To hear Jerry Seinfeld deconstruct a joke is like watching a world-renowned artist paint something just for you. Take his beloved Pop-Tart joke. On the surface, it chronicles the invention of the breakfast staple, and especially how the delicacy resonated with a young Seinfeld. It’s a simple idea, but what you don’t see when he tells the joke in his 2020 stand-up special 23 Hours to Kill is how the sausage—or in this case, the Pop-Tart—was made. Seinfeld spent roughly 10 years testing out the joke, refining it, and making sure every beat hit just right before he committed it to film.
As good as the joke ended up being, it wasn’t initially clear to him that it should be…a movie. Over the years, Seinfeld would joke about the prospect of the film with one of the cowriters, Spike Feresten, who was an early believer. Another cowriter, Andy Robin, suggested making the movie like The Right Stuff, except set in the cereal world. That idea tickled Seinfeld, so along with another cowriter, Barry Marder, they all started writing it.
Unfrosted, which Seinfeld himself directed and which comes out on Netflix on May 3, is the story of two cereal juggernauts, Kellogg’s and Post Cereal, with Seinfeld playing Bob Cabana, a Kellogg’s employee. The premise is loosely true in that both companies were competing to come out with a mass-produced breakfast pastry first. Beyond that, reality takes a backseat to the jokes and the comedy all-stars in the cast, including Jim Gaffigan, Amy Schumer, Melissa McCarthy, Hugh Grant, Jon Hamm, Sarah Cooper, James Marsden, Peter Dinklage, Bill Burr, Dan Levy, Christian Slater, Sebastian Maniscalco, Cedric the Entertainer, and more.
Vanity Fair spoke with Seinfeld about crafting jokes, directing for the first time, the Curb Your Enthusiasm finale, and whether he has any life goals he hasn’t yet achieved.
Vanity Fair: Before we get started, I want to say that one of the earliest supporters I ever had as a writer was your late manager, George Shapiro.
Jerry Seinfeld: Aw, that’s great. Anytime someone brings up George to me, I know it’s going to be a great day.
Let’s talk about your original Pop-Tart joke. You put it in a Netflix special in 2020, but you had been working on it for a full decade before then. When do you feel like a joke is ready? Is it when you feel like the audience is connecting with it?
Well, yeah. I’ll just say right up front I’m very guilty of endless baseball analogies, but you have to hit at a certain level to be in the lineup. And it’s the same with jokes. They have to work with a certain consistency and get a certain size laugh where I say “Okay, that’s good enough. You can be part of the regular team.” But before that, they try. They want to get in. They want to be part of the show. It’s very difficult because you keep raising the line, or try to.
Especially when you’re such a tough critic of your jokes.
It’s not me. It’s them. The audience. When you’re talking to an audience, there’s nothing else going on in that room. And if that joke is not good, it is intensely boring and annoying. That’s the kind of unforgiving part of comedy.
You’ve mentioned that you were sort of hesitant to the idea of doing a film of the Pop-Tart bit when Spike Feresten first ran the idea by you. How much convincing did it take?
I never knew if he was serious all those years that we were joking about it. When we were in COVID and doing nothing, he said “Let’s have a meeting about making that movie.” And I still thought it was a ridiculous idea. But Andy Robin—who was one of my favorite writers from the years of the series—threw out “Why don’t we tell the story like it’s The Right Stuff.” That was the click that I went, “Oh yeah. That’ll be fun. Let’s make it super serious.”
Was there a specific moment when you’re writing the film that you just couldn’t wait to get it up on its feet and shoot it? What were you most excited about?
Full Cereal Honors [which takes place at a funeral sequence for one of the characters]. That was also Andy’s idea—that someone who dies in the service of creating a breakfast product would be buried with Full Cereal Honors. And then we came up with all the pieces. One of the key pieces was my daughter’s idea of the prize inside the box being the American flag folded up for the widow.
There’s about 10 jokes layered on top of each other in that sequence.
But the thing that makes it, for me, is you see the mascots and you think, “Okay, that’s the joke.” And then you see the cereal and the milk in the grave and you think, “Okay, that’s a good joke. That must be the reason they did this.” And the way they say “Snap. Crack-el. Ppppop!” Like marines. Which I think those guys came up with on the day we were shooting. That’s what I live for. I literally live for Wow. We put a sprinkle on top of a cherry.