Carol Leifer, the prolific sixty-eight-year-old comic and tv author (“S.N.L.,” “Seinfeld,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “Hacks,” and so on.), has many expertise. One, maybe unsurprisingly, is delivering humorous speeches, a present for which she’s now giving again, with a guide titled “How one can Write a Humorous Speech . . . for a Wedding ceremony, Bar Mitzvah, Commencement & Each Different Occasion You Didn’t Need to Go to within the First Place,” co-written by Rick Mitchell. One other expertise: dancing, which could come as a shock to those that’ve heard the rumors that the rhythm-challenged “Seinfeld” character Elaine relies on Leifer, who dated Jerry Seinfeld within the late seventies.
The opposite day, Leifer—“schlubbed out,” as she put it, in a white hoodie and glasses—sat in her workplace in entrance of a cue card for a Bob Hope particular she appeared on (“Hope: Milton, you performed all of them, didn’t you?”), a poster for “A Exhausting Day’s Evening,” and images of the Beatles, whose 1966 Shea Stadium present she attended. (She had additionally simply gone to a Paul McCartney live performance on the Bowery Ballroom with Seinfeld.)
Her guide has some useful guidelines. For example,“Don’t drink an excessive amount of,” “Maintain it stylish,” “Keep away from platitudes,” and “Maintain it below 5”—“the Gettysburg tackle was 272 phrases, and it lasted round two minutes,” she writes. “There’s a cause Lincoln’s on the penny.” She famous that, though there are a variety of books about speechwriting, they’re largely “from the fifties, on do a factor on the Diners Membership.” She went on, “The purpose of the guide was that anyone may give speech. It actually isn’t that onerous, and it’s actually not that onerous to make it humorous, even when you’re not a professionally humorous individual.”
“How one can Write a Humorous Speech” does draw from the comedy playbook. Leifer invokes such Catskills phrases as “callback,” “the rule of three,” and “runners,” in addition to recommendation corresponding to “At all times be able to pivot” and “Quite a lot of time, profanity is a crutch.” “Standup is actually a speech each night time,” she identified. “The funniest query I get as a standup is ‘Do you hear the viewers once you’re up there?’ It’s, like, Do I hear the viewers? I’ve a stethoscope on the viewers your complete time.”
In 1982, Leifer opened for the Seaside Boys, and the band broke quite a lot of cardinal guidelines of each leisure and etiquette. “Initially, they’d tune up whereas I used to be on,” she stated. “I needed to go backstage after the primary present and say to them, ‘Seaside Boys, are you able to please not?’ ” Relating to speeches, she stated, “when you’ve requested folks to offer a speech and you place this stress on them to exit of their consolation zone, it’s a must to create a very nice setting.”
Within the guide, she tells of a pal searching for assist writing a toast for her daughter’s wedding ceremony. Leifer requested a few of her go-to questions: What’s a comic story in regards to the pleased couple? What are the perfect and weirdest issues about them? What outrageous issues have they accomplished? What loving or beneficiant issues? The mother’s ensuing speech was candy (“As just a little lady, she didn’t love enjoying with dolls; she most popular enjoying with snails from our backyard. You chortle, however, belief me, I saved a ton on Barbies”). As a management, Leifer fed the identical anecdotes to A.I. and bought a speech riddled with clunkers (“I let you know, she had extra gastropod buddies than human ones!”).
Some individuals are naturals. “Barack Obama, he’s the grasp,” Leifer stated. “The ability of what he was speaking about not solely got here via, however with eloquence and style.” President Trump, however, “violates an enormous rule of speech-making, which is whoever you’re talking to, it is advisable be inclusive. That makes speech, since you’re not alienating half the viewers.” (Ergo, don’t inform a dirty frat-house story with grandparents current.)
Leifer, who estimates that she’s given between twenty-five and thirty nuptial toasts, hasn’t ever bombed at a marriage, although she did have an early unhealthy expertise at a comedy membership: “A man was heckling me and I assumed he was doing a Darth Vader voice.” From the stage, she riffed on his “impression.” “ what’s coming—he had a voice field, as a result of he had throat most cancers.”
Larry David is a wonderful speech-giver, Leifer stated, “as a result of folks know his character, and the parameters of what he can get away with are that a lot larger—he can go off the rails the place normies can’t.” Leifer requested David to talk at her second wedding ceremony, however he declined, saying that the stress would damage his morning golf sport. Jay Leno and Invoice Maher did communicate, “and so they had been each killer.” However the greatest chortle that night, Leifer recalled, was for a bit she wrote for her non-comedian spouse: “My spouse stated, ‘Carol, you’re the most loving, warmest, most stunning, caring individual I may ever meet.’ After which she tore up the paper and stated, ‘Ah, sufficient with Carol’s draft.’ ” ♦
