Jerry Seinfeld has directed his feature film debut with the upcoming Pop Tart movie, Unfrosted, which is coming to Netflix. During a recent interview with GQ magazine, Seinfeld talked about his experience directing for the first time in his career and he has some interesting things to say.
He talked about his experience and explained that he believes the movie business is over. He said: “It was totally new to me. I thought I had done some cool stuff, but it was nothing like the way these people work.”
Seinfeld then added: “They’re so dead serious! They don’t have any idea that the movie business is over. They have no idea.”
When he was asked to elaborate on that comment, Seinfeld continued on a more serious note: “Film doesn’t occupy the pinnacle in the social, cultural hierarchy that it did for most of our lives.”
He added: “When a movie came out, if it was good, we all went to see it. We all discussed it. We quoted lines and scenes we liked. Now we’re walking through a fire hose of water, just trying to see.”
When asked what had replaced film, he responded: “Depression? Malaise? I would say confusion. Disorientation replaced the movie business.”
He said: “Everyone I know in show business, every day, is going, ‘What’s going on? How do you do this? What are we supposed to do now?’”
Seinfeld went on to discuss his stand-up career and how that’s different from the movie biz, saying: “I’ve done enough stuff that I have my own thing, which is more valuable than it’s ever been.”
He explained: ”Stand-up is like you’re a cabinetmaker, and everybody needs a guy who’s good with wood. … There’s trees everywhere, but to make a nice table, it’s not so easy. So, the metaphor is that if you have good craft and craftsmanship, you’re kind of impervious to the whims of the industry.”
He continued: “Audiences are now flocking to stand-up because it’s something you can’t fake. It’s like platform diving. You could say you’re a platform diver, but in two seconds we can see if you are or you aren’t. That’s what people like about stand-up. They can trust it. Everything else is fake.”
The iconic comedian makes a lot of solid points here. He specifically mentioned something that rings true to me. “We all discussed it. We quoted lines and scenes we liked.” I don’t see that happening as much these days.
We are always quoting films from the past, but what kind of films are coming out that have people quoting great lines of dialogue these days!? It’s rare! I can spit great memorable quotes from all kinds of films from the 70s, 80s, 90s, and early 2000s. But now? There’s no real or fresh memorable dialogue that people are quoting.
Seinfeld was also asked about the series finale of his classic sitcom. While he admits that it has bothered him a little over the years, he doesn’t regret it.
“I don’t believe in regret,” Seinfeld said. “It’s arrogant to think you could have done something different. You couldn’t. That’s why you did what you did. But me and Jeff Schaffer and Larry were standing around, talking about TV finales and which we thought were great.”
He continued: “I feel ‘Mad Men’ was the greatest. A lot of people like the ‘Bob Newhart’ one. ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ was OK. ‘Mad Men’ was the greatest final moment of a series I’ve ever seen. So satisfying. So funny. And they said that they had sat and watched the ‘Seinfeld’ finale, trying to figure out what went wrong. And it was obviously about the final scene, leaving them in the jail cell.”
I was actually fine with the Seinfeld finale! I liked how it ended as it ended with the exact conversation that the series started with. That was great.