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The Culture War Heats Up
Reverse Cultural Collapse & Revive Civilization
An Atheist Children's Fantasy, THE GOLDEN COMPASS,
Comes to the Big Screen
Insulting the Audience You Seek
Behind the Scenes of Jerry Seinfeld's BEE MOVIE:
The Joys of Making
a Wonderful Gift to Children | 
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Though he has his mature comedy moments, Jerry Seinfeld's comedy has always been pitched at a broad audience. Consequently, BEE MOVIE, his first foray into animated family movies, makes for a perfect fit. And, that's just what Jerry and some of the other people behind this movie told MOVIEGUIDE® recently.
"Jerry doesn't need bad language to be funny. He doesn't need to be provocative," Producer Christina Steinberg said about Jerry Seinfeld's comedy. "That's not who he is.
"I have kids and Jerry has kids," she added. "Our hope is that you can take your four-year-old and your 85-year-old grandmother and at the same time preserve Jerry's humor because Jerry has a specific humor that is very sophisticated but very relatable. His humor is really perfect for a general, family audience."
Co-Director Steve Hickner noted that, when Jerry started out in comedy, he began with an act that would play on TV as well as in nightclubs. Thus, his comedy tends to be accessible to a broad audience, including families.
"This is perfect for our sensibilities of making a PG movie," he concluded.
Jerry Seinfeld also said making such an animated family comedy was a perfect fit personally for him and his brand of comedy.
"I don't have any inclination towards sexual comedic tone, profanity, or things like that," he said. "I just wrote the way I always write. I felt very comfortable doing it."
"No one should ever challenge Jerry on what's funny," Producer Christina Steinberg added. "His instincts are amazing. He knows what's funny. He was always right. He's a great writer, a really great writer. His work ethic is insane. He gives 150 percent."
"Jerry brings a wealth of experience on how to build jokes and how to make them work," Co-Director Hickner noted. "He's one of the pre-eminent comedians of our time. Sometimes a joke wouldn't work and Jerry would say, 'Trust me. If I re-read that joke faster, we'll get the laugh with that,' and he would be right."
"He learned very quickly the difference between making a TV show and making a movie," Co-Director Simon J. Smith added.
Smith said he wanted to work with a better writer for his next project, so when he heard that Jerry Seinfeld was going to do an animated movie for DreamWorks, he jumped at the chance to do BEE MOVIE. In fact, the idea of adapting Jerry's brand of observational comedy through the eyes of a bee seemed like "a perfect combination."
Christina said, "We all agreed on what the movie should be at the beginning. There was never a moment of tension or fighting. Jeffrey Katzenberg [the top production head at DreamWorks] said at the beginning, "This is Jerry's movie. I am going to be there to guide him through this process, but he will always have the final say. Jeffrey never went back on that word - ever."
Despite his experience at making people laugh, Jerry Seinfeld said he did learn a few things writing and making this movie.
"I realized making this movie why all those Marx Brothers movies had musical numbers and long chase scenes," Jerry said. "It's very hard to sustain comedy throughout a full-length movie, so that's why they came up with those things in the old days. We can all sit here and name comedies that we loved the first half. That just seems to be a pitfall of the form. I just didn't want it to be one of those movies where you go, "I liked it and then it just oh yeah. . .
"If you just make jokes, it gets so boring after a while. And, if you just have plot and no one's making jokes, that gets boring. And so, it becomes kind of a dance between the two, of forward action and funny dialogue and forward action and funny dialogue.
"This whole movie is a gigantic puppet show," he added. "That's all it is, just puppets. These things don't do anything. You have to move them and turn their heads and move their eyes. It's a marionette show. I sat with every single animator, for over 1,400 different shots from cut to cut."
Regarding the popularity and iconic status of his popular, acclaimed TV show, SEINFELD, Jerry said, "I am enormously gratified, pleased, flattered. It overwhelms me."
Why is it so successful, even in reruns?
"I'll give you the same answer Jackie Gleason would give when he was asked about THE HONEYMOONERS, why is it still on, why are people still watching the show. It's funny."
Can it be duplicated?
"It couldn't be done again. It's like asking Neil Armstrong, 'Could you be the first man on the moon one more time for us, please?'"
Writing the TV show helped him know how to write BEE MOVIE, he said, despite the longer form of a feature-length movie.
"The TV show taught me how to write stories and scenes, and when to have characters enter and exit, how people move, and all those things. I learned all that on the show."
Actor Patrick Warburton, who does the voice for Ken, one of the antagonists to Jerry Seinfeld's bee hero, Barry B. Benson, has four children, age 15, 13, 9, and 7, with his wife, Cathy.
"This is like the pinnacle," he said about BEE MOVIE. "If you can do something that's really fun and clever and family friendly - with a team like this - that everybody can watch and enjoy, that's the best, because I've got four kids [myself]. Today the premiere will be a lot of fun because I've got the whole family coming. It's icing on the cake that it's something I can take my wife and kids along.
"It's great working with Jerry," he added."You feel very fortunate [and] very confident because he knows what he's doing. He's a great writer, a great performer. At the same time, he has a selflessness."
Thus, Patrick said, Jerry willingly lets other people share the spotlight. He recalled that when Jerry and his team cast his famous TV show, they hired "scene stealers."
"I've worked with other people like Jerry but their insecurities seem to get in the way," he concluded.
Making a family-friendly movie like BEE MOVIE, or her previous movie, NATIONAL TREASURE, is an enjoyable experience, Producer Christina Steinberg said enthusiastically.
"I love it! It's fun to make a movie that everybody wants to see, have a good time with, be with their family, and forget the world for a couple of hours every once in a while."
Perhaps the final word should come from the man, Jerry Seinfeld, himself, a man with three children of his own, age 6, 4 and 2:
"It's just now hitting me that this is a wonderful gift to children . . . and I have kids. I honestly never thought about that aspect along the way. I initially thought that this is a very interesting medium in which to work - it's so creative and unique. That was what attracted me to it. I wasn't thinking about kids at all, but now that's what I'm thinking about. I'm thinking I'm about to wrap up a present for kids with a big bow, kids all over the world, and that's what I'm excited about now."
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