"Bill Cosby's like Dad and Richard Pryor's like your dirty old uncle. You know what I mean? Uncle Richard would, like, sneak you beers and give you firecrackers at Thanksgiving. Bill Cosby is like every comedian's father."
-Comedian Eric Andre reflecting on the concert film Bill Cosby: Himself in a 30th anniversary piece in GQ that also features Jerry Seinfeld, Ray Romano, Sarah Silverman, Patton Oswalt, Hannibal Buress, and Larry Wilmore sharing their thoughts on the wildly influential performance.
"I think stand ups who have something to say are interesting … The lineage of Lenny Bruce to George Carlin to Richard Pryor to Bill Hicks. Not Jerry Seinfeld, let me put it that way. He talks about why pizza is stuffed with cheese in the crust. I’m not saying that doesn’t have its place, but with all due respect, it’s quite superficial. But a lot of people like that milquetoast stuff."
- Eddie Pepitone (The Bitter Buddha, WTF with Marc Maron) to IFC on the comedians that do and do not inspire him.
Rapper Wale released The Mixtape About Nothing in 2008, a hip-hop album that heavily sampled and referenced Seinfeld and even featured an appearance from Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Now, for his follow-up, Album About Nothing, he's got Jerry Seinfeld himself on board to make an appearance. Seinfeld explains in the below video, "Wale wanted me to do something with him and I didn't understand it, but he did, and I kinda liked the guy, I dug the guy, I liked his music, so I said 'Alright, I'll do it,' even though I didn't know what I was gonna do." No word yet on when the mixtape will be released, but, [...]
You're gonna wanna read the New York Times Magazine's new profile on Jerry Seinfeld and why he keeps doing standup all the time despite being worth as much as a Saudi royal. Above, a pretty amazing look at his writing process, which is all done by hand on legal pads.
If you need further convincing, here's a pretty facinating bit on why Seinfeld will never pull a Louis and create a new hour of material every year, tossing his old material in the trash:
Much of comedy is derivative. Even the good stuff. Especially the good stuff. Funny people develop a relationship with a certain brand of humor that's already being purveyed by someone more famous and, if they're not outright thieves, they build upon that premise, adding texture and originality to a proven game. (E.g., Lots of people played the narcissistic dickhead card before Danny McBride, but no one does it quite like him.) Still, the Seinfeld toolshed is usually a tough one for comedians to open up.
Getting an authentic, funny handle on the over-analysis of minutia is difficult because not everything about everyday life is entertaining, no matter how much [...]
