode with the black and white cookie. I will always, always remember Jerry eats a black and white cookie. He's talking to Elaine, he's like, Elaine, the world needs to look to the cookie. Racial harmony here in the cookie. We... What we can learn from the black and white cookie. And then in the end of the episode, he throws up due to food poisoning from the cookie.
03:42:56 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[03:42:56] S0: Oh, Jerry. [03:42:57] S1: Oh, Jerry. Alright. What you got? For me, [03:43:00] S0: I have, another Seinfeld related one. Everyone, if you have a browser open right now, go to seinfeld.visualizingdata.com. There is the most insane web project I've ever seen called The An Unnecessary Data Exploration by Andy Kirk. This is a book that... It's a coffee table book that the author then put online that is a full data visualization of a zillion different ways you could slice and dice Seinfeld. What laughs happen when in each episode? What do the patterns look like? How do they accrue to each character? It goes episode by episode. The thing's a 121 pages showing when various characters got screen time. It walks through why he thinks the show worked, what makes it unique. But the the most wild thing to notice, it's all hand labeled. So it was him watching episodes on his couch with a spreadsheet open, granularly every five seconds, pausing and labeling who's on screen, who's getting laughs. I mean, the whole thing is is astonishing that a human did this manually before AI. [03:44:20] S1: Wow. So I have the marine biologist up right now. There are 23 scenes in the marine biologist. [03:44:26] S0: Yeah. It's crazy. [03:44:26] S1: There you go. Seinfeld and the Internet made for each other. [03:44:31] S0: My second carve out is Buck's in Woodside. [03:44:34] S1: Oh, yeah.
03:44:34 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[03:44:34] S1: Oh, yeah. [03:44:35] S0: Incredible restaurant. David and I just went there for a meeting this week, and, I was reminded of just how special that place is, especially if you like Silicon Valley lore and ephemera. And, I mean, they've got an Apple one up on the wall. They've got a signed Jensen jacket, the first one he ever wore on stage. It's like you just tour around the place and get a history of, of the tech industry, which is very fun. [03:44:57] S1: It's like a, Silicon Valley version of Monks Cafe, you might say. [03:45:01] S0: Yes. And my last carve out is a company called Tin Can. My son is obsessed with it. He's three, but it's more for, like, five to 12 year olds. It is a phone. It's a landline with no screen that uses Wi Fi that is built for kids. So they can call preprogrammed numbers, and if they need to call 911 or an emergency contact or something, it stays, you know, plugged in in your house. It's like exactly the type of phones that we had when we were kids and just got to call other kids without all the smartphone stuff. The weird coda to this one is somehow I ended up being the first investor in this company because it was a completely different company first. It's like my last check when I was a professional [03:45:49] S1: You're like the NBC network executive. [03:45:52] S0: Like, it accidentally pivoted, turned into this company [03:45:54] S1: Yeah.
03:45:54 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[03:45:54] S1: Yeah. [03:45:55] S0: Became this, like, massive viral hit. They're on Good Morning America. It's the face of this movement around great ways for kids to communicate without screens, and my son is loving it. So forever, I was just sort of sitting on, like, at some point, I should carve out tin can, but I don't wanna be, like, too self promotional and promote a company I invested in. But this thing is just really fun watching all these kids use it. [03:46:17] S1: So good. [03:46:19] S0: Alright. Well, listeners, if you wanna listen to any other acquired episodes, you can do so on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. And we've got some thank yous. [03:46:28] S1: Yes. We do. Thank you [03:46:30] S0: so much to our partners this season, Sierra. Sierra helps the great companies of the world build better, more human customer experiences. Sierra.ai/ acquired. WorkOS, start selling to enterprise customers with just a few lines of code and build authentication in minutes instead of months, workos.com, to Anthropic. Claude thought with me a lot while I was researching this episode, and it can think a lot with you too. Claude.ai/ acquired to Sentry, application monitoring software considered not bad by millions of developers. Sentry.io/acquired. You can click the link in the show notes to learn more about any of the sources, the several dozen that David and I have between us, the books that we read, especially Seinfeldia by Jennifer Keesian. [03:47:16] S1: Yep. [03:47:16] S0: Great, great book. All of that is linked in the show notes. And a few people to thank in particular.