I have something a bit different to share with you today.
It’s an episode of Seinfeld I wrote some twenty plus years ago.
No, I was not a writer on Seinfeld but like most Americans in the mid and late 1990s, I was a pretty big fan of the show.
Back in the fall of 1995, I went on a date with a young woman, and needless to say several odd things happened before, during, and after the date.
I had a hard time wrapping my brain around them all, so I told several friends about it and asked for their input.
One of my friends, Ryan Schulte, listened to my tale and interpreted my situation quite succinctly, saying, “Dude, your life is a Seinfeld episode.”
I agreed with him instantly and over the course of the next few days I took my weird dating experience and turned into a Seinfeld spec script titled “Bad Dates.”
I never really thought I’d sell it to the show, but as an aspiring screenwriter I thought it would be a good sample of my writing to show agents and producers.
Fast forward to the winter of 2019.
I have the flu and am knocked down for almost an entire week.
As I’m recovering, I’m laying on my couch doing my best to stay hydrated, and I come across a block of Seinfeld episodes on TV.
This transported me back to the 90s and I rediscovered my affection for this brilliant sit-com. I started watching Seinfeld reruns nightly.
And I started thinking about the spec script I’d written back in the day.
I found the “Bad Dates” script and read it.
I’m happy to say I thought it was still pretty good and it entertained me.
There were some issues with dialogue, pacing, and structure, but overall the story still worked.
I decided that I wanted to revise the script and share it with my readers.
I fixed the issues I had found, and I added some characters that had been left out of the original script.
Specifically I added George’s neurotic parents and Newman to the story.
I love those characters and felt that their inclusion would make this story feel much more like a real episode of Seinfeld.
I also changed the name of the story from “Bad Dates” to “The Cheek.”
Why? Well, watching all of these Seinfeld episodes recently has shown me that a majority of the show was about bad dates, so my title needed to be more specific.
Therefore my Seinfeld spec script turned fan fiction story/episode is now called “The Cheek.”
You can download and read Seinfeld: The Cheek for free by tapping this link.
You can also read the opening of the story here to sample it then decide whether or not you wish to read it in its entirety.
Either way, I hope you enjoy my little addition to the world of Seinfeld. Please let me know what you think of it.
Oh, and one other note.
Screenplays and teleplays have a very specific industry format that those outside of movie and television production are not familiar with.
I decided to abandon that format and go with the more common stage play format that most people are familiar with to make reading “The Cheek” easier.