Every Seinfeld Episode Based On A True Story

Initially in the pilot, Kramer's character was named Kessler. I was living in New York at the time and I had a next-door neighbor who was a slightly eccentric guy named Kenny Kramer, who would always come into my apartment and always impose himself. I did things I didn't want to do and he was a little overbearing at times but very adorable and funny and we started dating and became very good friends, I mean, best friends, you know, and it's unlikely that the two of us would be so good friends because we are very different types of people.

I'm an outgoing, fun-loving, party-ready type of person, and you know, this is George Costanza and he always had a lot of women there and there were always things going on in his apartment. It was like the mecca of the building and I thought it would be a good character for the show too. You could live next door to this Kramer guy, yeah, and he came in as a real-life crazy neighbor, Jerry, I think at the beginning. I thought, well, that's too cliché, the cool neighbor, you know, but I knew this guy very well and I thought he could write.

I could write this character. One day, Larry comes in and calls me Crane. Seinfeld asked me to write this pilot with him. and uh, I think I'm going to do it, but you know what I would like to have as a basic character and call him Kramer, okay? And I said it's certainly fine as long as I can play Kramer and he says you can. I may not be Kramer and I said, but I am Kramer and one of the characters will be

based

on you. No I dont think so. I don't like. Whatever you want.

I can play Kramer. You can't play Kramer. Am. Kramer but you can't act I still didn't want to call him Kramer because I knew my real neighbor Kramer and I knew that by calling this character Kramer I was going to open a can of worms that I really didn't want. getting involved with Larry was positive and correctly predicted that if we got Kenny Kramer involved in this show in any way he would exploit it to the max and become a complete pain, which of course he did, I actually think he's a great guy and a guy funny, but that name just had something that no other name had.

Jerry liked the name Kramer so much that he became very attached to this name and I also didn't forget it while we were working on the first one. A couple of shows in my apartment which was right next to Kramer's and we were working in my apartment. Kramer came over while we were working. I was on the phone with Jerry, they were writing at Larry David's apartment and Cherry was saying. the real Kramer just arrived and then Jerry told me what the real Kramer was doing, he goes to the kitchen, he's searching, he got something right, he left and I finally prevailed.

Larry said we have to change it to Kramer, there is no other name. There's something about that name that rings

true

. Cramer finally started calling Castle Rock's legal department and said and said listen if you're going to use this name and he gave them a whole list of things they demand that he wanted. including some financial demands and he got

every

thing he wanted. I didn't realize that George was Larry, it was probably in that first season with that trust order of four um, it was somewhere in there, there was something that I can't remember exactly where it was, there was a moment in the script that, ya You know, with my excellent training as a classical actor, I went to Larry and said, Larry, first of all, this would never happen to anyone, but if it did, no human being would react like this. and Larry said what do you mean this happened to me and this is exactly what I did and I said oh okay and it was at that moment that I understood that he was writing his own experiences and his own reactions, the Stakeout that was Based on an incident that actually happened to me when I was with a woman that I had dated Monica Yates after we were dating and we were at this restaurant and there was another woman that I had my eye on and I couldn't.

I didn't go into full flirting gear right in front of her, so I somehow found out about the building in the conversation, the building she worked in and I actually made the overseas surveillance move, the robbery was, You know, he had this apartment on 81st Street that was In real life they get robbed pretty regularly, they cut through the hallway wall to get into his apartment and they robbed it, and I remember maybe that was the seed of the idea, look Jerry , sorry, you have insurance, friend. no, how is it possible that you don't have insurance because I spent my money on the clapco d29 it is the most impenetrable lock on the market today it only has a design defect the door must be closed this little Vietnamese opened this little restaurant it was a four like a four table restaurant called The Dream Cafe is right on my corner and it was amazing because I was fascinated by this type.

Tom Leopold actually took me aside and said, you know, this is

based

on a real guy, it was a little postage stamp. of the restaurant, but their menu was huge, but the most touching thing was that no one ever came in and I thought, well, if I go in, I live next door, I'll always have to go to the other

story

on the coast, where George was taking the IQ. test and this was absolutely a

true

story

that happened to me years and years ago I was dating a woman who I guess was studying to be a psychiatrist and she always said she could give me an IQ test and I was just scared because I mean, you know , you know, I don't want to, I didn't want myself to know the truth, you know, but what if it's even lower than I thought?

You know, the nose job came about because I have a very close friend whose father works at The Jewelry Exchange in Manhattan and constantly attracts people and is so goal-oriented that he literally tells people all the time that you go, you know you're a very girl. beautiful, he told clients. You know all the time that you are a very pretty girl, you should get to know yourself, you should get your nose done, you know, and you know, you would tell him, you know, but my friend would say, Dad, you can. I don't say things like that and you're like, hey, trust me, she'll come back and thank me, so I thought it would be really funny if George was dating a girl who would be out of his league, except for the fact that she has such a big nose. . and it's a great thing unsaid and then Kramer just tells her one day it's amazing how many beautiful women live in New York, well you're as pretty as any of them you just need a nose job and once I remember that incident from my past in which I'm sorry to say that I tried to come to terms where I could actually have this physical relationship with someone and yet not get to the point where we're boyfriend and girlfriend and the only way we could do that was if we followed these particular rules and that became the agreement

episode

because this is very good and that would be good, that would also be good, the idea is to combine this and that, but this cannot be.

It bothered us, we just want to take this and add that a lot of our personal problems at Seinfeld, Jerry's, Larry's, mine, were bathroom problems and like I told you, I had the office next to theirs, they had a bathroom in his office, which was a real privilege, but I would make it a point to use his bathroom all the time, which led to the story where George was fired by his boss for using the boss's bathroom and I was hired as a writer on Saturday night Live. I wrote there for a while. I got an on-air sketch, which aired at five to one in the morning, and I left it halfway through the season.

He said, "Basically, I walked into, you know, this guy's office and said I'm out of here this is it, close this job, close your hand, you know, and you really just put it thick, that's it, this That's it, I'm done, it's over, I'm done, I'll never do it Working for you again Looking at you You think you're an important man What you think you're nothing You don't have brains or ability Nothing I left and on the way home I realized that I was having a hard time living on a salary and I decided to come back on Monday morning like nothing had happened or like it was a big joke and you know, the guy called him but he said no, which was nothing.

I was joking, am I crazy or not? You don't quit, are you kidding? I didn't quit, you took it seriously, you mean the laughingstock, all that stuff, come on, could you stop it? When I was dating Monica Yates , the daughter of Richard Yates, who was a great writer, her father had come to town and was staying at the Algonquin Hotel appropriately enough and she wanted me to meet him at the Algonquin Hotel and I had just bought this . suede jacket this jacket has completely changed my life when I leave the house with this it is with a completely different confidence like tonight.

I may have been a little nervous, but inside this jacket I am composed, grounded and confident that I can face any social challenge, may I say? One thing for you and I say this with an unblemished record of unconditional heterosexuality. Absolutely, it's fabulous. I like meeting him at the Algonquin Hotel and we had a drink and, uh, he was as intimidating as Alton Bennis, which one is he supposed to be? be the funny guy, ah, he's the comedian, we had a funny guy with us, a racing gun, he got his brains blown all over the Pacific, there's nothing funny about that.

It started snowing outside and I had my jacket rolling and we were going to go from the Algonquin to another place for dinner and we were going to walk there and I saw the snow outside and I knew that would be the end of that jacket, the phone message with George leaving a message on someone's answering machine and then regretting it, I left some of the worst messages, uh, I regret so many messages that I left particularly to women when I was single and they ended it, they ended it for me, they told me totally. leave a message and stutter and and that was it, they never wanted to see me again, so anyway the ball is in your court, so take it easy, then of course George Shapiro's pen, we were in the office, you know, writing session or something and uh and uh Larry didn't have a pen I said he has a pen this is an astronaut pen and he said wow, it's beautiful I said you can ride upside down I said really I said well yeah, take the pen and uh I said no no I can't take the panel get another pen and Larry didn't want to take it and then he made him take it and that's where that came from and to this day and I didn't know you were going to ask this question.

I still have it it's written backwards they use this in space Oh oh well that's the astronaut pattern I heard where did you get it from that was a gift oh because many times I travel in bed and I have to turn and lean on my elbow to do let the pen work, take the bed, oh no, go ahead, I couldn't come, make me a person, it's okay, I can't take it back, are you sure I'm sure? Thanks, you had sex with the cleaning woman. your desk, who you are, who you are there, well, sometimes I was in the office working late into the night, you know, and, you know, being the horny Jew that I am, you know, occasionally a woman I would be dusting, we all have thoughts and luckily I had an outlet for some of those Elaine and I in real life had these two friends, a woman and a man, who we had fixed up and when we fixed them up they started to get along very well and went out, I was working.

It went really well and we thought we were geniuses because we had made this great match, you know, then the relationship started going bad and Elaine and I started blaming each other for what happened to their relationship and that's what we thought, so we were looking . for one

episode

, so we proposed that idea. Larry and Jerry liked the idea, we went away, and literally in a day or two we wrote a first draft of that episode. George was in weird shape, she just can't find anyone, yeah I think so too, she's really giving up on George too, yeah right, I've never fixed anyone up, oh me neither and I'm not going to start on George, enjoy the game, uh, I think you better take off your Orioles gun, yeah, you better not, no, seriously, you're in the owner's box I don't think that's a good idea you're not serious yeah yes yes I am didn't he say that?

No no but he gave me the seats and I don't think he'd like you carrying an Oreos Cup, yeah well maybe you should ask. I don't have to ask him now, are you going to take off your hat or not? Then Larry David asked me if he had anything, any connection for the seats in Anaheim. I told him yes, maybe he knows. Gene Autry's accountant, he's a good friend, said to me, "See if you can get me some tickets," so I called the accountant Stan Schneider and said, listen, can you help me with Larry David to get a couple of tickets?

He says yes, I will get it. jeans tickets in the Gene Autry box and I took a friend of mine who was wearing a Yankees cap and it was about the third or fourth inning and all of a sudden one of the Angels executives comes down, taps my friend on the shoulder and he tells him: you have to take off that hat. Mr. Archery doesn't like people wearing Yankees caps. I thought it was the most amazing thing I had ever heard in my life, so of course I put it in an episode where we introduced the show the same way as.

Jerry and George pitched the show to NBC executives on the series. Jerry and I came in and I had no experience and what did you two come up with? We thought about this in several ways, but the basic idea is that I would like to move forward.more seriously. He comes from this girl that he had been dating, uh, Larissa, where one night she couldn't sleep and next to her he was lying in bed. It's so stupid for her and me to even say this. I thought it wouldn't be funny if while she was sleeping her butt started talking to me and it became a little joke between the writers that they would just joke about, but it was some kind of crazy thing that comedy writers insist on and it became all this fiction for a while. like a month.

Larissa's butt, which he didn't know, could talk and was learning to talk and learned new things, you know, capital letters. of different states and things

every

day and at night when Larissa fell asleep it entertained me and kept me awake and that's why I wasn't sleeping so it was a real inside joke and at one point I shared it with Jerry but A lot of times we got our ideas or things that people thought, well, you can't do that on TV and uh, but I thought it would be cheap if we did it coming out of that part of the body.

I thought people would do it. You might think we were going for a cheap laugh, which I always hated, so I thought I'd change it to the belly button so it doesn't seem like we're, you know, making a joke about bodily functions and, I wish we had. it's like it really was so it's finally humiliating me no, it's not you, it's your stomach he's talking in this funny jovial, booming voice hello Mr. Kramer says hello buddy, something here, would you mind coming back later? Oh yeah, sure, should we prepare something now? Get out, no one said you're fat.

He is a lovable character. He's like the Kool. -Help boy, he's fat, fat, no, he's just a little swollen. Goodbye that night. I went home and shared it with Larissa and she left. I returned the next day to Seinfeld. I said she left. He's leaving. Why did you tell him what's happening to you? what's the scene I think is there and he said now we have our second seat and he's going home again try talking to her again and see what happens so you're sure you're not still mad about last night no . I'm fine as long as you never make that voice again, ever fine, what if you're not around?

No, so I have to choose between seeing you and doing the voice well. I can do that, what's your decision? I don't know that it's very contagious, I mean, even during the week we never seem to get tired of it, everyone, the team and everyone, we did The Voice, what nothing, it's a card from my dad, what is it, dear son, Happy Festivus, what's the best thing about? It's nothing, the idea for Festivus comes from the demented mind of Danny O'Keefe, pure Danny O'Keefe. I didn't introduce Festivus as an episode, in fact, I had blocked it out of my mind entirely.

Danny O'Keefe had a family. that's rich in madness, colorful to say the least, yes, and so we knew that his kind of family life, his personal stories, were going to be absolutely perfect for Frank Costanza and the really celebrated Festivus of the o'keeffe, they ran out words and before the sheer It's strange and they said, well, you should, you should, you should write an episode about that. I was like, oh, I don't know about that, I think we should leave that alone and they said no, this has to be on television, the story has to be.

At Festivus dinner you gather your family and tell them all the ways they've let you down over the past year and if there's a tree, no, instead there's a pole, no decoration required. The tinsel is distracting to me, embellished it a little with the metal pole I don't think they actually do that, but if you're going to embellish with something, what a great way to do it with a metal pull. George Festivus is your heritage, it's part of Who You Are, that's why I added The Show, we said Festivus took place on December 23rd. I think Frank said it was to get a leg up on the competition, but he didn't actually have a set date, so that's what made it even more sinister: it was a floating event. vacation, huh, it could happen practically at any time you were just we were just given very short notice hey kid, good to see you, are you expecting anyone else?

Kind of two-faced, but that was based on a real woman. I went to university. with whom she would occasionally try to approach me and then turn her head and the light caught her badly and she looked like a creature from the depths, she was alternately beautiful and deformed, she was a real phenomenon, she reminded me. Me, Two-Face character Harvey Dent, Gotham District Attorney, so attractive one day, unattractive the next, have you encountered this? Yes, I am familiar with the syndrome. She's two-faced, like Batman's villain, if that helps your idea. of the Christmas card, a donation was made in your name actually because every Christmas we get a Christmas card from Castle Rock, who produced Seinfeld, some Whatley, we see, you give and you get, this is what I'm trying to teach you in these holidays. a donation has been made in your name to the Children's Alliance oh, that's cool, I bought them Yankees tickets, he gave me a piece of paper that said, "I've given you a gift to someone else, to a children's charity. "They just see how wrong he is." is where is your Christmas spirit? it would always be donations in Maine in your name would always go well, geez, I wonder how much it would be to at least be able to get the tax deduction and we finally decided Well, that's the most selfish thought.

In the world that should be George, one of the most exciting things about that episode was that Ben and Jerry created an ice cream flavor called Festivus, so it's strange to think that a family vacation turned into an ice cream that was one of the proudest moments of the show when we had ice cream, my dad's reaction to the whole Festivus phenomenon as it is, at first he was a little strange about it, but it eventually turned into a yes. Vindication, you know, he thought his message was going out. He was very excited about it.