Jerry Seinfeld

Jerry Seinfeld

Date of birth: 29-04-1954

A born and bred New Yorker, Jerry Seinfeld’s interest in comedy began when as student in the city’s Queens College, where he communications and theatre. His first open-mic night in the Catch A Rising Star club came in 1976, right after he graduated.

Three years later, he landed a small recurring role on the Benson sitcom as a mail delivery boy who had comedy routines that no one wanted to hear. In May 1981, Seinfeld made his first appearance on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, leading to several appearances on the late-night talk show circuit.

In 1989, he created Seinfeld (originally titled the Seinfeld Chronicles) with Larry David the show that would go on to become the most successful sitcom in American TV history over its nine-year run. It has made him incredibly wealthy through syndication, and he earns up to $85 million a year, which helps him indulge his passion for cars, owning reported 46 Porsches.

After his sitcom ended, Seinfeld returned to stand-up; recording the show I'm Telling You for the Last Time during his 1998 tour, which briefly visited Britain. He then had to create a new set, a process captured in the 2002 documentary Comedian.

In 2008, he helped create the animated Bee Movie, and provided the voice for the main character. The following year, he again worked with his Seinfeld co-stars for a storyline in David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm revolving around a long-anticipated reunion. In 2010, he was executive producer on the American reality show The Marriage Ref.

He has also written a number of books, including 1993’s Seinlanguage, based on his stand-up routines, and 2002 kids’ book Halloween.

He has been married to Jessica since 1999, and they have daughter and two sons.

Read More
© Mark Seliger

Jerry Seinfeld: 23 Hours To Kill

Note: This review is from 2020

Netflix comedy special reviewed by Steve Bennett

On the face of it, Jerry Seinfeld is not the ideal comedian for a pandemic. 

He’s the master of minutiae, a comic whose life is so comfortable that all he has to worry about are trivial irritations, which he brilliantly amplifies into major exasperations. But when everyone the world over has such big issues on their mind, is this not just a bit, well, privileged?

Maybe so, but actually 23 Hours To Kill – his new special which landed on Netflix today – proves a reassuring reminder of the bugbears and petty grievances that unite so many of us. 

An early routine, especially, has an unforeseen resonance in lockdown, when he mocks our need to go out to gigs or restaurants to give arbitrary validation to our pointless lives. Even his own gig, recorded in New York’s Beacon Theatre during a residency cut short by Covid-19, is described as a ‘made-up, bogus, hyped-up, not necessary, special event’. He plays up the rigamarole of getting out the house, protesting that it’s never worth it. But boy how we miss the palaver of going to those ‘bogus’ events now they are gone.

After perhaps the most daredevil opening of a stand-up special – plunging  40ft into New York’s East River from a helicopter – the remarkably well-preserved 65-year-old plays up his curmudgeonliness, insisting ‘nobody likes anything’ and that ‘everyone’s life sucks’. Even his, he claims, although he does concede that his wealth cushions him from the worst of it.

‘You know what I’ve done, you know what I’ve made,’ he tells the audience, in acknowledgement of his elevated position. ‘If you were me, would you be up here hacking out another one of these?’

Like everything in his act, the gag is that he protests too much. He’s on stage because it’s in his blood, and he clearly loves it. Why else would the show title be a nod to the aimlessness felt between gigs. He surely doesn’t really think everything is so awful, either – his much-imitated delivery is of exaggerated irritation, not the real deal – but we’re all indulging in the same idea, united in playing the game.

In 23 Hours To Kill his grumbles range from mobile-phone dependency to golf fanatics, portable toilets to non-portable toilets. No subject that’s especially unique – but with Seinfeld, the joy is always in the detail of the observation and the writing.

In describing, for example, how we might scroll idly through a list of contacts on our phone, he exposes universal behaviour with a metaphor that’s beautifully vivid and ruthlessly efficient. It’s one perfectly judged sentence that says it all, so he barely needs to bother with the ensuing act-out.

Yet while that is so delightfully economical, in other routines he revels in repetition, creating rhythms from each iteration, and melodies from the slight deviation from established phrases. On a technical level alone, he remains masterful.

Halfway through the special, Seinfeld pauses to sup his water and tell the crowd: ‘Let’s change gears and come into "Jerry’s little world"’, a suggestion that he’s going to share personal detail about marrying lateish and being a father of three.

Despite how he frames this section, Seinfeld does not do inward-looking. What is set out as intimate is, ironically, the most generic part of the show. Playing up the perceived differences between men and women, he paints a familiar, even tired, image of a marriage where the hapless husband has to watch what he says while the wife’s itching for a fight, drawing on an encylopaedic memory of every previous conversation and argument to make her case. 

This picture may be clichéd because it’s rooted in truth, but while Seinfeld can always find an excellent way of putting things, he can’t quite make this well-ploughed territory his own, as he does in so much of the rest of this classy hour.

But as his gaze swings outwards again, he hits upon more hilarious routines for the home straight. Perfectly pitched diatribes pick away at the self-absorption of the golfing dad or the design flaws in shared public toilets with taut, sharp outbursts of perfectly exasperated phrases that instantly evoke wonderfully comic imagery. All of which is surely more than enough to transport you away from the more significant concerns in life.

Read More

Published: 5 May 2020

Agent

We do not currently hold contact details for Jerry Seinfeld's agent. If you are a comic or agent wanting your details to appear here, for a one-off fee of £59, email steve@chortle.co.uk.

We see you are using AdBlocker software. Chortle relies on advertisers to fund this website so it’s free for you, so we would ask that you disable it for this site. Our ads are non-intrusive and relevant. Help keep Chortle viable.