The beloved golfball reveal of Seinfeld‘s “Marine Biologist” episode nearly by no means occurred. Jerry Seinfeld revealed this week he and Larry David wrote the scene simply hours earlier than filming the scene, and actor Jason Alexander solely had minutes to memorize the script.
“I don’t know the schedule that week, however let’s say we’re taking pictures it on Wednesday. It’s Tuesday,” Seinfeld stated throughout an look on The Wealthy Eisen Present. “We don’t have the golf ball goes into the blowhole of the whale. We don’t have it — it was by no means within the script.”
In Seinfeld season 5 episode 14 (“The Marine Biologist”), Alexander’s George Costanza delivers an impressively lengthy monologue about making an attempt to impress a girl, through which he ultimately reveals that Kramer’s (Michael Richards) golf ball acquired caught in a whale’s blowhole. Famously, the speech begins with the road, “The ocean was offended that day my associates.”
“It was the evening earlier than we shot the scene with Jason,” Seinfeld recalled this week. “I stated to [co-writer David], ‘Hey, what if what places the whale in misery is Kramer’s golf ball?’ He’s hitting golf balls on the seaside. George is strolling on the seaside with the woman, we haven’t linked them. We noticed no connection the evening earlier than. We write that speech the evening earlier than. Two o’clock within the morning.”
After the late-night gentle bulb of inspiration, Seinfeld stated it was Alexander who grew to become the true hero of the day.
“We present up the following day. We hand Jason, who’s an effing genius, that speech. How lengthy is that speech? It’s a web page, two pages. That is TV, OK? Because of this movie sucks. You go to a TV actor like Jason and also you hand him two and a half pages, and I am going, ‘We’ve acquired to shoot this in a half hour. Memorize it.’ He goes, ‘No downside.’ That’s TV. No preciousness.”
Seinfeld stated Alexander’s feat made for a good higher efficiency from everybody that day, together with himself. “When Jason is doing the speech, this one shot, there’s one reduce to me with my eyes. My eyebrows — I’m watching him. You assume I’m reacting to the story, I’m reacting — I can’t imagine he’s getting this speech, phrase good. That’s what I’m considering,” Seinfeld stated. “I’m not even within the scene. I’m not appearing. I’m simply watching Jason get the speech proper in entrance of a dwell viewers. OK, it’s not movie. In movie, motion pictures, you screw it up and we’ll do it once more. In TV, this dwell viewers goes to listen to this speech for the primary time as soon as. So that you need these juicy laughs, they’re listening to these jokes the primary time, and he’s getting it good. That’s the reason I’ve that look on my face.”