Acquired
00:22:26 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[00:22:26] S0: And they got to know each other well during this period where they're just both constantly going up, trying new material. You don't go on till nine, ten, 11PM, so you're, like, friends with the other comics just sitting in the bars chopping it up. [00:22:37] S1: As Jerry was coming up as a kid out of Queen's College, Larry David was one of the established comics that he looked up to. But their careers had gone in very different directions here by the end of the eighties. Who was Larry David here in November 1988? The answer is he is nobody. And he's not even, like, a promising young nobody who has potential and talent like Jerry. He's 41 years old. He's single. He's broke. He lives in subsidized artist housing. His stand up routine has, I think the term that people used to describe him at the time was he was a comics comic. Meaning that he was appreciated by other comics, but his, humor did not exactly land with audiences. [00:23:21] S0: And he had basically been chewed up and spat out of the industry. [00:23:24] S1: Jerry said, you know, they always just sort of had, like, a comedic resonance, the two of them, and had known each other for a long time. But Larry has had this, kinda like George Costanza, eclectic string of failures that lead to this moment. So the stories about Larry before Seinfeld, you probably already know them. You just know them as George Costanza stories. So Larry had actually moved to LA not for a sitcom, but because he got a job on a show called Fridays. [00:23:54] S0: That's right. It was an SNL knockoff.
00:23:54 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[00:23:54] S0: That's right. It was an SNL knockoff. [00:23:56] S1: Right? I didn't know anything about this. ABC, here in the late seventies, early eighties, was jealous of Saturday Night Live on NBC. So they decide that they're gonna just do a wholesale knockoff of Saturday Night Live, and the only two things they're gonna change is, one, they're gonna film in LA instead of New York. And two, they're gonna do it on Fridays instead of Saturday. So they call the show Fridays. [00:24:21] S0: And they're gonna fish in the exact same talent pool.
00:24:21 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[00:24:21] S0: And they're gonna fish in the exact same talent pool. [00:24:23] S1: Yep. Yep. They also can't get the best talent out of New York who's interested in this kind of stuff because they're going to SNL. So they get Larry David to come out for this. They get a eccentric young comic named Michael Richards. You might have heard of him. Fridays last, I think, three seasons and then gets canceled. But fortunately, SNL says, you know, we could use some extra writing talent around here. Everybody who is a writer on Fridays will offer you a one year trial. So Larry, he just needs a job. He needs a paycheck. He comes on for one season at SNL. The entire season, he gets only one skit that he writes included on the show. And famously, in Saturday Night Live history, one day, Larry is so frustrated that what he's writing is not getting on the show. He flies into a rage, yells at all the producers, and screams that he's quitting, and he walks out of the set. And then he's freaking out. He's like, oh, shoot. I don't have a job. I'm not gonna be able to pay my rent. What am I gonna do? He's, you know, so worried. So worried. He goes home. He explains the situation to his next door neighbor in his apartment, in part of subsidized housing there in New York, who is named Kenny Kramer. And Kramer, the real life Kramer, says, Larry, why don't you just go back in tomorrow and pretend like nothing happened? So Larry does.
00:25:51 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[00:25:51] S0: Which he does. And you might be thinking, I feel like I've heard this story before. George Costanza does this on a Seinfeld episode. This is the first of many, many, many examples where what you see in Seinfeld is just things that happened in Larry and Jerry's and eventually other writers' lives. But this is the early stew of what would become Seinfeld is mining their own lives for stories. [00:26:14] S1: Yes. And and most specifically, Larry's because Jerry's life is exciting. There's, you know, Hollywood and stuff. You know, the the funny stuff is happening to Larry. Yes. Also, this is gonna become so important once Jerry brings Larry into this project with NBC. Larry did this and things like this during the one year period where he was working at NBC. NBC hated this guy. To the extent he had any reputation, it was as a loser and somebody who, like, could not function in any sort of corporate environment, and NBC wanted nothing to deal with. [00:26:51] S0: And he turned out to be a genius. A genius. And one of the best comedians and writers that the world has ever seen. [00:26:58] S1: Yeah. Yeah. So during that ill fated year for Larry at SNL, he also intersects with a young woman on the cast named Julia Louis Dreyfus. [00:27:07] S0: Who also had a very short stint at SNL and kinda churned out of it.
00:27:11 · David Rosenthal
[00:27:11] S1: Yep. I think she lasted two or three years, but they bond over, you know, not getting any airtime or their material on the show. So back to this night here in early November nineteen eighty eight when Jerry goes looking for Larry at Catch a Rising Star, this is what's on his mind. Hey. My buddy Larry has experience writing this kind of stuff, Fridays, SNL. He's been on TV. He can help me flesh out what we can do with this opportunity. So he finds Larry. They go out for a walk together. Jerry explains to Larry what's going on, and they stop at a Korean deli there in the Upper East Side, Lee's Market, which is right near the comedy club. And when they're in the deli, they can't help themselves. These are two comics together. They start making jokes about all the products here on the shelves in this Korean deli. Larry makes a quip about Korean jellies, and Jerry looks at some fig bars and says, it looks like somebody made these in their basement. And the words come out of Jerry's mouth, and Larry turns and looks at him and says, this is it. This is what the show should be. This is the kind of dialogue that we should do on the show. You know, two guys just just talking like this. They're both excited, inspired by this. They said, okay. Okay. Great. Let... Let's meet up again tomorrow night after our sets. So the next night, they meet up again. They go to the Westway Diner on 9th Avenue. It's around midnight. And Jerry says to Larry, you know, I've been thinking about what we came up with last night. You know, the number one question I get asked, I'm sure you get asked too, you know, be in stand ups is, where do you get your material? And Larry says, bingo. That's how we set up the show so we can do that kind of dialogue on the show. The premise will be how do stand up comedians get their material? Jerry says, yes. Yes. Great. They... The the comedians, they get their material. They they do this. And he's just gesturing with his hands to themselves there at the table in the coffee shop, hanging out with his friends. And at that moment, Seinfeld is born.
00:29:13 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[00:29:13] S0: Which you'll notice nowhere in there did David say the words, a show about nothing. That has nothing to do with how the show Seinfeld is born. Later on in the show, this is... Seinfeld is so meta. Yes. They would do a season arc where Jerry and George are creating a show called Jerry and pitching NBC about the show. That is a show about nothing. And then, of course, that gets co opted to be like, oh, Seinfeld in real life is a show about nothing. But... [00:29:42] S1: No. No. No. The premise is the show is about how stand up comedians get their material. [00:29:46] S0: Yes. And so this leads Jerry to believe, k. Whatever format this takes, I'm playing myself. And I'm not just playing someone named Jerry. I'm playing someone with my sensibilities, with my observational humor about the world. I'm not gonna cast myself into a character that is super different. I don't wanna do that. I'm not acting. I'm... I mean, we all know Jerry can't act. So [00:30:10] S1: Yeah. Roseanne Barr, the comic who did Roseanne. Like, she's not playing Roseanne Barr on Roseanne. She's playing a sitcom character. [00:30:16] S0: It's a slightly different Jerry Seinfeld. I mean, the version on the show is in a little shoebox apartment, and this guy was making a million dollars a year flying around. So there there are differences, but still, it's it's pretty true to personality. And, again, you can see how this all takes shape because nobody's thinking about a sitcom here.