CHAMPIONS OF BREAKFAST

After decades spent working as a stand-up comedian, Jerry Seinfeld is now a first-time movie director. What’s the deal with that? Total Film speaks to the sitcom king about the personal reasons behind his star-studded breakfast-based debut, Unfrosted…

Movies come from lots of dumb ideas but this might be the dumbest,’ asserts Jerry Seinfeld, standup comedian, TV sitcom rev ‐olutioniser and first-time movie director at 69 years old. This iconic funnyman may be a little late off the mark when it comes to helming Unfrosted – his oddball directorial debut that chronicles the wild and completely made-up tale of how everyone’s favourite sugar-loaded toaster pastry came to be – but his observations about the weird things that inspire movies are as timely as ever.

Films often emerge from left-field catalysts – memes, online ads, even Barbie dolls with identity-crisis Kens. For his latest project, Seinfeld has gathered a stacked comedy cast that spans Melissa McCarthy, Amy Schumer and himself to make something unique: a movie that has its origins in a stand-up routine. ‘As far as I can tell, it’s the first,’ he tells Total Film, explaining how a comedy bit that he first debuted during a 2010 set on The Last Show has led directly to his first film. ‘I don’t think anybody’s done this before.’

Even if you haven’t enjoyed multiple viewings of the hugely successful sitcom that bears his name, odds are you probably have a pretty good idea who Jerry Seinfeld is. Born in New York, he made his name in the mid 1970s as an aspiring stand-up comic. His influence on the craft was cemented in 1989 when, alongside Saturday Night Live drop-out Larry David, he pitched and sold a comedy series about his seemingly mundane life as a gigging comedian. Infamously billed as ‘a show about nothing’, Seinfeld became an American cultural touchstone. By the time it ended in 1998, Seinfeld had run for nine seasons, successfully introduced audiences to a fresh style of socially nitpicky sitcom humour and made Seinfeld and his co-stars the highest-paid actors on telly.

A stickler for not doing anything unless it’s done with passion, Seinfeld’s refusal to continue the show while it was at its redhot peak shocked the industry, with the star reportedly turning down a $110m pay cheque for one more season. Instead, he returned to his stand-up roots and, besides indulging in a few passion projects like 2007 animated comedy Bee Movie and 2012’s web-seriesturned-Netflix-show Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, that’s largely where he’s stayed… until now. So what changed?

SEIN OF THE TIMES

‘This never would’ve happened if it wasn’t for COVID because I love being a stand-up comedian,’ says Seinfeld, confirming that the world had to grind to a halt before he’d even consider doing anything other than cracking jokes on stage. Speaking to TF over Zoom from his Los Angeles home office, each of his answers is punctuated with a sip from a big coffee cup. ‘We started writing during COVID literally out of pure boredom,’ he continues. ‘When I was a kid, I always wanted to be a grown-up. I wanted to be one of those guys who wore a suit and carried a briefcase, so working in a cereal company definitely would’ve been the ultimate fantasy – and we got a chance to do it.’

Unfrosted sees Seinfeld play a Kellogg’s company man who helps to invent the Pop-Tart before their breakfast rivals Post can beat them to the sugary punch. Despite a huge framed Superman poster sitting directly behind him while we chat, Seinfeld’s childhood dreams were quite humble – and now they’ve become an actual reality. However, much like his TV show, Seinfeld didn’t think anyone would be silly enough to green-light a project about the history of Pop-Tarts, let alone with him as its director and star.

‘Believe me, I couldn’t believe Netflix wanted to do it. I showed them the script and they said, “This is fantastic. We’ve got to do this,”’ he says, his perpetual smile turning to surprise for a moment. ‘I was totally shocked – but you know you’re in a good area in comedy when you think, “There’s no way they would do this.”’

Besides being every dentist’s worst nightmare, Pop-Tarts are also a point of fascination for Seinfeld. So much so that they inspired him to write a dedicated Pop-Tart comedy ‘bit’ where he playfully imagines the circumstances leading to their creation. Seinfeld has tinkered with the ‘Pop-Tart bit’ since 2010, eventually including it in his 2020 Netflix special 23 Hours to Kill. Cut to 2024 and with the help of former collaborators Spike Feresten, Barry Marder and Andy Robin, he’s fleshed it out from a short collection of gags to a fully-fledged film. What made him feel it could survive the jump?

‘I never thought it could,’ he says candidly. ‘The bit is like a minute long and the movie is an hour and a half so we definitely had to find more [substance] but once we got into the world of it, everywhere we looked there was another funny thing to do.’ A fresh angle offered by one of his team helped. ‘One of the writers said, “Let’s do it like The Right Stuff.” You know, the US versus the Soviets,’ says Seinfeld, comparing his Pop ‐Tart film to Philip Kaufman’s 1983 historical space-race drama. ‘Suddenly I thought, “Oh, now I see a way to do it.” The idea clicked in my head: “Let’s make The Right Stuff… with cereal.”’

TALL TALE

That said, you’d be a fool to hit play and expect to find any actual facts. ‘Oh nothing in the movie actually happened,’ he chuckles through that familiar Seinfeld smile when asked how he delicately balanced comedy with history. ‘I always say that this movie is the opposite of Barbie. Barbie was made by Mattel. Kellogg’s didn’t even know we were doing this – and I doubt they would’ve approved it,’ admits Seinfeld. ‘Although we’ve started talking to them recently and they seem very supportive, even though we have them looking pretty silly.’

It also helped that breakfast seems to be a recurring theme throughout almost all of his work. Aside from the ‘Pop-Tart bit’, the fictionalised version of himself on Seinfeld was regularly seen slurping down a bowl of something colourful. Meanwhile, the entire premise of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee has brunch-time snacking at its caffeinated core.

‘That’s another reason I wanted to do it because there are very few things I love as much as cereal,’ he laughs. ‘On [Seinfeld], above the kitchen sink, there were all kinds of cereal boxes that looked like a library and I’ve always talked about it in my standup.’ It makes you think: is there something inherently funny about breakfast food? ‘It was something they made in the 60s just for kids and they fooled 60s parents into thinking they were giving their kids real food,’ smiles Seinfeld. ‘All that ignorance and naivete is charming to look back on.’

‘Once we got into the world of it, everywhere we looked there was another funny thing to do’

It’s this kind of nostalgic glee that you can expect to find in Unfrosted. ‘We like to say: “Finally, a movie you can eat,”’ he jokes. ‘The idea of the film is the fun of being a kid in the 1960s; the things we were allowed to eat, the colourful boxes and the prizes inside [them]. It was very much a 60s childhood throwback thing for me.’ A dose of silly humour was also added to sweeten the recipe: ‘The idea of stuffy 60s businessmen talking about cereal, sprinkles, puffs and pops is just a fun world to be in.’

THE BREAKFAST CLUB

Another key ingredient? Comedians – and lots of them. Seinfeld’s candy-coated cereal world features more rib-ticklers than a Saturday morning breakfast cartoon, with Bill Burr, Fred Armisen, Jon Hamm, Dan Levy and Maria Bakalova among the many names packed into his Pop-Tart odyssey.

‘They’re all so talented and funny but honestly, the biggest thrill of the whole thing was Hugh Grant. He’s so damn funny,’ insists Seinfeld of directing this Brit icon during his later-in-life comedic resurgence following turns in Wonka and Paddington 2. ‘You should’ve heard us screaming at each other on set. I was saying to him: “You don’t know anything about comedy. You just know how to be witty in a pub. Here in America, we’ve got to get real laughs,”’ he recalls, half-joking. ‘He’d scream back: “I know a lot about comedy!” It was one of the great gifts of making this.’

Still, after years spent laser-focused on refining the perfect gag, the transition to working with improv-happy comics was tricky. ‘I love the simplicity and loneliness of stand-up and the movie is the complete opposite; it’s so collaborative. I had to dust off my “working with other people” skills from the 90s,’ says Seinfeld.

‘I’m the biggest pain in the ass you could dream of in comedy; every word has to be exactly as written and a lot of big-time actors don’t like that,’ he continues. ‘Hugh Grant would say, “Give me a chance to find it,” and I’d say, “I’ve already found it. Just do it like this.” I did let them do whatever they wanted… but first, they had to do it exactly the way I wanted it.’

Comics aside, one person you won’t see in Seinfeld’s movie is the actual inventor of the Pop-Tart, Bill Post. ‘He passed away a few weeks ago,’ Seinfeld says of Post, who died on 14 February this year, aged 96. ‘I don’t think we even knew that he was still around so I was a little upset. I thought, “Damn, I should’ve reached out to him.”’ Despite playing a Post-like character, Seinfeld didn’t use Post’s name for fear of throwing viewers: ‘It was confusing that there was a guy working at Kellogg’s named “Post”,’ he says of unwanted comparisons to Kellogg’s American rival. ‘We picked an astronaut-sounding name for my character.’

Arriving into a movie landscape that lauds Dune-sized epics and cerebral Oppenheimer thinkers, Seinfeld thinks his big, daft comedy can’t come quick enough – but don’t expect him to make directing a permanent thing. ‘I feel like we’re ready for a colourful, dumb, silly comedy,’ he says earnestly. ‘My heroes are the Marx Brothers, Peter Sellers, Monty Python… That’s what I live for and my ambition is to be as like them as possible. I have no interest in actual filmmaking.’ So this isn’t the start of a new career path? ‘Well, it might be,’ he ponders. ‘But it’s not going to be anything with any meaning or depth to it.’