Jerry Seinfeld and Michael Richards starred in a comedy before their NBC series

41 years ago, HBO, then the most subscribed pay cable network in the United States, decided to expand its original programming (which consisted mainly of comedy and boxing specials) with the inspiring film based on real life. movie “The Terry Fox Story.” Although it didn’t set the world on fire, the film received decent reviews, giving competing premium cable channels the desire to try making their own movies.

And so, in 1984, Showtime gave film production a shot with a zany comedy called “The Ratings Game.” While this film was notable at the time for being the network’s first original film, it is now more significant for being Danny DeVito’s directorial debut. If this is the first time you’re hearing about “The Ratings Game,” there’s a good reason for that. It’s a sporadically funny movie based on an old-fashioned Nielsen ratings scam that’s basically Mel Brooks’ “The Producers” for television. DeVito plays a New Jersey trucking magnate who moves to Hollywood to pursue his dream of making it big as a comedy writer and producer. Then he backtracks to get a horrible series called “Sittin’ Pretty” to air and, with the help of a rating company employee (Rhea Perlman), concocts a plan that will make it look like one of the most popular ones. in the air.

Clips from the fake shows provide the biggest laughs in the film. However, DeVito gets help from two future stars of one of the most beloved sitcoms to ever hit primetime television.

At the beginning of “The Ratings Game,” none other than Jerry Seinfeld appears as a CBS executive who informs DeVito that his ideas are out of step with what’s popular in Hollywood. “The chains won’t be buying Italians, Jews or Puerto Ricans this season,” he tells DeVito. “They are buying homosexuals, alcoholics and child abusers.”

Seinfeld wasn’t completely unknown when “The Ratings Game” first aired in 1984. He had made his first appearance on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” three years earlier, and had become a familiar face there and on “Late “Night with David Letterman.” At the same time, he wasn’t as well-known as his future “Seinfeld” co-star Michael Richards, who had been involved in an infamous (staged) fight with Andy Kaufman on the short-lived ABC series. Sketch comedy series “Fridays”. Richards also appears in “The Ratings Game” in a slightly more significant role as one of the fools hired by DeVito to break into a Nielsen house and watch “Sittin’ Pretty.”

If you’re curious about “The Ratings Game,” it’s currently available to stream on Prime Video. Once again, it’s curiously dated in the age of streaming, but there are enough fun bits to perhaps justify 102 minutes of your time. It might also have been the movie that made Hollywood perceive DeVito as more than just the angry dispatcher in “Taxi.”