The filming of “Schindler’s List” was, to put it mildly, a difficult experience for Steven Spielberg. Principal photography took place in Poland in and around many of the concentration camps where Jewish captives were murdered en masse. The weight should be too much for any human being to bear (clearly it isn’t, because human beings carried out this unspeakable genocide), and it absolutely cut through Spielberg. As he said in Joseph McBride’s “Steven Spielberg: A Biography”: “I was hit in the face with my personal life. My upbringing. My Jewishness. The stories my grandparents told me about the Shoah. And Jewish life came pouring back into my heart. I cried all the time.”
This was not fertile grounds for laughs, but to get through the making of such a soul-scarring motion picture, Spielberg needed some semblance of levity. And so, when he knocked off for the day, he would repair to his quarters in Poland and find lighthearted solace via two sources: phone calls from Robin Williams and videotapes of “Seinfeld” episodes.
For Jerry Seinfeld, discovering Spielberg’s fandom was a godsend. As he remarked in a 2014 Reddit AMA, “That was really one of the great moments in the history of the show. We really felt like we were doing something worthwhile.”
So, in classic “Seinfeld” fashion, they paid tribute to Spielberg with a wildly inappropriate gag.
Jerry and Rachel made out throughout Schindler’s List
In the season 5 two-parter “The Raincoats” (the third best season of “Seinfeld” according to /Film), Jerry goes out on a movie date with his girlfriend Rachel (Melanie Smith). They choose to see “Schindler’s List,” and because they’re both a little frisky from not having been alone together in a while, they start to make out. Jerry’s nemesis, Newman (Wayne Kramer), sees their amorous display and later tries to expose Jerry’s cultural faux pas by asking him questions about the movie.
It’s an outrageous moment in a series filled with them, but what did Spielberg think? Interestingly, it appears he’s never gone on the record about it. Surely, he got a huge laugh out of it (and knew it was a joke written expressly for him), but given how hard it was to film at or near camps like Auschwitz, maybe it was hard for him to get a kick out of the joke.
Again, Spielberg is a pretty good sport, so it’s quite likely he roared with laughter at the scene. If anything, he should feel relieved his film received better treatment than Anthony Minghella’s masterpiece “The English Patient.”