Maybe We'll Have You Back: The Life of a Perennial TV Guest Star (13 page)

The list of premises I brought with me for my first day of work.

I arrived early my first day to the
Seinfeld
offices on the CBS Radford lot in Studio City. About twelve offices on the upper level of the structure were allotted for its writers, producers, and editor.

I thought you were supposed to dress up. It was summer, and I wore a nice new cotton shirt from Gap, a pair of dress jeans, and a belt. Soon, the other writers made their way up. First was Peter Mehlman, who had been on staff the longest. He was dressed in what he’d usually wear if the temperature was above seventy: a dirty shirt, gym shorts, and sneakers. The other new writers for the start of that ‘94–‘95 season were Marjorie Gross, who I had known from the New York stand-up scene in the early eighties, and Sam Kass, a playwright from New York, starting his first TV gig. Returning for her second season was Carol Leifer, another comic from those old stand-up days. Tom Gammill and Max Pross were a writing team that had worked at
Late Night with David Letterman
,
Saturday Night Live
and
The Simpsons
among many other classic shows. Finally, there was a writer I’ll call Perry, a scraggly little guy with a panicked look on his face, who had actually survived the season before. He was nervous even before the season started. The first thing he said to me: “It’s going to be rough. Let me tell you, the vacation is over! This is ’Nam, man. It ain’t pretty here.”

Shortly thereafter, Larry David showed up and then Jerry himself. I had known Jerry from both the New York and L.A. comedy clubs. A few weeks later, two other writers were hired, which made me panic a little. I took it as a message that I wasn’t single-handedly making it a great season. A young writing team, right out of college, who had worked on the first few weeks of the brand new
Late Night with Conan O’Brien
were hired after getting a shot to pitch some premises that Larry liked. They also hired another writer who had faxed in dozens of ideas the season before. He also worked as a Sinatra impersonator on the weekends and always turned on a white noise machine in his office.

There must have been something about me that made it obvious that I was trying too hard to seem dressed up. Maybe my belt was a little off. I usually don’t wear them and perhaps it showed. Maybe it didn’t go with my pants or didn’t quite fit correctly.

“Nice belt,” Jerry commented.

That was all I needed never to wear that belt to work again. All during the course of that first week, Jerry and Larry made a point to ask me, “Where’s the belt?”

That first day, we milled about a few minutes in the conference room before Larry assigned everyone offices. In the conference room, we’d eat lunch every day at a long table. Cabinets were stocked with pretzels, cases of Snapple, and cereal, lots of cereal. Grown-up choices like Corn Flakes, but a lot of sugary kiddie stuff like Lucky Charms, Count Chocula, and Cap’n Crunch.

My office was larger than I needed. It had a huge desk with a computer on it and another large wooden desk of drawers behind. There was also a bulletin board and a dry erase board for outlining my stories. They brought in a nice chair for me. It was a big comfortable leather swivel chair with a high neck support. Larry walked past my office and spotted it.

“That’s a better chair than mine. How’d you get that chair?” He came in and ogled it.

“Take it. Take the chair. It’s yours.” I didn’t want to make waves and claim in any way that I deserved a better chair than Larry, the co-boss of the whole show. He sat down in it. He sat there for a few moments as if he were recalling the comfort of his own chair and comparing it to mine. After a long pause he shook his head.

“No, I’m keeping my chair.” He abruptly got up and left.

There was a brief fifteen-minute meeting, discussing possible story arcs for that year. I made a suggestion or two that I have erased from my memory bank due to the humiliation I felt after getting no reaction at all. Even a shaking of the head or an “I don’t think so” would have encouraged me to participate more. No one gave any of my few ideas the possibility of gestating in the room for more than a second. I’d suggest something, and the next person’s pitch would practically overlap mine.

We discussed whether George should keep his job as an administrator with the New York Yankees or go back to being unemployed. Larry felt that they had exhausted the George-being-out-of-work theme. A writer from the year before suggested that perhaps George’s parents get divorced. Aside from lunches, that meeting was one of maybe five all year where all the writers were gathered in the same room. After that, we were basically all on our own.

“Well, come in when you can and start pitching your ideas,” Larry said. Then he shut the door to his office. Right away, he started working on the season premiere and the next few shows all by himself.

To start writing an episode, you had to get approvals on a story premise each for Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer. Then you had to get Larry and Jerry to approve how you planned on connecting all four stories together. Back in my office, I composed myself after feeling slighted after not being acknowledged in that first meeting. I told myself that story arcs for the year were not my specialty. I had the notebook that Larry had told me to keep with crazy life experiences and little observations suitable for story ideas. I hoped that when I’d pitch to him alone, it’d be apparent that he hadn’t made a mistake bringing me onboard.

On my way to pitch, Perry, the scraggly little nervous guy, stopped me.

“I know the best times to bother them. I’ll help you, bro. I’ll guide you. I’ll tell you when I think they are in good moods. You may have a great idea, but if they’re not in a good mood, they’ll shoot it down and then that idea is dead for good. I know Larry. I know how to read him.”

At first I was grateful. It would take a while to realize that this “help” was something else. I’d be walking toward Larry and Jerry’s office, mustering all my confidence that I had a good idea to pitch, but then he’d see me and shake his head, “Not a good time, bro. You got to wait.”

I’d retreat back to my office. There was not much to do until I got the ideas approved, so I’d check my answering machine messages. After that, I’d just sit there not sure what to do. Eventually, I’d pop back out, but Perry would again shake his head. “I would not go in there now. They are very pissed. A very bad time.”

Unlike Perry, my interactions with the other writers were merely passing nods of “hello” on the way to the bathroom or for a snack. They were all very cordial but I didn’t bond with anyone. Once in a while I’d inform Marjorie Gross and Carol Leifer if I had bumped into a fellow stand-up comic who had sent their regards. The others might have had camaraderie but I honestly wasn’t part of it. To me it was like working in a homicide division. Everyone was isolated, working on their own cases, and every once in a while you’d report to the captain (Larry), who would tell you which leads to follow.

Next to our office, Gammill and Pross would sit outside on the
thirtysomething
porch, the exterior set of the house from the ABC hit show. Sometimes I’d run my ideas by them. They would listen, but they, like all the other writers, seemed so busy trying to flesh out their own premises, I didn’t want to keep bugging them. But Perry, my “mentor,” he made the time for me. Early on, I wondered if that was such a good thing. I desperately needed anyone to whom I could spout my ideas to, but his reactions to my premises and to life in general were not exactly encouraging. He’d say things like, “After forty, that’s it for a writer. After forty, we’re all through.” When I received this dire forecast, he was already a few years over forty and I had about four to go.

He’d barge into my office and ask what I was working on. He’d then rest his chin on his fist and contemplate intently for what seemed minutes at a time.

“I’m very concerned, very concerned about that idea. I don’t think that’s going to work. I told you this is ’Nam. I barely survived last year. Almost had a nervous breakdown.” True, it wasn’t the homiest, most nurturing atmosphere, but I quickly realized that a lot of his torture was self-inflicted. “Fifteen hours! I slave fifteen hours to perfect every damn line in my script.” I couldn’t tell if he was boasting about his work ethic or complaining. On that job, it was insane to agonize that long over a line because almost every line would be changed when the script was handed in and rewritten by Jerry and Larry.

On
Seinfeld
, when all four of your character stories were approved, Larry would give you permission to write up a full script. Then, he’d read it, and if he liked it, tell you to start pitching for a new episode. The doors would close and he and Jerry would rewrite the script. Sometimes just the story line remained, along with just a fraction of the dialogue. What Jerry and Larry did when they took someone else’s script and reworked it was different than other sitcoms, on which all of the writers sit around a large table together and punch up or make whatever changes are needed to the script as a group. Many shows even come up with all the show’s story lines at what’s called “the table.” I’m not sure which situation is better. There are some writing jobs that are not too extreme in either direction. I had heard horror stories of what it was like to be at a writer’s table sometimes for over ten hours a day for months at a time with a group of aggressive, competitive writers.

The only time we were all together as a group was at the lunch table where we all ate the catered food that was brought in every day. I’d call Joel on my long distance phone card each day to report what goodies I got, afraid I’d get the Powers-That-Be mad I was using my office phone to make long distance calls. I just sat there, not participating much in the lunch conversations. I remember they’d make fun of lame Witt/Thomas shows like
Empty Nest
and
Nurses
. I wanted to say, “Perhaps they’re not as innovative as
Seinfeld
, but you could have just as easily written on those shows.” I felt only Jerry and Larry had the right to take ownership of
Seinfeld
. We writers were just writing in the voice they had created.

When I had something to pitch I would wait outside Larry and Jerry’s office for the door to open. Once inside, it wasn’t always a comfortable experience. Sometimes I felt like a pest. I felt as if I were asking to borrow money from my ex-girlfriend’s boyfriend. I’d pitch, and many times Jerry and Larry would make disconcerting comments that had nothing to do with my idea.

For instance, Jerry remarked that when I made a pitch, I always hit the same mark on the floor. (Stand-ups appearing on TV always come out and have to stop and stand on a spot where a line of colored tape is marked.)

Larry once stopped me before I could even get a few lines into my pitch to ask about my shirt.

“Where’d you get that shirt? Do people help you? What’s the process with someone like you buying a shirt?”

He was too distracted trying to figure how an oddball like me functions to follow what I was proposing. Perhaps he was trying to extract a premise at my expense. Well, if that was one of the reasons I was hired, fine.

My idea about the police composite artist from my spec script wasn’t materializing enough for a story at the time. But, they did seem to like the idea I came up with on
Dumb and Dumber
, where George is equally attracted to two women who are always together.

A friend who had had a rocky year two seasons prior to mine at
Seinfeld
told me that coming up with Jerry stories were the hardest. It was easier to come up with George and Kramer stories, because they each had a lot of flaws and neuroses. I was having trouble getting a Jerry story approved, until I got lucky walking around the mall one evening. I bumped into a fellow comedian, who asked me what suit size I wore. I honestly didn’t know. He said he had a great Armani suit that didn’t fit him anymore because he had “gotten huge” from working out at the gym. He gave me the suit and said all I had to do was take him out for a free meal, and we’d be squared.

I took him to Jerry’s Deli, an overpriced deli in Beverly Hills, where he just ordered soup and a soda. It looked like I was going to get off easy until he explained that he was going to “save the meal for another time.” I ordered the same thing and the bill came to around twenty bucks. I took him out two more times but it still didn’t count as “the meal.” I didn’t want to seem cheap and say, “You’re costing me money. This should be the meal.”

It seemed to be a good situation for Jerry, trying to determine how to get rid of this pest, and what, in fact, constitutes “a meal.” When is he out of his obligation to this guy? Jerry and Larry liked that idea. I had two story lines approved with two to go.

When the actual season started, and the shows began getting filmed, trying to get Larry and Jerry alone to pitch ideas became even more difficult. They weren’t just in their office writing one of their scripts or rewriting someone else’s. They’d either be in a casting session, on the floor watching a run-through, in the editing room trying to cut time off an episode, or any number of places having to do with the actual making of the show.

One time, I stood outside their office for over an hour, waiting for the door to open so I could pitch an idea. While I sat there, one of the young, more confident writers just opened the door and went in ahead of me. What fearlessness, I thought. I was Billy Bibbit, the stutterer from
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
trying to compete with the salesmen from
Glengarry Glen Ross
. So I decided to be strong, opened the door myself, and went in. Before I even got a few words out, the phone rang. They had to take it. My idea would have to wait. I went back outside. I was so mentally exhausted that I walked back to my office, shut my own door, and took a nap.

Once, it seemed that Larry was sympathetic to my plight.
He stepped into my office on his way to the editing room.
“I see what goes on here,” he said. “I see you’re not in the clique. I see that.”

“No, everyone’s nice,” I said. “People connect on different levels, I suppose.”