‘Seinfeld,’ ‘Girls’ and ‘Nobody Wants This’ with Bruce Eric Kaplan
The Last Laugh
The Daily Beast
4.6 • 661 Ratings
🗓️ 25 October 2024
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For the past 30 years or so, Bruce Eric Kaplan has toiled away as a staff writer on some of the best television series ever produced, including ‘Seinfeld,’ ‘Six Feet Under,’ and ‘Girls.’ But as he writes in his new book ‘They Went Another Way: A Hollywood Memoir’—and discusses in this bonus episode—Kaplan has never managed to get his own show past the pilot stage. And it’s not for lack of trying. Kaplan has written more unproduced pilots than anyone else he knows, and tells the story of how the Hollywood system has slowly beaten him down in hilarious fashion in the new book. He also reveals some details about his new gig as co-showrunner for Season 2 of the Netflix hit rom-com ‘Nobody Wants This,’ shares what it was like to join ‘Seinfeld’ in its final season, and so much more.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is The Last Laugh. I'm Matt Wilstein from The Daily Beast, and today we have something a little different for you. |
| 0:11.7 | My guest on this bonus episode is not exactly a comedian, but he has written for some of my all-time favorite comedy shows, including Seinfeld and Girls. |
| 0:21.6 | And he was just named co-showrunner for season two of the excellent Netflix series, |
| 0:26.6 | Nobody Wants This. |
| 0:27.6 | If, like me, you have ever read The New Yorker cover-to-cover, but only the cartoons, |
| 0:32.6 | you could probably recognize the work of Bruce Eric Kaplan by his initials, B.E.K., which appear in the |
| 0:38.7 | bottom right-hand corner of all of his very funny cartoons in that magazine. Now, Bruce has |
| 0:43.8 | written a new book called They Went Another Way, which I enjoyed reading so much that I wanted |
| 0:48.7 | to have him on this podcast to talk about why he wanted to write about his struggles to get his own |
| 0:53.4 | TV shows made in Hollywood |
| 0:54.8 | after so much success on so many iconic series. I really love this conversation, and I hope you do too. |
| 1:00.8 | But before we get into it, we are going to hear Bruce Eric Kaplan read the journal entry that |
| 1:05.6 | opens his new book, They Went Another Way. |
| 1:09.4 | January 10th, 2022. |
| 1:11.7 | I'm looking to have a profound experience |
| 1:13.7 | I thought to myself a couple of days ago |
| 1:16.1 | as I woke up from a dream in the middle of the night. |
| 1:19.4 | It was almost as if that was the last sentence |
| 1:21.7 | I said in the dream, |
| 1:23.1 | but I'm getting ahead of myself. |
| 1:25.1 | First, I want to tell you that I'm starting this journal to keep |
| 1:28.3 | from going mad. I used to say that the cartoons were my journals, but now that I don't draw cartoons |
... |
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