Jerry Lewis: The Total Film-Maker

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oh now you knew i was going to click on that

strongo hulkington's ghost dad, Thursday, 23 June 2011 17:14 (1 year ago) Permalink

all the "I cannot tell a lie" GIS results had some extraneous bullshit :(

frog in a bs place (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, 23 June 2011 17:18 (1 year ago) Permalink

jerry lewis chopped down the cherry tree with his big fucking dick

strongo hulkington's ghost dad, Thursday, 23 June 2011 17:19 (1 year ago) Permalink

i don't even know what i'm talking about now. i'm so tired.

strongo hulkington's ghost dad, Thursday, 23 June 2011 17:19 (1 year ago) Permalink

Oh pish posh. He exploited the potential of cinema much more than either Chaplin or Keaton (both of whom, yes, exploited it exceedingly well and have many masterpieces under their belts). Tati may have surpassed Lewis on that level but he lacks Lewis' grotesque personality which is essential to his life-affirming effect. I'm reminded of something Richard Barrios's disdain for Al Jolson (a key Lewis progenitor) in The Singing Fool: "Charisma, when applied this relentlessly, becomes oppressive." But yo, Richard, that's precisely why we go to the movies (or listen to, I don't know, Morrissey): to witness a gargantuan, out of control ego as a way to measure the contours of our own steady paths. If I wanted an even-keeled experience, I'd knock on my neighbor's door and ask to borrow some sugar.

P.S. Pizza is stupid and boring.

Kevin John Bozelka, Thursday, 23 June 2011 17:32 (1 year ago) Permalink

delete "something"

Kevin John Bozelka, Thursday, 23 June 2011 17:32 (1 year ago) Permalink

You don't strike me as the type that needs more sugar.

ephendophile (Eric H.), Thursday, 23 June 2011 17:32 (1 year ago) Permalink

I certainly don't need fuckin' pizza.

Kevin John Bozelka, Thursday, 23 June 2011 17:35 (1 year ago) Permalink

Bozelka, OTM itt.

shake it, shake it, sugary pee (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Thursday, 23 June 2011 17:40 (1 year ago) Permalink

Rosenbaum:

Why are the French so crazy about Jerry Lewis? Well, for one thing, some of them see him as being very much like America: infantile, hysterical, uncontrolled, giddy, uninhibited, tacky, energetic, inarticulate, obnoxious, sentimental, overbearing, socially and sexually maladjusted, and all over the place. (By contrast, at least on the surface, Allen is adolescent, neurotic, controlled, whiny, inhibited, preppy, lethargic, articulate, cynical, wormy, socially and sexually maladjusted, and confined.) It’s not so much a matter of necessarily loving all these qualities as it is envying or admiring or identifying with some of them, and being horrified by others — a sort of compressed model of the love-hate that many French people feel toward America as a fantasy object. I suspect that what many French people experience as the overcultivated constraints of their culture finds a welcome release in Lewis’s explosiveness and ungainliness, and their taste for freewheeling fantasy is partially met by Lewis’s remoteness from realism — the sheer wildness of his ideas as a writer-director, and the deconstructive habits such as the vulgar modernism that he shares with Mel Brooks, which periodically reminds us in various self-referential ways that we’re watching a film. (At one point in the mid-1960s, Godard described Lewis as “the only free man working in Hollywood.”)

shake it, shake it, sugary pee (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Thursday, 23 June 2011 17:45 (1 year ago) Permalink

This is probably racist.
dongmaster2 4 months ago

buzza, Thursday, 23 June 2011 17:50 (1 year ago) Permalink

I seriously can't watch more than a minute or two of Jerry Lewis before my flesh starts to crawl. He's like the uncanny valley of human behavior.

SNEEZED GOING DOWN STEPS, PAIN WHEN PUTTING SOCKS ON (Deric W. Haircare), Thursday, 23 June 2011 18:07 (1 year ago) Permalink

dongmaster2 otm

☂ (max), Thursday, 23 June 2011 19:04 (1 year ago) Permalink

dongmaster2 least favorite installment of the dongmaster cycle

brazenly alive (strongo hulkington's ghost dad), Thursday, 23 June 2011 19:05 (1 year ago) Permalink

1 month passes...

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

System, Friday, 29 July 2011 23:01 (1 year ago) Permalink

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

System, Saturday, 30 July 2011 23:01 (1 year ago) Permalink

Thanks, bud.

third-generation stripper (Eric H.), Saturday, 30 July 2011 23:17 (1 year ago) Permalink

judd apatow option doomed/saved this from the git-go

king of torts (strongo hulkington's ghost dad), Saturday, 30 July 2011 23:24 (1 year ago) Permalink

plus that photo choice

you call it trollin' i call it steamrollin' (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 30 July 2011 23:43 (1 year ago) Permalink

On fat ladies trying to lost weight: "Who cares?"

third-generation stripper (Eric H.), Monday, 1 August 2011 13:57 (1 year ago) Permalink

lose

third-generation stripper (Eric H.), Monday, 1 August 2011 13:57 (1 year ago) Permalink

I am going to miss Jerry's effortless pomposity about showbiz when he's gone; he may be the best ever at it. "I don't allow people in my family to use the term 'TV'" vs there's nothing good on. Real Sammy Maudlin stuff!

satan club sandwich (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 2 August 2011 19:48 (1 year ago) Permalink

hardcore oatmeal (Jordan), Tuesday, 2 August 2011 21:52 (1 year ago) Permalink

oh, that Berle story. I was waiting for "And then Gracie Allen picked up a fork..."

Is it possible that MDA got tired of the chairman boasting about his cocksmanship in print, at his unseemly age?

satan club sandwich (Dr Morbius), Monday, 8 August 2011 18:35 (1 year ago) Permalink

I feel like I watch his movies and I don't understand them

Richard Nixon's Field of Warmth (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 8 August 2011 18:42 (1 year ago) Permalink

They are personal and idiosyncratic for sure. I wish I didn't understand Apatow's.

satan club sandwich (Dr Morbius), Monday, 8 August 2011 18:43 (1 year ago) Permalink

6 months pass...

Jerry live in NYC (w/ a documentary too) on his 86th birthday:

http://www.92y.org/tickets/production.aspx?pid=81040

Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Friday, 24 February 2012 15:35 (1 year ago) Permalink

Man, I wish I could go to that. But I'm glad I got to see him live once, in Damn Yankees. He killed.

Let A Man Come In And Do The Cop Porn (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Friday, 24 February 2012 16:17 (1 year ago) Permalink

well yeah, esp when he went offscript or did 10 minutes of his Vegas act in the middle of his big song.

Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Friday, 24 February 2012 16:23 (1 year ago) Permalink

2 weeks pass...

moderator: Richard Belzer

Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 13 March 2012 21:40 (1 year ago) Permalink

so, here's what happened. Coulda called it The Old Man and the Shpritz.

http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2012/03/the-indelicate-delinquent-in-manic-winter-an-evening-with-jerry-lewis/

Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 17:58 (1 year ago) Permalink

Little wonder that, in a star-studded video of birthday wishes played near the tribute's end, '50s kids Werner Herzog (wishing Lewis a future "saturated with life") and Lou Reed materialized.

!!!

we can be gyros just for one day (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 18:15 (1 year ago) Permalink

Thanks for posting, Morbs. What a wonderful tribute. Wish I could've been there.

we can be gyros just for one day (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 18:17 (1 year ago) Permalink

some folx showed up on videotape AND in person, ie Jerry Stiller and Joe Piscopo.

De Niro, Bogdanovich, Letterman and the comedy team of Tom Hanks & Jonah Hill also sent regards.

Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 18:21 (1 year ago) Permalink

It's always great to see Jer getting the respect he deserves.

Also,

we can be gyros just for one day (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 18:31 (1 year ago) Permalink

I'm really sorry we couldn't run a photo of him doing that from this event

Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 18:34 (1 year ago) Permalink

lou reed's last record w/ Metallica is (unintentionally) funnier than anything jerry lewis has ever (intentionally) done for a laugh.

kurwa mać (Polish for "long life") (Eisbaer), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 19:02 (1 year ago) Permalink

it was nice to hear the Ladies Man butterfly gag get a big laugh

Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 19:19 (1 year ago) Permalink

"Thanks for the mail now baby let's wail."

Eric H., Wednesday, 21 March 2012 19:23 (1 year ago) Permalink

nice piece Morbz, sounds like a fun night

the sir edmund hillary of sitting through pauly shore films (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 19:27 (1 year ago) Permalink

I didn't include Jerry's claim that he was the first to use arclights on a Hollywood set. "I saw them at UFA!"

Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 21 March 2012 19:30 (1 year ago) Permalink

Hoberman catalogs some of the evening's weirder moments (so right about the tanned wiseguys), and btw calls JL "Hollywood's most cerebral funny man since Buster Keaton":

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/94492/hey-jer-ree/

Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 22 March 2012 14:48 (1 year ago) Permalink

After calling Jerry’s trademark “Hey lay-DEE!” the Beethoven’s Fifth of Comedy, Belzer...

Belzer OTM.

we can be gyros just for one day (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Thursday, 22 March 2012 15:22 (1 year ago) Permalink

can't believe I never made the connection between that and Beasties "Hey Ladies" before

the sir edmund hillary of sitting through pauly shore films (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 22 March 2012 15:36 (1 year ago) Permalink

I can believe it.

Also, Richard Brody:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2012/03/jerry-lewis-and-love.html

Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 22 March 2012 15:39 (1 year ago) Permalink

amazing story morbius

I do have a question though -- in that 'hardly working' clip upthread, why is the music a faux-oriental koto cover version of 'memories' from cats

Milton Parker, Thursday, 22 March 2012 15:39 (1 year ago) Permalink

why

Milton Parker, Thursday, 22 March 2012 15:40 (1 year ago) Permalink

What fascinates me about Cracking Up—I should say one of the many things that fascinate me about Cracking Up—is the fact that, while “playing” the schmuck Warren Nefron, Lewis didn’t bother to foreswear his impeccably-tailored suits or his expensive watch or the gold chain on his other wrist.* It is a known fact that Jerry never wears the same socks more than once, and I believe that, through the course of Cracking Up, he wears at least a dozen Member’s Only jackets in different colors, usually jauntily hiked up to the elbow. You can almost imagine him flinging them about, like Gatsby’s shirts.

Jerry’s most noteworthy sartorial choice on Saturday were his vinyl-shiny shoes that, as he was seated and his pants began to cinch up, revealed themselves to be ankle-length Beatle boots. (He wears a low-gloss version of same in The Patsy.) It was the sort of thing you might expect Gary Glitter, if not Gary Lewis, to wear...

http://blog.sundancenow.com/weekly-columns/bombast-88

dell (del), Sunday, 14 April 2013 05:09 (1 month ago) Permalink

The Family Jewels, The Patsy, and The Big Mouth (zero votes altogether) are each on their own better than anything by Judd Apatow.

Josefa, Sunday, 14 April 2013 06:52 (1 month ago) Permalink

I read that Pinkerton piece... but I knew pretty much all of that. "That's Jerry," we fans say.

Pope Rusty I (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 14 April 2013 07:27 (1 month ago) Permalink

The whole "Buddy Love/Jerry Langford is the REAL Jerry" thing is well-worn territory; for Pinkerton to treat it as some kind of new insight is amateurish at best. And I swear I'd read the thing about Jerry's suits and jewelry somewhere else before, possibly in Rosenbaum's Hardly Working review.

The Family Jewels, The Patsy, and The Big Mouth (zero votes altogether) are each on their own better than anything by Judd Apatow.

While an exception might be made for The 40-Year-Old Virgin, this is OTM.

Pope Frank is the messenger of your doom (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Sunday, 14 April 2013 14:18 (1 month ago) Permalink

1 month passes...

http://youtu.be/WCvTrrb4_R4

Tarfumes The Escape Goat, Wednesday, 15 May 2013 23:29 (1 week ago) Permalink

Wow, it's bizarre to see color videotape footage from the 1950s.

Josefa, Thursday, 16 May 2013 00:22 (6 days ago) Permalink

I find Schmaltzy Jerry pretty indigestible, but I should watch that sometime. Molly Picon AND Alan "Fred Flintstone" Reed...

According to David Crosthwait of DC Video, the company that restored this video tape, this specific episode of "Startime" was taped at the then-NBC studio in Brooklyn, NY and hand-edited. Color video tape was in its infancy; only about a year previous to this [1959] the first color videotapes were recorded at NBC. The copy was a dub found at NBC. The tapes used proprietary electronics unique to NBC, which is one reason why restoration took time. The tape was missing part of its audio. The Lewis family donated a kinescope film copy of the show, along with a 1/4" audio tape of much of the show's soundtrack to finish the restoration.

ballin' from Maine to Mexico (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 16 May 2013 00:56 (6 days ago) Permalink

Max Rose at Cannes this week

ballin' from Maine to Mexico (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 19 May 2013 23:11 (3 days ago) Permalink

Looking forward to seeing that. I went to high school with the writer/director.

Tarfumes The Escape Goat, Monday, 20 May 2013 00:24 (2 days ago) Permalink

That was a quick edit.... they shot it in Jan/Feb.

ballin' from Maine to Mexico (Dr Morbius), Monday, 20 May 2013 06:19 (2 days ago) Permalink

some of that supporting cast... Claire Bloom, Dean Stockwell, Fred Willard, Joe Frank (that one)!

ballin' from Maine to Mexico (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 21 May 2013 15:25 (Yesterday) Permalink

from the extracts of that 6-hour french doc i caught i learned that jerry's saved pretty much everything - all his original camera negs, workprints, outtakes, etc

Salt Mama Celeste (donna rouge), Tuesday, 21 May 2013 17:12 (Yesterday) Permalink

That's why the Jazz Singer, upthread, looks so good. He has the (only?) original videotape, and was meticulous about archiving his stuff from the very beginning. All other copies of that were long-ago-destroyed kinescopes.

Tarfumes The Escape Goat, Tuesday, 21 May 2013 17:38 (Yesterday) Permalink

I'm sure he supplied the M&L Copacabana kine that I saw in Astoria in the late '80s, which was on-another-planet funny.

ballin' from Maine to Mexico (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 21 May 2013 17:40 (Yesterday) Permalink


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