Kramer as a US Open ball man. Elaine accusing Barney’s of having skinny mirrors. George wearing a toupee on a date… with a bald woman. You may credit Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David with these hilarious moments etched in television history and you’re not wrong if you do. The co-creators of Seinfeld are known to have shaped every episode of the sitcom on which they worked as show runners. But it all starts with a funny idea, and it’s Carol Leifer who deserves encores and accolades as she was the writer of these famous episodes (not to mention a co-writer on the one that coined “shrinkage,” but I digress). Leifer has also written How to Succeed in Business Without Really Crying, a surprisingly serious and heartfelt memoir loaded with lessons from her nearly four decades as a comedienne. This is a woman who began her stand-up career right out of college and has endured the jeers of drunken frat boys for years; this along with countless other forms of rejection undoubtedly gives you credibility in any line of business, including comedy. What’s nuts is that even today Leifer has to submit a resume and references to get work, reported by her with great humility in this excellent book.
What we have here is a hiring guide and then some. Leifer advises that if you want a certain career, you should “just get yourself on the premises, as close to the action as possible, in one of those grunt-level assistant gopher-type positions.” This is not the only comment she makes that seems to speak to the younger set, but let’s face it – we’re never too old to take a step back if we think it’s in pursuit of something greater. She goes on to suggest that anytime we’re competing for a job or assignment, two hundred others are as well, with half of ’em being younger and hungrier, the other half being older and more experienced. We have to be on our game, even over-prepared, because surely a few among the scads who want what we want could have been given a personal introduction to the decision maker… or may have earned advanced degrees in sucking up. Competition is fierce in the shark-infested waters.
Not looking for a job? Well, if you’re still required to sell yourself, you too can use the author’s wisdom as she is a master of speaking with – and being unfailingly polite to – everyone in her path. Leifer carefully leverages relationships to continue to get opportunities. To wit, Johnny Carson’s team purportedly pigeonholed her as “a Letterman regular” and therefore told her no 23 – count ’em, 23 – times. But she kept at it, maintaining a professional approach with those who continued to reject her. It was only a matter of time until her friend Jay Leno, what with his then ever-increasing substitute role on The Tonight Show, would provide her the big break. And surely he did. “So many things along the way are poised to knock you down” she writes, “that bringing anything less than your best would be self-destructive.” So Carol Leifer has gone from writing sitcom episodes about nothing to a book about everything that matters when it comes to breaking through, transforming herself from joke teller to business consultant. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
PS: Another very worthwhile read from a multi-hyphenate television veteran is One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories by B.J. Novak. You may know Novak as an actor-writer-producer-director from the U.S. version of The Office, but you may not realize he has a degree from Harvard in English and Spanish literature and has uncorked a career’s worth of subversive short stories here. At once bizarre and hysterical, this collection is for those looking for something (really) off-beat as summer winds down…