Send in the clowns
JANUARY 21ST, 2016 — POST 017
I’m a big fan of Seinfeld. When I browse through, thinking about what episode to watch, I know them so well that I don’t feel I could sit through them one more time. The title sparks a synopsis, the synopsis sparks all the divergent narrative streams, these streams spark all the funny moments. I’m so intimately familiar with each episode that quite often pressing ‘Play’ doesn’t actually excite me that much.
Until the episode starts playing.
There are few shows as infinitely rewatchable as Seinfeld. And I’m really curious to why that is. Especially with comedy, how can the laughs keep coming when I know all the punchlines? For Seinfeld it’s the performances that keep the show eternally vibrant. Furthermore, one actor embodies the most classic form of comedy that lays dormant today.
If there’s one word to sum up the edge to the performances in Seinfeld, and not just from the central four cast, it's “detailed”. Each actor is so within their character that you can see them operating in layers, building each reaction, loading each punchline with a depth that is ceaselessly joyous to watch.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus can never stop working the face. When Elaine is happy, her smile gives you that information the least. There is always some part of her face that for most of us is petrified flesh in comparison to the animation she is able to mobilise. One of the standout feats is the eat-and-talk. Elaine spends more time with food in her mouth than any other character. There are parts of her cheeks and neck that contort around the food whilst she talks that is just funny, regardless of what she’s saying. Talking with your mouth full isn’t a gag. But Louis-Dreyfus’ performance makes it one.
For Jason Alexander, it’s the voice that is richly layered with detail. He gives George the fullest range from the smug belly laughs to the most tightly pinched “Newman!” as if his larynx was being clamped by a bulldog clip. Being the progeny of Frank Constanza, played by another vocal gymnast in Jerry Stiller, it makes sense. A particular running gag, in which George frantically calls Jerry to relay a bunch of news to which Jerry responds some variation of “Who is this?”, there is a liquid musicality to Alexander’s delivery that retains the gravelled eruption in the punchline of “Jerry!!” whilst often smashing the phone against the phonebooth. In every sputter and scoff when George gets in a characteristically impotent fit of rage, there’s craft, there’s work, there’s life.
Where the level of detail of Louis-Dreyfus’ and Alexander’s performances is rare in comedy these days, there is one kind of comedic performance, and frankly the most traditional form of comedy, that is entirely absent from today’s landscape in the way its best proponents manifested. Michael Richards as Kramer is the most recent in a slapstick lineage that includes Rowan Atkinson, John Cleese, Jacques Tati, Harpo Marx, Charlie Chaplin, and Buster Keaton. All these actors understood that slapstick is so much more than a pie in the face, or a man falling down steps. These weren’t simply gag men. These actors all were getting to the same places as their voiced counterparts but relied mostly (or entirely) upon the equipment of the body. None of them just hit a punchline but instead drew it out through time with the body.
Just last night I watched ‘The Revenge’, the climactic scene of which has Kramer sabotaging a laundromat machine by pouring concrete into it whilst Jerry distracts the owner. The dance Kramer does to get the concrete into the machine is one of the most memorable physical sequences of the series and one that with a black and white pass and a few intertitles would be indistiguishable from a Buster Keaton film from seventy years prior. There are the loud obvious moments: the nearly knocking himself out thundering backwards into a wall of machines, or the cement powder getting in his eyes. But within these are the minutest details that don’t just give you a man doing something funny, but give you a fully realised comedic character that is expertly drawn. Take the “getting in the eyes” bit. As he reaches up to wipe his eyes, he could easily use just one side of his hands to do it. Instead, Kramer’s hands pirouette back and forth, almost as if they’re wiping the powder off themselves as much as extracting it from the eye. This detail is unnessary for the gag, but crucial for the character.
I urge you to go back and rewatch Kramer to see that what most people get as “the wacky neighbour” is written through by an extremely intricate performance. If a hand needs to be waved, each of Kramer’s fingers are trembling individually.
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