YouSaid · the spoken record

Jerry Seinfeld

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76
first
2020-12-08
most recent
2020-12-08
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1
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podcast

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  1. “And you're born and they just put you on it. And that's what happens. They just put you on it. And you either learn to ride this thing or it's going to kill you. Then we have many, many examples of that. So she's trying to write this thing. She's struggling. I can't write. I keep putting it off. So I explained to her my basic system, which you already talked about at the top of the show, which is if you're going to write, make yourself a writing session. What's the writing session? I'm going to work on this problem. Well, how long are you going to work on it? Don't just sit down with an open-ended. I'm going to work on this problem. That's a ridiculous torture to put on a human being's head. It's like you're going to hire a trainer to get in shape and he comes over and you go, how long is the session? And he goes, it's open-ended. Forget it. I'm not doing it.”

    2020-12-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #485: Jerry Seinfeld — A Comedy Legend’s Systems, Routines, and Methods for Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “Well, my guiding rule is systemize. What's the problem? The problem is like my daughter. My daughter is very creative. She's extremely bright. She's got an incredible head on her shoulders. And I see myself in her at that age. She's way further advanced than I was at that age. But she doesn't know. I say to her, she has a creative gift, okay? So I say to her, when you have a creative gift, it's like someone just gave you a horse. Now you have to learn how to ride it. You got to learn how to ride this horse. And I've seen people that are born by the dozens and dozens. I've seen people that were given black stallions. And it usually kill, if you have a black stallion, like from that movie.”

    2020-12-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #485: Jerry Seinfeld — A Comedy Legend’s Systems, Routines, and Methods for Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “For what I've created because it's very pragmatic. It's not faith based in any way That's one of my biggest principles confront.”

    2020-12-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #485: Jerry Seinfeld — A Comedy Legend’s Systems, Routines, and Methods for Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “I don't know where I got that. I feel like if you break the human struggle down to one word, it's confront. And so I kind of approach everything that way. And just the act of the confront is like, you know, what do people always say? Meaning you have a problem, all that nonsense. I did read some pop psychology books. I was very much a searcher in my younger years, yoga and Zen and a little Scientology, transcendental meditation Buddhism. You know, I read a lot of stuff looking, I don't know what I was looking for. I think I was looking for a working philosophy is what I was looking for in life to apply. And I kind of formed my own little, I don't know if religion is the right word, but I've definitely created my own belief. Or operating system. I think operating system would be the best term.”

    2020-12-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #485: Jerry Seinfeld — A Comedy Legend’s Systems, Routines, and Methods for Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “I don't like discord. I don't like it and I am fearless in rooting it out and solving it. And if anyone's having a problem, I'm going to walk right up to them and go, is there a problem? Let's talk about this because I cannot stand that kind of turmoil.”

    2020-12-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #485: Jerry Seinfeld — A Comedy Legend’s Systems, Routines, and Methods for Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “And a lot of it is visual, I think. I think I mentioned that in my introduction that I think jokes come from a kind of intense visual acuity.”

    2020-12-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #485: Jerry Seinfeld — A Comedy Legend’s Systems, Routines, and Methods for Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “Yeah, so both of them, the husband. So anyway, they both had to get this very delicate surgery on their inner ear, and they replaced that bone with a piece of titanium that's made to do the same thing. And it's actually this fantastic cure for this problem. And so they both have these titanium ears now. And when they first got it, their hearing was like too good and a little uncomfortable for them. And I think now they've adjusted to it fine, but it reminded me of how I feel like my senses are. My eyes and my ears and my skin. And I just feel everything just a little more than I think I would even like to And so that's, yeah, I think that's just kind of a genetic thing, but I don't know another comedian that isn't the same and just has this hair trigger. Reaction to anything that irritates them?”

    2020-12-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #485: Jerry Seinfeld — A Comedy Legend’s Systems, Routines, and Methods for Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “I think your five senses have been made a little too good. And it's not quite comfortable. I have a friend, actually two friends. It was really weird, and they're married. This is a really weird story. And they both suffered from this breakdown in their hearing. There's a bone in the hearing canal that's, I guess it's like it looks like a little wishbone or something. You know, there's all these little fine bones in there. Yeah.”

    2020-12-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #485: Jerry Seinfeld — A Comedy Legend’s Systems, Routines, and Methods for Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “The closest I had, and I would never compare myself in any way, shape or form, was the Beatles. The time frame of the Beatles Was nine years. They broke up for different reasons. We had no Discord on my show like they struggled with. But the portion size of the Beatles just felt so right to me. And I thought, and they were together about nine years and we were together about nine years. And there was something about adding that other digit to go to 10. You know, like if people said to me, how long did you do that series for? And if I said 10 years, I could just hear people go, wow, 10 years is just the portion size just felt too big.”

    2020-12-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #485: Jerry Seinfeld — A Comedy Legend’s Systems, Routines, and Methods for Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “Lovely thing one time in the 90s, and it was just lovely. I wanted them to have it like that. No excuses, no if onlys, no, it did go on a bit maybe longer than it should have. I didn't want to, I just wanted them to have this lovely gift. That's why I stopped the TV series. I could also describe the TV series to you as a weather event that has an energy that gathers and becomes cyclonic, but every storm blows itself out. And that storm was about to run out of energy. And so was I. It's the same thing because I was at the center of the storm and I could feel the slowing of the cyclonic curve, the funnel.”

    2020-12-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #485: Jerry Seinfeld — A Comedy Legend’s Systems, Routines, and Methods for Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “To the vessel, the faster you're going to struggle to maintain its progress through the water. For sure, the TV series got to a point. We did it nine years. And the way I was doing it, that was as far as it could go before it was really going to stop cutting through the water in that beautiful way that it was doing. That's why I pulled out of it before I had to, before anyone wanted me to because I didn't want to be on a boat that was starting to struggle. I didn't want to have that experience. And even more than that, I didn't want the audience to have that experience. I wanted to complete this gift to them in a way that they would always go, oh, I was given those.”

    2020-12-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #485: Jerry Seinfeld — A Comedy Legend’s Systems, Routines, and Methods for Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “The series is a, you know, if you want to look at the comedy arts is the only thing that interests me creatively, I think, or the only thing I'm good at, but... If I look at the different comedy arts, if I was to break it down, let's just say into basics of standup comedy, a television series, or a movie. I would analogize those to different vessels on the water. So a TV series is like a pretty big boat that you can run with a couple of people. A movie is a yacht. There are so many people. It's a beautiful thing. There's a lot of money involved. Everybody wants it. Everybody thinks it's the ultimate way to go across the water and stand up for me is a surfboard. It's just you. You paddle out and you try and catch the energy and you're all on your own. And you can do it and go home and nobody but you really even knows what happened. I think the more people you add,”

    2020-12-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #485: Jerry Seinfeld — A Comedy Legend’s Systems, Routines, and Methods for Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “No, no, that part is somewhat having a very cranky nature and being a sensitive kind of I don't know if it's perception, but you're just provoked by a lot of things, you know. And that, if you're lucky enough to have that. Next thing you must do is nurture and protect it and never lose it. And the enemy of it is success. Success is the enemy of irritability and crankiness because now you have money and you can remove the difficulties from your life and that's not good.”

    2020-12-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #485: Jerry Seinfeld — A Comedy Legend’s Systems, Routines, and Methods for Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “Yeah, the systemization of the brain and creative endeavor. I really think when I'm working, it's very much like when you're watching a picture working. Stage than that we're So that's a different. So basically, it's on stage and offstage. It's the desk, and then the stage, and then back to the desk and then back to the stage. And that's endless.”

    2020-12-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #485: Jerry Seinfeld — A Comedy Legend’s Systems, Routines, and Methods for Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “And that goes into my brain from performing it on stage. And then it's back through the rewrite process. And then new ideas will come. And it's, you know, it's just millions of different kinds of development. It's just that so you're just trying to get that place of creating, fixing, jettisoning. It's extremely occupying. It's never boring. The frustration I'm so used to at this point, I don't even notice it. And it's just work time. It's just work time, which and That's my, I like the way athletes talk about, I got to get my work in, did you get your work in? I like that phrase. One of the reasons I was looking forward to doing this show with you is I know that it's something you are very interested in.”

    2020-12-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #485: Jerry Seinfeld — A Comedy Legend’s Systems, Routines, and Methods for Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  16. “I mean, it's not wasteful to me because that's just what I like to do amounts of time refining and perfecting every single word of it until it has this pleasing flow to my ear. And then it becomes something that I can't wait to say. And then we go from there to the stage with it. And then from the stage, the audience will then, I imagine, you know, it's a very scientific thing to me. It's like, okay, here's my experiment and you run the experiment and then the audience just dumps a bunch of data on you of this is good, this is okay, this is very good, this is terrible.”

    2020-12-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #485: Jerry Seinfeld — A Comedy Legend’s Systems, Routines, and Methods for Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  17. “I could say to a room full of humans in a nightclub that will make them see what I see in that. There's something stupid and funny about that to me. That's the very, very beginning. So then I'll write something about it. It'll be, if I'm lucky, it'll be half a page or a page on a yellow legal pad. And I'll write that. And then session the next day. If I get around to it, I will see it again and I will see what I have and what I like and I don't like. And as any writer can tell you, it's 95% rewrite. So I have two phases. There is the free play creative phase and then there is the polish and construction phase of. And I love to spend inordinate”

    2020-12-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #485: Jerry Seinfeld — A Comedy Legend’s Systems, Routines, and Methods for Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  18. “Know it's an excuse or an apology. They go, I don't know what happened there. So, anyway, so I don't know. So that's an example of something in my little, little tiny notebook that I don't know what to do with that, but it's just so stupid to me and funny. So that to me is like an archery target 50 yards away. And then I take out my bow and my arrow and I go, let me see if I can hit that. Let me see if I can create something.”

    2020-12-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #485: Jerry Seinfeld — A Comedy Legend’s Systems, Routines, and Methods for Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  19. “What's in front of me is usually about 15 or 20 pages of stuff that's in various states of development. And then there's a smaller book of just really, really random things like when you're on a cell phone call and the call drops and then you reconnect with the person, they'll go, I don't know what happened there. As if anyone is expecting them to know anything about the incredibly complex technology of a cell phone, they offer this little...”

    2020-12-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #485: Jerry Seinfeld — A Comedy Legend’s Systems, Routines, and Methods for Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  20. “Pushing against the wind in soft, muddy ground with a wheelbarrow full of bricks. And I had to do it because there's just, as I mentioned in the book, you either learn to do that or you will die in the ecosystem. And I learned that really fast and really young. And that saved my life and made my career, that I grasped the essential principle of survival in comedy really young. And that principle is you learn to be a writer. It's really the profession of writing. That's what stand-up comedy is. However, you do it. You can do it any way you want. But if you don't learn to do it in some form, you will not survive.”

    2020-12-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #485: Jerry Seinfeld — A Comedy Legend’s Systems, Routines, and Methods for Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  21. “It's put in the book's description No, it hasn't changed. It changes the coffee, which I didn't know about coffee in my younger years. I think I discovered coffee. After I had kids and I didn't have time to have long meals with my friends anymore, but we could meet for coffee. And then I realized, boy, this coffee really gets you talking. And I thought maybe I'll do a show. Where you just talk with coffee, and that's kind of where that came from, that comedians and cars show. But my writing sessions used to be very arduous, very painful.”

    2020-12-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #485: Jerry Seinfeld — A Comedy Legend’s Systems, Routines, and Methods for Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  22. “What comedians might need to learn to be comedians? And that was an early 70s Esquire article. And I had no idea it was a parody. I mean, I just thought, oh, there's a school or I just wanted to learn about this world. And the last laugh really took you deeply into the world. And it is a completely hermetically sealed world that is frankly unrelated to the rest of the entertainment industry. And it's really unrelated to almost all other creative arts. It is a very sealed ecosystem, the world of comedy, particularly stand-up comedy. And I was desperately thirsty for any scrap of data about it.”

    2020-12-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #485: Jerry Seinfeld — A Comedy Legend’s Systems, Routines, and Methods for Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  23. “Yeah, so if I look back at my whole life starting, you know, about like second or third grade, it was all this inexorable march towards this pursuit of the comedy arts. And there was nothing else about comedy. Albert Brooks did a album or did an article in Esquire called School for Comedians, and it was a parody. And I had no idea it was a parody because he grew up in LA and he was making fun of”

    2020-12-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #485: Jerry Seinfeld — A Comedy Legend’s Systems, Routines, and Methods for Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  24. “I have two sons and a daughter. And that's the thing I really wanted, if I could pass along, the two things I would want to pass along would be ethics and boldness in life. But that doesn't answer your question where I got the book. I don't know.”

    2020-12-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #485: Jerry Seinfeld — A Comedy Legend’s Systems, Routines, and Methods for Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  25. “I don't know. In those years, you know, early, early 70s, Esquire was really full of character about encouraging male boldness and inventiveness in lifestyle and just life in general. You know, they were very sophisticated and it was everything I wanted to be. I wanted to be urban and I wanted to be smart and smarter than I was. I wanted to have like this cool adventurous life. And they were very encouraging to that. I don't think there's anything like that around today. That was essential. And the same with that book, The Last Laugh. It was just like whatever made men in centuries pass become explorers, you know. I don't know how they became that. I guess I remember reading about Explorers clubs. Like in 17th, 18th century London, you know.”

    2020-12-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #485: Jerry Seinfeld — A Comedy Legend’s Systems, Routines, and Methods for Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  26. “How did I find that? I really don't know. But I still have it. I have the copy that I bought wherever I found it. I mean, I was in high school. Did the absolute minimum you could do to survive in high school? I never read anything outside of high school except magazines, car magazines, comic books, and Esquire.”

    2020-12-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #485: Jerry Seinfeld — A Comedy Legend’s Systems, Routines, and Methods for Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT