I bought the newly released DVD of Season 7 of Curb your Enthusiasm this weekend and watched it all, plus the bonus stuff at the end about the making of the reunion show.
Now let me get this straight. They were able to get all of the principle cast of the show together, make up a rather funny plot about George and his ex-wife, bring all the old Seinfeld sets back from the warehouse, and filmed what seemed like 10 mins of this fictional reunion…SO WHY DIDN’T THEY JUST DO THE DAMN THING???
Expand the script! Write 3 times more than what you already have! Put it together! That’s a show! Fans would go crazy for it! David’d make a hundred million dollars! WTF was he doing teasing us for?? I kept watching that last episode of the season, and my brain tells me the episode seems longer than usual. I was hoping beyond hope that they put some special easter egg in the DVD, that they’d actually film the reunion episode then hid it on the DVD. But no! No reunion! Even though it would have been great, even though it would have been something unique like David wanted, even though they had every god damn thing set up for it already!!! It would have taken so little extra effort! Damn it!!
Just wanted to get that off my chest…
Anyway, I wanted to ask, from an earlier season of Curb, Larry got into trouble when he didn’t tip the waiter captain. WTF is that? I’ve been to a few fancy restaurants, I’ve never seen a waiter captain before. What does he do? He only showed Larry to his table! He didn’t do anything, why the hell should he get paid? And is there a waiter first mate too? Am I supposed to tip him in doubloons?
Is there such a thing as a waiter captain? And if so, why the hell should they get tipped seperately?
I believe the cast of the original Seinfeld have often said they didn’t want to do any kind of reunion show, and it was only because Larry David has that special relationship with Seinfeld that it got that far.
In interviews after the Enthusiasm finale, they said it was kind of cool to see their old set, and do that short segment, but it didn’t seem like they wanted to do more.
Couple of reasons:
Seinfeld himself is a gazillionaire due to the residuals from the show. He doesn’t need the money and has other projects in the works.
Michael Richards (Kramer) made a total racist ass of himself at the Comedy Store in West Hollywood and has pretty much kissed his career goodbye.
Jason Alexander (George) still does some television (including a regular gig on Enthusiasm), Broadway and films, so he doesn’t really need to revisit the George character anytime soon.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus had her own show (recently canceled) and, to my surprise, I recently read that her father is a billionaire (really!!) in France. I doubt she needs any coin to pay her mortgage.
So - this is about as close as you will ever see for a Seinfeld reunion. Two out of four are fabulously wealthy, one is doing quite well without the show, and the other - well…shit happens.
Regarding tipping the waiter captain - no, you don’t “have to”, but in a hip restaurant where tables are scarce, doing so might ensure a good table. Plus, doing so every time will make it easier to get in and get seated. Once you stop that “tradition”, you might find yourself at the end of the line. No different than at a hip new club, or anyplace that has someone in charge where money talks.
Thing was, by the last season of Seinfeld, Richards and the other two were earning somewhere between 500K and 1M per episode, which would be between 12 and 24 Million in 1998 alone, which doesn’t count any of the previous 8 seasons or residuals afterwards.
So yeah, shit happens and Richards’ career has sunk, but I’d be seriously surprised if he was hurting for cash right now.
I know he’s not the character, but I still can’t help half expecting to read that he lost it all in some bizarre investment project (only to read a year later that he actually came out ahead due to some freak Kavorka-like luck).
They did it in a hilarious way. On the penultimate (I like saying that word ) episode of that season, Richards was trying to get into his character but was very distracted by a recent medical diagnosis of Groat’s disease. Larry wanted to take his mind off of it so he told Richards that his friend Marty Funkhauser’s friend, Danny Duberstein, had Groat’s and is currently fine. Larry was to arranged for Duberstein to call Richards and reassure him before Funkhauser told Larry that Duberstein died of Groat’s only 2 months prior.
Not wanting to send Richards into a panic a few days before the reunion show, Larry asked Leon, the black guy that was staying with him, to pretend to be Duberstein and talk to Richards and reassure him. Leon agreed, but Larry couldn’t be there to supervise the whole thing because he was stuck somewhere. Leon had to improvise being a black Jew, among them saying the Bar Mitzvah happens every 13 years instead of on the 13th year, to “recharge the Mitzvah”
Seemingly reassured, Richards shows up for work on the set the next day wearing a special hat that Leon gave him, because Leon said that would stop the Groat’s. Unfortunately, that’s also the day Marty Funkhauser decided to bring Danny Duberstein’s widow to the set. Richards realizes the trick, then runs outside to confront Leon. He grabs him by the collar and starts yelling at him in the NBC lot, right near a bunch of tourists. They pull out their cell phone cameras and start to record the whole thing just as Richards was yelling at Leon saying “I wish there was a name that I could call you that would make you as mad as you made me!” before realizing he’s being recorded and then running away
The studio head said in a meeting recently that the show has made $2.7 billion in syndication fees. (Now that’s everything, including the studio’s money, Seinfeld’s money, Larry David’s money, etc., but still, it’s astonishing.)
The Alfred Dreyfus who was at the heart of that scandal is only distantly related to Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Her father runs a really big investment firm.
) episode of that season, Richards was trying to get into his character but was very distracted by a recent medical diagnosis of Groat’s disease. Larry wanted to take his mind off of it so he told Richards that his friend Marty Funkhauser’s friend, Danny Duberstein, had Groat’s and is currently fine. Larry was to arranged for Duberstein to call Richards and reassure him before Funkhauser told Larry that Duberstein died of Groat’s only 2 months prior.