Name: Jerry Seinfeld, Calvin Trillin on Late Late Show w/Tom Snyder, June 6, 1996
Uploaded: 2018-12-10T07:14:12.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Jerry Seinfeld, Calvin Trillin on Late Late Show w/Tom Snyder, June 6, 1996' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2018-12-10. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Jerry Seinfeld, Calvin Trillin on Late Late Show w/Tom Snyder, June 6, 1996' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2018-12-10. Transcript available.

Jerry Seinfeld, Calvin Trillin on Late Late Show w/Tom Snyder, June 6, 1996

Good evening, my friends, and welcome back, everybody.
I'm Tom, and the simulcast is on the air now
from the Columbia Broadcasting System, CBS in Los Angeles.
For D-Day, June 6, 1996, Jerry Seinfeld,
the country's most popular television comedian,
is on this program tonight,
along with Calvin Trillin, our pal who writes for Time magazine,
who has a wonderful book out on how his dad brought them
to the United States from the Soviet Union many, many years ago
and made them proud to be Americans.
And if we have time at the end of tonight's show,
thanks to Ken Crosby, who is the executive director
of research for the simulcast, we've got some wonderful tape
Ed Murrow describing the invasion of Normandy 52 years ago today
on June 6th of 1944.
You know, we've hired a new guy here, Bruce McKay,
who is now the producer of this program,
brought him back from the dead, so to speak.
I've known this man for many, many years,
and I love him as a brother.
But he's been away from my operation now for a time,
and I really needed to get him up to speed
as to how we operate here at CBS.
So I took him out today,
and we took a look at the water tower.
I haven't mentioned this for a long time.
I said, now when you look up there,
you'll notice that on the water tower,
it does not say Bruce McKay.
It says Tom Snyder.
He said, what does that mean?
I said, there's going to be a problem here.
I know that for sure.
I said, this means that if I tell you
I would like something done a certain way,
please honor my idiosyncrasy,
and just do it that way.
He said, that's baloney.
He said, here's the name on the water tower.
It doesn't mean anything.
I said, okay, let's go inside.
And I got some videotape
that Michael Cullen, my associate,
made last week in Central Florida.
I said, now Bruce, just take a look at this videotape.
As you go through Central Florida,
on highway whatever it is down there,
take a look at how they revere
the name on the water tower.
If you put the videotape up, please.
This is taken on Super 8 now,
so it's going to be a little jumpy.
This is a high...
There's a highway.
There's a highway right there in Florida.
You notice, you could tell the cars
were kind of slowing down
as they went past just to check
to see whose name was on the water tower.
Here's another one, okay?
Totally different style, right?
Again, a totally different location,
and here is still a third.
And look at this.
Even through the rain, the sleet, and the snow,
the name Snyder on the water tower comes through.
I said, McKay, never underestimate
the power of the tower.
Anyway, I want to get going early tonight
because I do want to show you
this Ed Murrow videotape
from the invasion of Normandy
back in June of 1944,
so please enjoy Jerry Seinfeld tonight
and a little bit later on,
our friend Calvin Trillin,
and as always, the magic of your calls
on the toll-free highway of life.
Why am I doing this?
I have no idea, sir.
I'm...
I'm...
I'm...
I'm praying.
Settle back.
Is everything in order, Mr. Kennedy?
Absolutely.
Very good, sir.
All right.
Settle back.
Fire up the color teenies.
Watch the pictures as they fly through the air.
And thanks for dialing us up, everybody.
The New York Times has categorized Jerry Seinfeld's humor
as keenly observed, carefully timed, contemplative humor
about life's minutiae, people's foibles,
and mankind's moments of angst.
He is perhaps America's favorite comedian,
as demonstrated by the fact that his book,
Sign Language, was a bestseller,
and that his TV show is one of television's
all-time greatest successes.
I know that you're tired of hearing it,
and I thank you for coming over here tonight,
and welcome to the competition at CBS.
Oh, I'm just so tired of hearing that.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
I was talking with Dr. Frank Field,
the legendary broadcaster in New York television today,
and he said,
didn't Seinfeld used to come to visit us
at NBC at 30 Rockefeller Plaza?
And I said, I don't know.
I will ask him.
Did you ever hang around the television station there,
Channel 4?
That was the first thing I was going to tell you.
You don't remember this.
I would be amazed if you remember.
When I was in college, I came to NBC.
Me and Chuck Scarborough and Frank.
How could you remember that?
I remembered that because somebody reminded me of it
when you went on to Great Success.
But that was years before.
1975, 76.
Right.
Yeah, yeah.
Wow, that's amazing.
Before you got the job at the Bruin Burger
on 55th and 3rd Avenue.
That's right.
Where you worked for a time.
Oh, this is scary.
So what did you think of TV
when you came to NBC and saw it then?
Were you just a kid in college?
Well, at the time, you know, if someone had said to me,
you know, I know a guy that could perhaps talk to someone
and get you a job pulling cable,
I would have said, well, what do I have to do?
And I would have been doing that the rest of my life
because I was just so excited by it.
So I never thought I'd ever do anything in show business.
And when you're a comedian, you don't think you're in show business.
Yeah, I understand what you're saying.
Yeah.
But you were a kid in Massive People, Long Island, as I recall.
Yeah.
Your dad had his business as a house painter, sign painter back there.
Sign painter, yeah.
And was he a funny guy?
Was there laughter in your home?
Yes, very, very funny.
But I was never funny around my parents.
I would never want to make them laugh
or somehow I felt uncomfortable doing that.
Yeah, I understand.
But did your dad make you laugh?
Oh, yeah.
What would he do?
He was a great joke teller, you know.
You would tell him a joke and then you would hear him tell it
and it was 12 minutes longer, you know, and much funnier.
Yeah.
And as you're growing up, who are your funny heroes?
Who do you see on TV that really make you laugh
and say, this is something that interests me?
Cosby.
Cosby was really the guy when I was growing up.
Those albums, I used to listen to those albums
and was really hypnotized by just...
Because Cosby's style was very...
It wasn't as jokey as a lot of the comedians were.
I understand it would be more of a monologue or a story
that might sometimes take him a long time to get to the punch,
but when he got there, you knew something had happened.
Yeah.
And he had a way of deconstructing things that I really enjoyed.
You know, it was...
He would take a scene and then he would...
Take it apart, you know, and show you this piece and this piece
and look at this piece.
And that was...
And you know what was another early influence of mine?
It was Gene Shepard.
I don't know if you're familiar with this, right?
Well, sure, from the radio.
W-O-R radio.
Yeah.
People of the night.
Yeah.
He had a way of taking the ordinary and making it very dramatic.
And I really sparked to that.
And I would say he was probably one of my main influences.
And your ambitions then were to be a comedian?
Did you always want to do something that would be a presentation or performance?
Yeah.
Or did you have other ambitions?
Well, I wasn't an outgoing person.
I didn't think I belonged on stage.
I didn't really want to do things like that.
But I had all these ideas and I would write them down.
And I thought, well, what do you do with this stuff?
You know, I could write an amusing column, I guess.
And then I heard about this guy in New York, Andy Kaufman, who was playing the
bongos and
crying at the improv.
And I thought, well, that sounds interesting.
So we all trooped in one night and went to this dark little club and saw these
people
get up that were like in jeans and T-shirts.
And we thought, well, this is some new thing, you know, that it was a new age
comedy at the
time, you know, that wasn't the way it was done.
It was Ed Sullivan and those kind of guys.
And so it just seemed like something I had to dive off that cliff.
And see what would happen, you know, when you hit the water.
But now you said to me that you weren't really an outgoing extroverted kid.
Yeah, around my friends I was, but not around my parents.
So when I told my mother that I had decided I wanted to become a comedian, she
went, okay.
You know, I mean, I had never said anything funny around them.
So they really thought this was a very strange choice for me.
What most people don't understand, and I've learned over the years from knowing
people who
do what you do for a living, is when you go out to dinner or you're with people,
you don't
say something funny.
You know, you do comedy when you're doing your program or when you're doing
stand-up,
and when you're having dinner, you have dinner.
Yeah.
It's just kind of that simple.
Well, you try and say something funny.
If I could think of something funny.
If I thought of something funny right now, I'd say it.
I know that you would.
Was there anything funny about working at the Brew and Burger on 3rd Avenue and
55th Street?
Well, I was working at night as a comedian at that time, so there were a few
instances where
I would walk over to a table, and someone had just paid a $5 cover charge and a
two-drink
minimum to see me the night before.
Right.
And they go, well, what kind of comedian are you?
You know?
I just...
I dropped 25 bucks on you last night, and now you're slinging burgers?
Yeah.
You think you're going to get a tip?
What do you think?
And then for a time, you sold stuff on the streets of New York, I read.
Yes.
I did a lot.
I had about a six-month period, six or eight months there, where I was kind of
scrambling
just to make the...
You know, when I lived in New York, you know, you'd walk the avenues, and these
guys are
there.
They're selling all these watches.
They knock off your Seiko.
They knock off your Piaget.
They knock off all these watches.
And I thought to myself, where does all this stuff come from?
Like, did you sell jewels?
I sold jewelry.
I sold umbrellas in the rain.
I would stand there in a slicker.
By the way, I invented the twirling concept of twirling the umbrella while you're
standing
there so people see that you're selling them.
You know what I was...
I started that.
You probably also invented the concept that when it wasn't raining, the umbrellas
were
a dollar, and when it was raining, they were $10.
Right.
But now, the jewelry you sold, where does all that jewelry come from?
Back of a truck.
Yeah?
Yeah.
I really can't speak about it.
And is it real?
I don't want to put guys in there.
What, are you kidding?
I don't want to put guys in there.
What do you think?
We're going to be selling artificial diamonds?
But then your first paying job would be at the clubs, where you worked at night.
So you're paying, where you got paid to perform.
Yeah.
$20, $30 here and there.
And that was...
I still have the $20 bill, I think.
My first $20 bill, I still have it.
People say that about you.
Yeah.
No, they don't.
And from the clubs to California, tell me about that trip.
One day you say, I've got to go there.
Yeah.
I don't know.
What the hell I thought was out here.
Well, you know, you go where the TV cameras are.
That's right.
And the movie cameras.
Something about cameras, you know.
Comedians, people that are not performing in front of cameras, really think
that that's
performing.
And then when you're not doing it in front of a camera, it doesn't count.
You're not really doing it.
Which is wrong.
Which is wrong.
Because there is something very magical about doing it for an audience that is
not...
That doesn't happen in front of a camera.
But, be that as it may, the lure for everyone was to come out here and, I don't
know, just
get on The Tonight Show.
That seemed like the highest, farthest dream you could possibly dream.
And in 1980, it was the great dream not only for yourself, but for David Letterman
and
for Jay Leno and for tens of comedians who said, you know, if I can get a spot
with
Johnny and later with Dave, this is how you gain the entree to be where the
cameras
are.
Right.
Right.
To be around the cameras.
You want to be where those cameras are.
And eventually, you wo