By Jenny Woodward
Finlay MacKay for The New York Times
Jerry Seinfeld: How to Write a Joke: The comedian describes the anatomy of his Pop-Tart joke, still a work in progress, and shows his longhand writing process.
Jerry Seinfeld began his commute after dinner, in no particular hurry. Around quarter to 8 on a drizzly Tuesday, he left his Manhattan home — a palatial duplex apartment with picture windows and a broad terrace overlooking Central Park — and made for a nearby garage. Due to tell jokes at a comedy club downtown, he decided to drive what he calls his "city car": a 1998 Porsche 911 Carrera 4S. Stepping into the garage, he tugged a thick fabric cover from the car. The interior was a pristine matte black, and the paint job was a startlingly luminous azure. "It's called Mexico blue — a very traditional Porsche color," Seinfeld said. "In the '70s it looked normal, but now it looks insane."
His hair, flecked with gray, was buzzed almost to the scalp, and he was dressed in light-blue Levi's, a navy knit polo and a dark wool blazer. Seinfeld, who once said he wore sneakers long into adulthood "because it reminds me I don't have a job," has lately grown partial to Nike Shox, which he likes for their extravagant cushioning, but tonight he opted for tan suede desert boots. When he's in the workplace — on a stage, microphone in hand, trying to make a crowd erupt — the feel of a harder sole helps him get into the right mind-set.
"I just tried a little Twitter experiment," Seinfeld said. His appearance, at Gotham Comedy Club, had so far been kept secret, but just before leaving home, he'd announced the gig online on a whim. "They've only got a half-hour to get there, so I'm not expecting a flash mob," he said. Gotham was an opportunity for Seinfeld to audition brand-new material and fine-tune older bits in a relatively low-stakes context. In two days, he would perform for nearly 3,000 people at Manhattan's Beacon Theater, and that show loomed large. It would be Seinfeld's first performance in New York City since 1998, not counting impromptu club appearances and the odd private event, and it would kick off a citywide tour, with performances in each of the other boroughs. Born in Brooklyn, educated in Queens and famous for a fictional Manhattan apartment, Seinfeld called the tour "a valentine," but he was, on one level, ambivalent about it. " 'The Hometown Hero Returns' is not my narrative of being a stand-up," he said. "For me, it's the hotel. It's 'I Don't Belong Here.' It's 'The Stranger Rides Into Town.' That's the proper form of this craft."
Seinfeld wondered if hordes would see his tweet and hustle over to Gotham, but sparse attendance would be fine, too. Several weeks earlier he materialized, unannounced, at the Creek and the Cave, a club in Long Island City, and performed for "14 people." Most comedians dislike telling jokes to empty seats, but at this point Seinfeld enjoys a room that offers some resistance. "I miss opening for Frankie Valli and Ben Vereen, walking out as an unknown and there's no applause: let's get it on," he said. "I once opened for Vic Damone at a nooner on a basketball court in Brooklyn. They're going, Who is this kid? Oh, god! They're sure you're not worth the trouble. But I'd win over some of those rooms." After you've helped create and starred in one of television's best-rated, best-loved sitcoms — a show that, thanks to rampant syndication, is still bursting Kramer-style into people's living rooms 14 years after its finale — tough crowds are tougher to come by. "I would love it if there were only two people there tonight," he said.
To get the Porsche out of the garage, Seinfeld had to execute something like a 12-point turn, somehow managing, as he nudged the car back and forth, not to leave chips of Mexico blue all over an unnervingly close concrete column. Seinfeld is 58, and his face is rounder and more deeply lined than it once was, but it has retained the bright-eyed boyishness of his sitcom days. He smiles readily, either at something someone else has said or — since he is frequently the funniest person within earshot — at something he came up with. His default display of amusement is to squint hard and scrunch up his nose till his front teeth protrude from a rictus grin: a groundhog tickled by the sight of his own shadow.
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