"(dramatic music playing)" "Jerry Seinfeld:" "A lot of people say to me, "Jerry, what is the point" ""of these old cars on your silly show?" ""It's outdated technology." ""They're not as good as new cars." ""The restoration, the maintenance," ""where are you gonna get parts?" ""Why would someone go through all that?"" "(honking)" "Well, what if there was a car that was so special, so beautiful, so elegant, that it could even maybe show you the meaning of life?" "And this heart-stopping 1955 Mercedes 300SL Gullwing in ivory white could be that car!" "It has a three-liter, 240 horsepower straight six, but it's angled over to the side so they could get this hood line so low down and racy." "It has a four-speed gear box, a steel body, but aluminum doors, hood and trunk." "They call it a Gullwing for some reason." "I don't know why." "I guess it's just a nickname." "It goes zero to sixty in eight seconds and tops out at 135 miles per hour." "They used a space frame to save weight, but it made traditional doors impossible, so it's a little tough to get in and out of." "This was the first car from Mercedes Benz that changed their image from kind of solid, square, luxury cars to exciting speedy, sports cars." "The thing about this car is the sophistication, the light weight, the aerodynamics, the engine." "It all added up to one of the fastest cars of its time." "It's tailored." "It's timeless." "It's enduring." "These words also apply to my very special guest today..." "Mr. Lorne Michaels, the iconic executive producer of..." "All:" "Live from New York, it's "Saturday Night"!" "(phone rings)" "Lorne:" "Hello?" "Jerry:" "Hi, Lorne." "It's Jerry." "Hi, Jerry." "How are you?" "Good." "How are you?" "I'm good." "Are you up?" "I'm up." "I'm" " Yeah." "I'm in the lobby 'cause I like to come down and hang out here sometimes." "Really?" "No." "And, um... yeah." "Are you wearing sunglasses?" "No." "No sunglasses." "All right, then I'm not gonna wear sunglasses." "Yeah." "Except in my case it is better at night." "Everyone's is." "I'm Jerry Seinfeld, and this is..." "Thank you for doing this." "Oh, please." "I'm really happy to." "Are you really?" "No." "I think it'll be fun." "It'll be fun." "Yeah." "This is the car." "Ooh, I know what that car is." "Does it feel like you?" "(laughs) Of course." "It does to me." "Thanks." "Wow." "It's unbelievable." "It's beautiful." "This is the same car, modern version." "Yeah." "This guy has no relation to you." "No relation." "But he just happened to be there." "This is a great moment right here, Lorne." "What I loved about doing the sitcom was you're doing it in front of a live audience, so you get that laugh, and then you get that the world is also seeing it." "Right." "But you're the first generation of comedians that had respect and legitimacy being comedians." "Jack Benny did movies." "Yes." "And when I finally saw those movies, particularly "To Be or Not to Be"..." "Mm-hmm, mm-hmm." "...they're fantastic." "That moment in "To Be or Not to Be"" "when he's about to" "Speech?" "Yeah." "And he pauses." "Right." "And the prompter goes," "(whispers) "To be or not to be."" "And Benny has the perfect "I know" take." "The most famous line in literature, and..." "Right." "the guy thinks he forgot it." "What do you think of movies comedically?" "I made a bunch of movies." "I mean, I wrote "Three Amigos" with Steve and Randy Newman..." "Right." "which was in a year I wasn't doing "SNL,"" "which I loved doing." "Right." "And the thing about movies is, it's a chance to... theoretically get it right." "You have enough time." "With "SNL," you never leave the studio." "You tend to-- thinking you got it and then you go to a party and drink." "I think you have a better chance" "to get it right comedically..." "Yeah." "in "SNL" than in a movie because you hear the laugh." "Yeah, you hear the laugh." "Is that the thing that you really couldn't get away from?" "'Cause that's what it was for me." "Yeah." "Well, there's a moment when it becomes an audience." "Yes." "That's right." "It's just a group of people that don't know each other." "That's right." "And if you can get them together and they're working together, it doesn't get better." "Comedians tend to trust the sound of things..." "Yes." "...more than pictures." "Mm-hmm." "So, you can hear when an audience is losing interest." "Don Pardo, who was 96 when he died, which was the reason I did the "40th Anniversary,"" "is 'cause I realized," ""Oh, the original group is starting to go now, so."" "Right." "I could have told you before that happened." "Exactly." "But you know, you did the White House recently, and the first time I went there was with John Belushi, and Chevy and Dan Aykroyd." "And we were going to film Gerald Ford saying, "Live from New York," in the Oval Office." "Oh, really?" "And we pulled up at the gate, which-- and that's all there was." "It was just a gate like a studio lot, and the guy asked for I.D., and we took out our driver's licenses and of course, John Belushi didn't have I.D., and I go, "John, you came" "to the White House and you don't have it?"" "You know, anyway." "And the guy at the gate said, "I know who he is."" "And we were let in." "Wow." "So... that's 1976." "Yeah." "Yeah, it's not that way anymore." "So let me ask you why you decided to do this show this way." "I can't stand fruit baskets and dressing rooms." "Tell me about it." "Yeah." "(laughs)" "I don't have a good side so." "How 'bout the front?" "Yeah." "May I have a cup of coffee?" "Do you think anybody else but you could do the show?" "It would be immodest to say no." "It's a thing where you watch people come into their own." "Adam Sandler... worshiped Bill Murray." "I think Chris Farley was the son that Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi didn't have." "Right." "And every generation has been in some way influenced by the one before." "How did you see in Jimmy Fallon that there was a talk show host in there?" "How did-- Where did you see that?" "I mean, he's truly funny and incredibly talented obviously, but he also is generous." "So, he can let somebody else talk." "He also has, for me, enormous empathy in the sense that" "Mm-hmm." "Mm-hmm." "He gets beat up sometimes for being overly nice or over..." "Yes." "There's a thing I used to say, that it's just as hard to make a bad show as it is to make a good show." "Right." "So, if the movie isn't good, he can prove his intelligence by pointing it out, but he knows that they still have to be out there trying to get people into the theater because that's part of the job too." "Mm-hmm." "So, he's enthusiastic and he's on their side, and I think that makes people relaxed and I think you get the best out of people when they're relaxed." "Do you think that I could do that job?" "You 20 years ago could have done it." "I don't think so." "Well..." "I mean, it might not have been a hit, but you could have done it." "I was in Caesars last weekend, and if you walk through the..." "Now that's something that could have been said anytime in the last 40 years, but go ahead." "(both laugh)" "It was actually their 50th anniversary." "1966." "The original Vegas group clearly were more prone to, you know, like fantasies." "Like this somehow chipped off of Ancient Rome and circled the universe and landed in the desert?" "Yeah." "That's how it happened." "So now..." "There's pictures of, like, the opening week, and Jay Sarno, who was the first" "Oh, yeah." "You know the name?" "Yeah, yeah." "And there's a shot of him, as you're walking through, sitting there with the table, with the girls." "Yeah." "So, we're trying to guess how old is he in that picture." "Yeah." "This is '66." "And I said as a joke..." "Yeah." "I said, "He's 42."" "Joking." "He was bald, he's heavy, you know." "He was 42." "Yeah." "(both laugh)" "It's also that joy of that period..." "Mm-hmm." "...that there was-- there was someone-- who actually owned Caesars Palace." "This is the guy who built Caesars Palace" "Yes." "Well, that's what you are, Lorne." "You're the guy who built that empire." "I think" "Does that weigh heavily on you in any way?" "There will be a time when I realize that I'm no longer as good as I was and that things aren't coming together the way they should and that the quality is going down." "And then three years after that, I'll- (laughs)" "You want to do it as long as you can." "The line that I say about" "When people leave show business, is-- is never." "For me, being at the center of it, with new generations that, uh... is still exciting." "The problem with making it look easy is that people believe it's easy, and the job is to make it look easy." "Why are you a New York guy?" "I like" "The thing about New York is that whoever you are, you're not that important." "Yeah." "So you had a line about alternative comedy." ""I don't know what you're doing down there below 14th Street, but it doesn't matter."" "Yeah." "And I know that's half a joke." "It's a stage." "You go through it." "And you can't hide behind art." "When you're playing the real game and you're taking a full swing at the ball..." "Right." "...there's no denying that you missed." "And so, I think that's a bigger-stakes game and I think New York just forces you into that faster." "Uh-huh." "But in our world, it is it worked or it didn't work." "In the early days of the show, I had to get used to something that we did address would destroy." "Right." "And I was really proud of it and liked it, and then on-air, if the camera cut is late..." "Right, right, right." "and it unravels..." "Right." "...and it didn't work." "But people call you the next day and go," ""Did you think that was funny?"" "And you go, "Well, I did two hours before."" "It didn't work." "And you can't explain "didn't work."" "When I got to Rockefeller Center in 1975, there were deer running through the hall." "You know, like, the city was at a low point." "On the fourth floor was the office of a former head of programming named Larry White." "You know, in the old days with networks, the only person who got fired was the head of programming." "Right." "'Cause they could say to the advertising community," ""We found the problem."" "Right." ""We've identified the problem."" "(laughs)" "Uh... and so I was in his office, and in his desk were just tabs of Maalox and Gelusil and old racing forms." "And a plant that was now parched, dead, with one leaf." "Which I still have, actually." "Oh, my god." "They play rough here." "Yeah." "It is more-- it is more brutal, yeah." "How come you never became the president of NBC?" "'Cause I work with writers and performers and designers, and..." "People always say you can-- there's so many talented people you can hire." "People who can run things." "And you go," ""Do you know how many people there are in the world?" ""There are like nine." ""So you're one, so that leaves the other eight." ""Do you think any of them are gonna come work for you?"" "So, it's like you have to roll up your sleeves." "There's an old Shelley Berman joke, uh, about... his grandfather came to America, he was told the streets were paved with gold." "And when he got to America, he found out three things." "One, that the streets were not paved with gold, two, that the streets were not paved, and three, that he was gonna be the guy paving 'em." "And I think anything you start, you're in that position." "The people who run studios, it's a little bit like a zoo." "Right." "In the sense that when you go to the zoo, the first thing you want to see is the lion 'cause the lion is the king of the jungle and" "And who would that be?" "That would be Brad Pitt," "Tom Hanks" "That would be a leading man, yes." "Right." "George Clooney." "A leading man." "Yeah." "Yes." "Those are lions." "Yes." "Then the next thing you want to see is the bear." "Then you want to see the bears." "Because the bear is the strongest and the fastest and those are" "And who are the bears?" "Bears are like Arnold and action people." "Oh, I see." "Yeah." "And then" "And then before you leave" "There's the-- the monkeys." "There's something about the joy." "The sheer fooling around because it is what comedians do." "You know, you can't tell when they're working." "Do you know what I mean?" "You can't tell what they're doing or how they're working and..." "No." "...it's disorganized and chaotic, and they're doing it to make each other laugh." "Yeah." "And they never seem to be settling down and getting work done." "No." "They're talking in the hall about sports..." "Yeah." "...and somehow by the end of the week, there's a show." "Exactly." "So, you can't run that through a normal, organizational..." "'Cause they're the monkeys." "Yeah, 'cause they're the monkeys." "(both laugh)" "There's a thing that happens when you grow up in a city like Toronto where... people are always saying things like," ""I think the Italian food here is as good as any restaurant in New York."" "Yeah." "And I say, "You know where you don't say that..." "(laughs)" "...is in New York."" "There are gold standards for what things are..." "Yeah." "...and then there's the ultimate gold standard, which is the not caring." "Not having to depend whether you're good or you're not good." "So I'm wondering if you ever feel like this." "Yeah, there are moments, I think." "Yeah." "So you've done this walk..." "Many, many times night and day." "Since 1975." "Yes." "This is a mural for something." "Now look at you." "It looks like we just finished Cherry Twizzlers." "(laughs)" "Normally, I come in through the 6th Avenue side and then I go up to the sixth floor to say hello to Jimmy or generally before his monologue or whatever." "Right." "Oh yeah." "I'll come up to say hi." "Okay." "Look what I have." "How does this work?" "How does this happen?" "(both laugh)" "You're doing a show right now." "I'm live right now." "All right." "Do it." "(cheers and applause)" "Jerry:" "How you doing?" "How are you?" "Do I get paid for this?" "No." "(all laugh)" "Have a great show no matter what." "All right." "Thank you very much." "Oh, my god, Larry White's plant!" "Jerry, this was fun." "I'm glad you enjoyed it." "Yeah." "I enjoyed it thoroughly." "It's really fun." "Jerry: "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee" will be right back after this brief word from our sponsor." "Lorne:" "This woman is directing traffic..." "Jerry:" "That's my producer." "...without any official authority." "And yet it's New York, so people are obeying her..." "Yeah." "...because she's a producer." "(laughs)" "Now, do you want to do this or do you want to do the dramatic one down..." "Oh." "I kind of wanted to be in front of the Atlas statue." "Okay, cool." "Yeah, yeah." "I kind of like that metaphor." "Yeah, yeah." "(both laugh)" "Yeah." "(honking)"