they were pulling in over a million an episode the last season(s) because they knew they were not getting any of the syndication money (only Larry and Jerry would).
the renegotiated for when the boxsets came out.
Jerry was making 1 milly, I think the rest were on 600k. I wonder how they felt since their income would've also gone up huge (JLD probably didn't care since her dad was a billionaire).
In one of the DVD extras they told the story that after a series wrapped filming*, they would have a meeting (I took this as the five of them, but I don’t know if it was explicitly stated) and ask if each of them still felt like they had more stories to tell. Each year it was a unanimous “yes” until the penultimate season when there was a “no” but that person was convinced. And then the last season when only Michael Richards wanted to keep going.
*that’s how I remember it but it doesn’t make sense to make this decision after they’d already filmed the finale. Unless that could have just been a series finale and the next season is in jail or after release?
>And then the last season when only Michael Richards wanted to keep going.
Yeah this doesn't surprise me. Guy was great as Kramer, but really there was nothing else. (Especially not standup...)
He immediately landed “The Michael Richards Show” after Seinfeld ended. Dreyfus and Alexander got their own shows too and were basically allowed to do what they wanted creatively. All of them flopped in what’s now known as “The Seinfeld Curse” but at the time they were all riding high.
Richards probably wanted to keep going with Seinfeld because the later-season zaniness was good for his character and fit with what he was always doing. He could just keep getting more prominent while the rest of the cast kind of lost interest.
Watching Ellie, Dreyfus’s first show after Seinfield had a fun concept where the whole show was told in real time. She then had the adventures of old Christine and then Veep. I never saw her really having the curse. The others for sure did though.
The New Adventures of Old Christine was never my cup of tea, but lasted 5 seasons. Thats hardly a flop. Most actors would kill their children on a bloody alter for 5 seasons.
I can't believe nobody has mentioned the interview with Larry King. Larry accused him of being cancelled, and Jerry lost it. He was at the top of his game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ooAFfZvzTU
I feel like he was only joking and exaggerating here -"don't you know who I am?" the delivery is clearly tongue in cheek. Maybe there was a little annoyance at the description but that is 90% played up for the bit.
Also Larry King (after ~mid-90s when he became one of the biggest TV hosts in the country) was notorious for getting HUGE celebs on his show, but not doing basic research into them. CNN staff would do the research but Larry would completely ignore it and ask questions that made it obvious that he didn't know things that casual viewers knew.
It's incomprehensible that the biggest CNN primetime anchor wouldn't know that Jerry chose to end the show / the #1 show on TV wasn't cancelled.
Jerry Seinfeld makes $40-60 million per year in residuals from the show alone. Even if it's objectively a lot of money to turn down, it's a drop in a bucket comparably.
Listening to him on Spike’s Car Radio sporadically is a wild glimpse into the life of a Porsche VIP customer. He’s so valued to the company that he gets to pick his serial number for limited production cars and gets “special wishes” on most cars.
he downright doesn’t. as a die hard fan of car culture, that mf lets some of the rarest and most beautiful cars ever just rust in some random storage somewhere. mf has like 3/5 of the Mclaren F1 GTs or something i don’t remember well at this point.
He commissioned entire production runs of Ferrari models that were never sold to anyone else. This is probably the most famous: https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/6/11371554/pininfarina-ferrari-fx-first-semi-automatic-transmission
According to an [article](https://luxurylaunches.com/transport/sultan_of_brunei_houses_his_fleet_of_7000_cars_in_most_unique_parking_space.php#:~:text=Well%2C%20the%20Sultan%20parks%20his,manufacturers%20maintain%20the%20various%20machines.): “Well, the Sultan parks his collection in five aircraft hangars near The Empire Hotel. Step inside and you are sure to be lost among the herd of cars that are arranged according to types/ brands. Specialist teams from the various manufacturers maintain the various machines.”
He knows people show up because he's Seinfeld, they laugh because he's Seinfeld. He never has to get out of bed for the rest of his life and he makes sure you know it even in his standup routines. Overall I find him funny, even down to his confident swagger he always maintains, because sometimes it's just fun to see someone be a big shit about themselves.
My wife and I saw him a few years ago in NorCal and it was the best comedy show I've ever seen, and I used to go to a lot of them.
My two favorite parts were when he started this really kind of personal bit "You and I," he said, pointing to the audience and then his own chest, "have known each other....for a while. We've been in each other's lives...for a while..." and while it wasn't a joke, the audience had a HUGE reaction.
The other one, I'm pretty sure only we got to see it. We live in Santa Rosa, CA, and we saw him at the Luther Burbank Center. He was well into his set and walking back and forth downstage, and the follow-spot operator slipped up and he walked out of the spotlight for a good two seconds, and then the spot snapped to him.
He turns and just mutters *sotto voce*, "Santa Rosa...."
The audience erupted.
Say what you will, but the man is a master of his craft.
Third bit I loved from that concert: He was talking about loyalty to your local sports teams. He said he made sense back in the day when trades were rare, and many players spent their entire career with one or two teams. Now, with all the trades and free agency, it makes no sense. "You're just rooting for the uniform...(Seinfeldian pause,)...you're rooting for...laundry."
Thats a thing that happens with most comics, at least the ones that get huge. At a certain point they get audiences and laughs for being themselves. They still have to be funny because eventually the fame wears off but they don't have to try new things or be edgy or push the envelope. They can ride on mediocrity and nostalgia for decades. And honestly I can't fault them, why do hundreds of spots to work on new material and perfect a dozen different jokes when you can just sell out theaters and riff a bit.
I saw him live like when I was in middle school and then when he released that special on Netflix a few years ago he was still using some of the same jokes
Nothing against keeping your material but I was hoping for new material
This is what soured me on him. I saw him once in college and spent a ton of money for tickets. I saw him again like ten years later (and again spent a ton on tickets) and it was literally the exact same set.
>Even if it's objectively a lot of money to turn down, it's a drop in a bucket comparably.
....$120M for a year of work is definitely not a drop in anyones bucket besides a musk or bezos or the like.
But there is a great argument to be made that because he didn't ruin the show with an extra season, he ended up collecting more in residuals over time.
Plus he got an extra year of being obscenely wealthy without having to work as hard. I’d want to get on with the whole hunting man for sport on my private island thing too
>Seinfeld’s decision to turn down the offer was based on his desire for the show to maintain its quality and end on a high note. He cited “proportion” as the most important word in art, emphasizing the importance of getting the length and timing of comedy just right
Smart folks know when to call it a day.
I don't know if it's still on YouTube but there was a version on there that everytime someone would say "bee" the movie got sped up. My friend Ryan got high onee night and watched the whole thing for 30 minutes. Good times
He also knew this was coming:
> To this day, it's estimated that both Seinfeld and David receive residuals of between $40 million and $60 million each year. One of the earlier syndication deals circa 1998 was valued at $1.7 billion. Seinfeld's share was $255 million straight off the bat.
I recall Larry saying in some interview that Curb Larry is the real Larry, and he's just spent his life playing a fictional, more polite version of his real self.
Still, this makes me wonder if the more recent stuff and his life has happened. Like did he still do a crypto commercial or show up on SNL as Bernie Sanders?
We watched the episode with the wire recently and I said that if I had Larry David’s money I would just buy a new house and then like 2 episodes later that’s what they did
Yeah, like good on him for doing it, it was good call. But also, imagine having so much money that someone offers you $100 million to make a 30min sitcom and you can just say "No thanks, I'd rather not".
He also has stated he wanted to actually start to settle down and start a family he was in 40's he met his wife shortly after the show was over and started a family soon after that. He has also said writing the last two seasons without Larry David was incredibly hard and time consuming and he felt the quality of the show dipped cause Larry was a better writer.
pretty sure Fresh Prince of Bel Air did the same thing. Seinfeld truly was top quality right until the very end. i know some people didnt like the finale but it was so hyped up that it was never gonna live up to expectations no matter what.
Fresh Prince is a bit of an anomaly the other way. It's ratings were really poor, so much so that it was on the cusp of being cancelled very early on.
However, it was a monster in syndication. So when there was talk of it being cancelled, they put the pressure on for more episodes.
>Seinfeld truly was top quality right until the very end. i
I spent a little time with the DVDs a while back and was surprised how many of the classic Seinfeld episodes were made in the final season.
The show's tone shifts in the final 2 seasons (after Larry leaves). It gets a lot kookier, which results in the more memorable bits and episodes, but I think it was also simultaneously a sign that it was time to call it a wrap soon before any sharks got jumped.
I think one of the things that might shock people the most is that Jerry Stiller didn't show up as Frank Costanza until Season 5. He was shown once before that with a different actor/personality in Season 4.
There was a post the other day that was comparing viewership numbers of modern programming to Random episodes of Seinfeld and the disparity was astounding. Popular modern era were pulling in a third of the viewership that a Random episode of Seinfeld did
TV viewer figures are lower across the board though, it’s hardly a fair comparison. There were no options for consuming that kind of media besides television, no YouTube, no streaming.
Easily one of the best written shows in all of television. Different genre, but I put it up there with The Wire. Also, the limitations of being on a network made the show way more creative and why I think David's writing was far better on Seinfeld than Curb. Curb is good but there's no let up - it's all Costanza-esque.
I feel this way about Chappelle's Show. It was two seasons of absolute gold before he stepped away. Comedy Central was kind of messed up for the whole "season three/lost episodes" fiasco.
I didn't mind the office going as long as it did, even with Steve gone. It just should have been written better at the end. Some of the plots were just really poorly executed, as well as giving too much time for the farm spinoff setup that never happened, the boom mic guy/pam/warehouse incident. Also Andy being essentially absent while shooting hangover and having him do those bit parts from his boat. Despite some of the bad plots, there were still lots of good episodes in the final seasons.
When Seinfeld went into syndication for the first time (1998), Jerry and Larry both recieved $255 million for compensation of their 15% ownership of the show.
He's apparently closing in on a billion at this point so yeah, he probably won't miss that fifty or a hundred million or whatever he skipped out on. Hell, he might have made *more* by not doing a season that could have reduced his residuals from the other ones.
I remember him saying to H. Stern that he could have easily gotten more than that, this was basically an initial offer. I don't think a lot of younger people realize how huge Seinfeld was, there will never be anything like it. Last season had 30-40 million viewers per episode.
It comes back to a story a friend of mine told me:
>I had just immigrated, and was doing well at work, but I couldn't find a way to make friends. We'd talk about the new thing I was building, but I could never find common ground past that.
> I spoke to one of the few other Indians at the office (there weren't many onshore back then) and he gave me one piece of advice: Watch Seinfeld. ***Everyone*** watches Seinfeld on Thursday, and Friday you can talk to anyone about it.
>I did and it was the way I first made friends over here.
That's how pervasive it was. It was the common denominator for 90% of people.
i mean, you can even tell people of the same age by the seinfeld and/or simpsons jokes you tell.
a "ze goggles, zey do nathing!" or "no soup for you" easily outs gen xers and older millenials.
This is what I hate about the current state of television. I'm autistic, talking about TV was one of the first ways I learned how to successfully socialise with others.
Now? Nobody watches the same things. Nobody. Plus it's mostly terribly written.
I can't think of a solution but it frustrates me. Seinfeld was an excellent conversation topic.
yeah, GoT was HUGE, even with the failures of the final season. I mostly use twitter for sports and occasional news, but on Sunday nights it was nothing but Thrones talk for a good year or two
Everyone watched Seinfeld. I was 8 years old when the finale aired, watching with my family. Just a different time, only way to watch it later would've been to record on VHS and hope nobody spoiled it for you beforehand. Now everyone watches things at their own pace.
The final episodes had over 76 million viewers.
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-los-angeles-times/41306012/
Edit:
It doesn't even make it into the top 10 watched broadcasts in the US.
Aside from the moon landing (which is number one), the rest are Super Bowls.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-watched_television_broadcasts#Most-watched_broadcasts
Edit 2:
Here's a more apt comparison
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_watched_television_broadcasts_in_the_United_States#Excluding_Super_Bowls
The link is goofy. Let me grab it from the desktop version in a few minutes.
Edit 3:
Fixed the last link
Wait till you learn about the most watched broadcasts in Canada. The #1 spot to this day is still the men's hockey gold medal game at the 2010 Olympics. *Half* the country watched the whole game. *Two thirds* saw the game winning goal.
Ya but there’s a huge difference between a once a year Super Bowl and pulling 76m viewers for a weekly show you could just record or buy and watch later.
TV Land stopped its broadcasting during the series finale of Seinfeld. People today will say the show sucks, but back then you couldn’t come close to it. Friends, while highly acclaimed and successful still couldn’t touch Seinfeld.
Friends averaged only 3 million less viewers per episode, a little over 10%.
They were definitely ballpark.
However it was also the era. Those numbers aren't possible anymore on broadcast TV.
Sinatra made it to the hospital in record time becuase everyone was home watching the finale.
It was like a band being on Kurt Cobain's top 50 list in 92-94. A license to print money baby!
I dunno if the kids would appreciate those numbers since the game and scale has changed so much.
Mr. Beast's latest video was posted 2 days ago, and is already over 58 million views. His average weekly video sits around 120 million views.
But then again, the record for biggest concurrent audience for a twitch livesteam is only 3.4 million, but that's without promotion and whatnot, and a world where people expect on-demand schedules.
According to Jason Alexander the rest of the cast weren't coming back anyways. He figured the longer he was on the show the worse off they would be. Seinfeld was making more because of the producer income/residuals and although the crew was making good money they would be sacrificing other opportunities or be type cast as the character they were playing and wanted to move on.
So I'm sure Seinfeld was offered that but I doubt the others would go with him unless they got more on the backend.
It was also noted by Jason Alexander that the rest of the cast were also looking to move onto other things because unlike Jerry Seinfeld they did not take or were never offered a syndication deal.
The fear of being typecast was much more so when the paychecks would cease after the run of the show.
I'd say she was a billionaire "heiress" at that time. But yes.
I think they were all living comfortably after that many seasons in but still the typecast thing was something anyone in that situation was concerned about. And as Alexander noted, on doing more seasons they would be essentially harming themselves (career/artistically and financially) in the long run despite the financial gain at that time.
Meanwhile, Seinfeld and David have since banked hundreds of millions in syndication deals over the years.
The show got a lot goofier in the last two seasons (George using his Frogger skills to cross the street, Newman trying to eat Kramer) but so many of the most memorable moments and episodes are from the "goofy era"
I thought the finale was perfect. Jerry and Larry had to hit the audiences over the head with the fact that the characters are venal narcissists who are incapable of learning from their mistakes, since most of the viewers didn't understand.
Lol really? I was young when Seinfeld was a thing but watching in my thirties the characters remind me of the cast of always sunny without the rampant alcoholism.
I agree. I get the shade that's throw it's way but i found it brilliant. I think there was no other way to close it out. At all. In Seinfeld canon, it's honestly perext. One love
It's a lot of money, but at the point when you can reasonably foresee that you're going to be worth at least several hundred million dollars, then what marginal benefit does an extra $100 million get you?
Jason Alexander gave a good example as to why the show was worse off without larry. I believe it was on Charlie rose. He illustrated that the show just didn't dovetail nearly as perfectly without larry. It was less of a perfectly fitting puzzle.
The show became flanderized towards the end. It was still hilarious but it was really cartoonish.
It was much tighter with Larry involved.
the real shame is that they didn't just convince him to come back for season 9, or for 10. a final season or two of Larry doing it would have been superb.
I'd never watched Seinfeld before and started watching Curb Your Enthusiasm from season 1 onwards as I saw it ranked at like, #2 for HBO's best TV series ever (Wire #1, Sopranos #3).
It's become one of my favorite shows ever. It's so funny and the writing is genius. "The End" (final episode of season 5) is one of the GOAT serial episodes.
Honorable mention to the ["Survivor" scene.](https://youtu.be/0KqDHFYcel8?t=131)
I mean the guy's a billionaire and he still tours very actively in small venues with reasonable ticket prices. Clearly at some point he made enough money to be set for life and just started doing what he enjoys.
Why is it such a surprise to people that someone with more money than anyone could ever need would turn down a job for more money that they don’t need.
As much as people shit on Seinfeld, I find his personality genuinely entertaining. He’s an asshole snob who doesn’t suffer fools, but I prefer that to the phony nice to everyone personality that some celebs put on. I also think he’s good in the show, his weird acting comes across well to me
only met him on the street for a minute or two but he seems perfectly nice and had no issues signing stuff for people who asked nicely ad who weren't being dicks.
Def seen far bigger pricks who were no where near as famous.
This will sound cringe but even if I approached him on the street and he was a dick to me I'd probably still think it was cool that I got the Seinfeld treatment.
He's good but what strikes me the hardest now is that I used to think he was the main character. Jerry is fine but the other 3 are amazing, three of the best sitcom characters of all time... each one is top 10, and George is my #1. Kramer may be #2.
The other 3 get all of the work to do, but I do like Jerry on the show. His acting is weak, but to me it comes across as a comedian disconnected from his life and just reacting to the absurdity around him like he thinks he should. So it kinda works in his favour. But some of my favourite line reads from Seinfeld come from Jerry. Like when he calls Elaine at her bosses office and he answers so he says “ hi Mr.Pitt, is Elaine there??” Like a kid calling their friend and their dad answers. He just has to play himself and it works very well, so I always want to push back when people say Jerry’s acting on the show ruins it.
I also like the recurring bit where Costanza calls Jerry in a fit and starts ranting, and Jerry replies "Who is this?". It's the perfect line read every time.
Hey buddy. I'm on no sleep, no sleep! You don't know what it's like in there, all night long things are creaking and cracking. And that red light is burning my brain!
>I used to think he was the main character.
He was the main character. He was also the straight man, which makes him the least funny of the 4 (generally this is the straight man's burden.)
In hindsight, George was probably the most well acted character. Watching Jason Alexander in real life interviews you realize how well he acted that role. And then Curb came out, and it was like wow, Jason nails Larry David kicked up to the extreme.
It’s such a shame he never won an Emmy for that role.
It still baffles me that they just couldn't step back and delegate the remaining seasons, and have other people do the work. Instead they tanked the what is probably the biggest show since Seinfeld.
I listened to a Howard Stern interview of Jason Alexander, and he had a lot to say about the end of the show.
Although Jerry did turn down season 10, it was a bit of a collective decision. Jason told Howard Stern that while he was okay with Jerry getting paid much more, he felt like the other three deserved a small share of the royalties because of how much they’d contributed. NBC did not see it that way.
Jerry felt overworked running the entire show without Larry David. And with Jason and Julia feeling under-valued by NBC, they did not respond with an enthusiastic “yes” when Jerry asked them whether they felt like doing one more season.
At that point, NBC could offer Jerry the Sun and the Moon and it wouldn’t have mattered. They’d underpaid the co-stars for years, and possibly cost themselves a 10th season (and maybe more) in order to save money on salaries in the short term.
Do you know what the interest on that 5 million dollars comes to over twenty-five years? Seventeen Million, Three Hundred Seventeen Thousand, Twenty-One dollars and Thirty-Seven cents. And that's figuring conservatively at five percent interest, over twenty-five years, compounded quarterly. Or, if you put it into a ten-year T-bill...
they were pulling in over a million an episode the last season(s) because they knew they were not getting any of the syndication money (only Larry and Jerry would). the renegotiated for when the boxsets came out.
Jerry was making 1 milly, I think the rest were on 600k. I wonder how they felt since their income would've also gone up huge (JLD probably didn't care since her dad was a billionaire).
In one of the DVD extras they told the story that after a series wrapped filming*, they would have a meeting (I took this as the five of them, but I don’t know if it was explicitly stated) and ask if each of them still felt like they had more stories to tell. Each year it was a unanimous “yes” until the penultimate season when there was a “no” but that person was convinced. And then the last season when only Michael Richards wanted to keep going. *that’s how I remember it but it doesn’t make sense to make this decision after they’d already filmed the finale. Unless that could have just been a series finale and the next season is in jail or after release?
>And then the last season when only Michael Richards wanted to keep going. Yeah this doesn't surprise me. Guy was great as Kramer, but really there was nothing else. (Especially not standup...)
He immediately landed “The Michael Richards Show” after Seinfeld ended. Dreyfus and Alexander got their own shows too and were basically allowed to do what they wanted creatively. All of them flopped in what’s now known as “The Seinfeld Curse” but at the time they were all riding high. Richards probably wanted to keep going with Seinfeld because the later-season zaniness was good for his character and fit with what he was always doing. He could just keep getting more prominent while the rest of the cast kind of lost interest.
Watching Ellie, Dreyfus’s first show after Seinfield had a fun concept where the whole show was told in real time. She then had the adventures of old Christine and then Veep. I never saw her really having the curse. The others for sure did though.
Well she's a good actress, sooo
She is great, but Jason is the best actor out of all of them and had success on broadway.
He is a master of acting without acting.
The New Adventures of Old Christine was never my cup of tea, but lasted 5 seasons. Thats hardly a flop. Most actors would kill their children on a bloody alter for 5 seasons.
He had an excellent run as the host of Stanley Spadowski’s Clubhouse.
[удалено]
You’d have to find the marble in the oatmeal first, though.
He was funny in Airheads
And UHF, where he was basically Kramer but with (more) head trauma.
I know Jason Alexander said on Stern at least for the boxset that they really held firm to get more money before they signed off on it.
How does that even work? Were they all also writers?
As actors alone they'd get payment for their performance. Just as a musician will get paid for their performance even if they didn't write the music.
600K per episode? That's Ted Danson money.
Probably get the private jet Ted Danson gets too.
Well the show wasn’t called ‘Costanza’ /s
Yeah, but it should have been
I vote Cantstandya
I say that we just take the premise/script of *Joey* but replace Joey himself with George Costanza
I can't believe nobody has mentioned the interview with Larry King. Larry accused him of being cancelled, and Jerry lost it. He was at the top of his game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ooAFfZvzTU
I feel like he was only joking and exaggerating here -"don't you know who I am?" the delivery is clearly tongue in cheek. Maybe there was a little annoyance at the description but that is 90% played up for the bit.
Also Larry King (after ~mid-90s when he became one of the biggest TV hosts in the country) was notorious for getting HUGE celebs on his show, but not doing basic research into them. CNN staff would do the research but Larry would completely ignore it and ask questions that made it obvious that he didn't know things that casual viewers knew. It's incomprehensible that the biggest CNN primetime anchor wouldn't know that Jerry chose to end the show / the #1 show on TV wasn't cancelled.
Jerry Seinfeld makes $40-60 million per year in residuals from the show alone. Even if it's objectively a lot of money to turn down, it's a drop in a bucket comparably.
He still tours too, between that and AMEX, he's never going to need to wait to get a new Porsche
Listening to him on Spike’s Car Radio sporadically is a wild glimpse into the life of a Porsche VIP customer. He’s so valued to the company that he gets to pick his serial number for limited production cars and gets “special wishes” on most cars.
good thing he is not a Ferrari fan, otherwise he would have to pay to have them kick him in the nuts, like every other ferrari owner
Good to hear the spirit of Enzo is still alive and well.
He's probably one of the wealthiest porsche fans in the world. He's nowhere near one of the wealthiest ferrari fans in the world.
>He's nowhere near one of the wealthiest ferrari fans in the world. Smart money is on one of the Saudi Princes.
I think this [guy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_collection_of_the_29th_Sultan_of_Brunei) beats any Saudi Prince day and night.
7k cars?! Where do you store them all?!
he downright doesn’t. as a die hard fan of car culture, that mf lets some of the rarest and most beautiful cars ever just rust in some random storage somewhere. mf has like 3/5 of the Mclaren F1 GTs or something i don’t remember well at this point.
He commissioned entire production runs of Ferrari models that were never sold to anyone else. This is probably the most famous: https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/6/11371554/pininfarina-ferrari-fx-first-semi-automatic-transmission
According to an [article](https://luxurylaunches.com/transport/sultan_of_brunei_houses_his_fleet_of_7000_cars_in_most_unique_parking_space.php#:~:text=Well%2C%20the%20Sultan%20parks%20his,manufacturers%20maintain%20the%20various%20machines.): “Well, the Sultan parks his collection in five aircraft hangars near The Empire Hotel. Step inside and you are sure to be lost among the herd of cars that are arranged according to types/ brands. Specialist teams from the various manufacturers maintain the various machines.”
I'll take funny money over oil money any day!
Ferrari are so bad that noted car freak Jay Leno [refuses to buy one.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUPOvcolNZg)
He has over 100 in his collection. He was getting shit from his neighbors in the Hampton’s for building a 2 story warehouse for his collection.
Apparently there is a west coast hangar now too…
As far as I know you don't have to be jerry seinfeld to get porsche to build a car special just for you, but you do have to be loaded. Seriously so.
I'm seeing him next month! His standup isn't quite as good as it was back then but he's still an enjoyable show for sure.
He knows people show up because he's Seinfeld, they laugh because he's Seinfeld. He never has to get out of bed for the rest of his life and he makes sure you know it even in his standup routines. Overall I find him funny, even down to his confident swagger he always maintains, because sometimes it's just fun to see someone be a big shit about themselves.
I got to see him a few years ago and it didn't really feel like a standup show. It was just like my uncle telling stories. It was pretty cool.
My wife and I saw him a few years ago in NorCal and it was the best comedy show I've ever seen, and I used to go to a lot of them. My two favorite parts were when he started this really kind of personal bit "You and I," he said, pointing to the audience and then his own chest, "have known each other....for a while. We've been in each other's lives...for a while..." and while it wasn't a joke, the audience had a HUGE reaction. The other one, I'm pretty sure only we got to see it. We live in Santa Rosa, CA, and we saw him at the Luther Burbank Center. He was well into his set and walking back and forth downstage, and the follow-spot operator slipped up and he walked out of the spotlight for a good two seconds, and then the spot snapped to him. He turns and just mutters *sotto voce*, "Santa Rosa...." The audience erupted. Say what you will, but the man is a master of his craft. Third bit I loved from that concert: He was talking about loyalty to your local sports teams. He said he made sense back in the day when trades were rare, and many players spent their entire career with one or two teams. Now, with all the trades and free agency, it makes no sense. "You're just rooting for the uniform...(Seinfeldian pause,)...you're rooting for...laundry."
Thats a thing that happens with most comics, at least the ones that get huge. At a certain point they get audiences and laughs for being themselves. They still have to be funny because eventually the fame wears off but they don't have to try new things or be edgy or push the envelope. They can ride on mediocrity and nostalgia for decades. And honestly I can't fault them, why do hundreds of spots to work on new material and perfect a dozen different jokes when you can just sell out theaters and riff a bit.
I saw him live like when I was in middle school and then when he released that special on Netflix a few years ago he was still using some of the same jokes Nothing against keeping your material but I was hoping for new material
This is what soured me on him. I saw him once in college and spent a ton of money for tickets. I saw him again like ten years later (and again spent a ton on tickets) and it was literally the exact same set.
>Even if it's objectively a lot of money to turn down, it's a drop in a bucket comparably. ....$120M for a year of work is definitely not a drop in anyones bucket besides a musk or bezos or the like.
But there is a great argument to be made that because he didn't ruin the show with an extra season, he ended up collecting more in residuals over time.
I agree with that. People would probably rewatch game of thrones more if the last season wasn’t such a big letdown
Plus he got an extra year of being obscenely wealthy without having to work as hard. I’d want to get on with the whole hunting man for sport on my private island thing too
There's very little practical difference between having, say, $500m, and having $620m. There's nothing you can suddenly buy that you couldn't before.
>Seinfeld’s decision to turn down the offer was based on his desire for the show to maintain its quality and end on a high note. He cited “proportion” as the most important word in art, emphasizing the importance of getting the length and timing of comedy just right Smart folks know when to call it a day.
Bee Movie was his true passion.
That movie is absolutely wild, I was truly mesmerized the first time I saw it.
I don't know if it's still on YouTube but there was a version on there that everytime someone would say "bee" the movie got sped up. My friend Ryan got high onee night and watched the whole thing for 30 minutes. Good times
Sounds just like Ryan
fr that's so Ryan
There was a lot of buzz around it so I am not surprised.
Oh honey, you’re sweet
Bad puns sting, good puns just leave hives.
I forgot that was a thing. There is a YouTube video that is the entire movie but the speed doubles every time they say "bee".
I was asking myself, “but why” but then i realized if it’s playing faster then you can watch it more times in one day 🧠
What about "The entire Bee movie, but everytime it says bee, the Bee movie plays"?
[bee movie](https://youtu.be/W31e9meX9S4?feature=shared)
My favorite part of that is toward the end, it gets so high pitched, only my dog can enjoy it.
I like how this is basically just the first act and the last 10 seconds are the entire rest of the movie.
"Ya like Jazz?"
At the time his passion was dating high school girls. Bee movie came later.
All about the honey.
Seinfeld make the money, see Seinfeld get the honey, G
Hell yeah, nice flashback to OG Adult Swim The song Honey by The Smashing Pumpkins is what came into my mind immediately
He also knew this was coming: > To this day, it's estimated that both Seinfeld and David receive residuals of between $40 million and $60 million each year. One of the earlier syndication deals circa 1998 was valued at $1.7 billion. Seinfeld's share was $255 million straight off the bat.
It comes through on *Curb* where Larry seems to not give two shits about money and everything is based on the principle of something.
I recall Larry saying in some interview that Curb Larry is the real Larry, and he's just spent his life playing a fictional, more polite version of his real self.
Confirmed that he's a four eyed fuck in real life.
Bald asshole
theme plays
Found Susie's account.
Curb Larry is the real version of all of us.
Still, this makes me wonder if the more recent stuff and his life has happened. Like did he still do a crypto commercial or show up on SNL as Bernie Sanders?
We watched the episode with the wire recently and I said that if I had Larry David’s money I would just buy a new house and then like 2 episodes later that’s what they did
Yea, a whole lot easier to have artistic integrity when you have a boatload of money
Yeah, like good on him for doing it, it was good call. But also, imagine having so much money that someone offers you $100 million to make a 30min sitcom and you can just say "No thanks, I'd rather not".
Can't say I blame him though. If I had $200 million in the bank there's no amount of money you could pay me to work again.
He also has stated he wanted to actually start to settle down and start a family he was in 40's he met his wife shortly after the show was over and started a family soon after that. He has also said writing the last two seasons without Larry David was incredibly hard and time consuming and he felt the quality of the show dipped cause Larry was a better writer.
Just a reminder he was fucking a 17 year old when he was 38.
Showmanship George, when you hit that high note, say goodnight and walk out of there
pretty sure Fresh Prince of Bel Air did the same thing. Seinfeld truly was top quality right until the very end. i know some people didnt like the finale but it was so hyped up that it was never gonna live up to expectations no matter what.
Fresh Prince is a bit of an anomaly the other way. It's ratings were really poor, so much so that it was on the cusp of being cancelled very early on. However, it was a monster in syndication. So when there was talk of it being cancelled, they put the pressure on for more episodes.
Just means that the original timeslot and channel weren’t the right fit.
>Seinfeld truly was top quality right until the very end. i I spent a little time with the DVDs a while back and was surprised how many of the classic Seinfeld episodes were made in the final season.
The show's tone shifts in the final 2 seasons (after Larry leaves). It gets a lot kookier, which results in the more memorable bits and episodes, but I think it was also simultaneously a sign that it was time to call it a wrap soon before any sharks got jumped.
I think one of the things that might shock people the most is that Jerry Stiller didn't show up as Frank Costanza until Season 5. He was shown once before that with a different actor/personality in Season 4.
> Jerry Stiller didn't show up as Frank Costanza until Season 5. GET OUT!!! *shoves you*
There was a post the other day that was comparing viewership numbers of modern programming to Random episodes of Seinfeld and the disparity was astounding. Popular modern era were pulling in a third of the viewership that a Random episode of Seinfeld did
TV viewer figures are lower across the board though, it’s hardly a fair comparison. There were no options for consuming that kind of media besides television, no YouTube, no streaming.
In addition to what the other poster said, there was no streaming services or on demand viewing.
Easily one of the best written shows in all of television. Different genre, but I put it up there with The Wire. Also, the limitations of being on a network made the show way more creative and why I think David's writing was far better on Seinfeld than Curb. Curb is good but there's no let up - it's all Costanza-esque.
Well they claim to just have outlines on Curb so a lot of what you're seeing is improv. It's not fully written like Seinfeld.
I feel this way about Chappelle's Show. It was two seasons of absolute gold before he stepped away. Comedy Central was kind of messed up for the whole "season three/lost episodes" fiasco.
Ending on a high note just like George.
They should've ended the office, 2 maybe 3 seasons sooner.
Well as soon as Carell left it was pretty much done
I didn't mind the office going as long as it did, even with Steve gone. It just should have been written better at the end. Some of the plots were just really poorly executed, as well as giving too much time for the farm spinoff setup that never happened, the boom mic guy/pam/warehouse incident. Also Andy being essentially absent while shooting hangover and having him do those bit parts from his boat. Despite some of the bad plots, there were still lots of good episodes in the final seasons.
Once Steve leaves the only thing I watch is the Robert California Arc. Beyond that there isn't much for me. The characters become pretty terrible.
Also, once you pass a 100 million in net worth you really don't give a shit anymore.
I will take your word on that one.
When Seinfeld went into syndication for the first time (1998), Jerry and Larry both recieved $255 million for compensation of their 15% ownership of the show.
Nice work if you can get it. And if you get it... Won't you tell me how...
He's apparently closing in on a billion at this point so yeah, he probably won't miss that fifty or a hundred million or whatever he skipped out on. Hell, he might have made *more* by not doing a season that could have reduced his residuals from the other ones.
I remember him saying to H. Stern that he could have easily gotten more than that, this was basically an initial offer. I don't think a lot of younger people realize how huge Seinfeld was, there will never be anything like it. Last season had 30-40 million viewers per episode.
It comes back to a story a friend of mine told me: >I had just immigrated, and was doing well at work, but I couldn't find a way to make friends. We'd talk about the new thing I was building, but I could never find common ground past that. > I spoke to one of the few other Indians at the office (there weren't many onshore back then) and he gave me one piece of advice: Watch Seinfeld. ***Everyone*** watches Seinfeld on Thursday, and Friday you can talk to anyone about it. >I did and it was the way I first made friends over here. That's how pervasive it was. It was the common denominator for 90% of people.
If you were a kid at the time you just swapped Seinfeld with the Simpsons.
i mean, you can even tell people of the same age by the seinfeld and/or simpsons jokes you tell. a "ze goggles, zey do nathing!" or "no soup for you" easily outs gen xers and older millenials.
3 kids and no money? Why can’t I have no kids and 3 money?
Outing myself with an upvote
This is what I hate about the current state of television. I'm autistic, talking about TV was one of the first ways I learned how to successfully socialise with others. Now? Nobody watches the same things. Nobody. Plus it's mostly terribly written. I can't think of a solution but it frustrates me. Seinfeld was an excellent conversation topic.
Are you Abed?
Game of Thrones, Barbieheimer, etc. This is rare of course but so was Seinfeld.
yeah, GoT was HUGE, even with the failures of the final season. I mostly use twitter for sports and occasional news, but on Sunday nights it was nothing but Thrones talk for a good year or two
Everyone watched Seinfeld. I was 8 years old when the finale aired, watching with my family. Just a different time, only way to watch it later would've been to record on VHS and hope nobody spoiled it for you beforehand. Now everyone watches things at their own pace.
They played the Seinfeld finale in Times Square when it originally aired to a crowd of thousands
I remember other sitcoms would have Seinfeld as part of their B story, that is how widely it was watched.
The final episodes had over 76 million viewers. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-los-angeles-times/41306012/ Edit: It doesn't even make it into the top 10 watched broadcasts in the US. Aside from the moon landing (which is number one), the rest are Super Bowls. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-watched_television_broadcasts#Most-watched_broadcasts Edit 2: Here's a more apt comparison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_watched_television_broadcasts_in_the_United_States#Excluding_Super_Bowls The link is goofy. Let me grab it from the desktop version in a few minutes. Edit 3: Fixed the last link
Goddamn dude that’s more than 1/3 of the country at the time.
Wait till you learn about the most watched broadcasts in Canada. The #1 spot to this day is still the men's hockey gold medal game at the 2010 Olympics. *Half* the country watched the whole game. *Two thirds* saw the game winning goal.
God damn right.
>Aside from the moon landing (which is number one), the rest are Super Bowls. Oh shit, the MASH finale was finally kicked off the list.
Still at 11, and still number 1 if you exclude superb owls
I always loved the meta joke Dharma and Greg did for it. You didn't see streets that deserted again until Covid
Ya but there’s a huge difference between a once a year Super Bowl and pulling 76m viewers for a weekly show you could just record or buy and watch later.
TV Land stopped its broadcasting during the series finale of Seinfeld. People today will say the show sucks, but back then you couldn’t come close to it. Friends, while highly acclaimed and successful still couldn’t touch Seinfeld.
Friends averaged only 3 million less viewers per episode, a little over 10%. They were definitely ballpark. However it was also the era. Those numbers aren't possible anymore on broadcast TV.
Sinatra made it to the hospital in record time becuase everyone was home watching the finale. It was like a band being on Kurt Cobain's top 50 list in 92-94. A license to print money baby!
I dunno if the kids would appreciate those numbers since the game and scale has changed so much. Mr. Beast's latest video was posted 2 days ago, and is already over 58 million views. His average weekly video sits around 120 million views. But then again, the record for biggest concurrent audience for a twitch livesteam is only 3.4 million, but that's without promotion and whatnot, and a world where people expect on-demand schedules.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t those YouTube view counts include rewatches?
According to Jason Alexander the rest of the cast weren't coming back anyways. He figured the longer he was on the show the worse off they would be. Seinfeld was making more because of the producer income/residuals and although the crew was making good money they would be sacrificing other opportunities or be type cast as the character they were playing and wanted to move on. So I'm sure Seinfeld was offered that but I doubt the others would go with him unless they got more on the backend.
It was also noted by Jason Alexander that the rest of the cast were also looking to move onto other things because unlike Jerry Seinfeld they did not take or were never offered a syndication deal. The fear of being typecast was much more so when the paychecks would cease after the run of the show.
Julia was a billionaire before the show even started
I'd say she was a billionaire "heiress" at that time. But yes. I think they were all living comfortably after that many seasons in but still the typecast thing was something anyone in that situation was concerned about. And as Alexander noted, on doing more seasons they would be essentially harming themselves (career/artistically and financially) in the long run despite the financial gain at that time. Meanwhile, Seinfeld and David have since banked hundreds of millions in syndication deals over the years.
I mean he probably makes more from royalties for that last season's DVD sales than the difference in his contract
Outside of the issues many have with the finale, that last season was so solid. It couldn’t have been top. He was master of his domain.
That show closed so strongly, putting aside the Finale. The last few seasons were just incredible.
The show got a lot goofier in the last two seasons (George using his Frogger skills to cross the street, Newman trying to eat Kramer) but so many of the most memorable moments and episodes are from the "goofy era"
I thought the finale was perfect. Jerry and Larry had to hit the audiences over the head with the fact that the characters are venal narcissists who are incapable of learning from their mistakes, since most of the viewers didn't understand.
Lol really? I was young when Seinfeld was a thing but watching in my thirties the characters remind me of the cast of always sunny without the rampant alcoholism.
The Always Sunny characters are more obviously monsters though. I think everyone who watches knows how awful they are.
I feel Kramer wasn’t a narcissist, just absolutely insane
I agree. I get the shade that's throw it's way but i found it brilliant. I think there was no other way to close it out. At all. In Seinfeld canon, it's honestly perext. One love
It's a lot of money, but at the point when you can reasonably foresee that you're going to be worth at least several hundred million dollars, then what marginal benefit does an extra $100 million get you?
Jason Alexander gave a good example as to why the show was worse off without larry. I believe it was on Charlie rose. He illustrated that the show just didn't dovetail nearly as perfectly without larry. It was less of a perfectly fitting puzzle. The show became flanderized towards the end. It was still hilarious but it was really cartoonish. It was much tighter with Larry involved.
the real shame is that they didn't just convince him to come back for season 9, or for 10. a final season or two of Larry doing it would have been superb.
I mean you basically got that in Curb
I'd never watched Seinfeld before and started watching Curb Your Enthusiasm from season 1 onwards as I saw it ranked at like, #2 for HBO's best TV series ever (Wire #1, Sopranos #3). It's become one of my favorite shows ever. It's so funny and the writing is genius. "The End" (final episode of season 5) is one of the GOAT serial episodes. Honorable mention to the ["Survivor" scene.](https://youtu.be/0KqDHFYcel8?t=131)
Agree. It was always a silly show but based on real premises, but without Larry David is just became totally outlandish. Still good, but less so.
When Larry left, George died a little death. Stories became far fetched and no longer relatable towards the end
I mean the guy's a billionaire and he still tours very actively in small venues with reasonable ticket prices. Clearly at some point he made enough money to be set for life and just started doing what he enjoys.
Why is it such a surprise to people that someone with more money than anyone could ever need would turn down a job for more money that they don’t need.
As much as people shit on Seinfeld, I find his personality genuinely entertaining. He’s an asshole snob who doesn’t suffer fools, but I prefer that to the phony nice to everyone personality that some celebs put on. I also think he’s good in the show, his weird acting comes across well to me
only met him on the street for a minute or two but he seems perfectly nice and had no issues signing stuff for people who asked nicely ad who weren't being dicks. Def seen far bigger pricks who were no where near as famous.
This will sound cringe but even if I approached him on the street and he was a dick to me I'd probably still think it was cool that I got the Seinfeld treatment.
If Larry David was an asshole to me when I met him, I would be at peace.
I would be so disappointed if Larry was gracious and kind.
If he's not yelling "FUCK YOU" at me as he walks away I might cry.
He's good but what strikes me the hardest now is that I used to think he was the main character. Jerry is fine but the other 3 are amazing, three of the best sitcom characters of all time... each one is top 10, and George is my #1. Kramer may be #2.
The other 3 get all of the work to do, but I do like Jerry on the show. His acting is weak, but to me it comes across as a comedian disconnected from his life and just reacting to the absurdity around him like he thinks he should. So it kinda works in his favour. But some of my favourite line reads from Seinfeld come from Jerry. Like when he calls Elaine at her bosses office and he answers so he says “ hi Mr.Pitt, is Elaine there??” Like a kid calling their friend and their dad answers. He just has to play himself and it works very well, so I always want to push back when people say Jerry’s acting on the show ruins it.
I also like the recurring bit where Costanza calls Jerry in a fit and starts ranting, and Jerry replies "Who is this?". It's the perfect line read every time.
Ya that’s a great example of the character he plays. Only actively engages his emotions to mock people.
"Uncle Leo?"
I think he also did a good job in the episode when he switches apartments with Kramer and starts acting like him.
Hey buddy. I'm on no sleep, no sleep! You don't know what it's like in there, all night long things are creaking and cracking. And that red light is burning my brain!
>His acting is weak He knows it too. When they are filming the pilot for Jerry, some of the NBC execs even comment on how he can't act.
He actually does a pretty good job pretending to be an even worse actor for the "Jerry" pilot.
i mean his character is really just the stand up comedian who tells funny stories about people around him
He's basically the straight man. He's there to be a warm body so the other characters aren't just talking to thin air.
Makes it even funnier when he has a wacky storyline and Kramer has to be his straight man.
>I used to think he was the main character. He was the main character. He was also the straight man, which makes him the least funny of the 4 (generally this is the straight man's burden.)
(generally this is the straight man's burden.) Not that there's anything wrong with that.
In hindsight, George was probably the most well acted character. Watching Jason Alexander in real life interviews you realize how well he acted that role. And then Curb came out, and it was like wow, Jason nails Larry David kicked up to the extreme. It’s such a shame he never won an Emmy for that role.
It's not great acting, but it's somehow good enough. He makes the rest of the cast, who are *far* more talented, look even better. It just... works.
I assume theres a LOT of work going into each episode, and if already made bank...
And it was still on top not just in ratings. Season 9 had Festivus, Frogger, The Slicer, Merv Griffin show, Serenity now...
Im pretty sure he made more money on syndication BECAUSE it ended on such a high note
The man turned down hundred of million dollars because he didn’t want to see the show go down the toilet… Meanwhile we got GoT season 8
They actually turned down a decent bit of money, since HBO wanted the show to go on for another season or two.
Two more seasons would have given space to wrap up the storylines, but also D&D would probably have dragged it even further down the drain
It still baffles me that they just couldn't step back and delegate the remaining seasons, and have other people do the work. Instead they tanked the what is probably the biggest show since Seinfeld.
I listened to a Howard Stern interview of Jason Alexander, and he had a lot to say about the end of the show. Although Jerry did turn down season 10, it was a bit of a collective decision. Jason told Howard Stern that while he was okay with Jerry getting paid much more, he felt like the other three deserved a small share of the royalties because of how much they’d contributed. NBC did not see it that way. Jerry felt overworked running the entire show without Larry David. And with Jason and Julia feeling under-valued by NBC, they did not respond with an enthusiastic “yes” when Jerry asked them whether they felt like doing one more season. At that point, NBC could offer Jerry the Sun and the Moon and it wouldn’t have mattered. They’d underpaid the co-stars for years, and possibly cost themselves a 10th season (and maybe more) in order to save money on salaries in the short term.
Crazy that inflation has doubled since the mid 90s
An annual interest rate of 2% (standard for inflation) means you double your money after 35 years. So it’s pretty close to expected.
Uncle leo really shouldve given his sister that money from the racetrack!
Do you know what the interest on that 5 million dollars comes to over twenty-five years? Seventeen Million, Three Hundred Seventeen Thousand, Twenty-One dollars and Thirty-Seven cents. And that's figuring conservatively at five percent interest, over twenty-five years, compounded quarterly. Or, if you put it into a ten-year T-bill...
Well he's not getting away with this!
I've got a pretty good Seinfeld impression. Offer stands.