Interview · moment 9 of 24
Seinfeld's Real Clio Awards Speech
from #293 - Fat Activism with Jessica Kirson | The Tim Dillon Show · #293
6 min
Guest
Jessica and Tim discuss overly clever "comedy for people who went to Vassar" comics, then play and dissect Jerry Seinfeld's unusually honest, cynical Clio Awards acceptance speech about loving advertising and lying.
- Tim has never laughed at Seinfeld despite calling him a great writer and technically brilliant comic.
- The one time Tim really laughed at Seinfeld was during his Clio Awards speech, which felt unusually real.
- Seinfeld opens the speech: 'I am excited to win this—this is the award they give you when they don't think you can actually win one.'
- Seinfeld explains his love of advertising: 'I love advertising because I love lying.'
- The happiness is in the gap between seeing the commercial and owning the product, before discovering it stinks.
- Seinfeld on duping innocent people: 'Spending your life trying to dupe innocent people out of hard-won earnings to buy useless low-quality misrepresented items is an excellent use of your energy.'
- Materialism gets unfairly criticized; the problem is not buying the right things, not having too much money.
- In 1991, the Clio Awards screwed up and left trophies lying around, so ad executives climbed on stage and grabbed them.
- Seinfeld: 'I got this. I didn't really win it but I got it.' Tomorrow he won't know where it is; eventually someone will sell or throw it out.
- The award represents the same happiness those executives felt in 1991 when they ran onstage and grabbed trophies that weren't theirs.
- Tim's conclusion: this speech is real, dark, and unlike Seinfeld's usual safe material—it's a different thing for him.