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See now to me, that button's in the worst possible spot.
The second button literally makes or breaks the shirt, look at it.
>> You guys, it's been 25 years since the first episode of Seinfield aired on NBC.
And what's the deal with anniversary?
Okay, you know what?
Let's just agree now I'm not going to do that impression anymore.
Really, not going to do it, okay well maybe one or two more times, three max.
But you're not here for that, you're here to learn some Seinfeld things.
And I don't mean lame things like how many Kramer entrances there were.
It was 389 by the way.
So check out these seven things you didn't know about Seinfeld, probably.
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Seinfeld is usually described as a show about nothing.
But that isn't exactly what the idea was from the beginning.
The original idea behind the show was exploring where comedians get their
material.
Taking that idea even further,
in the earliest drafts of the pilot, Jerry wasn't supposed to be the only comedian.
George was also going to be a comedian and his name was originally Bennett and
not George.
They abandoned these ideas pretty quickly and it was obviously the right way to go.
George makes a much better fake architect or
fake marine biologist than he does a comedian.
Or a Bennett for that matter.
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Cosmo Kramer, everybody knows that nobody knows how he makes a living.
But you may not know that much like The Dude, he's based on a real guy.
The real Kramer was co-creator Larry David's neighbor in New York.
But because there was a concern over rights and
clearances basing him on the real guy, they just changed his name to Hoffmann.
Then they changed it again to Kessler just before shooting the pilot.
That's why Jerry calls Kramer Kessler in this scene from the pilot.
(Laugh) >> What are you doing, Kessler,
it's a tape.
>> By episode two, NBC's lawyers had cleared up the legal issues and
they were able to finally call Kramer, Kramer.
In the backwards episode from Season 9,
they sort of addressed whole Kessler Kramer thing right here.
>> I saw your name on the buzzer, you must be Kessler.
>> No, actually it's Kramer.
>> So yeah, airtight explanation, kind of.
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Let's get into some supporting cast with something about Helen Seinfeld.
Bet you didn't know that Jerry's mom dated James Dean.
(Sound) Yep, Liz Sheridan, the actress that plays Jerry's mom,
claims she had a thing with Dean back in the 1950s.
She even wrote a book about it.
I don't care enough to read it and I also don't care to
think about Helen Seinfeld and James Dean doing it, so next thing.
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The Chinese Restaurant is arguably the first classic Seinfeld episode, but
do you know that it has a couple of easter eggs?
For one, Jerry mentions having a sister in this episode.
>> My cousin, my cousin and my sister, my sister and me.
>> Jerry does have a sister in real life, but
on the show his sister is never mentioned again, ever.
Also in this episode,
we have this guy on the restaurant's payphone ruining George's life.
Well this same guy reappears in The Puffy Shirt years later.
He's the photographer shooting George's hands during George's extremely brief
stint as a hand model.
Okay, one more before we move on.
If you listen closely during this scene where Elaine is trying to scam an eggroll
off of these old folks.
You might recognize the voice saying what did she say?
Over and over.
>> (Crosstalk) What did she say? Can someone tell me what she said?
>> Yep, that's Larry David.
This was first of many vocal cameos Larry David did on the show.
Long before the George Steinbrenner era.
>> And how's this, you're fired.
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>> Second only to Jerry's apartment,
Monk's Cafe would have to be the most important set for all of Seinfeld.
And believe it or not, for the scenes shot in the coffee shop,
Jerry Seinfeld is drinking real coffee.
That's a lot of caffeine.
He needed something to do during the scenes and
it needed to be easy to do over multiple takes.
Well I guess getting hopped up on caffeine is way better than having to eat dozens of
egg salad sandwiches.
Show tapings were actually the only time Seinfeld drank coffee at all,
since he didn't really drink it in his real life.
Which is a little weird when you consider his current show,
Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.
Is this guy just creating shows so he has an excuse to get a cup of coffee?
There's an easier way dude.
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Let's talk about another classic episode for this thing.
And that episode is Season 4's, The Contest.
You probably didn't know that this episode's premise is based on
a true story.
Years before Larry David had participated in a real contest to see who was master
of his domain.
It actually lasted for several months and Larry won.
When he decided to turn his experience into a Seinfeld episode,
he figured NBC would never let him do it.
He'd quit over them stifling his creativity and
it would work out perfectly for him.
To Larry David's surprise and chagrin, NBC let him do it.
And after The Contest aired,
only 31 people complained to NBC's New York headquarters about the episode.
So Larry David was stuck writing on his hugely successful show for
a couple more years until he finally did leave after Season 7.
He came back to write the series finally though, so boom!
Bonus thing that maybe you already knew.
And if so, no big deal because we're moving on.
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There's no way to wrap this up without at thing about The Soup Nazi.
We've all heard that there's the real Soup Nazi in New York who inspired
the character.
What most people don't know is Jerry Seinfeld had a bit of a run in
with the Soup Nazi after The Soup Nazi episode aired.
Jerry was in New York during the summer break after Season 7, and
went to grab lunch with some of the Seinfeld writers one day.
For whatever reason, they wanted soup, and you can guess where they went to get it.
Well, after seeing Jerry, the Soup Nazi, real name Al Yeganeh, voiced his
displeasure with the show and demanded an apology in front of the entire restaurant.
And Jerry complied, in a way.
He gave the most overdone, fake apology possible in front of the crowd.
The Soup Nazi can't still be mad about the episode though.
The show gave him so
much free publicity that he has since franchised his restaurant.
Obviously he didn't go with calling it The Soup Nazi, but still.
He even has packaged soups for sale online and in the grocery store.
I'm sure having jambalaya that's been sitting on a shelf for
four months is almost the same experience as going to the original restaurant,
being abused, and enjoying it fresh.
>> No soup for you!
(Laugh) >> That's it for this week's episode, but
leave a comment telling us what your all time favorite Seinfeld episode is and
we'll read that comment.
But thanks for watching and be sure to check out cinefix.com and subscribe for
more truish things about TV shows and movies, and sometimes mulligatawny.
Right here on Things You Didn't Know.
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