Jerry Seinfeld has a simple theory about why so many comedy movies fall flat: they are too worried about making us like the characters. He made the point in a sit-down conversation with Eddie Murphy for Netflix, filmed in 2019 when Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee was up for an Emmy, and the clip is doing the rounds again.
Why There’s No Seinfeld Movie
When the host asked whether he would ever make a Seinfeld movie, Jerry admitted it could be done but said it would be “less funny.” In a movie, he explained, “you have to have a chase scene, you have to have a romantic story,” and the audience has to like the characters by the end and feel glad they spent the time with them.
“That’s what’s ruined movie comedy,” he said. “Redemption. Redemption of the character at the end.” He mocked the studio focus-group mindset of worrying that viewers didn’t like the lead, and answered it with two words: “So what?”
The Bugs Bunny Rule
That freedom, Seinfeld said, is what made the TV series great. He compared it to a Bugs Bunny cartoon, where a character can take a blast to the face, the screen cuts to black, and he comes back perfectly fine. Nobody has to learn anything and nobody has to be fixed.
It is the same thinking behind Larry David’s famous “no hugging, no learning” rule for Seinfeld, which kept Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer petty and unchanged right up to a finale that landed all four of them in jail.
Earlier in the conversation he also explained why filmmaking in general puts him off: the size, the scope, the manpower and the money. He would rather stay in stand-up, which he called his “aquarium.” As he put it: “Let me just see if this is funny, and then I’ll go home.”