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Jerry: Oh, sure. One that I loved was about a guy who somehow falls out of a building window and lands on the pavement. Everyone runs over, saying, “What happened? What happened?” And the guy looks up and says, “I don’t know. I just got here myself.”

Marlo: That’s a good joke. Your father sounds adorable.

Jerry: He was.

Marlo: Did your mother laugh at your dad’s jokes?

Jerry: My mother was a good laugher. She always said that she married my father because he was so funny and the life of the party. But then once they got married, he wasn’t so funny around the house. I think my wife has discovered the same thing about me. Comedians are not that upbeat in their private world, you know.

Marlo: Yeah, my dad worried a lot about his act. But he sure was funny at the dinner table.

Jerry: The dinner table is a good stage.

Marlo: Yup. And my father loved listening to his children tell jokes. Were your parents the same way?

Jerry: I was never funny around my parents.

Marlo: Really?

Jerry: Yeah. I was too shy.

Marlo: Did your father eventually see you in a club?

Jerry: Yes. And he’d say, “If I’d had some place where I could have gotten on stage, I would have wanted to do the same thing.”

Marlo: If you were never funny at home, your parents must have been very surprised to see you perform.

Jerry: Oh, my God. My first Tonight Show? I’m telling you, I have never been more nervous about anything. Having my parents in the audience used to just terrify me.

Marlo: Really? Why?

Jerry: Because I was showing them this side of me that they had no idea about. Like, when I first told them I wanted to be a comedian—I was about 19 or 20—they said, “Really? But we’ve never seen you do funny things.”

Marlo: That’s a riot. So you were like this little closet comedian.

Jerry: Yes, yes—I was much more the closet comedian than the class clown.

Marlo: How did you do that night on The Tonight Show?

Jerry: I did well. But I wasn’t that happy with it. I thought I could have done better.

Marlo: You were probably still nervous. Back then, The Tonight Show was like the holy grail for comedians. What does that feel like for a young comic?

Jerry: It feels like, like the stomach flu, you know? Except it’s in your whole body. You can’t eat, you feel sick. Those first couple of years, every time I did The Tonight Show, it was such a gigantic event in my life. I’d be up all night the night before, and so sick the day of the taping. I remember one time asking myself, Why do I do this? Why would anyone put themselves through this?

Marlo: And your answer was . . .

Jerry: Because if anyone can, we can. And that’s why we do it. The only reason anyone would go through this hell is because they love it.

Marlo: Exactly. What about bombing? Do you remember one particularly awful bomb? Because, sorry to say, nothing makes me laugh more than flops.

Jerry: Well, I remember once doing a club where the waitress had to step on stage in front of you to get to her section.

Marlo: Oh, my God.

Jerry: And so all throughout my sketch, she would get up on stage and walk in front of me, with the drinks and the tray—back and forth, back and forth. Just awful.

Marlo: That must have been great for your timing. Tell me the anatomy of a Jerry Seinfeld joke. Like your famous missing sock routine, where you try to understand why there’s always an odd, partnerless sock when you pull your clothes out of the dryer. And you theorize that the missing sock is actually a fugitive on the run. That joke’s a classic. How did it come about? Were you actually folding your laundry one day when the idea hit you? How does a piece like this evolve?

Jerry: Well, first, there’s always the missing sock.

Marlo: Right.

Jerry: And I can’t remember how I hit upon the idea that they want to escape, but once you get your hook, you try to do what we might call a “switch piece,” where you take everything that fits that scenario and apply it to the joke. Okay, so we have an escaped convict scenario. Now you find all the pieces that match up. You have the sock hiding inside the wall of