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Seinfeld is on Netflix UK

Started by Mobbd, October 01, 2021, 01:33:53 PM

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Magnum Valentino

Quote from: olliebean on October 08, 2021, 09:57:47 PM
But is there any evidence of an American actually saying it like that, other than in relation to that joke?

There is but fucked if I can remember where I heard it.

RHX


Magnum Valentino

Quote from: RHX on October 08, 2021, 10:58:12 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkLqAlIETkA

1:14 here.

Thanks RHX but the retort that Gilbert doing it means it's not representative of any real American pronunciation is inevitable.

Dusty Substance


I know this has been addressed countless times over the last 30 years since Seinfeld began but did the production meeting go like this?

"So, we've got these hilarious tight scripts, four excellent core characters, a great cast with supporting actors. This is bound to be a winner. We just need to give it a nauseating slap bass theme tune and play it during every time a scene transitions".


Poobum

How they cut around this to keep it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgGKe9TsMC8
Always look for it now, and wince.

Icehaven

Quote from: Dusty Substance on October 09, 2021, 03:35:50 PM
I know this has been addressed countless times over the last 30 years since Seinfeld began but did the production meeting go like this?

"So, we've got these hilarious tight scripts, four excellent core characters, a great cast with supporting actors. This is bound to be a winner. We just need to give it a nauseating slap bass theme tune and play it during every time a scene transitions".

It also dates it enormously. I'm only a recent fan and before I got into it all I knew about it was Kramer bursting through the door and the theme tune, and I thought it started in the early 80s.

dr beat

If memory serves there is quite a bit of discussion of the Feem Toon in the great book Seinfeldia. I think the tune totally works. 

BeardFaceMan

Just be thankful they didn't keep the scat singers.

Mobbd

You people make me sick. The slack base transitions are delightful!

amputeeporn

Loving watching one of these with tea every night. Maybe been three or so years since I saw them last.

I've probably watched the whole thing at LEAST six times at this stage...

All the old pleasures are there; Jerry's constant, infectious corpsing, the brilliance of the cast, the shrewdness of the scripts, the constant allusion to a much wider world of fringe freak characters, even early on.

I first found Seinfeld as a depressed teenager and just fell in love with its tone and message (don't take anything seriously, life's a joke). My best friend fell in love with it, too, and it's become a lasting bond between us.

So glad to see that even the more gentle early episodes are making me cackle, but damn, you know you're getting old when you find yourself laughing at Jerry's stand-up. Can't tell if I'm laughing at the 'character' people do of him saying 'what's the deal with airplane peanuts?!' or sincerely enjoying his stuff. And I guess fuck it, I don't care. I'm just having a blast with this stupid thing again.

buttgammon

The corpsing is one of my favourite things about the programme, it's joyous. Jerry's always stifling a laugh, but you can see JLD more skilfully holding in laughter a lot of the time - and there's lots of lovely outtakes of her ruining scenes by bursting into laughing fits too.

They were clearly a tight-knit group, perhaps to the detriment of some of the other actors. I know the actor who played Susan had a tough time with them, but I actually think she did it very well. It's a difficult role, in that she's a fairly straight-laced character, but she gets her little hang-ups and insecurities down perfectly. I'm particularly fond of the way she starts reading the rules inside the Trivial Pursuit box when George and the Bubble Boy are fighting; I guess she's the sort of person who's so incapable of dealing with chaos that even as something like that is unfolding around her, she tries to cling on to rules.

For whatever reason, my pet rabbit is drawn to Seinfeld, and he will stare at the screen when I'm watching it, often hopping up on the sofa to sit next to me. It's the only way we can get him to sit still.

Milo

I'm sure it's Larry David doing the barking in The Dog.

Butchers Blind

Quote from: buttgammon on October 10, 2021, 10:35:05 AM
you can see JLD more skilfully holding in laughter a lot of the time - and there's lots of lovely outtakes of her ruining scenes by bursting into laughing fits too.

I was watching The Pony Remark yesterday and right at the end when Jerry say "Who would have thought an immigrant would have a pony" you see JLD corpse. It's great that they kept that in.

colacentral

I love the theme tune too, it works perfectly. It needed to be something a bit goofy and irreverent. Most sitcom music is either unmemorable and therefore adds nothing to the identity of the show, or worse, tries for "cool" or whatever you would use to describe the Friends music, which is the type of shit I find disgusting and a comedy killer.

El Unicornio, mang

Quote from: Cuellar on October 08, 2021, 03:38:06 PM
Just seen that bit in The Shoes where the head of NBC's 15 year old daughter comes in and Jerry and George stare at her tits.

edit: I'd forgotten about Jerry's real-life young young girlfriends, of course. Hmmm.

To be fair, Denise Richards was 22 at the time. I mean it does seem like a dodgy scene given the age reveal/context but also not unrealistic, knowing how men are whenever confronted with cleavage. The fact that she's 15 and that they're being a pair of pervs is pointed out by Elaine.

I knew the Indian giver reference but only due to having spent so much time in the US. For so many episodes it's not surprising there's a few references we won't get. Got to be a lot harder for US audiences watching our stuff.

Milo

Quote from: El Unicornio, mang on October 10, 2021, 11:53:30 AM
To be fair, Denise Richards was 22 at the time. I mean it does seem like a dodgy scene given the age reveal/context but also not unrealistic, knowing how men are whenever confronted with cleavage.

I wonder if that was before or after the line about looking at cleavage being like looking at the sun - "you get a sense of it and you move on".

First heard 'Indian giver' on the A Tribe Called Quest song 'Steve Biko' where Phife handily explains what it means:

https://youtu.be/ZItLBiHG9gc?t=140

poodlefaker

The first few series are like the  early albums of a group that hasn't found its groove; there's an energy and an edginess, but Jerry is wooden, JLD is mugging, JA is doing a shouty Woody Allen impression and Kramer is Stan Laurel. Then Season 3 is Rubber Soul.

Cuellar

Quote from: El Unicornio, mang on October 10, 2021, 11:53:30 AM
To be fair, Denise Richards was 22 at the time. I mean it does seem like a dodgy scene given the age reveal/context but also not unrealistic, knowing how men are whenever confronted with cleavage. The fact that she's 15 and that they're being a pair of pervs is pointed out by Elaine.

I don't know - Jerry doesn't just look, he looks, then nudges George to get HIM to look. It's hardly an 'involuntary' glance. And it's not really an age 'reveal', they find out the daughter's age before they meet her. They know she's 15 when they start ogling.

Yes Elaine brings them up on it, but in a sort of 'oh you' way, rather than, 'that's a child you pair of absolute nonces'.

I think Jerry Seinfeld is very probably a psychopath.

thr0b

In context though, the scene is very of its time. Remember, even a decade later, newspapers here were running countdowns to girls becoming "legal" for Page 3, or of course:



It was wrong then, but it was acceptable, in its "fucking hell, it's creepy shit and nobody was cancelled for it" way.

buttgammon

I love how Chris Morris is 'sick' and the people who run Channel 4 are 'pervs' but they're perfectly entitled to salivate over a 15 year old girl. Whoever did the layout had a sense of irony.

Cottonon

Quote from: wrec on October 04, 2021, 12:26:52 PM
His true passion is musical theatre which marks him out as coming from a different place to the other main players.

This explains a lot. I initially found his performance the hardest thing to get over, somehow too loud, demonstrative, not adapted to television. Then reading around the show and finding out this was effectively Larry Davids voice made him seem all the more miscast in my mind. But watching The Jacket the other night, I didn't mind it so much.

Also fired up The Library form S3 in which Jerry Seinfeld is in an almost permanent state of corpsing for the entire show, barely able to wrestle the smile down. Love it.

thr0b

I always find it odd that he claims he only worked out how to play George when he realised he was meant to be playing Larry David. It's so obvious from the off, but it seems to have taken him a couple of years to realise.

buttgammon

Oh no, the bad Woody Allen impression he did at the start...

In fairness, there's a change in how the character is written too. He seems to come into his own when he loses his job and goes from being unlucky to someone who finds life a struggle and then later on, someone who's often selfish and amoral.

thr0b

True enough. He was GOOD at the real estate job, which isn't right for George at all. And a comedic dead-end in itself.

El Unicornio, mang

Quote from: buttgammon on October 11, 2021, 12:08:57 PM
Oh no, the bad Woody Allen impression he did at the start...


And in the Denise Richards scene

Ignatius_S

Quote from: buttgammon on October 11, 2021, 10:39:51 AM
I love how Chris Morris is 'sick' and the people who run Channel 4 are 'pervs' but they're perfectly entitled to salivate over a 15 year old girl. Whoever did the layout had a sense of irony.

I think you give them too much credit - more a reflection of the double standards in the media. Similarly, The Mail's coverage of the special was an edition that had photos of Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, clad in bikinis - were 13 and 11 respectively, then. At the time, such coverage did raise eyebrows - e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/aug/05/news.film

Twonty Gostelow

Quote from: Magnum Valentino on October 09, 2021, 03:31:28 AM
Thanks RHX but the retort that Gilbert doing it means it's not representative of any real American pronunciation is inevitable.

U.S. dictionary audio samples here, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/clitoris. Note the UK pronunciation is first so that's probably how most Americans say it too.

Icehaven

Quote from: Twonty Gostelow on October 13, 2021, 06:40:45 PM
U.S. dictionary audio samples here, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/clitoris. Note the UK pronunciation is first so that's probably how most Americans say it too.

"Webster's dictionary pronounces clitoris as..."

Cuellar

Freaking out about the fact that in the credits for the Russian dub that come up at the end of an episode it seems that ONE guy is playing pretty much every part.