“It was in our first meeting that (co-writer) Andy Robin said, ‘Why don’t we tell the story like The Right Stuff?’ That’s what carried me through the movie, because I was an insane NASA guy and Mercury program guy. I love that stuff. I love cereal, obviously. So that combination of cereal and NASA, I’m in.”
—Jerry Seinfeld on his directorial debut Unfrosted
If you met comedian Jerry Seinfeld and documentary filmmaker Ken Burns in the late 1970s I bet both of them would have signed a deal that would have guaranteed that they could each have a 30-year run in their chosen creative endeavor and just have their basic financial needs met.
Seinfeld said when he started out doing comedy he had a construction day job and performed standup for free at night (though he did get free hamburgers at the club). He was later able to quit his day job because he was able to be the emcee at the club making $25 a night. New York was much cheaper back then. But too expensive for Burns, who fled to even less expensive New Hampshire to edit his Brooklyn Bridge documentary. He said of the move that he felt like he was taking a vow of poverty.
There was no clear financial stream for documentary filmmakers back then. And Seinfeld said that only a few comedians made a living when he started out. But both Burns and Seinfeld not only found a path in their 20s, but they found great success. So much so they they are both in their 70s and still producing at a high level. Both are household names, have 38 Primetime Emmys combined, and one is a multimillionaire and the other a billionaire.
And now they’re together at last to promote Seinfeld’s new movie Unfrosted that dropped on Netflix today. I don’t know if the movie is any good, but the trailer is great.
P.S. Since The Right Stuff (1983) was evoked in making Unfrosted, if you’ve never seen that film check it out. It’s one of the best films made in the 1980s that unfortunately got buried in controversy and greatly overlooked when it first came out. Just brilliant filmmaking and acting. And Sam Shepard as Chuck Yeager—legendary.
Related post: How to Write Like Jerry Seinfeld in Five Steps
Scott W. Smith is the author of Screenwriting with Brass Knuckles and runs the Filmmaking With Brass Knuckles YouTube channel.