Entrances and Exits

A PERMUTED PRESS BOOK

Entrances and Exits

© 2024 by Michael Richards

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 978-1-63758-913-7

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-63758-914-4

Cover design by Cody Corcoran

Cover photo by Tony Duran

Art direction, design, and interior composition by Greg Johnson, Textbook Perfect

This is a work of nonfiction. All people, locations, events, and situations are portrayed to the best of the author’s memory.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

Neither the U.S. Army nor any other component of the Department of Defense (DoD) has approved, endorsed, or authorized this book.

Permuted Press, LLC

New York • Nashville

permutedpress.com

Published in the United States of America

To my family

Contents

Foreword by Jerry Seinfeld

Introduction: The Hair

Part 1  Got Any Meat?

Chapter 1: If You Want Funny

Chapter 2: Kessler

Part 2  Oh Mama!

Chapter 3: The Backstory

Chapter 4: Love

Chapter 5: The Summer of ’69

Chapter 6: Next

Chapter 7: Drafted

Chapter 8: The Road Show

Chapter 9: The Burgermeister

Part 3  I’m Out There!

Chapter 10: Higher Intelligence

Chapter 11: Zapped

Chapter 12: The Ha-Ha Returns

Chapter 13: Fridays

Chapter 14: The Real Don Johnson

Chapter 15: The Truth

Chapter 16: Stella!

Part 4  Giddyup!

Chapter 17: The Shortest First Season in the History of Television

Chapter 18: The Ah-Ha

Chapter 19: The K-Man Cometh

Chapter 20: The Hipster Doofus

Chapter 21: And the Emmy Goes to…

Chapter 22: The Celebrity

Chapter 23: Cosmo

Chapter 24: Finding Home

Chapter 25: It’s Go Time

Chapter 26: Have a Good Show

Part 5  YYou Gotta Listen to the Little Man

Chapter 27: The Flop

Chapter 28: Whirling

Chapter 29: Not Funny

Chapter 30: Heart-Work

Chapter 31: The Light

Acknowledgments

Foreword

By Jerry Seinfeld

There were many things that bonded Michael Richards and me together. Cereal, interesting automobiles, Tony Curtis, but mainly it was prioritizing our personal life in a very distant second place to our comedy life.

Some funny people do comedy because of the fun or attention it brings if they can do it well. I think for Michael and me, it much more took the form of a sacred mission. A deadly serious undertaking in which no effort can or will be spared. Kill and die are words comedians toss around very freely. Mostly it’s because comedians love to exaggerate and overstate everything in hopes of getting a reaction. But for some comedy performers those words are not an exaggeration at all. They are literal.

We must kill.

The audience died laughing.

That line is a killer.

I died out there tonight.

Within the comedy community there are only a small few that approach it like this and it’s not by choice, it’s by birth. It’s what you are and how you’re made. There’s no thought, choice, or decision about it. You think nothing but, I must make this funny moment work. The rest of your human life is but an annoying inconvenience.

I first became aware of Michael on Fridays because I was doing Benson across the hall at ABC Prospect Studios in the early ’80s. I only did three episodes and was fired but I got to see Michael work, which of course changed both our lives forever. I have never just liked a comedian in my life. They’re either just okay or if they can actually make me laugh, I fall madly, insanely in love with them.

It was definitely when I saw Michael do Dick Williams, a Hollywood fitness guru, on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno that I fell hopelessly, forever in love with him. The furrowed trying to seem handsome brow, the tension through the neck, arms, and shoulders to appear muscular, the black shoes and socks, the smooth playboy style of walking, it was over for me.

Poor Michael, he never had any idea that the second I heard he was available for the part of Kramer on The Seinfeld Chronicles the part was his and no one else had any chance. I went through the multi-layered network audition process so that Larry, Castle Rock, and NBC could imagine I would even consider another actor. Not for an instant. It was all a charade as far as I was concerned.

Michael, of course, was amazing in the audition and after the last one I’ll never forget an NBC executive turning to me and commenting, Well, if you want funny… That’s when I first understood TV networks are not actually in the entertainment field. I looked at this guy like, What world do you live in? Whatever it was, it wasn’t the kill and die world that Michael and I lived in.

I never thought that the show would be very popular but I was determined that it was going to be funny. I have to say looking back on it all now, one of my very favorite things that I absolutely miss the most was just looking into Michael’s eyes. It’s the most beautiful view in the world of comedy. If you could only see the way they dance and jump up close when he’s in the curl of the wave.

It was fun when we rehearsed but when the audience was in, the lights were up, and the cameras were on, and we knew that huge laugh we just got is going out to millions and millions of people, that was comedy big wave surfing. We were riding monsters and we knew it. And of course, it was wonderful when the show caught on and people got into it.

But the show I saw, Michael Richards six inches in front of my nose, was something else entirely. It was one of the greatest gifts for me personally having Michael’s face right up to mine. It was that place that Michael and I always dreamed of being. A golden comedy heaven.

I guess there were other events in my life and in the world that took place between 1989 and 1998 but it’s all faded and dim in my mind. It was Larry, Jason, Julia, and Michael. We hung on tight as we could for as long as we could. And honestly, the most vivid reality for me of creating it day after day, year after year, was that Michael/Kramer and I really did live together. He envisioned it so strongly in his mind and I did too.

Most weeks were seven days long for me and I didn’t have to pretend very hard, which I guess is called acting, that our little apartment set was where we really lived. I also didn’t have to act at all that I would love having such a fun live-in and/or adjacent to a friend that I was always excited to see—that was Michael.

We decided early on that no real-life rules would ever apply to Kramer. His apartment would be a Silly Putty fantasy that we would form into whatever comedic device we needed it to be. And of course, the character itself would also be infinitely re-inventible per each story like Harpo Marx, Stan Laurel, or Bugs Bunny. Whatever’s funny, that’s what Kramer would be. Some of it we thought of but a lot was inspired by what we saw in this wonder of Michael himself. And that was the one-of-a-kind comedy genius that Michael had. Only he could soar, dip, and dive so easily with this freedom.

I know Michael tortured himself to make this happen 180 times in a row over a decade, but I know it was why he was born. I would tease him about it and laugh at the twists and contortions that he would put himself through mentally and physically to do it, but it was really just part of the fun and pain of doing comedy. It was when we locked eyes in that apartment set that I knew I was in the best cult ever. Two insane lunatics spinning in an out-of-control comedy universe.

And it was when I felt the spin rate start to slow ever so slightly that I knew we had to get out. This was all way, way too much magic to turn into a transaction for profit enterprise. Not going to end it on that note. I wanted to keep flying on the wings of the comedy gods that had smiled on us for so long. Obviously, all the ingredients were fabulous, but for me, Michael will always be the bubbles that made the drink so tickly and tingly.

I’m sure you could see how often I was hanging on for dear life to keep from laughing when I was in a scene with him. Nothing ever felt as pure as just looking into Michael’s eyes when we sat at the script read-throughs, when we laid down some tracks for the scene, and of course, when the red light came on and we played it for keeps.

That’s the show I was watching.

That’s my most indelible memory of doing it.

That’s why I feel Michael and I will always be at the end of the hall, living right next to each other forever.

Introduction

The Hair

We’re on a break, and Jerry comes over to me during rehearsal early in the third season of Seinfeld . During these brief lulls, we usually lounge around in his apartment set. We make ourselves at home. In a way, we are home. For all the time we spend in this soundstage—five days, forty-five hours a week—the set has become our home.

Jerry is shaking his head slightly.

Michael, he says, with a slightly bemused grin that makes him appear as if he’s listening to a joke in his head before he tells it. Michael. Michael.

I can’t tell if there is trouble or if he is laughing to himself. Jerry has a way of reducing problems to nothing, often to silliness. It’s the not-so-secret ingredient of the show. It’s also Jerry in real life. The two are often indistinguishable.

Jerry can stay cool in any type of situation, to stand still and calmly assess circumstances as if it’s a puzzle to figure out or some kind of word game that will eventually produce a punch line. It’s an enviable quality, and I have attributed it to his having had good parenting, which he has acknowledged to me to be true.

As a result, Jerry doesn’t flap easily. He genuinely plays it cool. Not me. I’m a flapper. I was raised around high-strung Italians, and they were not so buttoned up. They always let the goo out. So I say what I feel, no holding back. This is a vital side to Kramer too. He inadvertently shoots his mouth off, which the show’s writers and I are realizing usually gets the ball rolling.

As comedians, Jerry and I are both ball rollers. He is more graceful, more methodical, and to the point. For his stand-up he carefully crafts his jokes word by word, rarely deviating from the genius he has put on the page, a true Apollonian. I am and have always been far more unpredictable onstage, riskier, off book, Dionysian.

I look at Jerry, who is looking at me, paused, as if we’re both at a red light waiting for it to turn green.

I rev my engine. So, what’s up?

He grins and says, They’re talking about your hair.

I think he is referring to the show’s fans, wanting me to know that they’re getting into Kramer’s look. But no, he tells me it’s the network. The network is concerned about the way my hair looks. Starting in the middle of our previous season, I let my hair grow and pulled it up, using a touch of hair gunk to keep it looking, well, weirdly alive.

I’m Kramer, I say, running my fingers through my hair. The man wants his hair this way.

Jerry nods. They don’t think the audience will like Kramer if he looks too crazy.

Really? I say. Well, tell ’em I’m putting a scorpion tattoo on my neck.

Green light! I floor it. Kramer kicks in like a blower! There is no separating the two of us, especially when I’m around Jerry. (To this day, at seventy-four, around Jerry, I’m Kramer. I’m psychically bound to this character, and Jerry is also Jerry around me.)

Jerry, look how these network people wear their hair! They’re running the front office. They have to look normal! I’m not normal! I don’t work in the office. The K-Man is eccentric! Every wild, weird, and goofy thing going on in New York City is running through this guy’s blood. You know…Giddyup! Come on, let’s go! Game on! We’ve got things to do! That’s New York City! That’s Kramer, Jerry! And it’s all in the man’s hairdo!

Jerry is amused.

Then in an abrupt U-turn, I go from Kramer well over the speed limit into a slow cruising speed. So, what’d you tell ’em?

I said, ‘We’re making a comedy.’

Bingo! I come to a stop. Jerry gets it. He has always gotten me.

Done! I say. Let’s have a bowl of cereal.

We sit down in the kitchen area of the set and pour ourselves two bowls of high-fiber, no-sugar cereal and move on to whatever. It is the last time the network or anybody on staff will ever question Kramer’s look. But you know, I couldn’t have changed even if they had mandated it. By this time, early in season three, only seventeen shows in, Kramer and I are irrevocably entwined, braided together from head to toe.

The hair, so essential, symbolizes the irrational that was and is and always will be the underlying feature not only of Kramer but of comedy itself.

This seemingly senseless spirit has been coursing through me since childhood. I’ve been under its almighty influence since the day I came into this world. I was raised by it, nourished by circumstances that shaped my love for the far out. I became a devotee of the best, most outrageous comedians on early television, and then in theater school at Valley College, then CalArts, but mostly at Valley College, I was drawn to the freakish and oddly humorous playwrights Ionesco, Pinter, Cummings, and Beckett…everything avant-garde—experimental, radical, the unacceptable or unorthodox in art and society. I felt it all within myself, especially the physical comedy, the body movements, so freakish and undignified, where I bumped into things, knocked stuff down, messed up situations, and often ended up on my ass.

This book is a hymn to the irrational, the senseless spirit that breaks the whole into pieces, a reflection of the seemingly absurdist difficulties that intrude upon me. It can be Harpo Marx turning me about, shaking up my plans, throwing me for a loop.

Upset and turmoil is with me all the time. It’s at the basis of comedy. It’s the pratfall that we all take. It’s the unavoidable mistake that I didn’t expect. It’s everywhere I go. It’s in the way that I am, both light and dark, good and not so good. It’s my life.

Part 1

Got Any Meat?

Chapter 1

If You Want Funny

If I’m not interested, I’m usually not at my best. And if I hadn’t been able to perform, if I hadn’t followed my interest in theater, I would’ve been a tramp wandering the earth, which is what I was interested in doing many years later. Actually, I’ve always been interested in tramping, but one step at a time.

Milton Berle once told me that saying a joke and playing a character are two different things, but if you can bring the two together, saying funny and doing funny, then you’re making gold. This explains why I am sitting in Jay Leno’s kitchen in March of 1989. He’s been a fan of mine going back to Fridays, the late-night sketch comedy show that ran for three seasons on ABC starting in 1980, and even further back to when both of us were doing stand-up at the Improv comedy club. He is sitting in for Johnny Carson this week, and he wants me on the next night’s show. He senses we can do something funny together.

He doesn’t know what that is, and neither do I, not yet. But we’re interested.

Jay suggests I reprise a character I created on Fridays, an absurd hipster and ladies’ man named Dick. He was one of the show’s memorable characters.

Doing that character, whaddya think will be funny? he says.

That’s the golden question, isn’t it?

I could come in as a weight lifter, I say. Dick as one of Hollywood’s top personal trainers, a weight lifter to the stars.

Jay mulls the wafer-thin premise.

All right, he says. Can you sketch it out?

Yeah, let me work on it. I’ll call you later.

A routine is already starting to take shape in my head.

***

A couple of hours later, I phone Jay from my house and tell him that I’ve figured it out. Jay comes up with the idea of plugging a new book from Dick. Aside from this and my brief premise, we agree to fly without a safety net; we’ll improvise the whole thing. To Jay’s credit, this doesn’t seem like too big a deal working without a script. He trusts me and obviously himself. I’ll do funny and he’ll say funny. Together, we’re going for the gold, Uncle Milty!

***

The next afternoon I arrive at The Tonight Show set on the NBC lot in Burbank with a barbell setup, a bucket of white chalk, a towel, and a rowing machine. I have some bits in mind that are similar to some funny moves I put on Dick back on Fridays—one sketch in particular that was called Dick Goes to the Gym. I can open it up more with Jay, but as I get into costume—a woman’s one-piece stars-and-stripes swimsuit, large blue shorts, and an oversized weight-lifting belt—I’m not quite sure how I’m going to do that. But I got one thing going through my head: if ya can’t make it funny, make it interesting.

I’ll just be Dick. I’ll commit to the character and trust in this. Jay will be Jay, and he’s very much at home with himself. Okay, Mikey, got it? Just be Dick. That should take us most of the way home. Everything else, the physical comedy, well, it can’t be rehearsed anyway. It needs to be in the moment, natural. So, Giddyup!

***

When it’s time for the sketch, Jay gets up from his desk and walks to the middle of the stage where my workout equipment is set up. He introduces me as his distinguished guest, Hollywood’s top fitness trainer to the stars, who is promoting his new book, Health, Wow! Please welcome Dick Williams.

I step out from behind the curtains wearing my workout suit with a lit cigarette dangling from my mouth, plus Dick’s trademark black socks and dress shoes. The studio audience roars. I flex, and they laugh harder. I snap a towel at Jay’s rear end, and we’re off. I get wacky on the rowing machine. I topple over my equipment. Jay sets me up perfectly. The whole thing works. Hail to the irrational!

An estimated five million people watch that episode of The Tonight Show, as they do most nights, and among them is New York based comedian Jerry Seinfeld, who laughs as he watches the show in his apartment.

The next day Jerry calls his friend Larry David, another stand-up comedian with whom he has spent months creating and writing a half-hour TV pilot for NBC. He says to Larry, "I saw Michael Richards last night with Leno on The Tonight Show. Michael was hilarious. He could play Kessler."

Like me, Larry was a writer–cast member on Fridays, so he knows me, but I imagine him inhaling deeply, clenching his teeth, wincing a little as he does when annoyed or irritated, and finally, with a nay-saying groan to Jerry, Ehhh, Kenny’s got a ponytail. I’d like that for the character.

Great, Jerry says. Let’s bring Michael in for a read.

***

Four months earlier, Jerry and Larry were working on a sitcom pilot. Both of them had done sets at Catch a Rising Star comedy club this one particular night and were hanging out together at the bar. Jerry mentioned that NBC was interested in doing a show with him, and he asked Larry if he wanted to work on it with him. Did Jerry have an idea? No, he had nothing—except himself, which was enough for a network to want to invest in him. He and Larry wandered into a nearby Korean grocery store, where lightning struck as they joked about things on the shelves. The show would be about two guys talking about stuff—stuff on the shelves, goofy stuff they did during the day, and the stuff going on in their lives.

They would stay close to themselves, write from there. There was no premise better than that! They knew themselves well enough. Certainly, they knew what made them laugh. Which was essential since neither of them had written a pilot script. But that didn’t matter! They were the pilot. The whole thing would be about them.

I can hear their eureka moment… What we’re doing right now, this is it! Two guys, us! Talking about whatever! That’s the show!

It was something Jerry and Larry had done together for years: talked about their lives, other people’s lives, everything. Jerry would star as himself, and his friend George would be modeled on Larry. Cheers had a bar; they’d have a coffee shop. They would talk about the minutiae and annoyances of living in New York and the relationships in their daily lives, the stuff they always talked about when they got together.

Depending on your point of view, it would be about everything, or it would be about nothing. Either way, they were onto something.

Jerry was managed by George Shapiro and Howard West. George was the nephew of comedy legend Carl Reiner. His show business connections ran deep, and he adored Jerry. More than that, he believed in him and believed Jerry was primed for success, which he was. After years of working in clubs, nonstop touring, and numerous Tonight Show appearances, he had climbed the ladder in the comedy firmament to a place where George and Howard were able to secure a deal for him to make his own comedy pilot for NBC.

Jerry and Larry finished writing the pilot in February. A few weeks later, Jerry sees me on The Tonight Show. Soon after, I get a call from my agent.

They want you to audition for a pilot Jerry Seinfeld is doing for NBC, he says.

NBC? But they canceled my show last year, I say, referring to the series Marblehead Manor, which ran on the Peacock network before getting the ax. Did they ask for me?

It’s coming from NBC. Jerry’s writing the pilot with Larry David.

"Oh, those guys must’ve asked for me. Okay, yeah, I know Larry. We were on Fridays together."

How about Jerry? my agent asks. Do you know him?

No, I say. I knew of Jerry, though. At thirty-five years old, he is a bona fide stand-up comedian. Like Jay, Jerry is established, a pro, a headliner who’s selling tickets. I am not surprised he has a TV deal.

Larry is in another category. Seven years older than Jerry, he has worked the stand-up scene since the early ’70s. He, too, is a gifted writer, something he does with more assurance than telling jokes to an audience, which he did with an air of disdain that still came off as rather funny. It was a unique feature of his comedy act that worked. He was perpetually bothered and disgruntled, and though it didn’t make him loveable, he was very much liked. It got him on Fridays and more recently on Saturday Night Live’s 1984–85 season that included Billy Crystal, Martin Short, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Christopher Guest.

Naturally, I tell my agent to send me the script for the audition. I am curious to see what the boys have come up with.

What’s it called? I ask.

"The Seinfeld Chronicles."

***

NBC might not have told Jerry and Larry yet, but I am probably at the bottom of their network list or out altogether in the discard pile. I can hear the NBC execs say, We had Michael on a show that didn’t work. Sorry. What about Tony Shalhoub? Have you thought about him? How about Larry Hankin? There are a lot of funny guys out there.

Hollywood is tough. But for a guy on the cusp of forty, standing six feet three inches tall, with the physique of a spaghetti noodle, my life is pretty good. I own my own home. I work regularly in television and films. My résumé also includes a few plays at the Mark Taper Forum.

Stand-up comedy, which is live and a form of theater, is, for me, usually improvisational and raw, a place where I let it all out, like a dog off leash, though lately I’m losing interest in the whole stand-up scene. After my recent co-starring role with Weird Al Yankovic in his movie UHF, it’s clear to me I am more of a character actor than a stand-up comic.

I’ve always felt this anyway, but now I am leaning into it. I’m going to audition for the Actors Studio and look into the Stella Adler Conservatory West.

***

I am at home preparing for my audition for the Actors Studio—memorizing the Jerry-and-the-dog monologue from Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story—when a messenger delivers the pages for my NBC-Seinfeld audition. The Seinfeld Chronicles script is still a work in progress, but it’s enough to give me a taste of the show, including a scantily written character named Kessler, the role for which Jerry envisions me.

The pages are not like any TV sitcom script I have read before in that it’s just conversation, a lot of banter with very few stage directions.

It’s interesting, kind of like My Dinner with Andre, but without the insight into the human condition. It’s just the condition, which I think is better.

It is mainly two guys talking in a coffee shop, where they are occasionally interrupted by a snarky waitress who they know from being regulars. Then there is Kessler, a guy who lives in the apartment across the hall from Jerry. He barely has any lines. He walks into Jerry’s apartment and says, Got any meat? In the next scene, he turns to George and asks how real estate is going.

I assume George works in real estate. I imagine Kessler must be a weirdo. There is no explanation or background for any of these people. There are no typical sitcom setups or jokes. It’s just talk.

I’m intrigued. It’s clear that this show is going to be about people and their ability or inability to navigate their lives in New York City. Since Kessler has few lines and really no story to go on in the pilot, I figure I’ll go into the audition as a character, be in character. It won’t be about saying funny. It will be about doing funny.

***

I audition three times. The first takes place in a conference room at NBC in Burbank, the same place I was a few weeks ago when I appeared on The Tonight Show. I walk in thinking NBC doesn’t really want me. No one has said it directly, but the way the network’s executives greet me with chilly, perfunctory hellos makes it seem like they are doing Jerry a favor by bringing me in. It doesn’t matter to Jerry, though. He says he is a fan of mine and thanks me for coming in.

Oh, well yeah, I wasn’t going to stay at home, I say, affecting a look of seriousness that lands on Jerry and doesn’t move until he starts to laugh.

Right. I’ll make some faces. I just want to make Jerry laugh. I’m not thinking about the network…they don’t want me anyway. But I’ll perform well. I do want the room to laugh.

We sit down and subtly, like Jacques Tati, I study my chair and try to get comfortable. After a few moments, I stand and get another chair, a desk chair on wheels, which lets me glide awkwardly around the room toward Jerry. This gets laughs. Then I start with the first line. When Jerry says his line, I don’t respond. I turn my head slowly and stare at him, like I have never seen him before, like I don’t know what to say, and he cracks up.

The others in the room do the same. This is not just an audition; it’s a performance. I’m giving them a character.

In the clubs, I used to open my act in character by standing onstage, acutely natural for five to six minutes while attempting to speak without saying anything. I pretended to have gone blank, to have forgotten my joke. I stood there all blanked out like Buster Keaton with the world falling apart around me. I covertly searched my pockets, trying to find the paper with my joke written on it. I find it. I glance furtively at my joke. Got it.

Slowly, I started my delivery, stuttering, then pausing, having forgotten the joke again. I look for the paper once more. Got it. Then apprehensively, I deliver, A guy walks into an antique store and says, ‘What’s new?’ It was the only joke I ever told in a club, and it worked. So here with Jerry, I’m doing my opener but without the joke. I’m in character, just staring at him, very subtly signaling to him to do something because we’re being watched.

Jerry isn’t an all-out actor. He’s a comic who knows comedy. He’s watching me, and at this audition, in this moment, this man is my audience, and the best one I could hope for. He won’t stop himself from laughing—and he is laughing.

I pick up on this immediately. And so I play to Jerry—something I will do for the nine seasons to come. But first things first. I have to get the job.

***

A few days later, I return for a second audition. Same place, but with more people in the room. Some are from NBC. Others are from Castle Rock, the production company that Rob Reiner—Jerry’s manager George Shapiro’s second cousin—founded a couple years earlier. Castle Rock is making the pilot (the network will finance it and put it on the air). I look around the crowded room. Where’s Larry?

I didn’t see Larry David at my first audition, and he is AWOL from this one too. Strange. We’d worked together in the past…he’s the producer and writer here…I let it go. Jerry warmly welcomes me back, appearing eager to play.

As we get rolling, I start fooling around with our dialogue, changing lines, and improvising new ones. Our chemistry this time is even better. Jerry doesn’t know what I am going to do, but he gamely plays along, clearly enjoying himself and keen to see how it will all turn out. Me too. I am flying without a net. I stand up and move around the room. The physicality feels good to me. Talking to Jerry from over my shoulder, I walk toward the conference room door, open it up, and to my surprise, there is Larry, standing straight and tall, listening to the scene through the door.

He is clearly caught off guard when the door opens. I feign shock.

What the hell are you doing out here, you Peeping Tom! I exclaim without breaking character. I’m going to get the landlord. I’m sick and tired of you creeping around this building, you pervert. I’m calling the cops.

Then I slam the door shut, sit back down, and give Jerry the next line as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened. (Later, I find out that Larry worried his presence in the room might throw me off, so he listened from outside.) People in the room are dying. Near the end of the scene, I get up and open the door again. Larry is still there.

You’re a sick man, and you need help! A great deal of help! I slam the door shut.

I leave. End of audition.

***

I am used to getting hired right after the first audition. I have gone in twice now and killed. My chemistry with Jerry is obvious. Everyone laughed. I can come up with only two reasons why they haven’t given me the job already: they don’t know what they’re doing, or my initial hunch about Marblehead Manor is correct—the network considers me used goods.

Later, Jerry will confide that I was right, NBC didn’t want me from the get-go because of the canceling of Marblehead Manor, but he pushes for me, and that’s the reason I am called back for a third audition. This one is in a plush suite at the swanky Century Plaza Hotel, which must be, I think, something they arranged as a convenience to NBC president Brandon Tartikoff, who is joined by NBC’s head of comedy, Warren Littlefield, and their head of late night and specials, Rick Ludwin. It is clearly the final round. The pilot is scheduled to shoot soon. Decisions have to be made.

Arriving early, I wait in the lounge with a bunch of other actors, the cream of the crop who’ve made it this far. One guy comes in character, wearing pajamas and slippers. Sure, why not? I am wearing pants (thank God for that) and a button-down shirt. They send us up one by one on the elevator. I’m using it: mentally, I’m in the elevator of our building in NYC, going up to Jerry’s apartment. But now, I walk into the hotel suite pretending it’s my room. After only a few steps inside I stop abruptly, pretending to be shocked by the sight of everyone there.

What are you people doing in my room? Some laughs.

I slip into the bathroom, wait a moment, and then loud enough for them to hear me, I plead, Oh, come on! I flush the toilet. Returning to the room, drying my hands, I look at Jerry seductively.

Darling, do you want me to get room service?

I’m getting laughs.

No, thank you, Jerry says. I’m good.

All righty. Shall we do our scene?

Jerry cracks up.

Yes, we should do something, he says.

I deliver the first line: Got any meat?

I don’t want to repeat the business from the previous auditions. Without deviating from the dialogue, I climb up on the nearby table and go straight into a headstand, as if this is ordinary behavior, nothing unusual while we’re having a conversation. Jerry plays it the same way. Nose up in the air. Eyes slightly pinched. Wearing a look that is somewhere between amused and befuddled. Classic Jerry.

Then I deliberately lose my balance, crash backwards, roll off the table, and fall awkwardly into an empty chair. Everyone in the room is stunned, waiting to see if I am injured. Me too. I sit up and say my last line as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened.

I get up from the chair, point to Larry and bark, Pervert! and walk out the door and back to the elevator.

Afterward, there is nothing for those left in the room to debate. Marblehead Manor is ancient history. Much later, George Shapiro told me that after I’d exited the room, Brandon Tartikoff said, Well, if you want funny, go with that guy.

Chapter 2

Kessler

The date is April 28, 1989, and nothing about the pilot we are shooting feels right to me. Maybe it’s just nerves before camera. I am always nervy before I shoot. I usually stay apart from everyone to gather myself.

When I auditioned for Larry and Jerry, I was playing silly and gave myself up to them. I was weirdly funny and off the wall, all out on a limb and having careless fun for their amusement. I didn’t give a hoot whether NBC or Castle Rock liked me. I wanted to make my comrades in comedy laugh, so I played it up, and doing so, I went home foreseeing that they were going to cast me. I was right.

Now I’m on the set, but it all feels rather empty. I sense my character Kessler isn’t going to come through well. Having recently finished the film UHF, I still have a hangover from the character I played, Stanley Spadowski. I think some of him is still on me, and there is only one day to shoot the pilot, one chance to get Kessler right.

This is going to be a long day. I’m inside Kessler, but unknowingly, far from the character into whom I will evolve, Cosmo Kramer. He has not yet arrived. For the pilot, it’s just Kessler and he’s looking for meat, a suitable metaphor for finding Kramer.

I wonder whether I will have time to get another pilot before the end of the year. What? I want to get out of here and escape to another show? I can’t have this mindset and perform. I buck myself up. Come on, Michael, you signed on the dotted line. We all signed on the dotted line. Let’s get the job done!

I’ve worked with all kinds of material before. Once, when I was assigned to act in a weak sketch on Fridays, Jack Burns, our ensemble director, noticed my uncertainty. He took me aside and said, With your talent, if you fully commit to the material, if you give it all you’ve got, you are seventy percent there. That’s enough for the audience to go on. The other thirty percent lands where it will.

It was excellent advice, and I can get by on Jack’s encouraging words. I have read enough sitcom scripts to know the pages Jerry and Larry have written are smart, quirky, funny, and different. Is it too different to become mainstream? What does it matter! Our job is to make it funny, and funny is about as mainstream as you can get.

Jerry and Larry have never written a TV series. They are first timers who don’t entirely know the rules, and they have inadvertently broken and continue to break many of them by simply doing their own thing. Thank God for that! This is their time—our time—to be