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by Pete Peterson on February 6, 2013 I’ve had a long-time fascination with and love for stand-up comedy. It’s every bit as much an artform as songwriting, painting, or swordsmithing. In this short video, Jerry Seinfeld (one of the great ones), pulls the curtain back and shows us a little of how the machine works. (If you enjoy the behind-the-scenes of comedy, you might also enjoy the 2002 documentary Comedian, which follows Jerry on his first stand-up tour after leaving TV.)
A. S. "Pete" Peterson is the author of The Fiddler's Gun and Fiddler's Green. He is also a maker of stinky cheeses, wooden boats, and tasty sandwiches.
8 Comments
106 days ago
My co-workers wandered into my office just now to see what all the fuss was. Seems my clapping, laughing, and screaming YES is disruptive. Whoops.
Thank you for this. I’m glad to see I’m not the only writer who finds the cursor cursed and who needs the yellow legal pad to craft.
106 days ago
Delightful! And the last 30 seconds, pure gold. Thank you, Mr. Pete.
105 days ago
Did anyone else feel a strong desire for pop-tarts after hearing him say the word so many times? The chocolate kind, or the brown sugar, strawberry always came in dead last.
105 days ago
I felt a strong desire to eat cardboard.
105 days ago
okay, chocolate flavored cardboard!
actually, pop-tarts are wrapped up nicely with my grandmother, some hot cocoa and saturday morning cartoons. though I keep them right there in my memory, where they can still taste that 10-year-old-child-with-Scooby Doo good. It might not be wise to test them out now…
105 days ago
“To waste this much time on something this stupid… that felt good to me.” that may be my new life verse…
104 days ago
For anyone who hasn’t already seen it, Seinfeld’s “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” has some more of this sort of thing:
http://comediansincarsgettingcoffee.com/
103 days ago
The thing I like about this is it states plainly what is often misunderstood: artists spend a tremendous amount of time working on their craft. I read a book and think, “Man this is so amazing.” Then I try to write and go, “Wow this is crap.” In reality the book I read probably started out like crap 10,000 times before it was ever good. Time. Patience. Practice. It takes all three.
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