Breakfast is often called the most important meal of the day. It’s also long been a fixture of Jerry Seinfeld’s comedy — from “The Tonight Show” routines about Cookie Crisp to the Honeycomb and Raisin Bran boxes lining the shelves of his cupboards on “Seinfeld.” His directorial debut, “Unfrosted,” brings the obsession full circle, chronicling the 1960s origins of Kellogg’s Pop-Tart.
“It’s really just candy disguised as a meal,” he says of the appeal of breakfast food. “And I really just want candy.”
Seinfeld juggles a lot of, ahem, bowls on the Netflix film. He not only directed but also co-wrote, produced and stars in “Unfrosted,” which evolved from a joke told about the venerable toaster pastry in his 2020 Netflix special “23 Hours to Kill.” Ahead of the movie’s May 3 debut, the comedian reveals his inspirations for its heavily fictionalized story — and contemplates which cereal might prompt a return to the director’s chair.
In telling the origin story of the Pop-Tart, when did you decide that printing the legend was a better route than telling the real story?
Well, as a comedian, the last thing that would interest me would be the truth.
Were there specific 1960s brand icons or people that you wanted to highlight — even if you were going to make fun of them?
I remember reading when JFK assembled his Cabinet after he was elected in 1960, he said, “I don’t care if they’re political — I just want the best minds in America.” I thought, that’s a ’60s problem-solution idea, so we thought, who were the greatest minds of the ’60s? And the only people we knew who were bigger than Chef Boyardee were Jack LaLanne and whoever invented Sea-Monkeys, who turned out to be this ex-Nazi.
How tough was it to get permission to use their actual names?
Parody protects you with most of it. Thurl Ravenscroft was the real name of the guy who played Tony the Tiger — I knew I wasn’t going to beat that. Harold von Braunhut did invent Sea-Monkeys. But what did this lawyer tell us? “If people are dead, it’s much harder for them to sue you.”
You make fun in the movie of NASA pretty heavily, but several characters are named after its personnel, including Bob Cabana and Poppy Northcutt. There’s also a reference to a Pop-Tart taking off like a NASA rocket. What led to those choices?
As a child, my aunt worked for Grumman, for the man who was in charge of designing and building the LEM module. Grumman was on Long Island where I grew up, and I had all kinds of inside stuff on NASA, and I was obsessed with the space race of the ’60s. So I always wanted the movie to feel like a NASA program. That it had that level of seriousness, I thought would be funny.
What films inspired you visually? The Bowl and Spoon Awards evoke the awards ceremonies in “Boogie Nights.”
If you want to play a fun game with your friends to see who can name all the movies that we took scenes from — for example, the Pop-Tart scene you referenced, that’s from Ron Howard’s “Apollo 13.” One of my favorite scenes in movies is the way he shot the rocket taking off, and I thought, I want to shoot that same scene with a Pop-Tart.
You often use the word “dingus“ in the film, and every time it was mentioned, all I could think of was “The Hudsucker Proxy.” That’s another “print the legend” story.
“The Hudsucker Proxy” was definitely an inspiration for us. We took anything we liked from any movie, as we used to do on [“Seinfeld”].
How challenging was it for you to get your footing behind the camera instead of in front?
There were two things that enabled me to do it. One was the TV experience — writing and dealing with actors, I was very used to doing that. But making [“Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee”] is really the thing that put me in a mindset of “I know how to direct now.” That show was, you take four hours of two people having coffee and turn it into a good 11 minutes. How do you do that? Well, you have to assemble pieces from different places and connect them into a story — and that’s what filmmaking is. You’re trying to get a charm bracelet that connects it all.
What was the toughest scene for you to coordinate?
The insurrection was brutal. I have no idea how to direct a riot. A lot of those people you saw in those costumes work as a mascot, so they were totally used to being Little Debbie or whatever the character was. But organizing that scene, I remember looking at Ben Affleck’s “Argo.” I thought he did a great job on that [riot] scene, so I was just trying to get the little pieces, and then you assemble them.
There are a couple of vintage “Seinfeld” line readings. How much have those reactions become part of your acting repertoire, and how many are deliberate callbacks?
[Whispering] “Xanthan gum” was a definite callback. But the snapping the fingers and going, “I can get rid of the three of you like that,” I don’t know where that came from. That’s just acting silly.
You’ve spent your entire professional life refining jokes. How often do you come out of the gate with something that you just know is going to kill?
Not too often, Todd. It’s a lot of hit-and-miss, and you have to love the game enough that you don’t even care that “Boy, I’ve had like 10 misses in a row this week. Maybe next week will be better,” and you just want to keep playing. I just love the game. But honestly, today was a really exciting day because as a stand-up, I don’t take anyone’s opinion. But today I’ve talked to so many people, and it seems a lot of them responded well, and so today’s the first day I’m thinking, “Maybe this movie works.” But before that, I don’t assume anything. You cannot predict comedy.
Having tackled this challenge, do you feel compelled to make more movies?
Not at the moment. I’m very happy that I did this. But it’s a little harder to do these things than you think. I didn’t think it would be, believe it or not, but man, they really wear you out.
It feels a little bit like Jerry and George going, “Oh yeah, you just write a pilot! It’s nothing.”
Yeah. But the way I do it is so stupid. Page 1, Act 1, blank sheet of paper rolled into a typewriter, to the last cut of the last edit. I don’t do it the right way, so I end up really paying the price for that. But I don’t know how else to do it.
How do you decide which projects you want to devote months or years of your life to?
That’s pretty simple. You just have to fall in love with it, and this was easy for me to fall in love with because I really did love it — the idea of returning to the ’60s as an adult, but you’re still in this silly kid’s world. That’s what I like to do.
A cornerstone of so much of your work is this cheerful misanthropy about the world.
That is a very good description.
How much is that a persona that you’ve cultivated through your work?
I have to spruce it up for public consumption, but that’s really me. Larry David used to always say I don’t get enough credit for my misanthropy.
Coincidentally, this comes out right after the end of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” How does it feel for the “Seinfeld” finale to be so controversial that Larry David felt compelled to re-litigate it more than 25 years later?
I don’t think we cared about the controversy, but if there’s a scab, we’re going to pick at it — I think that’s the tendency. I think it bothered him, what people thought of the “Seinfeld” finale. It bothered me too. But I let it go.
If you could pick one, what discontinued cereal would you like to bring back?
I think I’d give Rice Krinkles another shot. That was a real ’60s cereal. And then there was another one that was kind of frosted flakes with raisins and some other things in there.
Crispy Wheats ’n Raisins?
That was a great cereal. Outstanding recollection there — and a brilliant alchemy of ingredients.
If there was another food product from the past that you could tell the story of, what would it be?
You really got me going with Crispy Wheats ’n Raisins. I’m going to give that some thought.
Well, if you end up making a Crispy Wheats ’n Raisins story, I’d like a story credit, please.
You got it, Todd.
Source Agencies
