If you remove the whole one-of-the-biggest-and-greatest-sitcoms-ever thing, Jerry Seinfeld is just another comedian promoting his web series. So, today he did a Reddit AMA. Seinfeld was pretty game, honestly answering questions on a wide range of topics, including Seinfeld, cheese, the new Superman movie, and the cartoon that gave him anxiety growing up. Maybe most exciting is that he revealed that he and Larry David wrote a script of some sort together about “intentional mumbling.” Read the best of the best below. Sadly, he did not finally answer what was the deal.
On his new Larry David project:
We never obsess over anything that isn’t mundane. Most recent was intentional mumbling. We wrote this script for this thing that you will eventually see but I can’t reveal what it is at this time. All I can do is tell you is that it’s big, huge, gigantic. Even bigger than that Amazon package.
On if Seinfeld were on today (and why it isn’t):
Everything would have had to change. The character would have gotten married and started families, I suppose. But I still think everything has its life cycle and if you respect it, people enjoy it longer. And if you disrespect it - look at THE HANGOVER movie. If you made just one, the movie would be a comedy legend. Because they made 3, it isn’t.
On his favorite cheese:
Tilsiter cheese. Or mozarella on a slice of pizza. It’s very mild.
On Man of Steel:
I was so happy that they made another Superman movie! I’m really reluctant to be critical of it in any way. But I thought the glossing over of the figuring out a secret identity and why he felt he needed one was a huge missed opportunity for that character, and one of the most interesting things about Superman is the whole secret identity. So to me it was too much action / violence and not enough character study.
On Richie Rich:
Richie Rich, that comic book, made me anxious. Just the whole thing was kind of weird, it brought out strange, uncomfortable emotions of envy, and you know, sadness. He had parents, but it was one of the most depraved comic books of all. I wonder if it still exists, it can’t possibly still exist.
On hosting SNL:
I had a great time being on SNL. But I didn’t think that I was one of those great hosts that had all these different things that they could finally do on that show. So I think it’s better when other people host it.
On the SeinfeldToday and Seinfeld2000 Twitter accounts:
Oh this is a very painful subject. As you can probably imagine, over the 9 years of doing the show, Larry David and I sat through hundreds of ideas that people wanted to do on the show. And most of the ideas are not good. Which I saw Larry say the other day on some show, somebody asked him the same question and he said “I know you think it’s funny, but it’s really hard.” The ideas that Larry and I would respond to, I don’t even know, they just need to be very unique. It’s just a lot harder than it seems to come up with. And particularly for that show, where we tried to do things that were unusual, and you had to go through a lot of ideas to find the ones you like.
On laugh tracks:
This was something we struggled with quite often on Seinfeld. Because we had real laughs on the scenes that were shot in front of an audience, but then we would shoot other scenes that were not in front of the audience (which didn’t have any laughs) and then it felt like a bit of a mismatch, so we tried to compromise and put in a subtle laugh track. I think that one of the fun things of a sitcom is feeling like you’re in an audience even though you’re home, watching it by yourself. I have to say I like some sitcoms with them and some without. Depends on the show.
On driving on a track:
I have driven a car on a track, but I have never been in a race nor would I ever be in a race. I don’t want to be faster than somebody else, that seems like a psychological problem.
