[PHOTOS: YouTube]
Jerry Seinfeld is currently doing the media rounds for “Unfrosted”, a new feature film for Netflix on the invention of the Pop-Tart toaster pastry, which sounds more like a Mad Libs prompt than a real thing that’s happening. But alas, Seinfeld’s directorial debut is great for one reason and one reason only: more behind-the-scenes anecdotes from the “Seinfeld” set.
Yes, the show concluded more than 25 years ago, but the renowned sitcom has given us so much that we’ll take any morsel or crumb possible, including Seinfeld’s latest revelation that one of the show’s more unforgettable monologues almost never happened. [Spoilers ahead for an episode of television from 1994].
Season 5, episode 14 of “Seinfeld” revolves around George Costanza pretending to be a marine biologist to impress a woman and Kramer getting his hands on 600 Titleist golf balls, which he proceeds to hit into the ocean. Of course, as Larry David-penned shows often do, all of the side plots come together with George eventually saving a beached whale that just so happened to have a golf ball stuck in its blowhole. The following is the perfect end to a Hall-of-Fame episode:
“The sea was angry that day, my friends – like an old man trying to send back soup in a deli,” George rants. “I got about 50 feet out and suddenly, the great beast appeared before me. I tell you, he was 10 storeys high if he was a foot. As if sensing my presence, he let out a great bellow. I said, ‘Easy, big fella!’ And then, as I watched him struggling, I realised that something was obstructing its breathing. From where I was standing, I could see directly into the eye of the great fish…
“Then, from out of nowhere, a huge tidal wave lifted me, tossed me like a cork, and I found myself right on top of him – face-to-face with the blowhole. I could barely see from the waves crashing down upon me, but I knew something was there. So I reached my hand in, felt around, and pulled out the obstruction.”
George then pulls out a Titleist, much to Kramer’s chagrin.
That’s gold, Jerry! Gold! But this classic monologue almost never happened as Seinfeld revealed on “The Rich Eisen Show” this week.
“I don’t know the schedule that week, but let’s say we’re shooting it on Wednesday. It’s Tuesday,” Seinfeld explained.” “We don’t have the golf ball goes into the blowhole of the whale. We don’t have it. No, it was never in the script.
“It was the night before we shot the scene with Jason in the coffee shop. I said to Larry [David], ‘Hey, what if what puts the whale in distress is Kramer’s golf ball?’ He’s hitting golf balls at the beach. George is walking on the beach with the girl. We haven’t connected them. We saw no connection the night before. We write that speech the night before at 2 o’clock in the morning.
“We show up the next day. We hand Jason – who’s an effing genius – we hand Jason that speech.”
There’s one shot in particular of Jerry looking amazed during the monologue and Seinfeld revealed that he wasn’t even acting. He was so shocked at how well Jason Alexander was nailing what was written earlier that morning. To get a multiple-page monologue when you show up for work and then be able to recite it with gravitas not long after is as good as it gets.
“I’m not even in the scene. I’m not acting. I’m just watching Jason get the speech right, in front of a live audience. OK? It’s not film. In film, movies, you screw it up and we’ll do it again. In TV, this live audience is going to hear this speech for the first time once. So you want those juicy laughs of they’re hearing these jokes the first time, and he’s getting it perfect. That is why I have that look on my face.”
