Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David shared their favorite Seinfeld The episodes and backstories behind some of the show’s most iconic moments during a live taping by Ari Emanuel and Ben Persky Rushmore podcast Monday night.
The event, which was part of the Netflix Is a Joke Festival, was held in front of a capacity audience at the Saban Theater in Beverly Hills, which included Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, as well as Alan Horn, the former president of Netflix. Seinfeld producer Castle Rock Entertainment, and Warren Littlefield, former president of entertainment at NBC.
The evening began with Emmanuel giving a brief history of the show, which was known for its difficulties in its infancy. The idea for the series came after David and Seinfeld met as stand-up comedians. They had conversations and started thinking, “If we put this in a show, it would be funny,” Seinfeld said.
David shared that the show’s first episode order after the pilot — a meager four episodes — was “the smallest order in the history of television.” Money for the series came from the same budget that NBC used for the various specials. when Seinfeld Seinfeld shared that he received a four-episode order, and it became someone’s responsibility to tell Bob Hope that he wouldn’t be able to do the Christmas special that year.
The playbill for the event contained a “research report” detailing audience reaction to the pilot. Persky read aloud some notes from the memo, which noted that “no part of the audience was excited to see the show again,” while viewers called Jerry’s life “boring,” called George a “loser” and said Jerry “needed a better backup group.”
Early on, David and Seinfeld were told that the series would not be continued — “and I was thrilled,” David said, noting that he felt like he “didn’t have any more stories to tell,” a feeling he also felt “after every season of the series.” Seinfeld And every season Curb your enthusiasm“.
Emanuel also reminded the audience that the show kept changing time slots before finally landing at 9pm on Thursday. “Can we just say we had a rough start and move on?” Seinfeld quipped as Emanuel continued to face the show’s early challenges.
The duo also talked about the backstory of the character Elaine, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Elaine was not in the pilot, which featured a waitress at a restaurant the characters frequent. However, it was decided that they needed a different female character. “We were single men,” Seinfeld said. “We couldn’t write the relationships down. We didn’t know anything about them.” David said he dated Monica Yates, the daughter of author Richard Yates, and they remained friends. So they based the character on it. “If it’s former, it is [eliminated the element of] “Are they going to do it or not?” Seinfeld noted.
Emanuel and Persky also asked about the origins of some of the show’s most important moments and iconic songs that have become part of the popular culture lexicon, including:
- Near speaker: “There are thousands of them, and there are 200 people in this audience now,” David joked.
- Double dip: “You dip it once and you eat it,” David deadpanned.
- Nazi soup: The idea came from writer Spike Firestein, who shared a story about a “hostile” man selling soup in New York, and that became the basis for one of the series’ most beloved episodes. “the people [around us] They will just talk and not realize that they have it [storyline] “For show,” David said.
- In the basement: Seinfeld said his biggest regret was that David wouldn’t let him say the phrase, “Oh, the basement!” (A play on “Oy, Gevalt!”) in a loop.
Meanwhile, every episode of Rushmore podcast It sees Emanuel and Persky host several guests from the worlds of sports, entertainment and culture to discuss the “Mount Rushmore” (top four) of those categories. To this end, the quartet shared their choices for the first four episodes of the series Seinfeldselected from a total of 180 episodes across nine seasons. Their choices, in no particular order:
- Seinfeld: “The Contest”, “Soup Nazi”, “The Merv Griffin Show”, “Marine Biologist”
- David: “Contest”, “Converse”, “Puffy Shirt”, “Pen”.
- Emmanuel: “Puffy shirt”, “friend”, “contest”, “memo”
- Persky: “Contest”, “Versa”, “Friend” and “Stadium”/”Ticket”
David and Seinfeld shared some behind-the-scenes stories from some of those episodes.
- “Contest”: David carried this idea in a notebook for two years before pitching it, convinced that no one would want to touch the story. He was “shocked” when Seinfeld told him he liked the idea. Later, David was so convinced that NBC wouldn’t let them film this scenario that he was willing to walk away immediately once he got the word. But that directive never came. However, “after reading the table, ad sales [team] “I’m going crazy,” Littlefield shared from the audience. However, the episode was filmed and broadcast and is widely considered one of the best episodes of the entire series.
- “The opposite”: Seinfeld said this showcases one of his favorite lines from the show, when Jerry says to George (Jason Alexander): “If every instinct you have is wrong, the opposite must be true.” “It’s just ridiculous, and George was stupid enough to believe it,” Seinfeld quipped from the stage.
- “puffy shirt”: David said he went out to dinner with a woman who he couldn’t hear well. Later, he started thinking: “What if I agreed to do something crazy?” The shirt itself was inspired by a “white puffy shirt” that David already owned – and “loved” – at the time.
- “Friend”: Jerry’s dialogue about the spit that MLB star Keith Hernandez (playing himself) may have thrown at Kramer (Michael Richards) — which includes a spoof of the Zapruder film and the conspiracy theory that there was a second shooter in the John F. Kennedy assassination — was “one of the biggest thrills of the series,” as Seinfeld said. “It was a long speech, and I knew it would get a lot of laughs if I got it right.”
In the end, the foursome decided that the four best episodes were “The Contest,” “The Opposite,” “The Puffy Shirt,” and “Marine Biologist.”
The night concluded with appearances by some superfans who won a trivia contest and were able to ask David and Seinfeld their own questions. When a fan got comfortable on the microphone and tried to make a joke, David admonished him with his trademark charming candor: “You’re letting this get to your head a little bit.”
