Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "Jerry Seinfeld Interview: How to Write a Joke | The New York Times" video.

  1. As a man with both OCD and autism, this is so very, very relatable. You shouldn't be thinking about things other than what you're doing if you're going to get anywhere. He's got his pens, he's got his paper, he knows if he's got the stuff he needs to continue working and the things to do the work are themselves cues to work. It made him many tens of millions of dollars, no reason to reinvent that.
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  2. Yep, I remember years ago watching a short documentary on comedy, and one of the comics was saying that if you've got something so dark, taboo and offensive that it can't ever be shown in public, he wants to touch and hold it. And, I do think that is right. The mechanisms that trigger laughing tend to be an attempt by the brain to reset after being given something that makes absolutely no sense.
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  3. I'm not sure if it is modesty, he probably does genuinely question whether he is a literal tens of millions of dollars worth of funny and whatever his fee for a show is these days worth of funny. Which is even harder to define than if the laughs you're getting for no pay are genuine, let alone it being so expensive that you can literally never work again and would have to put major effort into disposing the money that you've got.
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  4. TBH, this is one of the rare cases where the bit of bait and switch was warranted. He's not writing a joke here, he's writing a bit. Writing a bit is much more involved than just writing a joke. He's got a set of smaller jokes that are being woven into a larger one. Writing simple jokes isn't really that hard and people often times make them off the cuff. I personally struggle with figurative language at various points in my day and I can do that. I just have to be careful because I can be more cutting than I intend to be due to a lack of appropriate body language.
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  5. Probably not more than when he was pitching the show that ultimately became Seinfeld. Plus, he probably has a bunch of other possible bits he could have used, I think he's probably just having fun. He's got the 0s behind his bank account to say that people like what he's doing.
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