"Nuggets Of Jerry"

I didn’t look hard – because I have still got bronchitis, and I’m lazy – but it does not appear that anyone has written a full-length biography of Jerry Seinfeld.  (If I am wrong… come on, I’ve got clogged bronchioles.)

It is therefore a source of deep personal pleasure, mining nuggets of insight into the man by watching of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.

Remember that drinking game on the old Bob Newhart Show where every time next-door neighbor Howard Borden pops in and says, “Hi, Bob.  Hi, Emily.” everyone downs a shot, or whatever?

Same thing when I glean and unknown fact about Jerry Seinfeld, except that with Howard Borden it happened continually and with Jerry it rarely happens at all, and rather than downing a shot, I instead just go “Ah.”  (So it’s not really the same thing.)

I recall the first “Ah” I received, watching Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.

Somebody – did I say I recalled everything? – I think it was Eddie Murphy – was discussing the virulent culture of drugs in the 80’s “Comedy Scene”, and Jerry Seinfeld casually let out, “I don’t know anything about drugs”, and then, I believe, made a “Left.”

Did you know that?  I mean, looking at him, sure.  But has he ever before mentioned drugs?  And knowing nothing about them, how exactly is that possible?  That’s a coal miner saying, “I don’t know anything about dust.” 

And you know what else?  He meditates.  Yeah, Team!

The most easily discernible “Ahs” on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee involve what a great “audience” Jerry is for all of his guests, and his bonding identification with stand-up comedians, relishing that indelible connection, experienced exclusively by stand-up comedians, boxers and gunslingers. 

Nobody knows what it’s like being “up there” but them.

There are glimpses of “No-Nonsense” Seinfeld, listening to a successful comedian explain, “I was lucky”, and then forcing him to concede he had talent, worked incredibly hard, and had steadfastly refused to give up.  (Just like Jerry.  “We don’t need no stinkin’ luck!”)

Then there is the delicate issue of money.

When another wealthy comedian explained, “I don’t like anything expensive”, Jerry immediately replied, “I do.”

‘Nuff said.  The man’s rich, and not guilty.

Finally, there are surprising glimpses of tenderness, topmost being a described visit to a terminally ill friend in the hospital.   (See:  Yesterday’s “hummus” anecdote.)

In a smaller though no less sensitive context is Jerry’s genuine concern that comedian Jay Mohr would feel hurt because (guest) Michael Richards took him to Mohr’s house, (seemingly) believing that it was “Sugar Ray” Leonard’s house, and when they found out it wasn’t, they just left.

“Shouldn’t we stay and say hello?”

“Jerry, he is probably napping.”

There are a lot of reasons to watch Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.  (One joy is watching the late Don Rickles throw out lines like, “My wife keeps moving my pills.  It’s like a ‘Scavenger Hunt’ for my life.”)  But for me, the richest pleasure is finding delicious “fragments of Jerry”, who seems cold and aloof, but when he blinkingly lets down his guard…

isn’t.

"What Is Comedy For?

A small personal anecdote before rolling along….

I am performing in “UC Follies”, our annual college “Review” (written and directed that year by Lorne Michaels, which got my career started, an overshadowing story, so I am putting it in brackets.)

We are deeply mired in the “Technical Rehearsal” prior to the “Opening”, a notoriously grueling affair, trudging long through the night, and into the following A.M. 

Our progress is tortoise-ial.  (I heard one turtle telling his buddy, “Let’s go.”)  There is one “professional” involved in this torture, the… – I don’t know what he was but he worked directly for the theater.  The man is cruelly apoplectic at our glacial “progress”, every delay evoking a stream of invective, cursing and personal diminishment.

Finally, it is well past midnight.  Everybody’s exhausted.  And there is a work-halting mess-up with the equipment. 

The “professional” immediately blows his top.  “Amateurs!’’  “Idiots!”  “Doesn’t anyone here know what they’re doing!?!?!

A stunned and humiliated silence paralyzes the venue.

Suddenly, a “calming” responder steps into the void.  In a tone of Oliver Hardy-like forbearance, I reply, with accompanying hand gestures,

“We are doing… the best… we can.”

The entire theater goes wild.  (And the guy never bothered us again.)

Without thinking or planning, I had defused the tension, saving the day for my downtrodden people.

That is one thing comedy is for.

“The Rescue.”

The idea for “What Comedy Is For?” came to me after extensive stewing over comedian Dave Chappelle’s putting his massive talent behind decimating “Political Correctness” for an entire Netflix-produced concert.

To me, that was hunting mice with a machine gun.  As in,

“Big ‘Fire Power’ – small prey.”

I then imagined Dave’s reaction to my well-meaning “You can do better with your wonderful gift” observation.  You know how great it feels, having a terrible nightmare, and then waking up, happy you are protectively okay? 

Boy, was Dave mad in that dream!

And you know what? – he was right to be mad.  And I’m not just saying that to soothe a situation that never actually took place.

It’s Chappelle’s “comedy gift.” He can use it however he wants.

As can we all.  (Including the “unfunny.”  That’s how wide-open this is.)

As a tool, comedy itself serves numerous purposes.  You can use comedy to attack.  You can use comedy to deflect.  You can use comedy to inform.  You can use comedy to delight.  You can use comedy to survive.  (SEE:  “Jewish History.”  Any period you’d like.)

Nobody owns comedy, so there aren’t any rules.  You just “go for it”, consequences be damned.  (Including the consequence of saying the wrong thing and ending your career, so okay, Dave, I do get what you’re driving at.)

Symptomatically, perceived comedy behaviors are not equally healthy.  In Nancy McWilliams’s Psychoanalytic Diagnosis (brought to me attention by another person in the house), the “Spectrum of Comedy” runs from a person who can’t stop making jokes (“… a feature of hypomanic personality… found at the borderline level of severity…”) to laughing at your own foibles and idiosyncrasies, which “… has been considered a core element of mental health.”  Exemplified by someone who admits being unable to spell “ideosyncracies” without assistance.  Wow!  I just blew it again!” 

Hey, how mentally “healthy” am I?

The issue of “What Is Comedy For?” remained percolating my mind as I watched Jerry Seinfeld “chauffeur” comic-buddy Steve Harvey in Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.  (I know, “percolating.”  It was an accident.)

In the context of remembering a comedy club they had both worked in called The Cellar – whose “signature kindness” was offering free hummus to the performers after finishing their “sets” – Jerry’s mind fluidly jumped to visiting a dying comedian friend in the hospital, before a scheduled “gig” at The Cellar. 

During the visit, the sick person coughed up something hideous, and embarrassing, because there was “company.”  Responding to the patient’s apologies for the unfortunate incident, Jerry casually replied.

“That’s okay.  It put me in the mood for the hummus.”

For that glimmering “recess”, the convulsed patient forgot he was dying.

Conclusion:  Comedy is for whatever you want it to be.

But most importantly,

It’s for that.

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It's somebody's birthday today, but I can't say who it is, which probably tells you who it is.

Happy Birthday, is all I can say.

Plus, how lucky am I.

"The 'Bit' I Did, And The One I Forgot To"

Best of the West was my tribute to the thousands of western movies and TV shows I enjoyed growing up.  It was not silly; it was fun.  The difference?  “Silly” is exaggerated ridiculousness.  “Fun” is “playful remembering.”  Others may not make that distinction.  But that’s just being silly.

Want an example of what I’m talking about?  I happen to have one right here.

In one episode of Best of the West, I depicted a “perilous situation” in which the Bad Guy is about to “do away” with the Good Guy.

Suddenly, the Good Guy’s compadre comes up from behind, gets “the drop” on the Bad Guy, and – “Blow the trumpets!” – the Good Guy is saved.

So far, so typical.  Here’s where the “playful remembering” kicks in.

Just when things feel appropriately settled, the Bad Guy’s compadre comes up from behind, and gets “the drop” on the Good Guys.  Things are beginning to look grim.  Until…

Suddenly another Good Guy’s compadre comes up from behind, gets “the drop” on the Bad Guys, and it looks like order has finally been restored.  Until…

Suddenly the Bad Guy’s other compadre comes up from behind, and gets “the drop” on the Good Guys.  The Bad Guy slavering gloats, “So you thought you had me, huh?
Until…

Suddenly the Good Guy’s wife Elvira comes up from behind, gets “the drop” on all of the Bad Guys and justice finally prevails!

We did five successive “get the drops ons” in one sequence.  And with each startling “reversal”, the audience reaction grew stronger.  By the time Elvira arrived, ultimately “saving the day”, the studio audience was bouncing!

It feels good when an imagined comedy “bit” achieves blockbuster reception.  It was only an idea.  (Which – credit the director – was impeccably executed.)  The audience reaction showed the objecting “naysayers” it worked.  And, by implication, that the series from which it conceptually derived worked successfully as well.

I did that gratifying “bit.”

But I forgot to do this one.

Why?  I don’t know – it was one of my earliest notions.  Busy and stressed, I just forgot it was there.

“Playfully remembering” another standard cliché, this one maybe “cliché-ier” than the first one…

Setting the Scene:  Two cowboys, brawlin’ in a saloon.  One guy knocks the other guy down.  Smelling “blood in the water”, the standing combatant moves in for the kill. 

But his opponent is ready for him.

Lying on his back, his knees-bent legs dangling in the air, when his standing opponent arrives, he pushes him away violently with his feet.

Everyone knows that “move.” 

I figure, since everyone knows that “move”, the approaching combatant also knows that “move.”  To me, it’s like, “Why walk into an ambush?”

Rather than barging in and getting pushed away violently by the other guy’s feet, why not instead move back a ways, lie down on his back, his knees-bent legs dangling in the air, and wait for the other guy to attack him?

That makes more sense than bumbling into the patented “Leg Push”, doesn’t it?   Of course, it does.

Following this sensible approach, the scene finishes us with two guys, lying a few feet apart on the saloon floor, their knees-bent legs dangling in the air, each of them waiting for the other guy to attack.  After a confused moment, it’s like,

“What are you doin’!”

“I’m doin’ what you’re doin’.”

“You can’t do that!”

“Why not? ‘I come to you – you’ll just push me away with your feet.”

 “I come to you – you’ll just push me away with your feet.”

“Well then I guess it’s a stand-off.”

We exit the scene, two rasslin’ combatants, lying on their backs with their legs in the air, each awaiting their stubborn opponent to give in.  And whenever we return to the saloon,

They are still lying there.

All day!

Bartenders carefully step over them, delivering their drinks.  Floozies traipse around them, dancing with customers.  There is, maybe, a shootout.

Nothing.

They just keep lying there.

Last line of the show, the camera cuts to the exterior of the saloon, and we hear off-screen voices:

“Ready to ‘give’?”

“Not hardly.”

We return from commercial for the show-closing “Tag.”

EXTERIOR SALOON:  NIGHT

And there’s snoring.

I regret forgetting that moment.  And I’ll tell you something.

I do that series again?

I am definitely putting it in.

"Biopic Reflux"

Preamble:  We have a very expensive remote in our bedroom that has developed – or always had but nobody told us – a willful mind of its own. Either that, or it is secretly in the pay of a major streaming service, shuttling unwitting viewers in its exclusive direction.  

Here’s what happens. Or at least has begun happening recently, indicating a remote with “clean hands” that has subsequently “gone bad.”

For our convenience, the window on our very expensive remote provides icons we can click on to carry us alternately to cable TV, DVD playing, or to the two streaming services we subscribe to:  Netflixand Amazon Prime.

Sounds simple, no? You “click” and you go.

Except, recently…

When we click on the icon for Netflix, our remote ignores Netflix, and takes us directly to Amazon Prime.

A technological “glitch”?  Perhaps.  But maybe, just maybe, we are in the hands of the same cyber-“Smarties” who drowned me in unsolicited Altoids andKind Bars. (But not Smarties, the Canadian M & M’s.)

Anyway, whatever it is,

Last night, headed for Netflix, we found ourselves “Shanghaied” helplessly to Amazon Prime.

What could we do?

We watched something on Amazon Prime.

(“We got‘em!”)

We selected a film from the hardly exclusive categoryof film, “We thought of seeing it in the theater but we didn’t.”  Worth a look… if you don’t have to go out.

What we watched was Rocketman(1919), the biopic musical of Elton John. (Elton’s John’s actual involvement, restricted to “still” pictures at the end of the movie.)

Playing the celebrated Sir Elton is actor Taron Egerton.

My – I don’t know, this is snarky – but my strongest reaction to Rocketmanwas that I reallywanted to watch Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.  (On Netflix.)

Here’s the problem.

To me, all musical “biopics” are the same.

Writing them’s like “Paint By Numbers”

It’s the same movie.  

But about somebody else.

– Hank Williams.

– Ray Charles.

– Johnny Cash.

– Dewey Cox. (I believe he was fictional.  But parodies follow the same trajectory; otherwise, they’re not parodies.)

– A successful rock star whose name I don’t know played by last year’s Best Actor Oscarwinner whose name I don’t know in a mainstream movie whose name I also don’t know.

– And… wait for it, because it didn’t come out yet – 

Judy Garland.  (I wonder if she’llhave things easy.)

Different genres of music, but the same movie, with optional endings.  (Not really, because they actually happened.)

There is a desperate struggle to make it.  Then they make it.  There is a desperate strugglewith making it.  Then they, optionally, get through it – with the help of a good woman, the Lord or group therapy – or they die.

Compare that with (random example):

Young Man from Toronto – The Earl Pomerantz Story

Logline:  “Unknown Earl comes to Los Angeles, works consistently for thirty years rising successfully to the middle, marries a woman with a great daughter and fathers a wonderful daughter of his own, and he almost never drank or took drugs.”

Which, for obvious reasons, they neglected to make.  (They were unable to cast “me.”)

True, that would probably be boring.

But “the same story over again” isn’t?

(I do not dismiss the prominent “gay element” in Rocketman, which is clearly distinguishing.  To me, though, people are people, and struggle, however personally packaged – black, gay, woman, black and blind– is struggle.  Rocketmanis a standard story, told with same-sex accessories.)

There was only only one “biopic” I ever truly enjoyed.

The Jolson Story.  

That one was great.

Only partly because Al Jolson was Jewish.  (So his “crisis of the soul” was not drugs, but the more identifiable missing Kol Nidreservices on Yom Kippur.)

More importantly, Al Jolson himself sang on the soundtrack.

Jamie Foxx performed skillfully as Ray Charles.

But nobody belts out a tune like “Jolie.”

Giving Rocketman two problems – a shopworn scenario, with notthe real guy.

A star’s a star for a reason.

Their glittering absence reflects what that is.