Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers (14 page)

I started to notice strange things happening. Once, an enormous party of tourists barged into the control room where we were shooting
Ethel and Albert
. We thought it was an accident. They started talking very loudly and bothering the director. Another time when we were shooting the show, all of the actors were in front of the cameras, performing live. The characters were playing a game of bridge. And suddenly a man—not an actor, and someone I’d never seen before—walked through the front door of the set, right through the scene. And all four of us actors looked at him and waited for him to say something—
anything
—but he didn’t even look up at us. He just continued walking, maybe nodding his head or something, and then walked off the set. And Alan [Bunce], who played Albert, looked at me with alarm and improvised, “Oh, that’s Mariel’s friend and he’s fixing our faucet, dear. I forgot to tell you. I’m sorry.”

Wait. So you think General Foods sabotaged your show in order to get
December Bride
—a show they happened to have spent more money on—back onto the air?

Yes. About three years after all of this, I met a man on a train. He looked at me and said, “Peg Lynch?” I said, “Yes?” He said, “I used to work as an ad exec for [New York–based advertising agency] Benton & Bowles and we used to handle General Foods. And I thought I might have a nervous breakdown when I was working there. My wife said either you get out of the business or I’m going to divorce you. And I left. I was sick about what happened to your show.” I said, “What do you mean?” And he said, “Don’t you know? Word went out through the whole industry that General Foods would do anything they could to sabotage your show—to make it look bad; to make it look unprofessional. And it broke my heart.” I said, “Now that you mention this, I do recall a few things, yes.”

We should probably make clear that these are
alleged
accusations, right? These were never proven.

You’re a babe in arms. I’ve gone through this thing and I’m ninety-six years old and I’ve got stories to tell and I know where the bodies are buried.

You’re starting to scare me.

What I mean to say is that television is a rough business. But I’ve been lucky over the years. Very, very lucky. I got to make the show I wanted to make, and I did it on my own terms.

Have you ever thought about working on a current version of
Ethel and Albert
? Perhaps now that the characters would be in their eighties and nineties?

I’d like to, yes. I’d like to write an
Ethel and Albert
now, and what their problems would be and how they would get through them. It would be interesting. Life becomes different when you’re in your nineties. People treat you differently. People are always asking, “Are you warm enough?” or “Are you hungry? What can I
do
for you?” No, I’m fine, thanks. I’ll do it myself.

It used to be fun. I used to keep in touch with all my fans. I answered all their letters; it was such a bright spot in my life. And now they’re all gone. Years ago, my father-in-law was celebrating his ninetieth birthday. For a surprise, I decided to make ninety cupcakes and have candles all over them. I thought it was so cute. It took me and four other people to get all the damn things lit before the first ones started to go out. So I said to my father-in-law, “When you’re ninety years old, do you still feel sixteen?” And he said, “Yes, you do.” But he looked at me kind of sad and said, “But all your friends are dead.”

It’s a terrible feeling. My big address book that I have sitting in front of me is scratched through, all of the names are
X
-ed off.
X, X, X.
All your friends are gone. You won’t appreciate this until you’re ninety-six.

But I do think anything can be written about it, and done in a funny way. It would be a challenge. Ethel and Albert still getting into fights, still having funny conversations. Maybe this time about doctors and gout.

Wow! Look at the time! I’ve talked your arm off!

You know, before you called, I was talking with my daughter. She said, “Mother, I wish you had told me these things. You never told me all of these stories.” And I said, “Well, I never thought they were important!” I’ve got a lot more, too.

Like the time when John Kennedy came into the studio while we were shooting an episode of
Ethel and Albert
. Kennedy’s sister, Pat Kennedy Lawford, worked as an assistant on the show. So Kennedy told me, “You
have
to have dinner with me tonight.” He was only a senator at this point. Can you imagine? “You
have
to have dinner with me.”

And how did you respond?

I said, “No, I’m not. I
have
to write a script tonight.” He left and then came back later and asked me again. I said, “I really can’t. I have to get up at 3:00 a.m. in order to write.” He looked at me in shock. He couldn’t believe it; I was turning him down once again. He then walked out. And I went home and I wrote.

Now that’s a dedicated writer.

You have to be.

Did Kennedy ever ask you out for a third time, perhaps after he became president? Did he phone you from the emergency red telephone in the Oval Office?

If he did, I didn’t answer. But that’s another story. [Laughs]

Writer,
Seinfeld, It’s Like, You Know . . .
; Journalist,
GQ,
Esquire,
The Washington Post, The New York Times

You wrote twenty-two episodes of
Seinfeld
. Quite a few lines from these episodes became well-known and found their way into the popular vernacular, including “yada yada yada” and “double-dip.” Did you have any idea while you were writing these scripts that a particular line would later hit with the public?

No, I never had an idea. I never knew, really, what would become popular. It always surprised me, actually.

So none of the lines were written to be a catchphrase?

No. Every line was written just to be funny and to further the plot. But, actually, there was one time that I did think that a certain phrase would become popular. And I was completely wrong. In the “Yada Yada” episode [April 24, 1997], I really thought that it was going to be the “antidentite” line that was going to be the big phrase, and it was not. That line went: “If this wasn’t my son’s wedding day, I’d knock your teeth out, you antidentite bastard.” The man who said it was a dentist. And no one remembers that phrase; it’s the “yada yada yada” line that everyone remembers.

But it’s interesting. When a phrase or word becomes popular on a show, it’s like a pop song. Everybody remembers the hook. Nobody really listens to the verses.

In 1993, you wrote a
Seinfeld
script called “The Implant” that included the “double-dipping” line. Did that story come from a real-life experience?

It did, yes. I was at a party and somebody flipped out because someone else double-dipped a chip. They didn’t say “double-dipped.” I had to make up the phrase, but that wasn’t exactly a tough phrase to make up. To me, “double-dipping” sounded funny and it fit, but I never intended it to stand out. I never consciously thought, Oh, my God, I can actually add to the lexicon.

How about the “shrinkage” line from 1994’s “The Hamptons” episode, in which George claims that it’s the cold air after swimming that has made his penis appear smaller?

Larry [David, the co-creator] had the idea of George going into a pool and coming out cold, and I said, “Oh, and he gets, like, shrinkage?” And Larry said, “Yeah! And use that word. Use it
a lot
.” So I don’t know if I thought it would be a big term, but Larry may have.
5

The brilliance of the writing on
Seinfeld
was, among other factors, how seemingly easy it is to emulate. I’d imagine you were constantly being bombarded with scripts from people thinking that they could effortlessly write for the show.

We would receive thousands and thousands of submissions. Mostly, they were just terrible ideas. We had a boilerplate rejection letter, and once a month one of the writing assistants would come in with about a hundred copies of that letter that I would have to sign, and she’d then send them out. One year, I took stats on the letters, and I found that we had received scripts from forty-six U.S. states.

What four states did
not
participate?

Alaska, Montana, and North Dakota, and then one deep in the South—Mississippi or Arkansas. Most of the ideas were terrible.

Do you remember any?

I remember there were a ton of “Jerry dates woman who turns out to be a transsexual.” Most of the ideas were unwitting parodies of the show. The main problem with most of the scripts was that in the first couple of pages it would always have some run of dialogue completely off the subject. The scripts had
pages
of dialogue devoted to digressions. I was always amazed when writers thought you could pretty much go on for pages and pages on completely irrelevant subjects. In reality, our scripts were ridiculously tight. And beyond that, 90 percent of the time we ended up five or six minutes long in the episode, and the scripts would then have to be tightened even further.

Were all of your waking hours dedicated to coming up with ideas for the show?

It became addicting. Every news story, every anecdote I heard at a party, every idea became a potential plot or piece of dialogue for the show. It was all-consuming. I was on vacation once in Arizona, at the Canyon Ranch Spa. It was Mother’s Day weekend, so there were a hundred women with their daughters taking a spa weekend together. I met one of these daughters, and we were hanging out and spending all this time together. Then, on my last day, we were standing on this little bridge over a dry water bed and we started making out. As we were kissing, I remember thinking, It’s amazing how every girl’s got her own style of kissing—hands
here
, lips
there
, left eye open. . . . And then I thought, Oh, my God, look at this, I’m in the middle of making out and I’m
still
observing! That’s when I realized, I’ve got to figure out a way to back off this a little.

Were your friends and family constantly suggesting ideas for the show?

Constantly. And they never worked. Except in two cases. A friend once told me about his father who worked in the jewelry exchange district in Manhattan, and he would openly say to women, “You know, you’re very pretty. You should get a nose job.” And my friend would say, “God! You can’t just tell people to get a nose job!” And his father would say, “Believe me, they end up thanking me.” And that later ended up in the episode called “The Nose Job” [November 20, 1991].

That same friend was once telling me a story—not for the show, but just as a story. He said, “You won’t believe what happened to me. I was at Marix Tex Mex restaurant [in LA] and I get the car back from the valet parker, and the car stunk unbelievably bad.” Never for a second did he think of that as a
Seinfeld
idea. At first, I didn’t either, but then I began thinking that if the smell starts attaching itself to people, then I can get all four characters into that one story—which is what you would dream about as a writer. It later became the “Smelly Car” episode [April 15, 1993].

As a writer for more than twenty episodes of
Seinfeld
, can you still make a good living to this day off residuals, years after the final show aired?

Obviously it depends on your definition of a “pretty good living,” but you know, I certainly could survive on it. I could pretty much come out better than even if residuals were my only income.

There are at least two Twitter accounts with jokes about how
Seinfeld
would have changed had the show continued to the present day. From a comedy writer’s standpoint, was the complete absence of cell phones and the Internet easier for you? Or do you think the show would be easier to write for now?

If written now, there would be a million instances of one character being able to call another character and saying, “Don’t do that!” For instance, in the episode where Elaine is dating a guy with the same name as the famous [1990s] serial killer Joel Rifkin [“The Masseuse,” November 18, 1993], Kramer goes to a stadium to pick up football tickets but he doesn’t have his ID with him. So the stadium makes an announcement to sixty-five thousand fans: “Will Joel Rifkin please come to will call . . .” This caused the breaking point when the guy wants to change his name—he’s tired of everyone in the city confusing him with the serial killer. But if there were cell phones available back then, Kramer could have simply called Elaine and asked, “Can you meet me downstairs?” and that would have been that.

Also, the constant coming in and out of Jerry’s apartment would have really changed. It would have changed the logic. It no longer would have been necessary.

We could have still written
Seinfeld
, but it would have just been different. It would have really put a new twist on some great story lines. Like in the Chinese restaurant episode [“The Chinese Restaurant,” May 23, 1991]. Instead of all four characters waiting and talking in the lobby of the restaurant, they just would have told the hostess, “Give us a call when there’s a table available.” Or when Jerry and George were stuck with Elaine’s intimidating father [in “The Jacket,” February 6, 1991], they could have just said, “Excuse me,” and then left to call Elaine: “Where the hell are you?!” When you think about it, convenience doesn’t make for good comedy.

Did
Seinfeld
have a writers’ room?

No—unless somehow a script was in total crisis. The writers would come up with their own story lines, and then we’d pass them to Jerry and Larry, who would either accept or reject them. If you couldn’t come up with story lines, you were let go. But there was no one room in which the writers had to sit and write and pitch out ideas.

You know, having a writers’ room is very conducive to getting
nothing
done. You get a lot of people in there and you go off on tangents and people are going to the bathroom and going out and getting coffee. Everybody just wants to get out of that room.

I never would have survived in an atmosphere of shouting out jokes. There’s a lot of pressure trying to come up with a better joke than the person sitting two feet away from you. It just doesn’t seem like it’s the kind of contemplative atmosphere that you usually associate with creativity.

How long would it typically take for you to write a
Seinfeld
script?

Some faster than others. “The Yada Yada” script was unbelievably fast. From the time I pitched it to Jerry to the time it was on air, it was about a month. There were others that took forever.

The most difficult aspect was combining four story lines in order to make a complete episode. There wasn’t an episode, really, where all four characters weren’t part of the show. That was difficult right throughout, but if I had a story lying around where Jerry was dating a masseuse and all he really wanted was the massage, and I had another story lying around in which Jerry was dating someone who just hated George, that’s where I could say, “Wait a minute, the masseuse can hate George,” and then we’re connected. But it was really tricky.

It would then be up to Jerry and Larry to rewrite the script that I’d turn in to them, and for them to inject their own magic into the scripts. As far as how much they would rewrite, it depended on the episodes. Sometimes it would be A to Z. Sometimes it was lighter.

What were the writing differences between Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David? Would they have a different way of attacking a joke?

There was an episode that took place in the Hamptons, where George has a girlfriend he hasn’t slept with yet [“The Hamptons,” May 12, 1994]. George goes off to buy tomatoes, and while he’s doing so, this woman goes topless in front of Elaine, Kramer, and Jerry. When George returns, he’s upset that he was the only one who didn’t get to see the breasts. Jerry then wrote a line where George says, “It’s like I’m Neil Armstrong. I turn around for a sip of Tang and you just jump out first!”

Jerry’s synapses work really well on analogies. He was really big on analogies. It’s a great line, but jokey. And Larry just didn’t write jokey lines. All his jokes were funny because of the situation. As an example, he once wrote a line for George: “I’ve never had a meeting where I really wanted the other person to show up.” And that was Larry.

You didn’t start off as a TV writer. You were a freelancer for various magazines. How did you make the leap from magazine writing to being a writer on
Seinfeld
?

In 1990 or so, I ran into Larry David, whom I had known a bit. He also attended the University of Maryland, but he was about ten years older than I was. He said, “I’m working on a little show with Jerry Seinfeld.” He asked if I had a script. I didn’t, but I said that I did have a recent funny article I wrote for
The New York Times
called “Star Trekking.” It was about me walking around Manhattan, trying to spot famous celebrities. Larry and Jerry liked it, and they gave me an assignment to write an episode, which eventually became “The Apartment.” That script idea was changed a bit from the original concept, which was to have Elaine moving farther away from Jerry. Larry Charles [a
Seinfeld
staff writer, and later the director of
Borat
,
Brüno
, and
The Dictator
] suggested it would be funnier to have Elaine moving
closer
to Jerry, into the apartment above his, and he was right. This was also the episode where George wore a wedding ring to a party thinking it would improve his chances of meeting women. It aired in the second season [April 4, 1991].

That is such a rarity. Magazine writers don’t usually—if ever—get asked to write for TV.

I know. It
never
happens. And it’s what a lot of freelance writers wish for, but it just never, ever happens. The funny thing is, years later, I think on Facebook, somebody sent me this blog that they wrote—this woman in New York—and it was called “In Search of Peter Mehlman.” This woman was wondering whether it was just apocryphal that there was this guy who was a freelance writer and then he became a writer on
Seinfeld
. And that was the first time I ever heard that people even aspired to that kind of thing if they were freelance writers. The difference is that I didn’t hope to write for TV. Magazine writing was fine. I actually prefer writing full sentences.

So you’re not apocryphal? You’re no Bigfoot or Abominable Snowman? You do exist?

I do exist. [Laughs] By a thread.