Comedian Jerry Seinfeld told GQ Magazine that the “movie business is over.”
It most certainly is.
Seinfeld is out promoting his directorial debut, Unfrosted, a Netflix film that arrives on May 3. It’s the story about the creation of the Pop-Tart in the early 1960s. Unfrosted is also the first time Seinfeld has starred in a live-action movie.
Directing a movie was “totally new to me,” he told GQ. “I thought I had done some cool stuff, but it was nothing like the way these [movie] people work. They’re so dead serious! They don’t have any idea that the movie business is over.”
When asked if he had told them the movie business was over, Seinfeld said he had not but explained his reasoning: “[F]ilm doesn’t occupy the pinnacle in the social, cultural hierarchy that it did for most of our lives,” he said. When a movie came out, if it was good, we all went to see it. We all discussed it. We quoted lines and scenes we liked.”
Referring to all the content today, he added, “Now we’re walking through a fire hose of water, just trying to see.”
When asked what replaced movies in the cultural imagination, he said:
Depression? Malaise? I would say confusion. Disorientation replaced the movie business. Everyone I know in show business, every day, is going, What’s going on? How do you do this? What are we supposed to do now? … Audiences are now flocking to stand-up because it’s something you can’t fake. It’s like platform diving. You could say you’re a platform diver, but in two seconds we can see if you are or you aren’t. That’s what people like about stand-up. They can trust it. Everything else is fake.
There’s no question stand-up is blowing up to the heights we saw back in the 70s and 80s. When Seinfeld says audiences can “trust it,” he is exactly right. Seinfeld, Ricky Gervais, Dave Chappelle, etc., are the only people telling the truth anymore. “Everything else is fake” is also exactly right. Movies and TV lie and lie and lie, and I don’t mean with fantastical stories. The lie is how the characters behave, converse, interact, and act. The lie is in a 90-pound woman taking a punch from a 200-pound man. The lie is that everyone is gay. The lie is that everyone is obsessed with identity over merit. The lie is that America is a racist, sexist, homophobic culture. The lie is in transsexuals and fetishists portrayed as normal and heroic. The lie is that it is healthy to groom little kids into questioning their sexuality and gender. The lie is that there’s something biological in between male and female when the truth is that it’s only personality.
It really does seem as though the only place we can go to be entertained with the truth anymore is through stand-up—and nothing is more entertaining, memorable, or moving than being told the truth. The truth has been so smothered and perverted by today’s movie and TV industry that watching Ricky Gervais or Dave Chappelle is more than entertaining; it’s cathartic.
What Seinfeld says about the movie business being “over” is also accurate. Hollywood’s cultural influence is pretty much gone. The only thing about movies that still brings everyone together is complaining about how awful and irrelevant they’ve become.
The left-wing studios worked overtime to alienate, offend, insult, lecture, and condescend to half the country, which has resulted in movies so terrible that the other half — leftists — also choose to stay away in droves.
Most movies and TV have become propaganda, which has no shelf life and no lasting impact. Universal themes and ideals bring us together. Instead, we are lied to and scolded. Exploring what it means to be human captures our attention. Instead, we are lied to about how identity trumps our shared humanity.
This is also why decades-old shows like Friends, Suits, The Office, Gilmore Girls, Grey’s Anatomy, NCIS, Seinfeld, etc., have dominated the streaming charts over hundreds—literally, hundreds—of brand new streaming shows. The new stuff is all shit.
I’ll probably never see Seinfeld’s Pop-Tart movie, but at least he cares about the only thing a comedian should care about: The Funny.
John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover on Kindle and Audiobook.
