CHAPTER 77

Author: Can you remember any other incidents like that, where it’s got into the public domain that there’s been a problem at the club?

Noam: Yeah, there was a big Seinfeld …

Ava: Yes, Maija.

Noam: Maija. What was her last name?

Steve: I didn’t know her. She made the movie.

Noam: She wanted to videotape her own act and then they started … They couldn’t record when Seinfeld was on stage, but they did record for her documentary or something like that, and then they got into a fight with Seinfeld about it.

Ava: In the hallway, right.

Noam: In the hallway, and then, oh, he was going to have his thugs come down and take care of my father, and my father ran upstairs, and somehow the media got wind of it and it was in the Post.

Ava: Absolutely. Actually, he remembered it exactly right.

Author: So what happened in that situation? I didn’t quite understand. So she was filming. She wasn’t supposed to film Seinfeld but she did?

Noam: She had her boyfriend with her. He was a tough guy. He did end up having words with Seinfeld.

Author: In the Cellar?

Noam: Now you have to understand that Seinfeld was really one of our first entrees into the big time in terms of a huge star coming regularly … Before that people who’d started here had become famous, but he was one of the first really famous guys who started coming down here regularly, filming his documentary here, and it was important. The idea that he might have been turned away or discouraged from coming back, or feel uncomfortable here, this was huge. It was a knife to our throats.