It Wasn't Just A Show About Nothing!

The actual, original Seinfeld TV show pitch is so much better

Author

Matt Zeigler
December 05, 2024

Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David’s original show pitch wasn’t the show-made-famous “It’s a show about nothing!”

It’s probably better.

In Seinfeld’s book, Is This Anything?, which just might be the best thing I’ve read all year, he tells the story.

The show was intended to be a genuine exploration of all the very plain, regular, real-life-living ways a comedian finds the material for their jokes.

You live, you reflect, and you reframe.

And maybe it looks like its about nothing, but even the most nothingness is day-to-day life is still something.

The only question is what you’re going to do with it?

I couldn’t decide what to pull out of this passage, so here’s the whole thing (with my emphasis added, and one quick reflection after, because this has stuck with me for months now):

I remember so well sitting there with Larry David at our pitch meeting for Seinfeld at NBC.

And I remember saying,

“We want the show to be about how a comedian gets his material.”

In my head I’m thinking,

“What a load of nonsense this is,

is anyone dumb enough to believe what I’m saying?

But it does sound good.

I think that’s what this meeting is about …

Just say stuff that sounds good …”

Then I threw in some bit I had about waitresses in coffee shops walking around

with a pot of coffee in each hand looking for people that had coffee, trying to give them more coffee.

That got a laugh.

And the next thing I knew I had a TV series.

“How a comedian gets his material.”

Please.

If you could go back to any time and place in history

would you go back to Van Gogh in an art store buying the paint??

NO. Of course not.

What the hell is that?

You would go back to watch him painting!!

That’s what you want to see.

And that’s what you’re seeing in a stand-up set.

The artist painting the picture right now, right in front of me.

That’s why it’s so compelling

It’s happening right now.

Why he’s doing it and where he got the ideas are stupid questions.

The stand-up stuff I did for the TV series was not at all the way I liked working.

I love working really slowly and taking a really long time figuring out what I want the bit to be.

In the series I had to work really fast and had no time.

I do think because Larry and I approached the show as stand-ups is why the comedy works so well.

There is a stand-up rhythm to the dialogue

and a stand-up mindset to the story lines.

When we finished the series the celebration was much more like the over-drained marathoner than the sprinter.

They do one weak little fist pump, not even above their head

and then right into the aluminum blanket.

The look on their face is,

“Obviously, that was worth it. But also … a ridiculously long run.”

Jerry Seinfeld, excerpted without permission and solely complete admiration from Is This Anything? 

In case it’s not abundantly clear—

They pitched the show as being about how a comedian gets his material, and then they wrote the show in the style of how a comedian (or comedians) would perform the material.

All the steps are separated here.

The job of the pitch is to make it sound good.

The job of the pitch is not to be the show.

The job of the comedian is to make regular life entertaining.

The job of the comedian is not to self-report nothing in an uninteresting way.

The job of the show is to be like an ensemble magic trick, delighting the audience with a series of surprises from various vantage points.

The job of the show is not to deconstruct the magic trick, but to find novel ways to present the ordinary as extraordinary in its construction, from multiple characters as performers.

Brilliant.

And, this feels obligatory:"