Jerry Seinfeld is well past the point in his career where he can do whatever he wants, but he still needs to get on the horse to promote his latest work. Thursday he did a Reddit AMA in support of the latest season of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee and a new short series called Single Shot, cobbled together from other footage during his comedian interviews.
Seinfeld managed to answer 101 questions before signing off, supposedly beating his record for his previous AMA. Here are just a few of the gems.
What’s the WORST advice you hear being given to aspiring comedians?
Oh. The worst advice is, you know, you have to do more to promote yourself. That’s the worst advice. The best advice is to do your work, and you won’t have to worry about anything else.
Who is your dream guest for Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (living or dead)?
Hm. This is a good question. Well, I guess it would have to be George Carlin, since he was one of the most iconic comedians and I did have a relationship with him and we would have had a great time.
Jerry, any word on Seinfeld coming to Netflix? Can you please convince Larry to let it happen? There are so many people who still have not experienced Seinfeld first hand and having it available through Netflix will surely be the easiest way.
You are a very smart and progressive person. These conversations are presently taking place.
Any interesting experiences with fans that you’d like to share?
Well, sometimes I try and help people with their, um, etiquette with strangers. You always have to approach a stranger as a stranger, even though you may have seen that person many times on TV, they’re still strangers. So you know, I sometimes will try and help people in their approach – you can’t walk up to someone that you know and act like they know you. The TV only works one way. You can’t just yell at me and expect me to respond positively. You have to introduce yourself first. You can’t just yell “HEY JERRY, C’MERE!” and expect that to work.
I recently realized that if we don’t have milk in our fridge in the morning, on a scale of 1-10, my day only has the potential of reaching a 6. What’s that one thing for you that curbs how well your day can go?
The quality of the coffee. I didn’t really used to drink coffee in the 90s, whenever we would sit in the coffee shop on the show I wouldn’t drink coffee, they would put coffee in the cup so it looked like I was drinking it, but I wouldn’t drink it. I don’t know what changed. But I got into it, in the 90s and I finally figured out why everybody was interested in it, and then I became obsessed with it, and then I did a show about it. There’s just – as Duke Ellington famously said – “there’s only two kinds of music, good and bad,” and it’s the same with coffee.
My girlfriend thinks How I met your Mother is better than Seinfield. Where should I look for another girlfriend?
See if she’s got a roommate.
What was the lowest point of your career? Physical, emotional, mental, financial…?
Oh. Well, there were a couple of times when I definitely thought that everything had completely come to a halt. At one point, in the early 80s, I got a part on a sitcom called Benson. And I was on the show for 3 episodes, and then I got fired. And I thought that would be the only break I was ever going to get. It was just a youthful lack of perspective. But at the time, I thought that was it. But it really ended up making me really get into being a much better standup comedian so that I wouldn’t be dependent on other people. It ended up being a good thing. The best things in my life have been the bad things that taught me stuff.
Which 5 artists would you choose for your ideal music festival?
My ideal music festival, hmm, okay. Sinatra, Beatles, Steely Dan, Carol King, Bruce Springsteen.
Two of my dreams are to be accosted by Larry David on the street and to eat cereal with you. Which is more likely to happen?
Neither, I think your life will go on as it’s been and you will never reach these peaks. My reddit associate suggests I throw you a bone. I think there’s a possibility of that happening. If I had a bone, and I saw you, I would throw it at you. A literal bone, yeah, I would have to be walking down the street holding a bone.
If you could meet yourself before all of this started and give yourself some advice about the business and general lifestyle that you now have, What would it be? Do you ever just wake up in the morning overwhelmed by where you are today?
I would say the advice I would give myself, or any young person, would be “Keep your head up in failure, and your head down in success.”