For those of you who aren't on the Vandelay mailing list, I thought you might enjoy this article on Jason Alexander. Pretty interesting little snippet, most of which will probably wind up in the FAQ. Thanks Ellen.................
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Hello Vandelay: Reprinted without permission from The Lowell Sun via AP, Sunday, April
4th 1993. Approx. 100 lines. Enjoy!
Ellen ----Begin Article----
===================================================================== TV's Lovable Neurotic
As Jerry Seinfeld's angst-ridden friend George, Jason Alexander gets
his breakthrough role.
By Jerry Buck
AP Television Writer Jason Alexander is a walking, talking tropical depression who
brings dark clouds, rain and gales of laughter to NBC's Seinfeld.
Alexander plays George Costanza, Jerry Seinfeld's angst-ridden best
friend on the comedy series. Rarely have hard luck and knuckle-headed
stubbornness produced so much fun. In its Thursday night spot behind
Cheers, where the show made its debut in May 1990, Seinfeld had shot up
in the ratings.
Stand-up comedian Seinfeld plays himself in this series, a
throwback to the days when Jack Benny, George Burns, Ozzie Nelson and
others built shows around fictional versions of their home life. Julia
Louis-Dreyfus and Michael Richards also star as Seinfeld's pals.
The series was originally built around Seinfeld's stand-up comedy,
and the characters were merely to illustrate the stories he told. But
very quickly the characters took on a life of their own, and Seinfeld's
stand-up appearances are there only to remind people he is a comedian.
"I thought in the beginning George would be just kind of Woody
Allen-ish" says Alexander, who won a Tony Award as best actor in a
musical for Jerome Robbins' Broadway in 1989.
"That was the handle I used to get a grasp on the character. George
was seen as Jerry's best friend, based on a couple of people. He was
just a voice. I think George was less neurotic in the beginning. But as
you go along you see paths you can take a character.
"I've looked at some of the early episodes and see that George was
much sweeter. He's become more mercurical and neurotic. I myself don't
know how he'll react. We look for the funniest possibilities."
George began changing when Louis-Dreyfus joined the cast as Elaine
Benes after the pilot.
"Elaine became one of the guys" Alexander says. "She was more
straightforward in her eccentricity. George then became the alter ego
of Larry David, who created the show with Jerry Seinfeld. Larry poured
himself into George and that's how the neuroses developed,
Alexander has spent much of his career playing schnooks. He was
Richard Gere's sleazy lawyer in Pretty Woman and in a long-running
Western Union commercial he's the hapless kid wiring home for money
after he's ticketed by the Southern cop in the mirror sunglasses.
"America discovered me a as real jerk when I attempted to rape
Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman," he says. "Women across America decided
I wasn't fit to live."
Currently, during time he can get away from Seinfeld, Alexander's
playing the next door neighbor in the feature film version of The
Coneheads from Saturday Night Live. The movie, which stars Jane Curtin
and Dan Ayckroyd in their original roles as the space aliens, hopes to
catch some of the strange magic that struck Wayne's World.
In his Tony-award winning role, Alexander sang and danced his way
through numbers from such favorites by choreographer Jerome Robbins as
West Side Story, Peter Pan, On the Town, The King and I, and Fiddler on
the Roof.
"I didn't leave the show for Seinfeld," he says. "I couldn't do it
any more. More than a year of my life had been devoted to that show,
between rehearsals and performances. After I left it went on for
another year, but I was shocked when it closed. I thought it should run
forever."
Alexander is married to actress Daena Title and they have a 9 month
old son, Gabriel. The actor grew up Livingston, NJ and attended Boston
University.
"As a little boy I knew I wanted to be an actor," he says. "I did a
lot of community and children's theater. I started working
professionally when I was 16. I got over $400 for 3 days work. I never
finished college. I worked every summer doing commercials and bit parts
in movies."
"The summer before my senior year I got a good part in a horror
film called The Burning. When I finished it was too late to enroll in
school. I moved to NY, got a job in a casting office, then I got a part
in a Broadway show and I never went back to school."
His first part was in Merrily We Roll Along, a major flop. However,
he had a sympathetic role and virtually everyone in the theater
business saw him in it.
While doing his second Broadway show, The Rink, he was seen by
Norman Lear and was cast in the TV series E.R. . The 1984-85 show, set
in a hospital emergency room starred Elliot Gould.
"I got a call to be a guest star, " he recalls. " They flew me out
to LA. It was to be just one appearance, but I wound up doing nine
shows. I was 24, but I was already losing my hair, and I played the
smarmy hospital administrator who was the butt of everyone's jokes. The
show is still running on the Lifetime cable channel."
In 1987, Alexander was in another short-lived series, Everything Is
Relative. It's been referred to as the worst show on television he
says, but he thinks it was a good show that was so savaged by the
critics that CBS dumped it.
"It was funny, creative television," he says. "Look, no one
expected Seinfeld to do what its doing. It didn't work in the testing.
To its credit NBC has owned up to the fact that it was a show they
didn't understand but left it to its own devices."----End Article----