jerry, what's new ?

What is Jerry doing now ? I heard he is not doing stand-up right now.

AT asked, "What is Jerry doing now? I heard he is not doing standup..."

     He may not be doing too much of it at the moment, but he is getting ready
to do a lot of it. He's rewriting his basic standup act, for the first time
since before the series went on the air almost a decade ago. (The HBO concert
in August at Carnegie Hall was his retirement party for his old act.) He loves
the life on the road, unlike most comics, and wants to get back to it at least
part-time.
     He may or may not also write a second book as a followup to
"SeinLanguage," his six year old best selling collection of short essays based
on themes from his old act...or turn the new act into a book of essays later,
if it plays well. He turned down a chance for a big advance to write a book
first, before he rewrote the act...but may come back to it after the act's
done.
     According to what he said at the time the series ended, he was planning on
spending the fall and winter of 1998-99 writing the basics of the new act, the
spring of 1999 testing sections of it in club dates and TV guest shots on the
East Coast, and after that...maybe a tour of clubs and medium-size auditoriums,
maybe some TV shots. He also hasn't ruled out a return to regular TV
appearances sometime in the next year or two, but only if the right kind of
format for a live or live-to-tape comedy and talk show came together. No more
sitcom TV or feature films, he doesn't think he can top the Seinfeld series and
doesn't think he'd be good as a film actor.
     Now to what everyone wants to know...did that comment about 'we'll be back
in a year"in the final episode refer to a return of the series in the fall of
1999? NBC would love to think so. But the real truth? Nope. No one except
Michael Richards wanted even to do a 10th season this year, and even he was a
little less than passionate about it. You have to know that since everyone
connected with the series has now moved on to other things, it'd be damn near
impossible to pull the whole thing back together for another 25 or 50 episodes.

Maybe in a few years there will be a one shot theatrical or TV film to pull all of the many loose ends together, IF someone comes up with a killer script. But how many of those things ever work? Jerry pulled the plug on "Seinfeld" in the first place because he had too much respect for the audience to just take the money and run. He's produced 180 episodes of comedy TV, all of them above average and all but a few of them gems. Why tempt fate by trying to repeat yourself, when you're probably going to serve yourself and the audience better by trying something else that's new and different?

Bob Smith, afternoons WXXI-AM 1370, Rochester NY