‘The big things are dull’: how Jerry Seinfeld wrote the book on comedy
From his multi award-winning eponymous sitcom to sold-out stand-up tours and even a show about getting coffee with comedians, Jerry Seinfeld has done it all. The secret? It’s the little things that make the difference.
After I watched a few episodes of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, two things stood out about the show. The first was that it was a triumph of production. In each episode of the online series – which started on Crackle in 2012 and moved to Netflix in 2018 – Jerry Seinfeld begins by describing a classic car.
Then he gets in the car, drives to a comedian’s home, and takes the comedian for coffee as the two discuss comedy and other topics.
Anyone who’s conducted an interview knows it’s a challenge to keep the conversation flowing, let alone watchable and amusing while operating a large vehicle, handling gawkers and autograph seekers, and dealing with foodstuffs – not to mention keeping the cameras and microphones in their proper invisible places. The show pulls it all off: kudos to everyone involved.
The second standout is an image: Seinfeld rearing back, his mouth open so wide you can see his incisors and occasionally his uvula, laughing uproariously at something a guest said. On the cover of The Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee Book, and in many of its close-up photographs, Seinfeld is doing precisely that. Both the series and the book are, as he says, a “valentine” to comedy, especially stand-up. The through line is his appreciation-bordering-on-obsession with the form and the people who do it.
The fact that the series has been turned into a coffee-table book will immediately remind Seinfeld fans of Kramer’s own effort in the genre – a coffee-table book that could be used as a coffee table.
Along those lines, you might expect The Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee Book to feature perhaps a pop-up Porsche that delivers one-liners. But no joy. The book is standard issue, with lots of photos and greatest-hits excerpts from the show arranged by theme (Relationships, Getting Older, Sports, etc.).
Ten years later, we have produced 84 episodes and we’re on Netflix. It’s a crazy story, and this book seems like a good way to tell it, along with some of my favorite photos and dialogue. The Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee Book is out November 22. https://t.co/YvPCVSPiyXpic.twitter.com/ceKfAPfdWt
— Jerry Seinfeld (@JerrySeinfeld) November 2, 2022
Seinfeld writes that he conceived the show in part as “a way to bring the viewer along on a bit of comedy hang time”. That sort of bull-session back and forth, including a glimpse into the process of joke construction, is what a lot of the book’s best moments show us. For example, this “Yes-and” riff between Seinfeld and Brian Regan cracked me up:
Brian: When people tell you, “You might want to sit down for this.” Have you ever fainted? I’ve gotten all kinds of news and I’ve never actually thought, “God, I’m glad I was sitting.” Why do I need to be sitting?
Jerry: Are you sitting down? ’Cause people are keeling over at this one.
Brian: “I don’t know what you’re about to tell me, but I’ll bet you a thousand dollars I can handle it without collapsing.” What kind of news just drains all the blood from your head?
Jerry: People lose loved ones. Horrific medical conditions. Life is horrible, horrible things. We’ve all heard the worst things.
Brian: And I don’t think people are fainting all over the place. My manager will do that to me … and he’s on the phone. I’m not even there. Like, “Brian, are you sitting?”
Jerry: “I got you an extra five hundred dollars. Hello? Hello? Is there anyone there? Brian, are you there?”
Brian: “Thanks for the warning. Get the smelling salts.”
A web experiment that became a television show, and now it’s in print. The Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee Book is now available. https://t.co/YvPCVSxHanpic.twitter.com/wnD84Xg9i7
— Jerry Seinfeld (@JerrySeinfeld) November 22, 2022
In the course of its run, the series had more than 80 guests, most of them represented in the book. (While the show hasn’t officially concluded, its last season was in 2019 and Seinfeld has indicated that there won’t be any more.) It won’t be a surprise to learn that the comics skew old and old-school; some, like Don Rickles and Jerry Lewis, are no longer with us. Even given that the show aired in the 2010s, when many of today’s prominent stand-ups hadn’t yet started out, the hipper and more transgressive comics are in short supply. No Hannah Gadsby, no Hannibal Buress, no Jerrod Carmichael.
The lineups and conversations suggest some of the limitations of Seinfeld’s comedy. As he says: “The little things. That’s all I care about. I think the big things are dull.” When a big thing comes up, he doesn’t quite know how to handle it. Such as when Trevor Noah talks about being born and growing up biracial in South Africa:
Trevor: But the whole system was absurd. Apartheid was an absurd system that was perfected. It doesn’t make sense. Racism, all of these things, when you look at them they don’t make sense. You know, Hitler – it doesn’t make sense. When you look now, you go, “How did that craziness happen?” It doesn’t make sense.
Jerry: Right (laughs).
No, Jerry, it’s not a bit. Or not just a bit. It doesn’t come through in the book, but when I watched that moment on screen, I had a sense that Noah was indulging Seinfeld just a little; that, like some of the other younger guests, he had agreed to appear on the show as a career move. Reading between the lines, I sometimes sensed a bit of disdain for Seinfeld and what he represents.
But that’s a topic to be chewed over by comedians and comedy fans in future hang times. In the meantime, enjoy the gems in The Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee Book, including this perfect comeback during Seinfeld’s interview with a pretty fair stand-up practitioner:
Barack Obama: Are you still doing stand-up?
Jerry: Are you still making speeches?
The Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee Book, published by Simon and Schuster, hardcover from $59.99.