Jerry Seinfeld Interview: How to Write a Joke | The New York Times

I know you think people are gonna be interested in this but they're not I've probably been working on this for two years two years I mean usually I write a bit in a couple days it's a long time to spend on something that means absolutely nothing but that's what I do that's what people want me to do is spend a lot of time wastefully so that then I can then waste their time comedy writing is something you don't see people doing it's a secretive thing I've never shown anybody this stuff I feel a little funny about it right now to tell you the truth [Music] in comedy what you do is you think of something that you think is funny and then you go from there it's a fun thing to say pop-tart I like the first line to be funny right away when I was a kid and they invented the pop-tart the back of my head blew right off and that that got the whole thing started that a specific part of my head blew off not just my head but just the back it was the 60s and we had toast we had orange juice that was frozen years in advance that you had a hack away out with a knife to get a couple of drops and it felt like you were committing a murder before you got on your school bus then I talked about shredded wheat which was like wrapping your lips around a wood chipper you have breakfast and then you had to take two days off for the scars to heal so you could speak again [Music] you always write on always yeah yeah no I don't like that cursor flash and looking at me like so what do you got mm-hmm yes the the BIC clear barrel blue which I wrote every episode of Seinfeld the TV series with that pen Larry and I used to we used to write him longhand because you can't be in this oh that's a drag so in the midst of that dark and hopeless moment the pop-tart suddenly appeared in the supermarket and we just stared at it like an alien spacecraft and we were like we were like chimps in the dirt playing with sticks what makes that joke is you got chimps dirt playing and sticks and seven words for them are funny chimps chimps are funny then there's the trying to America as a kid how did they know that there would be a need for a frosted fruit filled he-double rectangle in the same shape as the box it comes in and with the same nutrition as the box it comes in in the midst of that darkness and hopelessness the Kellogg's pop-tart appears and there was laughs there because that indicates always telling us a story and then my next joke that I'm want to get to is chimps in the dirt with sticks so now I'm looking for the connective tissue that gives me that really tight smooth link like a like a jigsaw puzzle link and if it's too long if it's just that split second too long you will shave letters off of words you count syllables you know to get it just it's more like songwriting [Music] then I had to figure out how to end the thing and that's the hardest part if you have a long bit the biggest laugh has to be at the end it has to be can't be in the middle or the beginning and this was very daunting once this pop-tart had come into the world I didn't understand why why we were still eating other kinds of food because this seemed to being definitely the new way to in the packet and two slots in the toaster why to one's not enough threes too many and they can't go stay up cuz they weren't ever fresh they can't go stale cuz they weren't ever fresh that was that took a long time and it I know it sounds like nothing and it is nothing you know in my world the wronger something feels the writer it is so to waste this much time on something this stupid is that's that felt good to me it's the exact opposite of what we do here at the times which is we spend appropriate amounts of time on deserving subjects so I'm the exact opposite inappropriate and undeserving subjects

Channel: The New York Times

Views: 2,465,373

Rating: 4.8590522 out of 5

Keywords: Jerry Seinfeld, Seinfeld, Seinfeld interview, jerry seinfeld stand up, jerry seinfeld interview, jerry seinfeld videos, jerry seinfeld jokes, jerry seinfeld routine, jerry seinfeld comedy, jerry seinfeld telling jokes, comedy writing, Funny, humor, How to write a joke, Seinfeld (TV Show), The New York Times, NY Times, NYT, Times Video, nytimes.com, news, newspaper, feature, reporting, Pop-Tart Joke, Jerry Seinfeld Cars and Coffee, Comedians in cars getting coffee

Id: itWxXyCfW5s

Length: 5min 2sec (302 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 20 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/SkyNTP]

Humor 101: Be silly about serious things. Be serious about silly things.

[u/Oceat]

It seems to me like I'm the only one who actually enjoyed the thought process behind his joke. I liked it!

[u/roger_]

Big fan of Jerry, but I still can't get over how terrible The Marriage Ref was.

[u/[deleted]]

Anyone ever see the HBO special Talking Funny? It's Seinfeld, Louis CK, Chris Rock and Ricky Gervais sitting around for an hour talking about the theory of comedy. Gervais is fucking annoying in ti, but it's interesting otherwise.

[u/picard_for_president]

the cursor bit was the best joke to me.

[u/TMaccius]

From an article about him while ago:

"I had a joke: 'Marriage is a bit of a chess game, except the board is made of flowing water and the pieces are made of smoke,'" he said. "This is a good joke, I love it, I've spent years on it. There's a little hitch: 'The board is made of flowing water.' I’d always lose the audience there. Flowing water? What does he mean? And repeating 'made of' was hurting things. So how can I say 'the board is made of flowing water' without saying 'made of'? A very small problem, but I could hear the confusion. A laugh to me is not a laugh. I see it, like at Caltech when they look at the tectonic plates. If I'm in the dark up there and I can just listen, I know exactly what’s going on. I know exactly when their attention has moved off me a little.

I've spent hours trying to figure out if there's anything funny about that line, but all I can think is, what the heck is wrong with his marriage?

[u/Tiban]

louis c.k. described him as a virtuoso on his field, polished and precise, to me this video adds to that statement

[u/[deleted]]

A video of Jerry doing stand-up on the Tonight Show earlier this march, fulfilling his dream of performing the pop-tart joke.

[u/UselessSaltyPennies]

Oh my god, I have not seen Jerry Seinfeld in a lonnngg time.