Jerry Seinfeld Interview: How to Write a Joke | The New York Times

I know you think people will be
interested in this

But they're not.

I've probably been working
on this for two years.

Two years? I mean, usually I write
a book in a couple of days.

It's a long time
to spend on something

that means
absolutely nothing.

But that's what I do,

that's what people
want me to do,

is spend a lot of time
wastefully,

so that I can then
waste their time.

Comedy writing is

something you don't
see people doing.

It's a secretive thing:
I've never shown anybody

this stuff.

I feel a little funny
about it right now,

to tell you the truth.

In comedy, what you do is
you think of something

that you think is funny,

and then you
go from there.

It's a fun thing to say,

"Pop Tart".

I like the first line

to be funny right away:

When I was a kid

and they
invented the pop tart

the back of my head
blew right off.

And that got the whole
thing started,

that specific part
of my head blew off.

Not just my head,

but just the back.

"It was the 60's
and we had toast,

"we had orange juice
that was frozen

"years in advance,
that you had to

"hack away
at with a knife

"to get a couple of drops
and it felt like

"you're committing
a murder

"before you got
on your school bus."

Then I talk about
shredded wheat, which

was like wrapping
your lips

around a wood chipper.

"You'd have breakfast and
then you had to take

"two days off
for the scars to heal

"so you could speak
again."

>> You always write on --

>> Always, yeah, yeah.

>> Have you ever
tried to --

>> No

I don't like
that cursor flash and

looking at me like,

"So?

What you got?"
>> Do you have

a special pen?

Yes, the Bic
clear-barrel blue

which I wrote every
episode of Seinfeld,

the TV series,
with that pen.

Larry and I used to
write them longhand.

Oh, cause you can't be
in this?

Aw, that's a drag!

That was good timing.

"So in the midst
of that dark

"and hopeless moment,

"the Pop Tarts
suddenly appear

"in the supermarket

"and we just stared at it

"like an alien spacecraft

"and we were like --

we were like, erhhh

"chimps in the dirt
playing with sticks."

What makes that joke

is you get "chimps",

"dirt",

"playing" and "sticks".

In seven words: four
of them are funny.

Chimps: chimps are funny.

Then there is the trying
to figure out

as a kid,
how did they know

that there would be
a need for a frosted

fruit-filled
heatable rectangle

in the same shape
as the box it comes in,

and with the same
nutrition

as the box it comes in.

In the midst
of that darkness

and hopelessness
the Kellogg's

Pop Tart
appears

and they always laugh
there

because that
indicates "Oh he's telling

us a story".

Then my next joke
that I want to get to

is "chimps in the dirt
with sticks".

So now I'm looking
for the connective tissue

that gives me
that really tight,

smooth

link, like a jigsaw
puzzle link.

And if it's too long,
if it's just

that split second
too long,

you will shave letters
off of words.

You count syllables,
you know,

to get it just --

it's more like song
writing.

Then I had to figure out

how to end the thing

and that's
the hardest part:

if you have a long bit,

the biggest laugh
has to be at the end.

It has to be.

It can't be
in the middle,

or the beginning.

And this was very
daunting.

"Once this pop tart had

"come into the world,

"I didn't understand
why we were still

"eating other kinds
of food

"because this seemed to be

"definitely the new way:
"two in the packet

"and two slots
in the toaster.

"Why two, one is not enough,

"three is too many

"and they can't go stale

because they were
never fresh."

"They can't go stale

because they were
never fresh,"

that took a long time
and it --

I know it sounds
like nothing.

And it is nothing.

You know, in my world,

the wronger something
feels,

the righter it is.

So, to waste
this much time

on something
this stupid is --

that felt good to me.

It's the exact opposite
of what we do

here at the Times.

Which is, we spend
appropriate amounts

of time
on deserving subjects.

So I'm the exact
opposite of that:

inappropriate
and undeserving subjects.