Acquired
00:56:05 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[00:56:05] S1: In a wholly unprecedented move, the net of this is that NBC's late night and specials department ok's a sitcom pilot. This has never happened before. The show just stays in in in late night. [00:56:21] S0: And just so listeners understand what we're talking about, the comedy department that has, at this point, what, The Cosby Show, it has Cheers. Yep. It has, like, a bunch of hits. They've got a whole process for reviewing scripts and giving notes and working with the creators. And the late night department's just like, it's really easy to say yes because it's even easier yes than the thing we already said yes to. And they just get to skip all the comedy department checklists and committees. [00:56:51] S1: So NBC says okay, and Castle Rock, now the production company, and Jerry and Larry are like, well, alright. Let's, let's cast this thing. Let's go make a pilot. So Rob Reiner at Castle Rock suggests that they should look at a mostly Broadway actor at the time named Jason Alexander for the part of George. He felt... And and Jerry and Larry certainly agreed that they needed a really polished, like like, really... I mean, Jason Alexander is an an incredible actor. They needed a really, really great actor to play opposite Jerry because Jerry is not a
00:56:51 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[00:56:51] S1: So NBC says okay, and Castle Rock, now the production company, and Jerry and Larry are like, well, alright. Let's, let's cast this thing. Let's go make a pilot. So Rob Reiner at Castle Rock suggests that they should look at a mostly Broadway actor at the time named Jason Alexander for the part of George. He felt... And and Jerry and Larry certainly agreed that they needed a really polished, like like, really... I mean, Jason Alexander is an an incredible actor. They needed a really, really great actor to play opposite Jerry because Jerry is not a [00:57:27] S0: great actor. He was about to win a Tony a month later. Yes. When Jason came in to read, they were like, this guy's unbelievable. He's perfect for it. Later on, Jason would sort of figure out, oh, this character is kind of Larry David. He's not exactly Larry David, but he's loosely based on him. He actually thought it was a Woody Allen character at first. Yes. So he came in and sort of did a Woody Allen impression for George. [00:57:51] S1: Next, they need to cast Kramer because Larry has decided to write his eccentric neighbor into the script here for the pilot, but he's not calling him Kramer just yet. [00:58:06] S0: Kessler? Is that right? [00:58:07] S1: Yes.
00:58:07 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[00:58:07] S1: Yes. [00:58:08] S0: Kessler. Don't wanna make it too on the nose. And also, if we call him Kramer, then, like, we're gonna have to pay this guy or do some kind of rights situation. So they they call him Kessler. The funny thing is, eventually, they realize... And this is so Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld. They are looking at the page. They're saying the name out loud, and they just realize, no. Of all the names we can think of, Kramer is actually the funniest name. [00:58:34] S1: It just sounds funny. [00:58:35] S0: Yes. Something about it that sounds funny. And funny is the most important thing. Everything else is secondary to that. We have to go with funny. And so they name him Kramer. [00:58:47] S1: And then, of course, it's the best thing that ever happens to the actual Kramer because he sets up Kramer's New York tours in New York City. Right. So they need to cast the character, and Larry says, I know the perfect guy from my days back at Fridays, Michael Richards. And that's how Michael Richards joins the show. [00:59:04] S0: George Shapiro has this great quote. Michael Richards was standing on his head while he was doing his lines, a yoga pose. And Brandon Tartakoff goes, well, if you want funny, this is at the audition. This is how he's preparing to go in and audition for this role.
00:59:04 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[00:59:04] S0: George Shapiro has this great quote. Michael Richards was standing on his head while he was doing his lines, a yoga pose. And Brandon Tartakoff goes, well, if you want funny, this is at the audition. This is how he's preparing to go in and audition for this role. [00:59:20] S1: Yeah. I mean, again, this is so off the wall compared to anything that would go through the normal process at NBC. So then they need to cast the fourth character, a woman, the character of Claire, the guy's regular waitress at the diner played by Lee Garlington. There's no Elaine in the pilot. So cast Claire, they shoot the pilot, and then they bring the NBC executives in to screen it. And they're not sure. [00:59:53] S0: Interestingly, the comment that really sticks out from this session is that some of the executives thought it was too New York and too Jewish. [01:00:02] S1: Yeah. Which is quite ironic because, basically, the entire origins of American comedy are New York and Jewish. [01:00:12] S0: But they didn't wear it quite on their sleeve the way that Jerry did. I mean, this is... They named the show Seinfeld, and it has this, like... I don't know how to put it other than this very Jewish type of humor, the the sensibility, the timing, the observational humor, the persnicketiness, the crankiness, the, like, the detail oriented, the obsession.
01:00:12 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[01:00:12] S0: But they didn't wear it quite on their sleeve the way that Jerry did. I mean, this is... They named the show Seinfeld, and it has this, like... I don't know how to put it other than this very Jewish type of humor, the the sensibility, the timing, the observational humor, the persnicketiness, the crankiness, the, like, the detail oriented, the obsession. [01:00:33] S1: It's a really good point. The Jewish tradition of comedy really was the main lineage of comedy in America. I mean, the Marx brothers, George Burns, like, but basically everybody that came out of Auldville was was Jewish. But they changed their names. They didn't wear it on their sleeves. It wasn't as obvious. I think the thing the NBC executives didn't realize is that here by the late eighties, it kinda didn't matter anymore. Everybody knew Woody Allen was Jewish. He was the biggest name in comedy. [01:00:57] S0: The other point in this is nobody knows anything. [01:01:00] S1: Yeah. [01:01:00] S0: It's Seinfeld. Right? It would go on to become Seinfeld, and they're like, I don't know. [01:01:06] S1: Yep. [01:01:07] S0: So they test it. They're like, we should proceed with our standard testing and feedback. [01:01:11] S1: We'll recruit a test audience to watch this thing.
01:01:11 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[01:01:11] S1: We'll recruit a test audience to watch this thing. [01:01:13] S0: Right. The practice at the time... And I know this is super interesting. They would cold call. They did... A research department would cold call a bunch of houses to recruit 400 households to watch a unused channel on their cable system at a certain time. And if you knew to tune in and you had the right hardware, you would tune in, and then you would see the pilot pop on. And then I think there's, like, nothing else afterwards. You're, like, just watching this one channel at this one time. The researchers then convene these people or call them and ask them a standard set of questions. It tested horribly. Horribly. Like Yes. The network executives were just a foreshadow of how people in the world saw it. Some of the most infamous comments that came out of this is, one, you can't get too excited about going to the laundromat. [01:02:04] S1: Which is where most of the pilot takes place with Jerry and George at the laundromat.