The Sponge. The Yada Yada. The Hamptons. The Chinese Woman. Peter Mehlman is responsible for some of
Seinfeld's most memorable episodes. Last week I had the opportunity to interview him.
(Photo: Dana Patrick)
What influenced your
career in comedy during your childhood and teenage years?
I would say mostly Woody Allen movies. Yeah he was one of my
favorites. I would see all his movies as soon as they came out and a little bit
Mel Brooks too, but mostly Woody Allen. Also, there was a TV show called Get Smart that I really liked. I was
probably like in fourth grade when that came out, but I still find it funny
even now.
Who were your
favorite stand-up comedians and writers when you were growing up?
Back then, these stand-up comics and writers of comedy didn’t
really influence me because I wanted to be a journalist. My main inspiration
was basically reading the New York Times every day.
Since you started out
as a journalist, what was the first TV episode that you ever wrote?
Well I worked on a sports journalism show called Sportsbeat with Howard Cosell, who was
in the 70s and 80s he was the most famous announcer in the world and so I got
to work on his show when my- you know, I was about 25. It was the first time I’d
worked in TV so before that I was writing for the Washington Post just kind of
straight newspaper reporting.
How did you first
become involved with Seinfeld?
By accident really. In the 80s I had a few mutual friends
with Larry David. I met him like two times, and then I just decided I wanted a
little life-change so I moved to Los Angeles and I was still just basically
being a freelance journalist. You know, writing articles for magazines. I’d
write some humor pieces and some straight journalism and then one day I was out
here about a year and I bumped into Larry on the street and he said to me “You
know I’m writing, I’m doing this little TV show with Jerry Seinfeld, maybe you
could write a script for us.” And I guess he assumed that just because I was a
write I had written scripts, but I didn’t. But I thought it was like a good
idea. At that time they had actually shot maybe four episodes so I got to see
the first four that they shot. And that’s when I got a little nervous because I
thought they were so good and I suddenly realized “Oh my god this is something
I would really like to do.” But it was very different from anything I’d done.
But, you know, I got a chance to write a script and it worked out well so they
hired me. I gotta tell you Eli, there’s a lot of luck involved.
Out of all the
episodes you wrote for the show, which are you proudest of?
I’m kind of proudest of… I’d say it’s a tie between “The
Implant” with Terri Hatcher because I think I did my best work on that one. I
like the way the show came together. On that one I just had four or five funny
scenes in my head that really had nothing to do with each other and I found a
way of tying them all together. So, you know, I was really excited. Of course
it never worked for me again that way. Like I said again, a lot of it is luck.
You never know how a good episode is gonna come about. Another one I really
like is “The Yada Yada” just because even though it was I think in season 8, it
felt like an episode from maybe Season 4, because it wasn’t like a big
production, there wasn’t a Puerto Rican day parade in it. When we did episodes
that were very complicated we would not be able to shoot them in front of an
audience and I always wanted to do shows that were shot in front of an audience
because then I knew that it was kind of more simple like just kind of more like
what the show was about. The show was all about little slices of life and
whenever we had to shoot off the set, and things like that, I never liked those
episodes so much. Like, I always say something like “The Puerto Rican Day
Parade,” I really-I don’t like episodes like that. To me the best thing about
the show is basically Jerry and George sitting in a coffee shop talking.
Apart from Seinfeld, you’ve also written an episode
of the show Wings. How did you end up
doing just one episode of that?
I wrote an article and I got contacted by an agent and this
was even before I was really interested in being in TV. And I got an agent and
the agent was tied into the show Wings and they asked me if I wanted to come in
and pitch ideas for the show, which I had never done but, you know, I watched
the show and I really didn’t like it that much to tell you the truth. But I thought
it would be a good experience so I went in and they bought my idea right away,
and so I did kind of write a script for it, but almost nothing of what I wrote
wound up in there, and I didn’t really know what I was doing at that time. It
was like when Seinfeld came along,
that’s what really turned me over to TV, to sitcom writing. I had done this one
other thing and I almost blank it out of my mind.
Did you base anything
you wrote on Seinfeld on your real
life?
A lot of them, like one tiny bit of it, would be real-would
be based on my life, and then the rest of it never really happened. “The Chinese
Woman,” I actually was going to meet an editor once when I lived in New York,
and her name was Janet Chan and, for some reason I had it in my head that I was
meeting a Chinese woman, and I went to meet her for lunch, and this little,
normal, white, Jewish woman comes over to me and says “Hi Peter!” and I said, I
looked at her like “Who are you?” and she goes “It’s me, Janet Chan!” and I
almost, I said to myself “What do you mean?” and you know I didn’t say that,
but I thought it and we put that in the script. But all the other stuff where
she actually acts Chinese and everything didn’t really happen. So a lot of the
times you would take like the beginning point and the just make a story out of
it. If you have just one funny point, you can blow it up and make a story out
of it. Larry tended to have experiences where he could almost use the entire
story, I mean lot of Larry’s most famous episodes were things that really happened
and two or three beats of the story actually happened. Very little of it was
me. I wrote that episode “The Smelly Car,” and I did have a friend who went to
a restaurant and the valet had bad B.O. and he couldn’t get it out of his car.
And I thought that was a great idea, but nothing else that happened to my
friend actually happened in the script. So, that’s usually how it worked out.
One little tiny bit of it, and then I would just blow it up.
What do you think
about the final episode?
I think that there was so much anticipation that it would’ve
been impossible to live up to it. I like the episode more than most people do.
And I certainly liked it at the time more than most people did. I think the
only thing that bothers me now that makes me understand what people thought was
that watching this guy get robbed and mugged and just sitting and making jokes
about it, I think that was like a little worse than anything the characters had
done before. You know, it wasn’t kind of typical of the bad things that they
did. I think that it was just a little more blatant. So, you know, I agree with
them there, but I don’t think the episode was as bad as some people think it
was, I don’t know. I think it was great that all the characters came back.
Do you think a reunion
will ever happen?
Oh I don’t see it happening to tell you the truth, I mean
maybe it will, but somehow I doubt it. Everybody kind of moves on. That was a
big thing but everybody kind of takes off in different directions and goes down
on their own lives. So, I don’t know, I guess it could happen, but I really don’t
see it.
So if you were asked
to write a reunion episode would you turn it down?
(Laughs) It depends on who asks. I mean, if Jerry asked, I
would say yes. If somebody from NBC asked, I’d probably say no. I would
definitely say no.
I noticed that on
many episodes of Seinfeld you’re credited as a program consultant. What does
that mean?
Every time you see my name on the show, other than written
by, those are all basically different titles for the same job. You know, story
consultant or co-producer or supervising producer, it was all the same job
basically, it was just a higher title and more money. But, my job was purely to
write.
You’re also credited
as a creative consultant on the 2005 children’s movie Madagascar. How did you get that job? Do you plan to work on kid’s
movies again?
After Seinfeld, I was under contract to DreamWorks to develop
TV shows, and I liked the company so much that I said to the head of the
company, Jeffery Katzenberg, if I can help out on anything else I’d be happy
to, and he told me later about Madagascar,
and so I helped out on it. I did a lot of rewriting on it for a few years,
because especially back then, animated movies took a long, long time to get
done. So, I actually put a lot of time and effort into that movie. And the
giraffe was named after me, so… I don’t think I would do any more animation
just because it’s not usually the way I think and that one was kind of an
exception just because I happened to be working at DreamWorks, and they
obviously made a lot of animated movies. They did Antz, and Shrek, and all
of those.
So a couple of years
ago, you started a web-series titled “Peter Mehlman’s Narrow World of Sports,”
can you tell me about the show and how it got started?
Yeah, the funny thing is people knew I had a sports background,
and I met somebody from Comedy Central and I said that I’d really love to do a
bunch of sports interviews and ask the kind of questions I want to ask because
when I watch ESPN they never ask the questions I wanna ask. And there was a
time where Tiger Woods was doing an appearance in New York for the video game,
the PGA golf video game, and so Tiger was going to do a very limited amount of
interviews. And he wanted to do it because it was a comedy thing. These guys
they talk about golf and their normal stuff so much they get bored so, this was
like an opportunity for them to have a little fun. So anyway, I did that and the
Comedy Central producer wanted me to cut the interview to three minutes because
they didn’t think that anybody would watch an interview for more than three
minutes and so I refused. So, that gave me the idea of just doing a series of
interviews just like the Tiger woods interview because I figured once I had
Tiger Woods it could give me the ability to get a lot of other people. So when
I started it, I knew the publicist for the LA Lakers and I asked him to ask
Kobe and Kobe was like all in so Kobe was the first one I did as part of the
series, my own “Peter Mehlman’s Narrow World of Sports.” And, I was working
with a production company that is no longer really in existence and they had some
kind of person who would reach out, like a casting person, so I got all these
other athletes. You know once I got Kobe it was kind of like, “Oh Kobe did it?
Sure I’ll do it.” So, that was like the most fun I could ever imagine having
and to be working at the same time, it was just a blast.
That was fairly recent, but it has since
ended. What are you working on now?
Well, since then I’ve written two books. I just started
doing stand-up comedy like a year and a half ago.
Had you ever done
that before?
No, I never did that before. There were a few years on
Seinfeld where I was the only writer on the show who had never done stand-up.
And so, I’ve been doing that, and that is just so much fun, and I have another
pilot that agents are trying to sell and there’s some interest, I don’t know.
But, I’m kind of big on writing full sentences now, so you know, I write a lot
of essays, and like I said, I wrote a novel and I wrote a book of essays. And I play basketball. That’s about it.
After you’re 1999
sitcom It’s Like, You Know was
cancelled, you said you “wouldn’t work with ABC again if the future of Israel
depended on it.” Since it’s been almost twenty years, would you consider going
back if they picked up your pilot?
Definitely. I probably shouldn’t have said that but it
seemed funny so I said it. (Laughs) But yeah, I would definitely go back and
believe me, there’s not one person who was there then that’s still there. It
turns over so much. The team who’s at FOX has been there for like six years,
and that seems like forever. I’m not really as tuned into the politics anymore
as I used to be. But, yeah, I would do it for anybody. You know, you get to the
point where you really want to pay as little attention to the business aspect
of it all and just pay attention to what you do. You know, my advice to all
young sitcom writers is always “Do your job and stay away from show business.
Just write and don’t get too involved in the other stuff, that’s what you have
an agent for.”
So, to close out the interview,
what advice would you give to young people who hope to become either a stand-up
comedian or comedy writer when they grow up?
Well, I would definitely say watch tons of the really good
comedy movies. I mean, like obviously that’s a matter of taste. For me, just
those Woody Allen movies when I was young, but Airplane, is to me like the
funniest movie ever made. And Police Squad and those guys, they all have a different
way of going about comedy. Some you’re
gonna like and some you’re not gonna like. So I mean, the Judd Apatow movies don’t
really do that much for me. I shouldn’t actually say that because he’s a
really, really, really great guy, I should say they’re just not really my taste
in comedy. But, I mean, you gotta determine for yourself what you really like.
And kind of study it, what it is you like and what are your favorite jokes and
what makes them so good. And what makes the story so good. Like, stand-up you
really have to pick out the three or four stand-ups that you really love. Like,
for me right now, you know Woody Allen did stand-up before he did movies and it
was fantastic, you know, it was super creative. But you have to find the
comedians you like, you know? For me, Steven Wright was great and I think Sarah
Silverman is really, really funny. But, I think while you gotta keep open
minded about all kind of comments, I think you gotta really stick to your guns
as far as who you like and even if your friends are saying “He’s not funny,”
just say “Well I think he’s funny and that’s all that matters.” And, it’s great
to watch somebody like Jerry because he’s so professional and he’s so precise,
and basically this is writing, and writing is the most important think. It’s
really important to do good writing and learn how to be really concise because
one word more than you need in a joke, basically ruins a joke. As Jerry used to
say, “If it doesn’t add, it subtracts.” So, it’s tough but you just have to
keep on writing and churning it out. And studying what it is you like about
different writers and comedians because really all you’re doing is trying to be
prepared for that day where you get lucky. Someday there will be a day when you
get lucky and you wanna be ready for it.
