Jerry Lewis: The Total Film-Maker

I prefer him to Chaplin, Keaton, Tati, who else ya got?

we part company here

yeah i was gonna say. a lol is a lol but.

preferring Lewis to Keaton is like preferring Blackmore's Night to Deep Purple

preferring lewis to chaplin is like preferring getting punched in the nuts to eating a pizza

hahahaha

site for jerry lewis fans: http://www.ballbustingtube.com/

don't click that btw.

oh now you knew i was going to click on that

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

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

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

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.

delete "something"

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

I certainly don't need fuckin' pizza.

Bozelka, OTM itt.

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.”)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRCsSrnz90s

This is probably racist.
dongmaster2 4 months ago

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.

dongmaster2 otm

dongmaster2 least favorite installment of the dongmaster cycle

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

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

Thanks, bud.

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

plus that photo choice

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/30/idUS77813458320110730

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

lose

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!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=141o_jwG7cA

http://www.gq.com/entertainment/humor/201108/jerry-lewis-interview-gq-august-2011?currentPage=all

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

moderator: Richard Belzer

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/

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.

!!!

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

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.

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

Also,
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_8k7m4e2TYeU/ScMKqlC1SCI/AAAAAAAACmY/ETY0vSaTqwg/s400/glass.bmp

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

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

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

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

nice piece Morbz, sounds like a fun night

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

a local theater is screening a double feature of A Serious Man and Cracking Up later this summer.

it made me insanely happy recently to score a vinyl copy of the Slapstick Of Another Kind soundtrack. i just like staring at the cover. i had the movie on VHS for years.

https://i.discogs.com/zWdOHpH_YsccKwRMLlA4T8ADQI_461kecHQK6SiMPRw/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTY5MDYw/NjAtMTQ4NTgwNDA2/Ni0yMDA4LmpwZWc.jpeg

the entire second side is a suite by Michel Legrand based on the music for the movie written by Morton Stevens! which is odd.

"think this might be my favourite Jerry Lewis scene (the opening from Cracking Up/Smorgasbord), it's like he'd refined his schtick down to its purest form, just him trying and failing to walk across a room and sit in a chair. I can't think of anything else that captures so perfectly the feeling of being at odds with the world, that everything in the world that is not you is one entity that is conspiring against you."

I can't help but think that the direction is working against him. That clip would have been even funnier if it had been just a single static shot of the room, with Lewis slowly negotiating his way around it, as if he was playing XCOM 2 on one of the few missions that doesn't have a timer, or alternatively XCOM: Enemy Within. Presumably he would be a psionic soldier because they're more likely to complete the mission single-handedly. I mean he would be crawling around the edge of the map using overwatch and being ultra-cautious.

Why a psionic solider? Because they can move and shoot, but they also have a much larger arsenal of special powers, whereas the assault and grenadier classes can only move and shoot, and in the latter case shoot badly. In contrast the psionic soldier has access to mind control, which is a game-changer. I'm sorry if I keep talking about XCOM. I won't do that any more.

There's a famous out-take of Lewis and Dean Martin doing a promo radio spot for The Caddy - "it'll make ya shit!" - which is probably naff, but the promo is funny because it has Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin swearing, which is funny. Almost as funny as mind-controlling a Muton Elite and having it wipe out its teammates! Or using psi-panic on a heavy floater.

I've only ever read bad things about Milton Berle (the enormous penis is an exception because that's a neutral fact, not a value judgement) whereas I still don't have an opinion on Lewis. I probably can't because the cultural barriers are too huge and he will never come around again. It's like the original Rebelstar games, too weird and old to judge by modern standards.

I can't help but think that the direction is working against him.

Jerry Lewis directed that film!

You learn something every day. He was his own worst enemy! Imagine if Jerry Lewis had never met Jerry Lewis. How different his life would have been.

I'm amazed to find out the film was released in 1983, which makes it a contemporary of Trading Places. Based on that clip I assumed it was from 1965 and that Lewis was just unusually old-looking. I learn that the cinematographer was Gerald Finnerman, who started in cinema before graduating up to episodes of Kojak.

I mentioned Milton Berle because he was asked to compere an episode of Saturday Night Live in 1979, and it was a disaster because there was a huge generational gap between Berle's type of comedy and the new wave:
https://www.cracked.com/article_40579_milton-berle-was-an-snl-nightmare.html

I assume from the point of view of Lewis and Berle etc they had a tonne of cash and were top dogs, and objectively probably had bigger houses and better cars than Gilda Radnor (a woman!) and Bill Murray, but even though I was only a toddler at the time I have the impression they must have seemed like relics from the distant past. Apparently there's a film coming out about the early days of SNL called SNL 1975:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNL_1975

I hope it has the credit "Cory Michael Smith IS Chevy Chase!". The odd thing is that in the UK the old-school came back into fashion in the 1990s and early 2000s, or at least I remember that Bob Monkhouse and Bruce Forsyth came back into vogue. Perhaps because they were primarily presenters and so they came across as blank slates - they embodied a certain kind of old-fashioned professional slickness rather than making jokes about Mexican people and "the wife".

I can't wait for them to make a film of the first series that's SERIES not SEASON the first SERIES SERIES SERIES of Whose Line is it Anyway. The story arc would have John Sessions gradually realise that no-one likes him and that he isn't funny, while Tony Slattery stands in the wings glaring it him like Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

some of the older comedians jibed better with the snl generation - there was a 1979 special called Bob & Ray, Jane, Laraine & Gilda with Bob and Ray doing skits with the original female snl cast members. I love both Bob and Ray and Jerry Lewis, but their comedy styles feel about as distant from one another as you can get

Jerry Lewis hosted SNL in the Ebersole era. Apparently he really hit it off with Murphy & Piscopo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej-7TYJK_uY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLLXK4g5A6c

Mind blown that Cracking Up is from 1983.

Just now remembered seeing this sketch when it was broadcast:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z37uV6nIgmQ

If there's one thing I've learned from this thread. It's that classic Saturday Night Live sketches. Were so slow! And laboured. I grew up with alternative comedy. Which was generally fast-paced and aggressive. But. I mean. SNL. Was. Sort of a US ancestor. Of. That. And. It just. Seems. So. Slow.

But perhaps they... I'll stop that. Perhaps they had to deliver. Each line. Carefully so that the audience could hear everything. I don't know. Perhaps they should have done a "best of SNL" at the end of each SERIES hahaha SERIES where the cast redid the sketches behind closed doors, at normal pace. And then perhaps they could have sold those compilations abroad so that foreign TV e.g. the UK could broadcast them. Every clip I've seen of SNL has been ruined by the slow pacing. There's some genuine talent there. But the pacing. Is just. So annoying. Imagine if it wasn't live! Imagine if Jerry Lewis wasn't Jerry Lewis.

It's like walking behind somebody who's really slow. God gave me these legs for a reason. These beautiful legs. Not to walk slowly. To be fast!

"Mind blown that Cracking Up is from 1983" - even the best comedy films from the early 1980s look cheap and naff nowadays, because comedy films are shot on TV budgets with TV directors. I picked Trading Places because it's a rare early-80s comedy that has a cinematic look. From what I've seen of Cracking Up it looks as if they had at least a passable budget, but the lighting, the point-the-camera-at-Jerry-Lewis-all-the-time camerawork, even the title animation look genetically 1960s. I wonder if it's a secret work of postmodern genius. Was Jerry Lewis aware of postmodernism?

Try watching a few old favorite movies from the 80s and 90s you haven’t seen in awhile, with fresh eyes. It was all so. much. slower. back then

Not just comedy. Horror, too.

https://newrepublic.com/article/185434/watched-footage-jerry-lewis-unreleased-1972-holocaust-film

“The Day the Clown Cried” has a reputation for being the worst movie ever shot. When I saw it, I was surprised at what I found.

oh wow. five hours. that that's what there is does support lewis's claim that shearer's story is hokum, that there wasn't any final or even really rough cut to see.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/aug/30/ashamed-embarrassed-jerry-lewis-infamous-holocaust-clown-film-that-never-was

this (mentioned in the TNR piece) sounds so much worse than The Clown Cried could ever be

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_in_the_Striped_Pyjamas_(film)

RIght

that that's what there is does support lewis's claim that shearer's story is hokum, that there wasn't any final or even really rough cut to see.

I've seen some commentary from someone other than Shearer that they saw what he saw, which was an assembly cut of the feature, which was still sans music and sound effects (and definitely not in a state for release). It's believed that this print either: (A) doesn't exist anymore, or (B) is still under lock and key somewhere and not (as previously speculated) part of what was handed over to the LoC.

It's Jerry's centennial today.

For NYers, the Anthology Film Archives is showing a bunch of his films March 19 - March 31, including his seldom seen final directorial work, Smorgasbord, aka Cracking Up (1983).