Jerry Seinfeld to Revisit Early Club Days for Netflix Special
A new, hour-long comedy special will show Jerry Seinfeld returning to one of the clubs where he cut his teeth, New York City’s the Comic Strip, for what’s being billed as an “intimate stand-up set.” The show, dubbed Jerry Before Seinfeld, will also feature a tour of the legal pads he’s kept with every joke he’s written since 1975 and footage from childhood videos. The special is set to premiere on Netflix on September 19th.
The streaming service has posted video from the special and photos of Seinfeld’s comedy notebooks to its @NetflixComedy Instagram account. One, which is a bit like a lyric video, contains audio of Seinfeld joking about moving furniture with his dad while the words are highlighted in his notebook.
Another short video shows Seinfeld onstage joking about getting the middle finger from somebody. “I always try to remember, if I get this finger, I’m only one finger away from a compliment,” he says moving his hand to a thumbs-up.
Another again shows Seinfeld’s notebook as he jokes about being left-handed and all the negative connotations that come with being a southpaw. At the end, he says it was his first-ever joke.
A final video, the longest of the bunch, shows the comedian onstage shows Seinfeld joking about the lives of socks.
The special is part of a deal Seinfeld signed with Netflix earlier this year. It includes another comedy special, which has not yet been announced, and a new run of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee series, as well as its past seasons, 24 new episodes of which are reported to premiere in late 2017; the latter series previously aired on Sony’s Crackle platform.
Jerry Before Seinfeld will be the comic’s first special since 1998’s I’m Telling You for the Last Time, though he participated in the documentary Comedian and has launched an archival website.