Seinfeld Ready for ‘Last Time’ on Broadway

Being Jerry Seinfeld means never having to say you’re sorry. Especially to a roomful of reporters, microphones and cameras.

He’s not sorry that scalpers are getting $1,500 for a $75 ticket to his sold-out, 10-show run that starts tonight at Broadway’s Broadhurst Theater and ends Sunday with a show that will be televised on HBO.

“Yes,” a smiling, confident Seinfeld said Tuesday at a media session to promote the HBO broadcast. “I’m responsible for scalping. I started it. There’s never been scalping before this. . . . There is crime, yes, and it does bother me, and as a comedian, I realize I’m supposed to fight crime where I see it. . . .

“Is it a good deal at $1,500?” he asked. “If you have $1,500 to spend on a ticket, you’re beyond [worrying about] a good deal.”

The comedian said that since his cut of the ticket sales was going to programs for New York City public schools, complaining about the price of tickets was like taking money from children. “Maybe they’d like their lunch money, too,” he said.

Seinfeld is not sorry that entertainment critics have been generally unable to see his show on its world tour from Melbourne, Australia, to Omaha, Neb.--reporters in New York, for example, could buy seats only for the last performance.

“Criticism is always fair,” he said. “What people forget is that it’s unimportant. . . . Each audience member is of equal importance regardless of whether he has a typewriter.”

And don’t expect him to apologize for the controversial “Puerto Rican Parade” episode last season. “The Puerto Rican episode was one of my favorite shows,” he said. “I thought it was very funny. I found that whole episode very amusing. . . . [Kramer burning the Puerto Rican flag] was such an obvious joke. That people tried to manipulate it was pretty weak.”

The purpose of the Broadway run is to prepare for the HBO show, he said, to learn the feel of the theater, the way things sound. It’s also a way of telling New York that Jerry is back where he started.

“Humor is really a New York invention,” he observed. “All people in New York are funny, and they get funnier as they get older.”

He’s clearly enjoying himself back East. On Monday night he didn’t just go to the Dodgers-Mets baseball game at Shea Stadium, he took 400 school kids, sat with them in the bleacher seats for a while, then did a couple of innings of play-by-play in the television booth.

It’s not that the move from the comedy circuit to Los Angeles in 1988 didn’t work out, it’s just that when your observations are your fortune, New York offers more opportunity to, well, see things.

Making “Seinfeld” in L.A., he said, “the writers were deprived of stimulation. . . . You’re working from a memory of living. In L.A. you’re less involved with the general public. [In New York] I feel like I woke up.”

Sunday night, Seinfeld said, his stand-up material goes into retirement. That’s why the show’s called “I’m Telling You for the Last Time.” The show will be turned into Seinfeld’s first-ever album, for release Sept. 22.

When the cheering stops, he’ll start working on another concert act and hopes to have it ready next year.

What’s it like being free from the weekly television series grind? “Ever take a dog into the park and take his leash off?” he said. “He looks up at you for a second, then bolts like a maniac. . . .”

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* “Jerry Seinfeld: I’m Telling You for the Last Time” airs Sunday at 9 p.m. on HBO.