Names and faces
■ Jerry Seinfeld has been gathering material. He is working on his first book about comedy since the million-selling Seinlanguage came out more than 25 years ago. Simon & Schuster announced Thursday that the new book, currently untitled, comes out Oct. 6. “Whenever
I came up with a funny bit, whether it happened on a stage, in a conversation, or working it out on my preferred canvas, the big yellow legal pad, I kept it in one of those old-school accordion folders,” Seinfeld, 65, said in a statement. “So, I have every piece of stand-up comedy I thought was worth saving from 45 years of hacking away at this for all I was worth.” According to the publisher, the star of Seinfeld and Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee has organized the book by decade, going back to the 1970s when he was a college student and emerging nightclub comic. “Not only is the book brilliantly crafted and laugh out loud funny on every single page, but readers will be able to see Jerry and his comedy evolve through the years,” Jonathan Karp, president and publisher of Simon & Schuster, said in a statement.
■ When David Alan Grier was offered a chance to revisit one of his favorite plays on Broadway, he quickly agreed. He just forgot about all the beatings. In A Soldier’s Play, Grier plays a stern Army sergeant who during each show is pummeled twice and later shot dead two times. While the violence is fake, the actor does have to repeatedly drop and roll around on the American Airlines Theatre stage. Although this is Grier’s third time performing A Soldier’s Play, the fact that the role he’s playing was so physical slipped his mind. He only remembered the physicality when a fight coordinator appeared. “I forgot about all that. I was like, ‘Oh, he has lots of lines. Yeah, I’ll do it.’ I thought there were little scuffles,” Grier said. “I thought, ‘Well, he gets pushed a couple times. A lot of monologues. I’ll take it.’” To be sure, Grier is the last person you’d expect to be caught unaware. One of his earliest roles was in a small part in the off-Broadway debut of A Soldier’s Play when he was in his 20s. He revisited the work when it was turned into a 1984 movie. This is his third bite of the apple. “I was the youngest actor. Now, I’m the oldest,” he said. The play by Charles Fuller is set on an Army base in Louisiana during World War II. A black investigator has been called to find out who murdered the black sergeant of an all-black company. What he finds is racism — but not from white bigots or the KKK. He finds intolerance within the black ranks. The play won the Pulitzer Prize for drama and over the years has attracted some of the most accomplished actors in the black community: Denzel Washington, Adolph Caesar, Samuel L. Jackson, Wood Harris, Taye Diggs, Anthony Mackie, James McDaniel and Blair Underwood. Grier recalls that one day during filming in Arkansas then-Gov. Bill Clinton stopped by the set. He also vividly recalled the food: Patti LaBelle, who played a nightclub singer, made rice and red beans daily, and one day the caterer served something a little odd: catfish sushi.