On Nov. 6, as the final batch of Seinfeld arrives on DVD, so will a boxed set boasting all nine seasons. Seinfeld: The Complete Series delivers 180 episodes on 32 discs, all for a suggested list price of $283.95 — not that there's anything wrong with that. After all, the set includes a 226-page coffee-table book filled with photos, quotes, trivia and personal reflections from Jerry Seinfeld, a compilation previously only shared by him with his cast mates. The book, in turn, contains a DVD featuring a roundtable discussion between Seinfeld, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Michael Richards and series creator Larry David, the first reunion of its kind for the group, held on the ninth anniversary of the May 1998 finale. Among the plethora of DVD extras — 104 hours in bonus features, peeps! — is a reedit of "The Betrayal," the famous "backwards" episode, this time going forward. Not included in all this: a marble rye. Still, that's a whole lotta nothing!
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Mel Gibson, recently vilified himself for spouting racial slurs, identifies and sympathizes with Seinfeld's Michael Richards, whose epithet-laden rant landed him in his own pot of hot water. (I know, shocker, right?) "I feel really badly for the guy," Gibson tells Entertainment Weekly. "He was obviously in a state of stress. You don't need to be inebriated to be bent out of shape. But my heart went out to the guy." Speaking of ridicule and inebriation....
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A day after having sullied Seinfeld vet Michael Richards on his syndicated radio program, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and other African-American leaders called on the entertainment industry — rappers included — to cease using the racial slur repeatedly uttered during Richards' on-stage tirade. "We want to give our ancestors a present: dignity over degradation," Jackson said at a Monday news conference, contending that the N-word is "unprotected" by free-speech issues. (The N, however, is, so keep on with your sapphic selves, Ashley and Spencer!)
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Speaking to Extra at Tuesday's American Music Awards, Oscar (and freshly crowned AMA) winner Jamie Foxx said that had he been in the audience for Michael Richards' now-infamous comedy act/racist diatribe, he would have been primed to channel, say, Ali, as opposed to Ray Charles. "He would've had to put his dukes up," Foxx shared, adding, "[Michael] probably should go get a private island somewhere, 'cause if I see him...!" What, you'll make him watch Stealth? The inhumanity.
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With the help of Jerry Seinfeld, who said his longtime friend was "shattered" and "deserves a chance to apologize," Michael Richards appeared on Monday's Late Show with David Letterman to discuss the racial epithet-strewn rant that capped his Friday performance at a Los Angeles comedy club, and was immediately disseminated via the Internet. "I was... trying to do my act, and I got heckled, and I took it badly," Richards said. "I went into a rage and said some pretty nasty things... a lot of trash talk. I'm deeply, deeply sorry." Letterman asked Richards if he would have launched into a tirade had his hecklers not been African-American. "It may have happened," he replied. "The rage did go all over the place, to everybody in the room.... I'm not a racist, that’s what's so insane about this. And yet it's said.... It fires out of me."
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