How George Steinbrenner reacted to being a character on Seinfeld

I think he liked it. Steinbrenner was unfamiliar with the show. His grandchildren watched it, and his grandchildren talked him into letting us use his name. The last episode I think of the '96 season, we came up with the idea to actually fly him in and put him on the show because up to that point, we'd only been seeing the back of his head, and I was doing his voice. And then we thought it would be fun if he was - if he actually made a real appearance. So we called him up, and he said, yeah, he would do it. So we flew out to do it. He did the show. We started editing the show. And as I watched it, I'm going, oh, my god, this is not good. And we thought it's so much better to just see the ba...

Tags:

Related posts tagged 'Making a show'

More

Related posts tagged 'Making a show'

I like that the show goes in different and unexpected places. It's sometimes fun to set thing up then take a step back if the business owner starts having their own ideas or pushing things forward. Later this season, I encounter a business owner that actually gets more into the idea than I am. But yeah, I like a variety of responses or reactions.
I was credited as a STORY EDITOR but that's more of a title than an actual job description. I was in the writers' room pitching jokes and ideas for scripts. I got to work with some real-deal TV veteran writer geniuses who I learned a lot from. Oh! And in season 4 when Jeff Garlin sneaks through a second-story window, the group of people watching him from afar are all the writers in the writers room. THAT IS THE ONLY EASTER EGG THAT'S EVER EXISTED ON ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT.
In general, there seems to be an understanding that when participating in a reality show you're not going to get full information about what will happen so that authentic moments can be captured on camera. The people that appear comfortable with this are usually the ones we end up involving in the show - those that seem open to an experience or adventure that's different from their day-to-day life. Often in the casting process we'll encounter business owners that have lots of specific questions about the show and exactly what we're planning to do with them. Because going into a shoot we don't want participants knowing any of that or that it's a comedy show (as this would take away from them ...
The pros and cons of live action and animation are pretty much what you'd expect: in live action, you can shoot the same scene from a thousand angles for a thousand takes and figure out how to assemble the scene in "post," but if you realize that a character should have been looking a different direction or wearing a different kind of hat, you're either CGing their eyeballs or you're screwed. In animation, you can make eyeballs and hats change until the cows come home, but on the other hand, your script has to be darn near finished before the first actor even records their first line. The funny thing to me is that in live action, you can type "a room full of people" and nobody will have a he...
The Christmas episode where Michael asked Kevin to sit on his lap, and Steve had to pretend to be crushed under his weight. I think I'm laughing on camera.
I come up with a few bits on TEAS a lot of the time, those are my genuine reactions to what's happening. He does some weird stuff on that show and it throws me off sometimes.
Each season has had its difficulties in producing them - and let me just say that I am really proud of the episodes in the second half of season three. I think they're super funny. There is a story to why I think they're a little inconsistent in production: For season two, we wrote all 20 episodes before we started shooting, and we shot them all out of sequence. I think the christmas episode with Zach was one of the first ones we shot, and I know the Halloween ep with Pee-wee was in our second week. So we really got to figure out an order after the fact that made sense. For season three, we had an earlier premiere date, but we started at the same time. So, even though we still wrote everyth...
The situation certainly is. Half my family growing up were carers of some sort, mostly retirement homes (stroke, Alzheimers), and Derek is like my fictional superhero of an everyday gentle outsider. I suppose they're all little fables about kindness. And possibly, a love letter to my lovely, poor and humble family growing up.

Related posts tagged 'Behind the scenes'

More

Related posts tagged 'Behind the scenes'

My personal opinion (speaking for myself, not the character of Ryan): You will never be too warm or too cold in a long-sleeve tee. In my opinion it is the perfect item of clothing. Further backstory: this line drove writer/producer Michael Schur crazy because executive producer Greg Daniels refused to clarify whether it was meant to be sarcastic or not. It was a vehemently debated line among the Office writing staff, for some reason.
One time in makeup as Mrs. Doubtfire, I walked into a sex shop in San Francisco and tried to buy a double-headed dildo. Just because. Why not? And the guy was about to sell it to me until he realized it was me - Robin Williams - not an older Scottish woman coming in to look for a very large dildo and a jar of lube. He just laughed and said "what are you doing here" and I left. Did I make the purchase? *No. * Did I walk away with a really good story? Yes.
John and I on the party planning committee for Kelly's party. Hanging the brown and grey balloons. We COULD NOT STOP LAUGHING.
The craziest moment was walking out to do Weekend Update and my first joke was about the Patriots and Deflategate and the one person I passed walking to the desk was Robert Kraft. He was just hanging out and watching the show in our studio. I was like, "Hey.... Ear muffs?"
I love when something unexpected happens in a scene. Like in Trainwreck when Lebron reaches for his wallet and acted liked he didn't realize he forgot to bring it in the restaurant.
Behind the scene stories from SNL -- I particularly remember the Saturday that Steve Martin was hosting with Sting as musical guest. The fire alarms went off that afternoon and we all had to rush down the stairs and out into the street. We weren't allowed back into the building until right before the live show. We went on with no rehearsal. Quite exciting. (just smoke in the building).
throaty laugh Hahahaha! Let's see now... All I can think of is Billy Murray holding up that candy bar in the pool! There was no scene that was written for me and Bill Murray together, where we're both in the same shot and had a scene, so we just sort of made it up as I was playing golf and he was running that tractor with all those big blades... oh wait, my wife was just reminding me that there was a scene inside the Caddy Shack itself, and I was playing some night golf to get ready for my big day the next day with Rodney Dangerfield, but in that scene - it was hilarious - we just did it, you know? We didn't write it, we just did it, haha!
OH MY GOODNESS, that's a great question! You know, we shot that in a town called Ouarzazate in the Sahara desert, just one long dirt road about 200 miles into the desert from Marrakech, and it was also a base for some of the fighting that was going on between the Morrocan army and others. And I had a Jeep, and I had to drive Danny into the desert to our set, and when we were done at the end of the day, we would have to drive back. And one time, Danny said "Hey look! Some Moroccan troops!" and took a camera out and took a photo and they SAW him - and they immediately jumped into the back of their truck and started chasing us! So I drove like a bat out of hell to this supposed hotel, and Dann...