Acquired
00:05:51 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[00:05:51] S0: Yep. Obviously, you can work really hard and hone it and develop more material, but the, like, instinct is actually genetic. [00:05:57] S1: Yep. Yep. He's always making his friends and family laugh. And right around the same time when he's about 12 years old, he falls in love with an album, with a record. Not a music album, not one of the, you know, great bands there at the time, the sixties, seventies. But with Bill Cosby's stand up comedy album, why is there air? [00:06:23] S0: This is to be a big thing. These comedy breaks. A big [00:06:26] S1: thing, stand up albums on vinyl. [00:06:29] S0: It's funny. Today, we all tune in to Netflix to watch the big stand up special that just dropped. Albums were doing that same thing 50 ago. [00:06:38] S1: Yep. Totally. So after high school, Jerry goes to Queens College in New York, actual New York City, where he majors in communications and theater, and he sets up for himself. He's really into comedy. He sets up an independent study where he studies stand up comedy like his heroes. So he goes out to the comedy clubs in New York. He writes papers for college, analyzing various comedians' sets, and then ultimately, he himself goes on stage as part of his college studies to get experience, try out being a stand up comic. And it's just like what he's born to do. [00:07:14] S0: And it seems like from every interview he's given... And Jerry has given a lot of interviews. [00:07:19] S1: We'll get into why Jerry has given a lot of interviews later in the episode.
00:07:19 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[00:07:19] S1: We'll get into why Jerry has given a lot of interviews later in the episode. [00:07:23] S0: Yes. He basically said I had one goal. I mean, since middle school, high school, become a successful stand up comedian. That's it. I didn't have, like, specific goals around other things I wanted to do, some sort of, like, career progression, something I wanted to rise toward, family, hobbies. Like, I had no goals around anything other than become a successful stand up comedian. [00:07:46] S1: Yep. So at age 22, after Jerry graduates from Queens College, he goes into his career. He makes his stand up comedy debut at the famous Catch a Rising Star Comedy Club on the Upper East Side in Manhattan in 1976. And just like he did in college in his independent study, he, like, does the same thing. He tapes himself. He analyzes his own performances. He's performing night after night after night. I mean, this is a level of obsession that is necessary for Jerry to become who he is, but it's also not that uncommon in the stand up industry. Like, this is what you do. If you were gonna dedicate yourself to the craft, you are every night performing, analyzing, just meticulously refining every word, every syllable, every movement that comes out of your mouth and your body.
00:07:46 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[00:07:46] S1: Yep. So at age 22, after Jerry graduates from Queens College, he goes into his career. He makes his stand up comedy debut at the famous Catch a Rising Star Comedy Club on the Upper East Side in Manhattan in 1976. And just like he did in college in his independent study, he, like, does the same thing. He tapes himself. He analyzes his own performances. He's performing night after night after night. I mean, this is a level of obsession that is necessary for Jerry to become who he is, but it's also not that uncommon in the stand up industry. Like, this is what you do. If you were gonna dedicate yourself to the craft, you are every night performing, analyzing, just meticulously refining every word, every syllable, every movement that comes out of your mouth and your body. [00:08:40] S0: And stand up is this thing that is unique among any sort of performance, be it entertainment, music, sports, where you get a real time scorecard from the audience on something that is entirely within your control. And you might have just come up with it that morning. Let's say you're singing and you manage to write a song and perform it. This is sort of a long process. Usually, it involves other people arranging the music or other musicians playing with you. In stand up, it's you and your material delivered through your instrument with a real time brutally honest feedback from the audience whether they're laughing or not. It is as raw as it comes.
00:08:40 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[00:08:40] S0: And stand up is this thing that is unique among any sort of performance, be it entertainment, music, sports, where you get a real time scorecard from the audience on something that is entirely within your control. And you might have just come up with it that morning. Let's say you're singing and you manage to write a song and perform it. This is sort of a long process. Usually, it involves other people arranging the music or other musicians playing with you. In stand up, it's you and your material delivered through your instrument with a real time brutally honest feedback from the audience whether they're laughing or not. It is as raw as it comes. [00:09:23] S1: Yeah. It is a solo act. You know, he compares it to being a solo athlete, but it's like the most extreme feedback and spotlight version of an athletic performance. Yep. So this is what Jerry does night after night after night. Pretty quickly, Jerry becomes a success as a stand up, and that leads him to other opportunities in comedy and specifically in television. So in 1979, three years after he begins his comedic career, he gets a call from Hollywood. They want him to come out to LA and join a sitcom show named Benson, which I'm sure none of you listening remember. So he's gonna get this recurring role on this sitcom. You Grady's gonna make a lot more money than just playing in the clubs. It's gonna be steady work, etcetera, etcetera. Well, he's in three episodes, and then his character gets dropped from the show. Doesn't, doesn't work out exactly as he planned.
00:09:23 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[00:09:23] S1: Yeah. It is a solo act. You know, he compares it to being a solo athlete, but it's like the most extreme feedback and spotlight version of an athletic performance. Yep. So this is what Jerry does night after night after night. Pretty quickly, Jerry becomes a success as a stand up, and that leads him to other opportunities in comedy and specifically in television. So in 1979, three years after he begins his comedic career, he gets a call from Hollywood. They want him to come out to LA and join a sitcom show named Benson, which I'm sure none of you listening remember. So he's gonna get this recurring role on this sitcom. You Grady's gonna make a lot more money than just playing in the clubs. It's gonna be steady work, etcetera, etcetera. Well, he's in three episodes, and then his character gets dropped from the show. Doesn't, doesn't work out exactly as he planned. [00:10:17] S0: Which is the common experience in television.
00:10:17 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[00:10:17] S0: Which is the common experience in television. [00:10:20] S1: Yep. But this becomes very, very important to Jerry and to the eventual show, Seinfeld, because despite this disappointment with Benson, during that first brief stint that Jerry has in LA, he performs in local comedy clubs, perform stand up on the nights and weekends around LA, where one night, he gets spotted by the legendary talent manager George Shapiro, who, along with Shapiro's partner, Howard West, were, like, the most legendary comedian talent managers slash agents in the business. They had gotten Andy Kaufman, the recurring role on Taxi, that sitcom that was a huge hit. They were placing their comics on The Tonight Show, which was filming out there in LA at the time with Johnny Carson, getting them exposure nationally. It was all this flywheel between stand up and TV that was happening. [00:11:16] S0: And what Jerry is watching here is, oh, that's how you become successful as a comic to make money. And it's kinda like the next rung in the ladder. But it's not like what he wants is to be in sitcoms. His calling is stand up, and sitcoms are the thing that the industry sort of has for you.