Larry David shares the “quintessential” Jerry Seinfeld story
Modern comedy would look markedly different were it not for the individual and collective efforts of Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, although the two were friends for almost a decade before reinventing the notion of what a sitcom could be.
Introduced through mutual friend and comedian Carol Leifer in the late 1970s, David had penned some jokes for her to crack at her birthday party before she ended up getting too drunk to even read them. Leifer asked Seinfeld to step in and do it for her, and the mutual appreciation society was instantly formed.
Both were trying to make their name on the New York comedy circuit and would regularly throw ideas and advice back and forth, before a fateful meeting between the duo at a Korean deli served as the springboard to developing a small-screen comedy famously dubbed ‘the show about nothing’.
Reflecting on his first meeting with David, Seinfeld knew immediately that there was something special brewing. “In comedy, certain guys it’s like, it’s funny right away,” he explained. “You’re talking, all of a sudden, in two minutes, you’ve hit into something hilarious.”
As well as co-creating Seinfeld, David would serve as its lead writer and executive producer for seven of the first nine seasons, winning a pair of Primetime Emmys along the way. The leading man, meanwhile, would win an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his efforts, with the show as a whole hoovering up a combined total of 13 trophies from the aforementioned ceremonies.
They knew each other better than anyone else, to such an extent David told “the quintessential” Jerry Seinfeld story to Charlie Rose, which underlined how one had the ability to know precisely what the other was thinking and how they’d react in any given situation.
“It was the third or fourth season of the show, and I was in the room talking to a few of the writers, and I looked at one of the writers’ shirts, and there was just something a little off about this shirt,” he said. “It was in a bit of a diagonal going down, and I said, ‘Has Jerry seen that shirt?’. And he said, ‘No’. And I said, ‘I bet he comments on that shirt within ten seconds after he sees you.'”
Confident he knew what was coming next, a wager was placed, with David lurking to see if he’d be collecting his winnings. “I’m just about to leave the room, and here comes,” he continued, referencing Seinfeld’s impending arrival. “I hang out at the doorway, and he didn’t even make eye contact with the guy and he’s talking to somebody else, and all of a sudden he turns and he says something to him, and he goes, ‘What’s the story with that shirt?.'”
The creative shorthand between the two was a massive part of Seinfeld‘s success, but that borderline telepathic connection evidently existed well beyond the confines of the screen.
