Jerry Seinfeld Talks Bill Cosby, Whether He Can Separate The Man From The Body Of Art | The Late Show with Stephen Colbert | Published on Sep 30, 2017
I think I like the leaning into the awkwardness: that's comedy to me because I had a very awkward childhood. like you saw the photo of me, of being an awkward child. you're now revisiting before you were famous Jerry Seinfeld, when you were working at, a working comedian...
I wasn't working
You weren't working?
Well:
I was performing. but working is you getting money.
I was ... I was trying, trying to be a comedian.
So that joke we heard you say in the leading as announcing you didn't get paid for that joke?
No. I did just recently because it's on a Netflix special.
So these are literally all the material that you were working at when you were trying to break in.
This is the material I wrote from my bedroom where I grew up to the first time I got on Johnny Carson. Everything that got me through the clubs, through all that hierarchy, through all that: you know, a little struggle. Which
that wasn't a struggle to me cuz I just loved it.
I was in it all I want. I just wanted to be in it. But that was the joke that I wrote on a piece of paper and I said it to two friends in college and I read it to him: what do you think of this? They went: "that's funny", you know? that's where'd everybody go they left they went "that's funny" and it was the first time I thought maybe I could be a comedian now.
[...]
I understand your dad had the same called break a face.
Yeah, he was in sales so what he used to say, he would talk to a guy who he knew he wasn't going to sell to the guy but he wanted ...those guys that have those faces that are like rock: he just wanted to break that face, you know? just say something to the guy that would make him laugh, it was even better to him than getting the sale. He really had a great comedic gift himself.