Jerry Seinfeld on Dave Chappelle ‘SNL’ Monologue, His Pop-Tarts Movie – The

As hard as this might be to believe, Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee turns 10 this year. The road-trip talk show — in which Seinfeld and his comedian pals hop in vintage cars and talk shop on their way to grab a cup of java — premiered July 19, 2012, on Crackle, then moved on to greener streaming pastures at Netflix in 2018.

Over its 11 seasons, Seinfeld has hosted just about every influential comic in the business — his Seinfeld co-creator Larry David, David Letterman, the late Don Rickles, Chris Rock, Tina Fey, Jon Stewart, Steve Martin and Tracy Morgan, among them. Along the way, he’s hosted a few comedy-adjacent folks, too: Then-President Barack Obama joined him in a 1963 Corvette Sting Ray in season seven, then had coffee with Seinfeld in the White House staff dining room.

To commemorate its tin anniversary, Seinfeld has compiled some of the most memorable exchanges from the series in The Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee Book (Simon & Schuster). Available Nov. 22 and packed with amusing anecdotes and insights into the stand-up psyche, it’s a holiday gift no-brainer for the comedy lover in your life.

Seinfeld, 68, joined The Hollywood Reporter for a conversation about what he finds funny, what he’s working on (including his Pop-Tart movie for Netflix) and his own thoughts on the debate rocking the comedy world right now: the controversial Nov. 12 Saturday Night Live monologue delivered by Dave Chappelle (who, yes, appeared on an episode of Getting Coffee and features in the book, as well).

I’m really enjoying reading the book. I think what I love about it, and it’s also what I love about the show, is that you really let us into the whole psychology of comics. What do you feel makes a comic a comic and different from the regular population?

A true comic really doesn’t care about anything else but getting the laugh. Everything else in human life feels artificial and pointless. 

There was an interesting exchange in the book where you’re talking to Dave Chappelle about how Chris Rock has a real edge and that he speaks in pronouncements. You refer to his delivery using words like “commandments” and “closing arguments.” I really love that idea — that comedians have to take regular thoughts and make them more extreme. 

Oh yeah, for sure. In fact, the dumber the idea that you’re presenting, the more fun it is. I think when it starts to become real, or starts to become, “This might be an actual relevant thought,” the fun is gone. 

Do you think that’s somehow getting lost in translation with audiences now? Maybe that in the rise of social media, that somehow, in the journey from the stage to regular discourse, people are forgetting that these are extreme versions of thoughts?

That is clearly evolving as we speak. I watched a stand-up special this morning and [there were] tons of great jokes. But an absolutely essential and required element now is it show us the tremendous psychic pain that you are in. We want to see it. We want to know how and exactly how damaged you are and in what way and whose fault it is. And that’s become a part of what people want from stand-ups now.

[Audiences] seem so in love with stand-ups. And I think that’s a kind of an indictment of other entertainment forms. Like, hey, the movies and TV are supposed to be doing most of this work. We just want to tell jokes. But now people are looking for depth from stand-up comics. I always think, “Well, the last thing I would want to hear was what was really bothering Rodney Dangerfield.” I do not wanna know! Just gimme the jokes. Take the pain, gimme the jokes. 

I was watching your New York Times video interview where you were explaining how you wrote the Pop-Tart joke. I really liked it because you were breaking it down in a way I hadn’t seen before. And you liken joke crafting to songwriting — that you have to be on a certain beat or rhythm and that sometimes it comes down to shaving off syllables to get the laugh.

Mm-hm.

So to you, comedy is a science. It’s mathematically earning a laugh. 

Some parts are mathematical, other parts are just — it’s a sound. I was talking to this comedian the other day, actually it was today. He has a bit about a dune buggy. And I just thought, “Wow. I wish I could say dune buggy every night.” Just a fun sound.

So sometimes that’s the musical part — sounds that are just fun to say. You always try. I have this whole long bit about personal storage areas and there’s a part of it where I go, “You gotta bust off the lock.” I don’t say “break into it.” I don’t say “struggle to get into it.” But the words “bust into a lock.” It’s fun for the ear.

I used to do this bit about bathroom stalls where I would say “the underdisplay viewing window.” There’s no word “underdisplay.” No phrase, it doesn’t exist. I made it up and…