Thursday, Jan. 29, 1998 | 2:01 a.m.
LOS ANGELES - It's show night on Stage Nine at Studio City, and up in the bleachers above the familiar New York apartment set, the comic warming up the audience gets a big laugh when he calls himself "The $5-million-dollar-an-episode man!"
If Jerry Seinfeld has any regrets about his decision to turn down the biggest financial deal ever offered a television star and to shut down production on the most popular sitcom of the 1990s, he certainly isn't showing it as he prepares to film the first of the final 10 episodes of "Seinfeld."
"We have a wonderful episode tonight," he promises the 200 or so audience members. "It's called 'The Cartoon,' and it's episode No. 169."
The episode, which is to be broadcast Thursday night on NBC, is a classic "Seinfeld" melange of high-pitched dialogue and cross-referenced interaction among four familiar, utterly self-absorbed Manhattanites. In this episode Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), baffled by a New Yorker cartoon she just doesn't get, sets out to become a cartoonist herself; Kramer (Michael Richards), upset by his propensity for offending people with unchecked comments, decides to stop speaking altogether; George (Jason Alexander) becomes unhinged when Elaine and Kramer say his new girlfriend looks alarmingly like Jerry, and Jerry himself is unhinged because a successful performance artist is denigrating him as the devil.
One audience member asks Seinfeld to list some of his favorite episodes. "I don't really have favorites per se," he says. "They're all my babies. I always like the one we're doing. I like this one tonight. I think it's very funny."
"Very funny" remains the sole criterion for Seinfeld in measuring his series. It was the goal that moved him to create this unconventional sitcom nine years ago, though the NBC executives who somewhat reluctantly ordered it didn't get it. It continues to be the focus of his work both as the show's producer and head writer, and it was at the center of his decision to step off the stage at the end of this season, confident "that we would be leaving them laughing," he said. The "Seinfeld" set is relaxed and casual, a reflection of the star himself, who is wearing his usual open-necked shirt, jeans and sneakers. He steps down from the bleachers and drifts among the writers and technicians. He is, he says, "feeling great" about his decision, and about the enormous outpouring of affection for the show in the weeks since he made it public in December.
On the sprawling stage, the only two permanent sets are Jerry's apartment - blue couch in the middle, kitchen counter stage right - and the interior of Monk's Restaurant, the coffee shop where the characters hang out.
Before he joins the other cast members at one of the booths, Seinfeld watches a first scene that has already been filmed on the street that the show uses for its outdoor New York scenes. It sets up the premise:
Jerry has told Kramer that a friend of George's late fiancee, Susan, has turned to acting but is so awful she ought to quit the profession. When the woman immediately meets them in the street, Kramer promptly informs her that she stinks and should quit.
The laughs begin to cascade from the bleachers, much to the pleasure of Howard West and George Shapiro, Seinfeld's managers and executive producers on the show. They are show business veterans, having managed such talent as Carl Reiner and Robert Wuhl. "Jerry is totally committed to make the last 10 shows as good as the best of what we've done," says West, tall, white-haired and exuberant.
Shapiro, shorter and equally energetic, seconds that immediately. "He wants to go out on a roll." Then he adds, with a little laugh, "I think the NBC executives were totally shocked that he'd walk away from that much money."
Of course, Seinfeld and his partners in the show have made enough money from it to keep them in cereal, sneakers, Porsches and whatever else they want for the rest of their lives. The syndication money will continue to flow, perhaps indefinitely.
Nobody on the set is expressing any regret about the end of production. The show's other stars all make clear that they're comfortable with the prospect of ending what is likely to be an unmatchable high point of their careers.
Most of the crew members conscientiously allow Richards, known for his intense concentration on show nights, a lot of space. But he takes a moment to say hello in exceptionally cordial terms and expresses his gratitude for all the show has brought to him.
Ms. Louis-Dreyfus and Alexander sit together in director's chairs just off the set and share a laugh over some suggestions in news accounts that they were surprised or upset by Seinfeld's Christmas Day closing notice.
"We were totally together on it," Ms. Louis-Dreyfus says. "It's what we all wanted. It's certainly what I wanted."
Both stars said they despised the dragged-out negotiations last spring that led to speculation that the show would not return this season. The cast members were holding out for a huge salary increase, which they felt was warranted considering how much money so many others, including the production company, Castle Rock, and the network, NBC, had made on the show.
Neither Alexander or Ms. Louis-Dreyfus has plans to jump into another show. "I just don't think the public would accept me as another character right away," Alexander says. "Not with the reruns out there playing twice a night."
A half-hour "Seinfeld" script can run up to 70 pages, which is about 20 pages longer than the normal hourlong show. Each episode is dense with dialogue and action, a long list of very short scenes. The point of every scene: Get in fast and be funny.
In the coffee shop, Jerry expresses dismay that Kramer has offended the aspiring actress. Kramer argues that he just told her the truth: She stinks.
"She does stink," Jerry says, "And she should quit. But it shouldn't be because of me. It should be the traditional route: years of rejection and failure until she's spit out the bottom of the porn industry."
The line gets a huge laugh.
After the end of the scene, as he does after every scene, Seinfeld huddles with his staff of writers, six to eight young men: all men at the moment, though it has not always been all male.
The show is rewritten as it goes along, with Seinfeld inserting new lines in almost every retake. In one scene, where Elaine confronts a co-worker who thinks he understands the cartoon, the writers want to try a new line in a second take to finish the scene with a better laugh. Seinfeld says to go for it.
The line hits big. Seinfeld shrugs as if to say, "What do you know?"
The plot involving the performance artist, who is played by stand-up comic Kathy Griffin, is another familiar "Seinfeld" writing device: a slice of the comedian's real life. Ms. Griffin who is also a regular on the NBC comedy "Suddenly Susan," had an earlier appearance on "Seinfeld," playing a woman asked to deliver a package for Jerry.
She went on to use the experience of filming a "Seinfeld" as part of her stand-up act, in which she satirically mocked Seinfeld. He saw her do the bit on an HBO special, and a new plot line was born.
The cartoon plot line came from the life of the episode's writer, Bruce Kaplan, who was once a cartoonist for The New Yorker. In one scene, Jerry and Kramer take turns writing their own captions for Elaine's cartoon, which depicts a pig at a complaint department, and they draw the biggest laughs in the show.
The laughs are so big, in fact, that they eventually become a problem. The actors have to let the laughs play out before they can deliver the next lines, and so the show is running almost preposterously long. "We're at about 32 minutes," one writer tells another, with two scenes still to go.
The show is supposed to run only 22 minutes on the air, although, one writer notes, NBC often allows "Seinfeld" to run a full minute longer, taking the time out of the next show. But 32 minutes? The episode will have to be tightly crunched in editing. Still, the writer concedes, some scenes will surely have to be cut entirely.
The audience leaves at about 11:45 p.m. The cast and crew members stick around. They have to shoot some retakes called pick-ups. But Seinfeld remains completely fresh.
There are nine half-hours to go, but that only means seven different episodes, because the finale is now planned to be an a hour, and one other show will be a compendium show of some kind, though Seinfeld says he has decided not to do the mock documentary he first planned.
But how about that last one, sure to be the most-watched television episode since the finale of "Cheers" five years ago, and maybe since the finale of "MASH" 15 years ago?
"Oh, Larry and I have that pretty much worked out," Seinfeld says of Larry David, his friend and writing partner, with whom he created the series. David left the show before the start of last season but will return to write the finale with Seinfeld.
They will try to keep the not-at-all bitter end a surprise, Seinfeld says.
"We're going to shoot the episode here, but clear out the audience for that final scene."
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