The ultimate Seinfeld reunion came to us with every backstage mechanism in view. The construct sucked the potential cheesiness out of the exercise and enabled the producers to show us only the good parts—because, of course, they wrote only the good parts. In a move typical of both Seinfeld and Curb, the plots that show up in the show-within-the-show come from—you guessed it—earlier episodes of the show. This is Larry’s “real life” material. Jerry gives a little girl’s doll a haircut, just as Larry once did in an episode, to disastrous effect. Kramer hires a prostitute so he can use the carpool lane, just as Larry once did on-screen. They also get some classically Seinfeld observational-humor lines for the modern era, as when Elaine checks her phone while talking to Jerry in his apartment, and Jerry fumes, “Oh, you’re gonna do the BlackBerry head-down thing on me now?”
Curb plots also swirl around the actors playing themselves. Julia blames Larry for a ring-stain left on a valuable wood coffee table during a party at her house, and Larry determines to find the real culprit. “Larry David, Wood Detective,” Jerry chides under questioning. Larry upsets Jason by referring to his new book, Acting Without Acting, as a “pamphlet.”
The most fun comes from the two separate worlds of Curb and Seinfeld, each one as real as the other, colliding. Larry’s friend Leon appearing nonplussed by the appearance of Elaine and Jerry, together again on the set of Jerry’s apartment: “Now who are these two right here?” Larry offering to play George—who was, after all, based on him—and succeeding in showing us how great Jason Alexander is by comparison.
Behind the scenes of Curb itself, David did panic the day he had to fake playing George. He called Alexander that morning, frantic. “I don’t know how to do George! You have to come down and give me line readings!” Alexander went to the set and directed Larry in how to play Jason playing George, who is Larry. Even at that, David argued with some of Alexander’s interpretations. (As Jerry explains to Larry during the episode, he does not belong on-screen with them. Pointing to himself, Jerry proclaims, “Icon!” Pointing at Larry, he yells, “No-con!”) In the end, Larry storms off in a jealous rage as Cheryl and Jason flirt—and even quits before the show is done, in a nod to his departure from Seinfeld two seasons before its finale.
As the reunion episodes wrap up, Larry gets what he wanted: all of the plot strands coming together. That, and a reunion with Cheryl. She shows up at his place proffering iced coffee and asking to watch the show together, having been replaced by an actress named Virginia (played by Elisabeth Shue, for some reason not playing herself ). When Cheryl leaves her sweating coffee cup on Larry’s wood table, however, he realizes: She’s the one who ruined Julia’s table! Of course, he can’t enjoy the romantic moment and leave that unnoted. He can’t believe that she doesn’t respect the sanctity of wood! And that, not a romantic embrace (no hugging!), ends the season and the Seinfeld reunion.
The reunion did allow for a bit of a redo on Seinfeld’s reviled finale. There was no talk of prison sentences or trials, only riffs on what the characters would get up to in the world of cell phones, Ponzi schemes, and IVF. There were even some direct admissions, as when Jerry says, “We already screwed up one finale.”
This time, critics agreed. Seinfeld had mastered the perfect send-off at last, as only Seinfeld could: by playing itself on another show, by blurring fiction and reality beyond conception. And by being, simply, funny.
15
Seinfeldia
CHELA HOLTON GOT A TEXT from her partner, John: her picture, he cryptically claimed, was “all over New York.” She was sitting in her office near Los Angeles International Airport, at a motorcycle company where she worked as an accountant. She wracked her brain to figure out what his mysterious message could possibly mean. She lived in the suburb of Monrovia, California, with John and his teenage son and daughter. She spent most of her time working or commuting an hour each way along the crammed L.A. freeways, wearing jeans and motorcycle T-shirts. There was no reason for her picture to show up in any public way on the other side of the country.
That is, except for that one reason. That had to be it.
She wouldn’t know for sure until he calmed down enough to send her a more thorough, explanatory e-mail that included photos of her photo, which was, indeed, plastered on a building in New York City. It was that picture she had posed for twenty years before, in 1993, when she was twenty-two. She and John had, in fact, been looking for a decent copy of it since she’d told him about it in the early months of their courtship, eight years earlier.
Luckily, you wouldn’t necessarily realize it was her, even if you knew her. In her everyday life, she had smooth, dark hair past her shoulders, pretty blue eyes, and well-tended eyebrows; in this old photo, her hair and eyebrows were unkempt, her eyes cast down. Once you knew it was her, you could see it. But even a friend wouldn’t immediately say, “Hey, there’s Chela Holton.”
If that friend knew anything about Seinfeld, however, he or she would say, “Hey, there’s Rochelle Rochelle.”
That was the one thing Holton had done that could cause her photo to show up in New York City—and cause a sensation that reached from there to Monrovia and beyond. She had “played” the star of a fictional moody, dramatic film called Rochelle Rochelle on a prop movie poster that showed up for a few seconds in a few episodes of a sitcom in the 1990s. That sitcom just happened to have such a lasting cultural effect that she never knew when those few seconds of screen time might make her, or at least her image from twenty years ago, famous again. And again. And again.
JASON SHELOWITZ HAD BEEN WATCHING Seinfeld since adolescence, but at thirty-four he still recorded the daily reruns on two different channels so his DVR stayed full of episodes. He never wanted to find himself short. He needed to watch at least five episodes per week.
For every life situation, he could find a Seinfeld parallel, but he tried to note them aloud only occasionally—to save his reputation and his loved ones’ sanity. With like-minded people, such as his cousin and his cousin’s fiancée, he particularly liked to recall all the fictional movie titles referenced throughout the show’s run: Prognosis Negative, Chunnel, Sack Lunch.
Shelowitz—who had the buzz cut, perfectly tended facial stubble, and shy smile of a teen idol—was a well-known street artist (going by the handle JayShells) in New York City, where his most famous project was placing street signs quoting rap lyrics near the places that inspired them. (For example, Big Daddy Kane’s line: “158 Lewis Avenue between Lafayette and Van Buren, that was back durin’ the days of hangin’ on my Bed-Stuy block.” Rappers are often quite specific with their directions.) So for Shelowitz, declaring his love for Seinfeld in a big, public way wasn’t as elusive an idea as for the average fan.
Once when watching the fourth-season episode “The Movie,” it hit Shelowitz: Rochelle Rochelle, “a young girl’s strange, erotic journey from Milan to Minsk”—the fictional film all four Seinfeld characters end up watching after trying to see the equally fictional Checkmate. He caught a glimpse of the Rochelle Rochelle movie poster in a theater scene, and he paused his DVR on the moody, black-and-white image of a beautiful young woman with mussy long hair and impeccable bone structure. He could re-create the poster and hang it at a vacant movie theater near him that had been closed for a few years on the east side of Manhattan, on Second Avenue at Sixty-Fourth Street. It would look as if Rochelle Rochelle were actually playing. He wondered how many people passing by would think it was a real film, how many others would get the joke. He liked the idea of “talking” to fellow fans through his art.
He snapped a photo of his TV screen with the DVR paused on the poster, then grabbed a similar screenshot from a YouTube version of the episode. Getting a clear-enough version of the model’s face—the main feature of the poster—proved the most challenging part of the project. Finally, he got enough detail to allow him to fill in the rest with Photoshop. For the final touch, he added copy across the bottom—usually several lines of credits on a real
movie poster—using the text from a “Rochelle Rochelle” description on the WikiSein website that catalogs every Seinfeld data point. “Rochelle Rochelle is a film referenced many times during the series. It is most likely based on the 1974 erotic film Emmanuelle. Like other films referenced by the show, it is never shown, but characters are portrayed watching it.” Shelowitz’s copy ends with a shout-out to the show’s creators: “Thank you, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David!”
At a cost to Shelowitz of about $100 each, he made two posters. On the day before Thanksgiving in 2013, he took advantage of the unseasonably warm, fifty-two-degree weather; he had to act fast because the huge, vinyl decals he was using for the posters wouldn’t stick at below fifty. He put them up outside the movie theater, on either side of the closed and locked doors, as if it were playing there.
Online, Shelowitz posted photos of himself putting the posters up, and he signed the posters at the bottom with his street-artist name, JayShells. Fans cheered and shared on Twitter: “Made me miss Seinfeld even more!” one said. Websites such as Gothamist, The A.V. Club, New York magazine, and Refinery29 covered it with glee. “Seinfeld Fans, Get Ready to Freak Out,” one headline said.
Shelowitz hadn’t realized there were so many fans as preoccupied with Seinfeld as he was. But soon he found out, as e-mails poured in asking about buying copies of his posters. Because the format was so expensive, he agreed to sell them (after checking with a copyright lawyer) to make back some of his investment in the project. He sold several copies, mostly to comedy writers in California and New York. In New York, he even hand-delivered a few.
Then, a few weeks after he’d put up the posters, he got an e-mail from a guy who claimed to be the partner of the woman who “played” Rochelle. The guy explained that his partner had been an extra on the show in a few episodes and was now an accountant; they lived in California with their two kids. He had managed to track Shelowitz down online. And they would love a copy of the poster.
Shelowitz wrote back, saying that if he could prove his partner was Rochelle, the poster was his for free. The guy—John—sent back four photos of his wife, clearly Rochelle in the present day.
HOLTON WAS WORKING AS AN extra in 1993 in Los Angeles when she was hired to pose for a fake movie poster on Seinfeld. She was among three young women who were asked to show up on the set ready to be photographed. They had to bring their own wardrobe, a summery dress. Holton didn’t have anything she deemed appropriate, so she borrowed a sundress from a neighbor.
One of the three girls didn’t show up, leaving two for producers to choose from. They chose Holton. They gave her a little attention from hair and makeup beyond the standard treatment for extras, then brought her to a small, parklike area outside the Seinfeld soundstage. She was surprised at how efficient and serious things were on the Seinfeld set. It felt different—more professional—from the sitcom sets she was used to as an extra.
After a few hours shooting her walking around, looking forlorn, and carrying a suitcase on this overcast afternoon, the crew stopped and sent Holton to change. She’d also serve as an extra in a bar scene in the same episode, wearing different clothes and with her hair pulled up, her back to the camera. By the time she was done shooting for the day, she saw the Rochelle Rochelle poster for the first time, a cropped, black-and-white image of her from the waist up, looking down. All she could think about was her untweezed eyebrows, so large.
Producers told Holton to call the studio office a week later to get a copy of the poster to have as her own, but when she did, she was told they couldn’t give out studio property.
She never got a copy, but she saw the image show up several more times again throughout the series. For instance, when George is renting it at the video store as he runs into his ex, Susan, and her new girlfriend, the movie poster appears on the VHS cover.
Like most of America, Holton regularly tuned in for reruns after the show ended in 1998. Every once in a while, there was a glimpse of her image again. Her two stepchildren learned of her moment in the spotlight when John, after years of searching for a copy of the poster, made his own version from a screenshot of the show and hung it above his desk at home. It was, however, blurry, and even more so when blown up to poster size. He set up a Google alert so he’d know any time Rochelle Rochelle was mentioned on the Internet. Thanks to Shelowitz’s project showing up online, he was able to replace his original attempt at a poster with Shelowitz’s better version at last.
Holton couldn’t believe how strange it felt to see her twenty-year-old photo resurfacing in such a public way. When she heard someone had stolen the posters Shelowitz originally hung in New York, she was even more confused: Why would people want such a thing? She wanted it only because it was her. And whenever she caught the episode, she barely felt a connection to that girl in the poster. Rochelle had become her own character with her own identity separate from Holton. Chela was a stepmom and accountant, not a young girl on an “erotic journey from Milan to Minsk.”
Holton rarely mentioned her involvement with Seinfeld to anyone outside her family. At the motorcycle company where she worked, one of her young coworkers was so obsessed with Seinfeld that his office mates banned him from further show references. They even instituted a Seinfeld jar, where he had to put a dollar each time he broke the ban. Holton never told him that every day at work, he saw Rochelle Rochelle.
She liked keeping her little secret.
TWO DECADES AFTER SEINFELD’S FINALE, the show is intruding on the real world more than ever, with portals into Seinfeldia popping up everywhere. Jason Shelowitz caused an online sensation, made a few bucks, and connected with the “real” Rochelle with his Rochelle Rochelle posters. NextMovie.com put together its own take on Seinfeld’s fictional films, casting them with modern actors and mocking up posters for them: Jason Bateman and Tina Fey in Sack Lunch, Hugh Jackman in the David Cronenberg–directed Prognosis Negative, and Channing Tatum and Jason Statham in Death Blow. Artist Rinee Shah turned her drawings featuring food references from Seinfeld into an online business called “Seinfood.” The Tom’s Restaurant façade, pretzels (“These pretzels are making me thirsty”), bear claws (“You’re the bear claw in the garbage bag of my life”), and black-and-white cookies were among the subjects of her works, which she sold to Internet shoppers around the world. Washington, DC, rapper Wale, born just five years before Seinfeld premiered, drew inspiration from the show for his Mixtape About Nothing in 2008—which included riffs on the theme song and a meditation on Michael Richards’s racist outburst. His 2015 album, The Album About Nothing, on which Seinfeld himself made a cameo appearance, went to No. 1 in its first week on the Billboard 200 chart.
Seinfeldia has its own art, its own music. And it has, more than anything, lots and lots and lots of its own media. Bloggers abound in Seinfeldia, chronicling its every detail, poring over its stars and its stories, and even documenting anti-Seinfeld sentiment. Several blogs are dedicated to binge-watching Seinfeld from start to finish, their writers ranking its episodes or narrating their experiences as first-time viewers or sharing what it’s like to learn English via subtitled versions across the world. Others recap Seinfeld the way they do shows that are currently airing. One programmer even built a detail-perfect 3-D version of Jerry’s apartment that anyone with an Oculus Rift virtual-reality headset can explore.
CANADIAN SEINFELD FAN JASON RICHARDS had watched the show since he was a kid in Montreal. At thirty, he still counted Seinfeld among his favorite shows of all time; he even had a Seinfeld-theme ringtone on his cell. He’d grown from a sweet, gap-toothed kid who didn’t understand all the jokes on Seinfeld into a tawny-skinned, clean-cut TV producer with a cynical, strange sense of humor, who appreciated Seinfeld far more now, even though it hadn’t aired a new episode in fourteen years.
And now Seinfeld was about to take over his life.
It began in 2012 when, years after he’d moved to Toronto, friends started talking about, e-mailing about, retweeting, and Facebooking
about a new Twitter account called SeinfeldToday. The account imagined Seinfeld plots in the modern world, as if the show never went off the air. “George finds a rare gun from his dad’s war days. Kramer talks him into selling it on eBay for $200. It shows up on Pawn Stars for $50,000.” “Jerry gets paranoid about his girlfriend’s past when her iPhone automatically connects to the wi-fi at Newman’s apartment.” “Elaine’s BF notices she has no Instagrams with black people. She awkwardly tries to take pics w/black co-workers to prove she’s not racist.” It went on and on: Kramer meets a new girlfriend on Craigslist who turns out to be a hooker, Elaine tries JDate; Jerry buys a smart car. Over and over, Richards’s friends forwarded these tweets to him because they knew he loved Seinfeld so much.
Richards followed SeinfeldToday on Twitter at first, like the thousands of others going Internet-crazy for the idea. But the more he read its tweets, the less funny it felt to him. The whole operation seemed kind of . . . smug, like someone claiming to be tweeting as Shakespeare or Hemingway. Who were these people, anyway? He checked out the handle’s Twitter bio, which revealed that the masterminds were a senior editor at BuzzFeed, Jack Moore, and a New York writer and comedian, Josh Gondelman. Here these guys thought they’d just pick up where some true comic geniuses left off, and in 140 characters or less? It started to bug Richards.
But what could he do about it, besides unfollow the account, or spew disapproval back at it? At first, he figured he’d just ignore it. But still many of his friends kept retweeting it, showing it to him, reading it to him, and tagging him about it online. He couldn’t take it anymore.
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