Andy Robin at BIF-2

On the wall of Jerry Seinfeld's Central Park South office, where Andy Robin has been helping the comedian script his upcoming Dreamworks comedy "Bee Movie," hangs a 1989 NBC audience testing report for the pilot of the TV hit Seinfeld.

The results were awful. According to NBC statisticians, the audience didn't like the pilot's characters, style, setting, or story. Given the importance TV executives place on testing, it's amazing the show wasn't promptly canned. And bad testing wasn't the only hurdle the show would have to jump.

"The planets really aligned for Seinfeld," says Robin, who wrote for the fabled sitcom. "Many times during the first three years, it slipped through the cracks, overcoming tiny episode orders, unfavorable scheduling, weak ratings, and standoffs between creators who wouldn't budge from their vision and NBC executives who threatened to yank it if they didn't."

Sometimes, all that forestalled the show's demise was its status as a product of the Late Night and Specials Division at NBC, a tiny group within the network whose head, Rick Ludwin, continued to believe in the show. Seinfeld escaped the homogenizing machine of the larger and more hands-on Prime Time Division. It eventually grew an audience that came to appreciate its unusual voice.

"The networks definitely have strong preconceived notions and rules about what will work and what won't," Robin maintains. "It's difficult to get anything on the air but almost impossible to get something really different on the air. And great things are always different."

Robin, alone or with long-time collaborator Gregg Kavet, is credited with writing some of the most memorable Seinfeld episodes, including "The Junior Mint," "The Jimmy," "The Hot Tub," and "The Fatigues," which earned the duo the Writers Guild Award. After the show ended, they spent a handful of years working on other network TV shows, feeling mercenary. To recapture the fun they had experienced at Seinfeld, they wrote a screenplay, directed it themselves, and financed production independently.

The result, Live Free or Die, is an offbeat comedy about a would-be criminal struggling to escape the boredom of his northern New Hampshire town. The protagonist finds himself in trouble when he teams up with an old high school friend and attempts to show off his talent as a local outlaw.

The film is making the rounds at festivals and has won both awards and accolades. Hollywoodreviews.com had this to say: "Smart writing and great characterization from the cast build the story into a black comedy that's even better the second time you watch it."

Robin learned the value of a distinctive voice early in his career. He was an Editor of The Harvard Lampoon, where he wrote both solo and in groups. "The funniest stuff came from collaboration, but it was with friends the same age, with a similar sensibility and set of references." Collaboration also ruled at Saturday Night Live, where Robin spent the 1990-91 season. Writers talked over ideas with each other and extensively re-wrote material at a large table with everyone present.

Robin expected to find that same scale of collaboration at Seinfeld, but didn't. Writers wrote solo and turned their first drafts in to Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, who made changes alone. "At first, it puzzled me," describes Robin, "Then I came to accept that sharply drawn characters depend on a fine filter."

When Larry David left the show prior to the last two seasons, Jerry redesigned the writing process so that, on any given script, a handful of writers did the rewriting. Robin feels that there were trade-offs involved. "There can be great synergy in a writing room when everyone seizes on a great idea and embellishes it, but characters' voices can sometimes become less distinct and consistent. Larry and Jerry certainly had more in common than a group of four or five of us did."

"A lot of people think of writing as a solitary sport," says Robin, "but that's not necessarily so. Collaboration can be the best way to go, especially with comedy, where others' laughter inspires you to even funnier ideas. But you have to carefully fit the project to the group, in size and personality. You don't want things to get generic. You want to have a distinctive voice."