Jerry Seinfeld imagines great buzz for his new Bee Movie.
By Fred Topel
With the success of the Seinfeld sitcom empire, it’s remarkable Hollywood didn’t lure Jerry Seinfeld to cinema sooner. Surely they have plenty of generic buddy comedies that could be punched up with his mundane observational humor. DreamWorks Animation must have had the best pitch, because he spent four years developing and providing the lead voice for Bee Movie, in which a honeybee sues humans for stealing his product.
The Wave: How does it feel to be back in the spotlight?
Jerry Seinfeld: It’s great. It’s fine. The ride I had on the sitcom was so intergalactic. To start off in something that was really intended to be this little boutique thing that became this other thing –it’s hard to match that. We just captured the country, and [that was] the last time it was even possible to do that. I don’t even know if it’s possible to do that anymore, because things have just fragmented culturally and portalwise. I don’t know if there will ever be another show that could do what we did.
TW: Do you get a sense that there’s a real demand for people to see you again?
JS: I don’t know. I don’t think about those kinds of things. I try to do whatever I’m doing as well as I can. It all feels kind of familiar to me, to tell you the truth. There is an old story I like to tell about Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe…. They were married and he, of course, was this baseball legend, and she’s doing this USO performance on an aircraft carrier. She goes out, and you know what those shows used to be like – they would get the sexy Hollywood actress to do this cheesecake number, and the guys go berserk. And so, she climbs offstage and he’s standing there waiting for her and the guys are all cheering and she goes, “Joe, listen to that. Have you ever heard anything like it?” And he, of course, says, “Yeah, I have.” So, people say to me, “Can you imagine what it would be like if the movie is a big hit?” And I say, “Yeah, I can.”
TW: How many jokes did you actually write for the movie?
JS: I come up with stuff, and everyone comes up with stuff. It’s kind of like The Dick Van Dyke Show. When they would write, there was the head writer, and that’s kind of the role I like to play. I’m in charge of the gate of what gets in, and anyone can throw out anything they want. There are ideas in the movie that people in the office just threw in, [like] the idea of calling the judge Bumbleton, so you’d kind of have an idea of how this trial was going to go.
TW: Did appearing on 30 Rock give you an itch to return to TV?
JS: No, not really. I mean, nothing could beat the sitcom experience that I had, and I enjoyed being on 30 Rock. I now know what it’s like for the people that came on my show just for the day. What an easy job that is! You come in, you give me the sides, see you later.
TW: What kind of Seinfeld episode could you imagine doing about modern dating issues like text messaging?
JS: We would have had fun with that. We definitely would have had fun with that. There is so much confusion. Anything where there is potential for confusion was always great for us. *This Article appeared in Volume 7, Issue 18 of The Wave Magazine.
