Jerry Seinfeld: If you’re not writing every day, comedy will leave you behind. | Trending Now

0:00Graham Bensinger:Hey guys, Graham here. It's Friday, which means we get to share with you another one of our most popular clips from a past interview. What you're about to listen to is trending this week on our Facebook page. Hope you enjoy.

0:17Graham Bensinger:You said your mind works faster under pressure. In what ways is that evident to you?

0:22Jerry Seinfeld:Things happen on stage that do not happen anyplace else in life. You don't even feel your feet when you're on stage. You don't feel your body. You're kind of in hyperspace. The brain is sped up because you're in a fight-or-flight condition. It's a very moment-to-moment survival environment, which is what makes it so addictive. You know, it's very adrenaline-fueled. I mean, it's like emergency room stuff, you know? It's like SEAL Team 6, you know? Many, many years of doing comedy... I was talking to a comedian friend of mine the other day. We were talking about how comedians handled the pandemic so easily.

1:14Jerry Seinfeld:It was no problem. because our entire life is being thrown into situations and going, figure it out right now. And so even though the pandemic was two years long, curveballs is like, that's your,

1:31Graham Bensinger:your whole life is a curveball. I think it's 1993, Adam Sandler's opening for you in Boston. You start a bit and somebody yells from the crowd. And how does it affect you?

1:45Jerry Seinfeld:I had this amazing bit about weddings. It was like, it was fantastic. It was so long. It covered everything. It was a great bit. And I worked on it and worked on it. And I love developing and polishing every little detail of a bit. So it takes me forever. Sometimes years. Years. I was talking to Chris Rock yesterday and he was telling me about his last special. He said, I had three jokes in there that I've worked on for over 10 years. and people don't understand that about comedy how could what could take 10 years you know but it can if you're obsessive and perfectionist um so anyway so i do the i start into the bit and somebody yells heard it you know and that was that was a tough one i still think about it Really?

2:36Jerry Seinfeld:Yeah. It was mean. It was true. But, you know, I think now audience is a little more sophisticated that, yeah, these are pieces that we work on for months and months and months. You don't do it once and it works. You know, every scene you see in a movie, they did that 18 times. That was the one time it was good. That's what's in the movie. You don't see the other 17. Same with comedy. I've done this bit 100 times, and now I've got it right.

3:08Graham Bensinger:But in fairness to you, even if you're performing a couple shows in the same night at the Beacon Theater, 40 % of the material could be different show to show.

3:16Jerry Seinfeld:Most of it's the same, yeah.

3:17Graham Bensinger:What did the George Burns book teach you?

3:20Jerry Seinfeld:Love this business. Love it. Appreciate. Enjoy it. It's the greatest thing in the world. Be happy. Be happy that you're doing this. And that's something you should know. that would be automatic, that would be natural. But it's not, because you get stressed over the anxiety and where am I at, and this person's doing better than me, and all the frailties and foibles of being human.

3:47Graham Bensinger:What about on the writing front, though?

3:49Jerry Seinfeld:Well, he had this routine where he would write two hours every day with writers, and they would work on material for his act or whatever he had coming up, and I thought, But, oh, so you have a regular routine of creating material. This piece of information, this discipline or this understanding, I was doing it, I would say, maybe eight months, maybe a year, when I realized, oh, this is all about writing. This whole racket is writing. and you, if you don't become a real writer creating new material every single day, you're going to get wasted like that. I saw it happen to a guy who was on The Tonight Show and he was a smash hit, his first show, then he came back to do a second one.

4:50Jerry Seinfeld:It's six minutes an appearance in those days. To do six great minutes on The Tonight Show, walking out as a complete unknown, and to kill them in six minutes, you need about 40 minutes of material that you're doing in a nightclub. That will distill down a six. So then they want him to come back in three months and do another six. So he takes another six. So his first six is the best six, right? Of course. And then the next six wasn't as good. And then he came back a third time, struggled, and he was gone. And that's when I went, oh, I see what's going on here. Now I see what this is. This is something that it's write or die.

5:40Graham Bensinger:On the day you write something, why will you not talk to somebody on that day about what you wrote?

5:46Jerry Seinfeld:Because you don't want to damage the accomplishment that you did your work that day. You will feel good that you did your work. And you always want to support that motivation. And if you think of something and you think, hey, I think this is good, and you tell someone, 99 % they're not going to react the way you want.

6:14Graham Bensinger:And this is despite the fact that you yourself will heavily critique your work.

6:19Jerry Seinfeld:That's right. That doesn't do you much good. I don't judge the work. The audience does. They edit the work. I tell them, here are my ten ideas. Yeah. They tell me, you got two good ones out of that. And you go, okay.

6:36Graham Bensinger:But if you like some of the other ideas, that's when you'll continue working. I will fight them sometimes.

6:42Jerry Seinfeld:I had a bit about poker that they hated. And I got mad about it.

6:49Graham Bensinger:What do you mean you got mad about it?

6:50Jerry Seinfeld:It made me mad. I actually did it on television before it was ready. And it bombed. And I got so mad that I thought, first of all, why did you do that on television? It wasn't ready. And it bombed. And I don't know. These are the ways in which I indulge myself. I like, I believe in indulging yourself. I like to indulge myself in certain self-resentments and frustrations and go, you know what? I really suck at that. I'm gonna get great at that. Did it eventually work? It did, but it took two years. It's about how I think poker is a horrible thing. You know, the mood in this room is horrible. Why are we trying to get our friends money?

7:41Jerry Seinfeld:These are our friends. Why would we want their money? So, you know, it was kind of a subtle thing, but I wanted to express that. I wanted people to understand how I see this. Yes, your hand's better than my hand. We shuffled the cards. All the hands are different. Of course some are better than others. We mix the cards up. What is the victory here? so you know that's my perspective on poker why will you sometimes count the syllables oh it's the timing music you have to you're attacking someone's brain in a it's very much a martial art where you want to get it into a vulnerable state attack it and destroy it it's comedy is a very aggressive art form.

8:36But, you know,

8:38Jerry Seinfeld:I was just working on this bit about artificial intelligence and calling it intelligence or smartness, you know. It's like songwriting. You know, words have a feel. They give you a feeling. They have a sound. They have an edge. And you're always seeking that, you know, Bruce Lee used to talk about that one inch punch, right? It was just one inch like that into the chest. You know, in comedies like that, you're looking for that, for that, that thing that just, it has to hit. It has to have punctuation and rhythm and flow. And comedy, when it's good, the audience just, they don't even know what's happening.

9:20Jerry Seinfeld:You know, you start a set and you don't even know it and you catch the right rhythm and it's, it's over.

9:28Graham Bensinger:As always, thanks for listening. To see more trending clips from my team, go to youtube.com slash Graham Benzinger.