Before they created one of TV’s greatest sitcoms, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David were strangers on a New York sidewalk.
A Chance Sighting
In a 2014 Reddit AMA, Seinfeld said he first saw David outside the Improv on Ninth Avenue and 44th Street around 1975. He wasn’t even doing stand-up yet. He was just eavesdropping while David and another comedian leaned on the fender of his car.
Seinfeld even remembered the car: a 1973 Fiat 128 SL. The two didn’t speak that night, and he said David didn’t even know the story.
Finally Meeting
Two or three years later, they finally met properly at Catch a Rising Star on First Avenue and 78th Street. Seinfeld said they started talking and couldn’t stop obsessing over the smallest possible issues.
That was the spark. Both were stand-ups on the same New York club circuit, and both were fascinated by the tiny annoyances of everyday life.
Building a Partnership
In the years that followed, Seinfeld became a rising stand-up star, while David built a reputation as a brilliant but uncompromising comic and later wrote for Saturday Night Live.
When NBC approached Seinfeld about developing a show in the late 1980s, he turned to David. Together they created The Seinfeld Chronicles, which premiered in 1989 and soon became simply Seinfeld.
The Engine of the Show
Their shared love of tiny details became the engine of their partnership, and of Seinfeld itself, a show where an entire episode could revolve around waiting for a table or losing a car in a parking garage.
The Los Angeles Times and Variety both picked up the story when fans rediscovered it.
Not bad for a friendship that started with one comedian quietly listening to another lean on his car.