Seinfeld's Gay Crisis: Not That There's Anything Wrong With That

of all of seinfeld's iconic catch phrases i am loving this yada yada thing she said i wasn't sponge worthy giddy up hello newman mulva nothing for you one of the most iconic is made up of just seven little words not that there's anything wrong with that nothing there's anything wrong with it not that there's anything wrong with that not at all it may be hard to believe now but in its early years seinfeld was a struggling show that was nearly cancelled more than once the research report on seinfeld was pretty disastrous and to make matters worse there was a rumor following its creator and star when people come up to me and goes jerry gay is jerry gay this kind of thing doesn't seem like a big deal today but in the years before seinfeld aired gay rumors were a huge problem for celebrities and just the sort of pressure that could spell disaster for a struggling show the network was up in arms so what do the creators of seinfeld do about it this is insane what have i got myself into hey i'm matt baume i make videos about pop culture and this is the story of how a struggling show confronted a risky rumor and coined one of tv's most famous catchphrases and how it almost never happened you can trace seinfeld's origins back to may of 1981 when jerry seinfeld made his first appearance on nbc's tonight show with johnny carson then they show you the satellite photo a photograph of the earth from 10 000 miles away can you tell if you should take a sweater or not from that shot jerry was a struggling 20-something comedian who worked odd jobs by day and appeared at comedy clubs by night often unpaid at this point in his career his main claim to fame was appearing on four episodes of the show benson where he played a struggling comedian i like everything about you except your jokes but they're funny they're not funny frankie he was so unappreciated on benson that not only did they quickly fire him they didn't even bother to tell him and i just showed up monday morning and there was no script and i said how come there's no and someone had to call me aside and say because you're not on the show anymore after that experience jerry figured sitcoms just weren't for him he mostly focused on live stand-up and appearing regularly on the tonight show jerry seinfeld thank you jerry for years he was a frequent face on nbc but only when most of the country was in bed for a long time this was all i was doing was this show and the little clubs but jerry's manager george shapiro believed that jerry belonged in bigger roles and he kept pestering nbc executives to have a meeting with jerry i said dear brandon call me a crazy guy but i think jerry seinfeld will soon be on nbc this went on for years to no avail and then finally his agent got the attention of two young executives warren littlefield who had recently been put in charge of prime time programming and rick ludwin a former joke writer for bob hope who was in charge of late night and specials they realized that through the tonight show jerry had appeared on the network dozens of times maybe it was time to think about giving him his own show so they brought him in for a meeting and asked him what kind of show he wanted to make to which jerry said he had no idea i said the only thing i ever had in mind was to have a meeting like this but what he did have was a friend named larry david who we wanted to collaborate with of course i really didn't have anything going at the time and i didn't have any money and i said sure fine jerry and larry had discovered that their styles fit well together at a birthday party for their friend lesbian comedian carol leifer larry had written some jokes for carol but i've been having a few drinks and i was kind of too drunk to read the material so you know everybody said oh jerry you read it when jerry read the lines for carol he got a lot of laughs and realized that he and larry had a similar sensibility there was just one catch larry barely had any tv experience he'd worked on a failed comedy show called fridays why was it called fridays well because it was just like saturday night live but not funny but not funny yeah and he wrote one sketch for saturday night live and then quit the show because he didn't like it if jerry was obscure larry was totally unknown and he said larry david and for me it was a loud and clear who but together jerry and larry started cooking up an idea for a show about a couple of friends commenting on the awkwardness of everyday life stories and characters would be inspired by the things that really happened to them to the point that they named characters after people that they really knew and i had a next-door neighbor who was a bit of an eccentric fellow named kenny kramer one day larry comes in and says to me crain i'd like to base a character on you and call him kramer is that okay and i said certainly it's okay as long as i get to play kramer and he says you can't be kramer and i said but i am kramer okay i'll tell you what you can do it on one condition whatever you want i get to play kramer you can't play cringe i am kramer but you can't act they presented the concept to nbc and i remember ending the meeting and i looked at rick and i said i don't know this was unlike anything else on television at the time this was when sitcoms tended to be about nuclear families workplaces wacky premises but this felt more like a little indie film i said i think the number one show in america right now is alf who's gonna watch this the audience for this show is me and i don't watch tv but warren and rick figured they'd at least give it a shot so they made a pilot pretty sure it wouldn't go anywhere and ran it by a test audience test audience hated it research can be a very very brutal day your your favorite children turn to crap the test audience felt that the supporting cast was not strong enough and that uh jerry himself was a weak lead feeling less than optimistic nbc aired the pilot in a summer dead zone that was typically used to burn off contractual obligations we sometimes referred to those sorts of uh dumpings as a garbage dump theater and it looked like that was the end of the line for the seinfeld project but those two executives who brought jerry in for a meeting warren and rick still thought there was something there they wanted to try making a few more episodes so they snuck some money out of the budget for late night specials to pay for our first season of seinfeld it wasn't much a usual season was 20-something episodes they could only find enough money for four four shows hmm they must be doing somebody a favor we're doing four oh well i think i'll hold on to my apartment then but that was enough to get started they put season one on the air a year after the pilot aired and they did okay not great the ratings were certainly low enough to justify cancelling it larry david was actually hoping that they would cancel it so he could do something else how am i going to do this i can't do it i cannot do it this is insane what have i got myself into but as it happened warren littlefield had just been promoted to the head of entertainment at nbc and he and rick ludwin still believed in the show they wanted to give it just a little more time to find its audience so they gave it an order for a second season i hung up that phone and i was traumatized i'm telling you tears came into my eyes i said this is crazy and i was petrified i couldn't believe it from there the show managed to limp along through season two and three with a small cult following always just kind of hovering in the middle of the pack never really getting much attention to be fair they had some tough competition the night that seinfeld was going to premiere we bombed baghdad they were also getting creamed in the ratings by another new show in contrast to seinfeld style home improvement was a very traditional conventional sitcom he's the command of carpentry and it was an instant ratings hit by this point seinfeld was running out of chances to prove itself so halfway through season four in an effort to boost viewership nbc moved it to a new time slot away from home improvement and into a prime thursday slot after cheers seinfeld was moving to thursdays 9 30 after cheers we didn't ask anybody we didn't tell anybody we just did it if seinfeld couldn't get better ratings there it was probably never gonna work so in season four the show pulled out all the stops with some particularly bold episodes there was the contest are you still master of your domain i'm queen of the castle the implant and by the way they're real and they're spectacular the junior mint how could they not notice it because it's a little mint it's a junior mint and a season-long meta-story about jerry and george making a show about nothing well why am i watching it because it's on tv not yet it's also the season that includes the now famous episode the outing which drew on a real-life experience that was particularly sensitive the outing episode starts with the gang making some small talk hey who do you think is the most unattractive world leader well if it's all time then there's no contest it begins and ends with brezhnev that's when elaine notices something those two girls behind you so she decides to have some fun with her you know uh just because you two are homosexual so what you know you'll always be the only man i'll ever love jerry's not into it what's the matter with you the eavesdropper gets up and leaves and jerry mentions that people have often asked him if he's gay people think i'm gay yeah you know people ask me that about you too yeah because i'm single i'm thin and i'm neat now this wasn't just something people said on the show this was also true in real life here's the episode's writer larry charles for some reason many people thought jerry was gay i mean there was always this rumor as the show got more and more popular that rumor got more and more prevalent and people come up to me and goes jerry gay those rumors had started 20 years earlier way back in 1972 when jerry appeared in a college play and a reviewer in the student newspaper incorrectly identified his character as a homosexual according to college friends rumors started following him around in part because one of his friends was gay and they continued after college when he lived with comedian george h wallace for 13 years they were such close friends that many people just thought they were a couple and after his series started at nbc jerry learned that all the network executives in new york just assumed he was gay these rumors followed him around for decades and since the show often pulled story ideas from real life so that seemed like a natural area to explore but devoting an episode to the rumor was an unusual move plenty of other public figures had faced rumors about their sexuality but they usually did everything in their power to destroy not just the rumors but those who spread them as well for example when a newspaper called liberace fruit flavored in the 1950s he sued them and won saying that the insinuation that he was homosexual caused him untold agonies and embarrassment that the rumors were cancerous that when his mother read the article she nearly died and that it cut years off his career because audiences would never come to his shows if they suspected he might be gay in the early 70s rumors circulated that rock hudson and jim neighbors had gotten married they were really just friends not lovers and in response jim called the rumor horrible a nightmare rock said it was sick their pr people called it a smear campaign and placed articles in gossip magazines about their lifelong love of women rumors like these didn't just affect gay celebrities they impacted straight public figures too in 1986 football player tom cozeno was fired from the cleveland browns and told reporters it was because of rumors that he was gay he said calling a man homosexual when he in fact is not is the quickest way to tear a man down we're talking about something that the thought of repulses me and a few years before that political rivals spread false rumors about republican congressman jack kemp in an attempt to turn voters against him newspapers called it a vicious slander and abuse and that kemp had been victimized kemp had been expected to be ronald reagan's running mate in 1980 and to follow reagan into the white house but instead kemp lost out on the vice presidency to george bush senior every time gay rumors surfaced about a public figure whether or not they were true the response was almost always the same deny them as intensely as possible call them cancerous a nightmare repulsive vicious slander and then change the subject as quickly as possible by today's standards these seem like wild overreactions so why did people go to such extremes to crush rumors because just being suspected of being gay could be enough to ruin a person's entire career just a few years before the seinfeld episode aired amanda bears who played the neighbor on married with children contemplated coming out and an agent told her not to that she'd never work again if you're under 12 and a tomboy you're cute he said after that you're nothing but a dike so the reason that we're going through all this background is to understand the position that jerry and the show were in when this episode aired seinfeld was struggling this was jerry's first big break and up to this point celebrities felt that they had to do everything in their power to crush rumors that they were gay now the writers of seinfeld had to figure out how to handle that same dilemma to tell a story where jerry denies being gay but to do it in a way that doesn't call homosexuality cancerous a nightmare vicious slander and abuse so here's what they did the next day jerry's meeting with a reporter for a student newspaper who's writing a profile on him when she arrives at his apartment it turns out to be the woman who is eavesdropping on them at the cafe jerry doesn't recognize her but she instantly recognizes him you look familiar have we ever met i'm i'm not sure have we george happens to be hanging out there too so how did you two meet oh actually we met in the gym locker room yeah and the reporter just assumes that they're a couple and starts asking about their relationship neither one of them realize what she's getting at and do your parents know no what my parents they don't know what's going on until jerry finally puts it together oh god you're that girl in the coffee shop that was eavesdropping on us i knew you look familiar and as soon as they realize what's going on they both freak out oh no so now jerry's character is in a tricky situation he's a public figure who's just been mistaken for gay by someone in a position to spread that rumor far and wide and is eager to set the record straight for comparison let's take a look at how a similar situation was handled 15 years earlier on another show that one was wkrp in cincinnati about workplace sitcom about a radio station the news anchor les nessman is a minor celebrity just like jerry's character and he learns that he's been banned from a stadium locker room because someone on the team mistakenly thinks that he's gay and when he splits one reporter turns to the other and says queer little fellow isn't he and the ball player misunderstood the rumor so how does he handle it i've always considered myself a fairly macho kind of guy now my reputation is ruined this is the kind of reaction that audiences might expect from a sitcom character of the time there'd always be a black mark beside my name which time cannot erase so is this how the writers of seinfeld are going to handle a similar rumor well at first jerry and george do panic it's been a big misunderstanding here yeah yeah we did that whole thing for your benefit we knew you were eavesdropping that's why my friend said all that it was on purpose but when they first read through this episode something about this scene felt off here's castle rock executive glenn paddock and we had a very unhappy difficult table reading it just didn't feel good didn't feel funny being gay was still thought of as a big risk to a person's career as evidenced by all the people who said ellen would never work again after she came out a few years later but overt expressions of homophobia weren't as socially acceptable as they had been in decades past we had to do something about the fact that we were saying it's awful to be gay and jerry and larry said let's let's shut it down and work on this the executives didn't just want them to work on it they wanted to cancel the episode completely i said to them my proposal is that we just not do this episode at all it wouldn't be the first time they did that with an episode of seinfeld in season two the writer of this episode larry charles had written an episode that was so dark the cast only rehearsed for about 20 minutes before they rebelled and said they refused to make it that one's become known as the lost episode of seinfeld and if you want to know more about that i've got a bonus video on my patreon with a whole story you can check that out at patreon.com so with the table read for the outing shut down and executives pressuring them to trash the script the writers struggled to find a fix how could they have jerry's character explain that he's not gay without it coming off like he thinks being gay is the worst thing on earth solution came from writer larry charles and he didn't even realize at first that he'd found it we were discussing the problem in the office with larry charles who was the writer of the episode and he said these guys it's nothing they could be gay there's nothing there's anything wrong with it that jerry realized was the solution they'd been looking for and i said that's the line that's the line i remember the exact moment i remember where he was standing right by the door i said that line has to run through the whole show and then we can get away with it and so in the scene george and jerry's panic is immediately followed by those words we're not gay not that there's anything wrong with that no of course not that seemed to play better in rehearsal so they committed to it not just as a one-off line but repeated every time a character expresses discomfort with homosexuality when the article about jerry and george being gay is printed in the paper no everyone's gonna think we're gay not that there's anything wrong with that when it's picked up by the associated press and jerry's mom reads about it jerry ah it's not true not that there's anything wrong with that jerry when george's mother reads about it and like liberace's mother is so stunned she needs medical care jerry i can see he's so neat and thin not that there's anything wrong with it it's repeated over and over and over there's anything wrong with that this line works so well because it takes the character's reaction to a touchy subject and turns their discomfort into comedy when you look back at wkrp 15 years earlier the way that les handles a similar rumor is by threatening suicide and declaring that his life is ruined but my reputation is still besmirched and sullied the way that seinfeld handles it is by having them make a big deal about how okay they are with it even though we can see they're still uncomfortable now everyone's gonna think we're gay not there's anything wrong with that no not at all and what's that discomfort about not being thought of as gay but being thought of as homophobic for denying that they're gay les is desperate to distance himself from homosexuality jerry and george repeat the line over and over to distance themselves from homophobia so that's what went out on the air and how'd it go over well for starters ratings for this episode were the highest they'd ever been 28 million double what they'd been at the start of the season ratings stayed high after that and the show was nominated for 11 emmys including one for best writing for the outing this is um all very well and good but i'm still bald the show also won an award from glad for its positive message and showing up to receive it was nbc's warren littlefield without whom seinfeld would never have been on the air if in some small way we have increased awareness tolerance and acceptance of gay themed issues in the media then we welcome that as a happy by-product of our work thanks to the better time slot the ratings bump and the award recognition after season four seinfeld success was solidified they never had to worry again but one of the biggest impacts of the outing episode was that the catchphrase became instantly iconic literally the next day it was it was everybody was saying it that line took on a life of its own and started popping up everywhere comic strips insurance ads rowing magazines shrek not that there's anything wrong with that it broke out from seinfeld and became part of pop culture from liberace to les nessman to jerry and george the reaction to gay rumors had shifted significantly and there was still a ways to go it's not like seinfeld fixed homophobia but this episode aired and yada yada yada yada yada over the best part in making this video i came across lots more great stories about the making of seinfeld from the lost episode the cast refused to shoot to how fran drescher from the nanny wound up briefly playing george's mom for more about that check out my bonus videos over on patreon and if you like hearing behind the scenes stories about the making of iconic pop culture moments like these i've got a book coming out next year all about queer episodes of television from the 60s to today i'll be posting more details about that in my newsletter you can sign up for that at mattbaume.com thanks to everyone who makes these videos possible and thanks to my friends at glad for digging up that footage of the award ceremony and now if you'll excuse me the hunt is on release the hounds

Channel: Matt Baume

Views: 872,804

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Id: Bnfq7l5VL1I

Length: 19min 36sec (1176 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 31 2022