I love watching standup comedy. I’ve always thought that good standup is 50% content and 50% delivery. Some people are great at delivery (Sam Kinison, Aziz, Michael Richards) and some people have great content (Patton Oswalt), some are just pretty good at both (Jim Gaffigan, Daniel Tosh), while the legends are great at both (Chris Rock, Seinfeld, Dave Chappelle).
It had been a while since I’d seen Jerry Seinfeld do standup, but I recently went and saw him that the Buell Theater in Denver. Let me tell you, he killed it. I was crying for most of the show. He’s still got it. Here’s a clip of some of his new stuff that he did on Jimmy Fallon:
I also listed to him on Howard Stern where he did a really long interview. He goes deep into his process of creating a joke and while he’s still doing comedy. I love long interviews like this.
Some items
- Talks about how bad network TV execs are about being able to determine what is funny. What they are good at is finding funny people, but the more involvement
- He was offered over $100 million to do another season of Seinfeld show
- He has a strong sense that timing is everything. He knows how great his TV show was, he’s loath to do another one, he knows it could never be as good. As he says, you can love a comedian at an hour and 10 minutes and hate him at an hour and 30 and that’s why he had to end the show. He said that the audience would turn on him if they did another season.
- He thought that Martin Short could have played the Kramer character
- He saw no need to put women and blacks on “Seinfeld,” but after ten episodes Colin Quinn told him he was gonna get in trouble for it, and he did.
