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Listener supported. WNYC Studios. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Dr. Remnick. Sir. You really, really look like a doctor. Doesn't he look like a doctor? I do. If he walks, I'm your cardiologist, you would just feel so calm. Wouldn't you? Yes, that's how I feel. I'm in good hands here. Jerry, it's nothing to worry about.
We can take a few tests. Oh, you got the tone. You know that voice, or I think you do, but for the record, it's Jerry Seinfeld, who came by our studios recently so he could determine, as my mother once did, that I should have been a doctor.
So, what's going on with you and Melody? I mean, I know you're not getting married. Seinfeld was famously the show about nothing, or maybe not nothing exactly, but we kind of broke up. About very small, very petty things and the ludicrous amount of mental energy we expend on them. You know, we were having dinner the other night and she's got the strangest habit. She eats her peas one at a time. You've never seen anything like it. It takes her like an hour to finish them. I mean, we've had dinner other times. I've seen her eat corn nibblets, but she scooped them.
She scooped the niblets. Yes! That's what was so vexing. That fixation on the preposterously minor has always been at the core of Jerry Seinfeld's comedy, and it's certainly at the core of Unfrosted, his new movie, which takes a footnote in culinary history, the invention of the Pop-Tart, and treats it like an epic national battle.
Now, this isn't Seinfeld's first feature. He wrote the animated B movie. But Unfrosted is his debut as a director. How did this project, which is hilarious and nuts in many ways, and it's so funny. Oh, thanks. And it resonates with all kinds of things in the 60s and movies about the 60s, which we'll get to. How did you decide on this project? COVID. COVID.
You were going out of your mind, weren't you? Yeah. And my friend Spike Ferriston, the writer who wrote the Soup Nazi episode, we used to joke about making a movie about the Pop-Tart. It was a joke. The Kellogg's Pop-Tart suddenly appeared out of Battle Creek, Michigan, which, as you cereal fans know, is the corporate headquarters of Kellogg's in a town I have always wanted to visit because it seems like a cereal Silicon Valley. Yeah.
of breakfast super scientists conceiving of a frosted, fruit-filled, heatable rectangles in the same shape as the box it comes in. And with the same nutrition as the box it comes in, too. I go, there's no movie here. He goes, give me one meeting. Let's just get the two writers that I love from B-movie, Barry Marder and Andy Robbins. Let's just the four of us do a Zoom and give me one meeting. And Andy Robbins
Do you remember the scene in The Right Stuff where Jeff Goldblum and Harry Shearer run down the hall and they burst into the conference room and LBJ's sitting there and they go, it's called Sputnik. It's called Sputnik. We know. Sit down. He goes, that's what this is. I went, and as I was saying. Sitting with
For comedy writers who love each other's sense of humor, you know, the first 20 minutes, I do a 20-minute warm-up of just nonsense. What'd you do last night? What'd you eat? What'd you watch? You know, and you just start laughing and having fun. This is how comedy is done. You can't have anybody in the room that's not in the same, that doesn't have the same brain disaffect. What does that mean?
Regular people need courtesies and respect to converse and socialize with them. You can't say hostile things to them, to their face, but comedians love that. You don't get offended. No. There's no offense in the room. The offense is if it wasn't funny. That's the offense. But the other person is never offended if you insult them, rag them or something. As long as it's funny. Yeah.
Which usually insulting someone in the face is pretty funny. But we don't think that there is much value in everything else in life. Everything else in life is pretty much a nuisance.
But if you can get a laugh out of it, it's worth it. That's the way you go through life. You only care about laughing and being funny. So describe these meetings to me, how they went during the course of however long they lasted. They're all the same. They start off with 15 to 20 minutes of absolute nonsense. There's a lot of really vile profanity.
complaining about absolutely everything and anything. And then you go, okay, what were we working on yesterday? What was the scene? What's, what are we, where are we going from here? And then you start to write, but you're all kind of, you're in this mood now. And that's how you write comedy. If somebody else walks in the room, everybody, you have to stop.
What do you want? Yes, I know. Okay, dinner's fine. It's six. That's fine. Okay. And you have to, you know. Could you please leave? You experience it as fun or you experience it as work, as effort? 50-50. Yeah. It does have to make sense to an audience. That's the work. All you want to do is be totally insane. In the film, you play a marketing executive for Kellogg and everything is set in 1963. Right.
JFK is the president. The story centers around this race between the Kellogg Company and Post. Which is true. Which is another popular cereal maker. And they're both working toward...
A trip to the moon. No. That's right. They're working toward the creation of Pop-Tarts, whether they know it or not. Tell me about how that storyline originated. Well, the storyline is the true truth of the story, which I have always loved. Post came up with this idea. Kellogg's heard about it months before.
They freaked out. They go, we have to have the same thing as them. We have to get there before them. We have to make it better than them. And that's what we came up with. It's the right stuff. It's the U.S. versus the Soviet Union to put a man on the moon. Yeah.
Now, we're of a similar age. We grew up on similar breakfast foods and a lot else. And I have vague memories of Walter Cronkite, who, by the way, has a
great role in this movie. Yeah, he's fantastic. A drunk, insane Walter Cronkite. Yeah, Kyle Dunnigan created a lot of that on the set. Yeah, very funny. Direct from CBS News in New York, this is the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. This just handed to me some major news from the breakfast world. The Post Cereal Company of Battle Creek, Michigan has reportedly invented a shelf-stable, heatable fruit pastry breakfast product. Shelf-stable.
Boy. Did you really like Pop-Tarts all that much growing up? Oh, yeah. How about now? Still, yeah. Really? Yeah, I love them. That's a good breakfast for you? No, I don't eat it for breakfast. I eat it after a bad show on a Wednesday night. I see. When have you ever had a bad show? A lot of times. I mean, to me, a bad show is I'm going to do four new pieces tonight. If three of them tank, it's a frustrating night. Now, you could do for Pop-Tarts what Barbie did for Barbie.
This could be a big thing for them. Except that Kellogg's did not even know we were doing this. No. No, they did not. We only called them three weeks ago to tell them, by the way. The lawyers didn't freak out? We found a lawyer in the Valley.
A guy. Who said, could you write us a letter saying that this is okay to do, that we can show to Netflix? Yeah. Because Netflix, when we pitch them this idea, is going to go, I assume you've checked this all out legally and the clearances. And I go, of course, we have a letter right here. The guy from the Valley. He says it's great. Yeah. He says it's no problem. So there's no fee paid to Kellogg's or Post. No. And no permission given or taken. No. No.
I think you're in big trouble. Do you think that Kellogg's would make a movie where people lose their lives trying to invent a pastry or dive into dumpsters? Two children diving into dumpsters looking for the special fruit paste. Yeah. Are you kids okay? Oh, sure. We live in nice homes and already had a complete breakfast. But we come here.
It's garbage. Is it? Or is it some hot fruit lightning the man doesn't want you to have? No, wait. You have to have it like this. Now, you've got an amazing cast here. Melissa McCarthy, Jim Gaffigan, Sarah Cooper, Kristen Wiig. Hugh Grant. And Hugh Grant, which he's a little famous for being not so easy.
Yeah. Was that your experience? Oh, yeah. Tell me about that. I love this man. My apologies to all the other people I've met. He's my favorite human. I grant it. Yes, he's my favorite human. Why? Because his charm and funniness is what I dreamed of when I was a kid in the 60s. I want to be a charming, witty man.
That never happened. You wanted to be Cary Grant? Yes. Well, you know, like you say, we grew up Muhammad Ali and JFK and Sean Connery.
Those are men. We want to be like them. You know, they were all witty and handsome. What was it like to work? And had broad shoulders. Well, he apparently. And he has all these things. He has the broad shoulders. He has the shoulders. He has the wit. He knows how to have fun. He knows how to make people put people at ease. But a lot of these actors, you know, they're very, they're prima donnas.
And he told me he would be. And I go, that's fine. I don't care what you are. So right off the bat, he said, I'm going to be a pain in the neck. Yeah, yeah. And was he? I don't care. What do I care? What do you mean? I don't care if someone's an asshole if they're charming. A charming asshole is way better than a boring, polite person. So how did it play itself out on set, for example, him being a charming asshole? I'd say, Hugh, you know, in this scene, you know, you're wearing these sunglasses and
Would you be completely against the idea of not wearing sunglasses in the scene? This is a negotiating technique I learned. The answer you always want to get from your counterpart is no, not yes. Why is that? Because people love to say no. They hate to say yes. Saying yes makes you feel vulnerable. Saying no makes you feel secure. So you ask a question where the answer you want is no.
Hugh, would you be totally against not wearing the glasses? No, I wouldn't be totally against it. That's the finesse. Yeah, that's the finesse. Now, did you enjoy this new activity of directing? With these people, when you have Melissa McCarthy or Hugh or Peter Dinklage, Peter Dinklage directing Peter Dinklage. He has a great turn in the movie.
Thank you. It's like someone saying, how would you like to take this Ferrari out for a drive? It can do anything you ask it to do. Anything. That is a lot of fun. I mean, he is a thrill. Are you a milkman? The name's Harry Friendly. And you might say I am the milkman. Do you know the first taste a human being experiences at birth? Applesauce? Oh. Milk, Mr. Cabana.
And in the milk business, we are not just part of the American dream. We are the white, red, white, and blue. We are the cream that rises so famously to the top. And you, Mr. Cabana, have become the annoying white ring that sticks to the bottom.
Jerry, you must get any number of ideas for films either brought to you or you have. No? Never got an idea. This is the only idea I've ever had for a film. Really? I never get asked to do a film. Really? Never. Why the hell would that be? I don't know.
When I was at DreamWorks and we were casting Bee Movie, this casting director came in and she had two cards, a blue card and a pink card. On each card were the biggest male stars and on the pink card were the biggest female stars in the business at that time. This is 2000s.
And we go through the names. By the way, there's like 12 names on each card. That's it. Right. And so we were casting the thing. And before she leaves, I go, let me, can I ask you, am I on that blue card? And she says, no. Nice. And I went, why not? She said, because everybody knows you won't do it. Ah, was she right? Yeah. Yeah.
Well, Hamlet maybe, but you wouldn't do any number of other things if the project was real? You have to realize, if you look at my career, I have never succeeded at anything that wasn't my material. Not one time. I've only done it once, and it was a huge failure. I did Benson in 1980. Yeah. And you felt it to be a failure or thought it was a critical failure? It was a total failure. Yeah. I have to write my own material or I stink.
I'm talking with Jerry Seinfeld. His new film is called Unfrosted and will continue in just a moment on the New Yorker Radio Hour. Hello again, WNYC. It's Andrea Bernstein, a co-host of the podcast Trump, Inc. This August, I'm guest hosting The Law According to Trump, a special series on amicus from Slate.
Long before this year's historic Supreme Court term, Donald Trump created a blueprint for shielding himself from legal accountability on everything from taxes to fraud to discrimination. Listen now on Amicus as we explore Trump's history of bending the law to his will. Search Amicus wherever you're listening.
This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick, and I'm talking today with Jerry Seinfeld. I was going to say the comedian Jerry Seinfeld, but that feels a little New York Times-y, like the renowned physicist Albert Einstein. Seinfeld co-wrote and directed the new film, Unfrosted. He's not one of those people who had to find himself exactly. As a kid, Seinfeld fell in love with the comedians on television.
and he was still in his 20s when he got a spot on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. Would you welcome him, please? Jerry Seinfeld. Jerry! Wow, good evening. Boy, this is so exciting for me. I'm so excited to be here. After nine seasons of Seinfeld, Jerry quit while he was way ahead.
He's become a kind of professor of comedy, continuing to do stand-up and shooting the series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, driving around and joking and analyzing comedy with every great comic of our time. So back to my discussion with Jerry Seinfeld. It's possible that you've probably made a dollar or two from Seinfeld and yet you still work so hard. Why?
Because the only thing in life that's really worth having is good skill. Good skill is the greatest possession. The things that money buys are fine. They're good. I like them. But having a skill, I learned this from reading Esquire magazine. They did an issue on mastery. Do you remember that? I don't.
I'm surprised. You definitely read Esquire. Oh, yeah. Of course. I loved Esquire in the 60s. A magazine for men, remember? Yeah, I do. Yeah. And they did one issue. In fact, I got to get this issue. I'll get it on eBay. I'm sure it's there. And it was about...
It's a very Zen Buddhist concept. Pursue mastery. That will fulfill your life. You will feel good. Nothing else. I know a lot of rich people. So do you. They don't feel good as you think they should and would. They don't. They're miserable. So I work because if you don't in stand-up comedy, if you don't do it a lot, you stink.
We call it a phone. We don't even use it as a phone. Nobody's talking on the phone. Once they gave you the option, you could talk, you could type, talk, and end of that day, it's over. Talking is obsolete. It's antiquated. I feel like a blacksmith up here sometimes, to tell you the truth. I could text you this whole thing. We can get the hell out of here right now.
Who did you start listening to or watching in comedy and say, that's the skill I want to learn? Robert Klein and Jay Leno were the two guys that... And George Carlin. Bill Cosby, I loved, but I thought I could never be that good. But I mean as a kid. You mean like six, seven? Yeah, or junior high school or whatever. I mean...
Peter Sellers was a huge obsession of mine as a kid. And there's one line in Unfrosted that a lot of the producers did not like. And they said, you got to take it out. It's too stupid. It really makes no sense at all. And I go, but for one second of my life, I got to be Peter Sellers. What was the line? The line is at the funeral and we have this elaborate scene.
Full serial honors scene. And the widow... Say who you're burying. We're burying Steve Schwent, who lost his life trying to create the Pop-Tart. What is happening? And his wife says to me, looking at this insane ceremony, and she says, Did you plan this? And I go, I don't know. I don't know. Which is impossible.
You can't not know that. Either you planned it or you didn't plan it. You can't not know. Inspector Clouseau would say that. Jerry, tell me about being a beginner, just a funny kid who wants to take the big leap into comedy. The leap was so terrifying. I don't know why, but I had no confidence in that, that I might be funny to people that don't know me. And I drove to this club.
The Golden Lion Pub, 143 West 44th Street. No longer. What year? 1975. I'm still at Queens College. And they have an audition. I think there were just a few people there. And I did this joke about being left-handed, and it got a laugh. And then they booked me on the... I want to hear the joke. Okay. The joke is...
So I'm left-handed. Left-handed people do not like that the word left is so often associated with negative things. Left feet, left-handed compliment, what are we having for dinner, leftovers. You go to a party, there's nobody there. Where'd everybody go? They left. That's a pretty cute joke. It's not a bad joke. It's a cute joke. It's not a bad joke. And how did it go over? Huge.
And it had a huge laugh. Can you remember the feeling? Yeah. And the applause. And I, you know that scene in the Elton John movie when he's at the troubadour? He goes off the ground and the audience comes off the ground. I love that scene. That's what it felt like. I felt like, oh my God, I'm on a, I'm a plane and I just left the ground. I just knew from that moment that
That's it. I now know what I will do the rest of my life. That's incredibly inspiring and at the same time huge pressure. Why is it pressure? Because you then have to write more jokes and repeat it. The book that got me into comedy is a book called The Last Laugh by Phil Berger. I read it in high school. And there's a joke in there that Jimmy Walker told at Catch a Rising Star. It's a pouring rainy night in Manhattan. He goes on stage. He's soaking wet. He goes, it is...
raining so hard out there, I just saw Superman getting into a cab. And I read that and I go, how in the world can a brain come up with an idea like that? I thought that was such, I still love that joke. I love that joke. But I go, how do you think of that? I didn't know how. But when I did the left thing, I went, oh, there's a guy in there that knows how to do it.
And he's going to now work his ass off for the rest of my life. So you became disciplined right away? Not right away. It was after I saw a comedian do a couple of Tonight Shows and get bounced that I realized. Who was that? I don't want to mention the name. He went on. He did well. Second time he went on, he did less well. Third time he struggled and they never had him back. And I went, oh, wow.
Now I get how this racket works. This is a writer's game. If you can write, you succeed. If you can't, you will not make it. This, the performing, being funny on stage, that's great. Any comedian can be funny on stage, but the bullets are the writing. Not long ago, I was watching on YouTube, not for the first time and maybe for the thousandth, Rodney Dangerfield's performances on The Tonight Show, which are...
insanely good and like filled with rocket fuel. Yeah. Well, when I was born, the doctor told my mother I did all I could, but he pulled through anyway, you know? LAUGHTER
I don't get no respect from anyone. Well, last week my house was on fire. My wife told the kids, be quiet, you'll wake up daddy. So he's a great writer, and he's invented this character, which is himself times 11, I guess. Right, right. How did you invent how you wanted to be on stage? It's like sculpting. Sculpting is removing everything that isn't the sculpture you want to make.
You're not adding, you're removing. Stone sculpture, not clay. So when you do a joke and it gets a laugh and something inside you doesn't feel quite right, you don't do that joke. Right. You do the jokes that you feel connect to your anger, your attitude, your personality. You know, success in comedy is very much a...
So the face, the voice, the body, the joke. When all of us are working together, it hits bang. You just feel it. You feel it like hitting a baseball on the button. And when it's a little, one of them is a little off, it's not there. What do you think about the difference between doing a comedy film for Netflix and doing A Night at the Beacon? It's the same thing and yet it's not.
The only similarity is your sense of humor is an essential tool. After that, it's all different. There's no similarity. A Night at the Beacon to me is like being a great, if you're a great jazz player and people come in and they want to hear you play and you're going on and I'm going, I know this instrument, I'm good at it.
let's all enjoy the playing. But for the jazz musician or any musician, they want to hear Around Midnight or Born to Run or whatever it is again and again and again. Do you feel that's okay for jokes or is there constant pressure to make it new and make it new all the time? We don't have enough time for that conversation. That would take another hour. What do you mean? It's a heavy conversation. It's a constant issue in the comedy world. Everybody has a different opinion about it.
Give me the short version. The short version is there's no answer. If I love a bit that somebody does and I go and they do the bit, I love it. If you see them after the show, they go, you did the peanut bit. I love the peanut bit. And they go, I know. I'm trying to get it out of my act and do something new. And you go, no, I love that bit.
Who's right? There's no answer. There's no answer. I think if you go see a comedian and he does some great stuff that you know and a bunch of stuff that you don't know, the audience is happy. I think comedians now try so hard to be all new all the time. I think the quality suffers because none of us are really that good. Chris Rock and I have determined that
A great comedian working his ass off his entire career writes two good hours. The rest is... Well, how many specials have you done for Netflix? Two. And I don't think I'll do another one. Really? Yeah. Again, we don't have time for that. These are gigantic subjects in comedy, but I won't put it out there unless I think it's of a certain quality. And I doubt I could get to that in the time I have left.
And I don't like old people either. Even though I'm 70, I don't like old people. You're about to be 70, right? Whatever. How are you feeling about that? I don't care. Really? Yeah. You look good. Thanks. You feel good? Yeah, that's it. And you're working? Yeah. When you say you don't like old men, do you mean that in a kind of Friars Club sort of way? No, I don't like old people, period. They don't look good.
Everything's going, everything's deteriorating. I don't want to see this. If you want to hang around, fine. But we're moving on to younger people. I feel like God is like, I'm with you up to about 38. If you want to stay, you can stay. But I'm moving on. Did you not like old comedians? No, I love old comedians. I do. Because they just get better.
This is the great blessing. On the other side of the material torture, on the other side of that, the blessing of it, you just get better and better. Tell me how you deal with the way the weight of the world or the serious aspects of the world weigh on you and how that affects comedy. Nothing really affects comedy. People always need it. They need it so badly.
And they don't get it. It used to be you would go home at the end of the day. Most people would go, oh, Cheers is on. Oh, MASH is on. Oh, Mary Tyler Moore is on. All the family's on. You just expect it. There'll be some funny stuff we can watch on TV tonight. Well, guess what? Where is it? Where is it? This is the result of the extreme left and PC crap and people worrying so much about offending other people. Yeah.
Now they're going to see stand-up comics because we are not policed by anyone. The audience polices us. We know when we're off track. We know instantly and we adjust to it instantly. But when you write a script and it goes into four or five different hands, committees, groups, here's our thought about this joke. Well, that's the end of your comedy. Have you had that experience? No.
No. Because isn't that what curb is all about? Yeah. Larry was grandfathered in. He's old enough that I don't have to observe those rules because I started before you made those rules. We did an episode of the series in the 90s where Kramer decides to start a business of having homeless pull rickshaws because, as he says, they're outside anyway. Right.
What about the homeless? Can't we worry about them later? To pull the rickshaw. They do have an intimate knowledge of the street. Always walking around the city. Why not just strap something to them? Now that's the first sensible idea I've heard all day. Do you think I could get that episode on the air today?
But you think Larry got grandfathered in and there could be no 35-year-old version. Right, right. If Larry was 35, he couldn't get away with his – like the watermelon stuff and Palestinian chicken and, you know. And HBO knows that's what people come here for. But they're not smart enough or – to figure out – you know –
How do we do this now? Do we take the heat, you know, or just not be funny? We would write a different joke with Kramer and the rickshaw today. We wouldn't do that joke. We come up with another joke. They move the gates like like in the in the skiing. Yeah. Culture. The gates are moving. Your job is to be agile and clever enough that wherever they put the gates, I'm going to make the gate.
You think this is going away now? This is what you're describing as PC is kind of receding? Slightly. I see a slight movement. How do you see it? With certain comedians now, people are having fun with them stepping over the line and us all laughing about it.
And but again, it's the standups that really have the freedom to do it because no one else gets the blame if it doesn't go down well. He can he or she can take all the blame themselves. Who are the young ones that you like? Nate Bargatze, I love. Ronnie Chang, I love. Brian Simpson, really funny. Mark Norman, really funny. Sam Morrill, really funny. Do you ever go to clubs? Yeah, I go all the time.
I don't go and sit there and pay for two drinks and watch and go, this guy's fantastic. I go to work out my own stuff. Jay, for Unfrosted, you actually wrote a song titled Sweet Morning Heat. You wrote the lyrics with Jimmy Fallon. No, I wrote it with Mark Ronson. Ah. Jimmy sang it.
by the way, who can sing. Yeah. He and Meghan Trainor sang the tune and Mark and Andrew Watt produced it, right? Right. But David, when I walked in the studio and I had this piece of paper where I wrote, I spent hours on it. Because...
You know, there's certain lines you can sing, certain lines you can't. I don't know anything really about singing. And I said to Mark, I wrote these lyrics and I started reading them. And he nodded his head and it was a long pause. And he went, that's not bad. Oh, my God. That was one of the greatest moments of my life. It's not bad. Yeah. He said, that's not bad. Yeah. I went, really? He said, yeah, that's not bad. We could do some of those.
I don't know if you can make out the lyrics when you watch the movie. I haven't seen it in the movie. That's why I'm asking. Would you like to sing us a little bit? No, I can't sing. Can you recite it? Why? Sherry Seinfeld, thank you so much. Give me that sweet morning. Give me that sweet morning. Give me that sweet morning.
Jerry Seinfeld is the director and star of Unfrosted. And he worked on a TV show called, let me see if I can think of it, Seinfeld. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around. This week, college campuses all over the country have erupted in protest with students arrested by the dozens. On our next episode, we'll dive deep into the response to the war in Gaza on university campuses.
I'll talk with faculty, a former college president, and student journalists who are covering the unrest on their own campuses. It has been a tense time, and while there have been unambiguously hateful incidents, both against Jewish students and against Muslim or Arab students or pro-Palestine activists, it's not clear to what extent those represent a systemic problem and problem.
There is no one narrative. In some respects, I think Harvard's campus has actually been comparable to or even calmer than that of many other universities that are also experiencing protests and that are also experiencing pressure as they try to navigate this moment. That's all next time on The New Yorker Radio Hour.
The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Arts, with additional music by Alexis Quadrato and Jared Paul. This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, Kala Leah, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Alicia Zuckerman.
with guidance from Emily Botin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Barish, Victor Guan, and Alejandra Deque. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherena Endowment Fund.
