Jerry Lewis: The Total Film-Maker

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLQybyaWt6s

one of my favorite scenes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQ0nhxCwxVU

Hoberman on the new Nutty Blu-ray set, which includes The Errand Boy, Cinderfella and "a facsimile of Instruction Book for Being a Person, the slim volume Mr. Lewis wrote, had bound and distributed to the movie’s cast and crew."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/15/movies/homevideo/jerry-lewis-in-8216the-nutty-professor8217.html

Think I'll skip that one; I already have the "Legendary Jerry Collection" box. Now, if it had been packaged with a copy of The Total Filmmaker...

First Jerry thinkpiece I've seen where he's compared to Matthew Barney.

As the titles of his amateur films from the early 50s – Come Back Little Shiksa, A Spot in the Shade, Watch on the Lime, Fairfax Avenue (a play on Billy Wilder’s Sunset Blvd.) – suggest, Lewis was poking fun at ‘respectable’ classics, frequently giving a specifically Jewish twist to this mainstream fare. Judging from the handful of clips that have emerged from these productions, they wore their marginal status as a badge of honour, their lack of production values functioning as an implicit critique of Hollywood gloss (anticipating the approach of later independent directors such as Jim McBride and John Cassavetes). Lewis even mocked the self-importance and solipsism of Hollywood’s rituals, staging his own red-carpet premieres for these shorts at his own house, and hosting award ceremonies in which he and his collaborators took home every statuette.

Lewis is so widely regarded as part of the Hollywood elite that it is worth noting how strongly opposed to it his formal, aesthetic and ideological practices are, his craving for independence as a filmmaker being the external expression of a deeper radicalism. His persona as a performer involved a rejection of restraint, dignity and good taste, and it was clearly this which endeared him to both children and revolutionaries while attracting the opprobrium of those who believed Stanley Kramer and Fred Zinnemann to be great directors, and Laurence Olivier a great actor.

http://www.bfi.org.uk/…/comment/b…/jerry-lewis-where-respect

urrrgh

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/comment/bradlands/jerry-lewis-where-respect

Anecdote from a friend on FB who went with his husband to this Joan Collins thing:

Joan Collins was actually very enjoyable. It was a One-Woman Show and she spent an hour and fifteen minutes showing slides and talking about her life, then spent another 20 minutes fielding questions from the audience. I wanted to ask her about the greatest movie she's ever done, "Empire of the Ants", but chickened out. Her stories were great though, especially her catty ones about the other actresses she worked with. And I loved when an audience member asked her if she was still friends with Linda Evans, and she answered, "I've never been friends with Linda Evans". Me-Ouch!
Sitting right across the isle from us was none other than Jerry Lewis, who made it very obvious that he didn't want anyone bothering him at all. (Skip sneaked a picture of both Joan and Jerry, although he was warned there were no pictures allowed of anyone. Jerry was looking a little ragged around the edges, but Joan looked amazing. It's hard to believe she's 81 years old!

Skip posted a blurry photo later -- nothing revelatory, Jerry looked like Jerry -- with this note:

And here's Jerry, trying to escape the few fans that wanted to shake his hand. ALL were assholes, actually, during the Jerry encounter at the end.

from the NYT Book Review's piece on Norman Lear's autobio:

"His memoir covers 92 extraordinary years of life in which, among other things, Lear flew 52 missions as a radio operator and gunner in World War II, wrote television scripts for the country singer Tennessee Ernie Ford and witnessed a naked Jerry Lewis blow out a birthday candle attached to his penis."

I was going to say the obvious question was "How many candles?"

NYT's Jennifer Schuessler:

The Nutty Professor has moved a few steps closer to academic respectability with the announcement that the Library of Congress has acquired the personal archives of Jerry Lewis.

The archive, acquired by a combination of donation and purchase, includes more than 10,000 moving-image materials and paper documents covering Mr. Lewis’s seven-decade career, from an early screen test before his movie debut to prints of hits like “The Errand Boy” and “The Bellboy” to various outtakes and bloopers.

The archive also contains the amateur movies Mr. Lewis directed at home, including “Fairfax Avenue” (a spoof of “Sunset Boulevard”) and “The Re-Enforcer” (starring Dean Martin).

Additionally, it contains copies from Mr. Lewis’s many television appearances on shows like “The Tonight Show” and the more obscure “Broadway Open House,” as well as footage of his nightclub act with Mr. Martin and his work with the Muscular Dystrophy Association Telethon.

To mark the acquisition Mr. Lewis, 89, will give a performance on Oct. 9 at the State Theater in Culpeper, Va., not far from the library’s Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation, where his archive will be stored.

“For more than seven decades I’ve been dedicated to making people laugh,” Mr. Lewis said in a statement. “If I get more than three people in a room, I do a number. Knowing that the Library of Congress was interested in acquiring my life’s work was one of the biggest thrills of my life.”

The library also holds collections relating to a number of other comedians, including Bob Hope, Groucho Marx, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/09/14/jerry-lewis-archive-goes-to-library-of-congress/

My comedian friend went to this and said Scorsese was quoting The Total Film-Maker from memory.

http://www.showbiz411.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/scorsese-and-lewis-c2015-Showbiz411.jpg

“Comedy in visual terms is always preferable to verbal,” he offered. “The visual gets to the brain faster. The eyes are faster than the ears.”

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/oct/07/jerry-lewis-martin-scorsese-new-york-film-festival

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/martin-scorsese-and-jerry-lewis-talk-comedy-filmmaking-and-more-at-museum-of-the-moving-image-20151007

http://www.showbiz411.com/2015/10/07/exclusive-jerry-lewis-listens-to-dean-martins-music-all-the-time-all-of-it-i-always-listen-to-my-partners-stuff

Oh man, thanks for posting those! Must've been amazing to be in that room.

feet

https://twitter.com/NickPinkerton/status/651791745215283200

Brody:

Scorsese called “The Bellboy,” Lewis’s first feature as a director, “a virtual dictionary of visual thought.” Speaking of one of Lewis’s most spectacular achievements, “The Ladies Man,” Scorsese (who was eighteen when it came out) said that the freely associative logic of the dance scene involving the “woman in black” suggested a new kind of movie grammar (what does Jerry think she’s going to do with that rope?), and that the movie over all presented them with new possibilities: “There’s a story, but is there a plot? It freed us up.”...

Lewis parodied Spencer Tracy’s scene of captivity in “Captains Courageous,” imitating him with a chain around his neck and crying out—with a rush of Yiddish, saying of the Catholic Tracy, “Really, he speaks better Jewish than I do.” But Lewis brought the discussion back to his craft, explaining that what he learned from Tracy was, “He had a wonderful time. I had to find the device so that when I made a film, I could have a wonderful time.”

That device turned out to be technical mastery. Lewis said, “In my first three days at Paramount, nobody could find me”—because he was wandering the studio, talking with and learning from technicians in every department, from camera and sound to lighting and editing (but, he said, not the contracts department—“not lawyers”).

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/jerry-lewis-the-auteur

he did a thing at the Friars Club too

While a frantic Leroy Anderson orchestral composition played in the background, Mr. Lewis recreated a famous bit in which he appears to pound away at an invisible typewriter.

And he sang an a cappella rendition of “Somebody,” from his 1960 comedy “Cinderfella,” with lyrics that poignantly observe, “In a cabin or a castle, even though you rise or fall/ Without somebody, you’re nobody at all.”

A further test of Mr. Lewis’s endurance awaited when the show was over. For a half-hour, he remained seated onstage in his chair while he received the good wishes of his fans, gently mocking their inquiries (“What a dumb question”) and discouraging them from taking selfies with him.

“It’s going to turn into an Italian wedding if you do that,” he explained more than once. “It’ll never end.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/07/arts/jerry-lewis-holds-sway-at-the-friars-club.html

https://instagram.com/p/95JbisqbVF/

NYC MoMA 90TH BIRTHDAY RETRO, mostly w/ 35mm prints and outtakes plus... basically similar to the 1988 Astoria retro that opened the Moving Image Museum:

http://www.moma.org/calendar/film/1621?locale=en

Jerry recorded an intro of a minute-plus for the retro; gracious and uneventful (he thinks it's "terriFICK").

There were color home movies shot by a M&L associate of Dean and Jerry hobnobbing around Broadway in their first big "presentation house" bill at the Capitol Theater ('47?), ie they shared the marquee with the Tex Beneke orchestra and the hit movie Naked City in a 4600-seat house, doing 4 shows a day. Assorted showbiz luminaries ambled by or mugged for the camera, including a 26-year-old Jack Roy (Rodney Dangerfield)! Young Dean was crazy handsome, the movies really don't do him justice.

They also screened about 45 minutes of Dean & Jerry guest shots on Milton Berle's show -- VERY funny, cuz Berle was best at down n' dirty slapstick and rapid-fire insults, and Lewis was practically tossing him around the stage at a few points.

Then there was a preview cut of The Ladies Man (which I'd seen in Astoria in 1988); my God, I'd forgotten about that whole "Miss Cartilage" dominatrixish musical number, WTF.

http://www.festival-cannes.fr/assets/Image/2012/cannes_classics/Dean%20Martin_Jerry%20Lewis.JPG

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NLDbHYFga28/U-ps8v-GfqI/AAAAAAAAGz0/91Jmifc3xNY/s1600/misscartilage.jpg

to be precise, Capitol engagement was spring '48

my God, I'd forgotten about that whole "Miss Cartilage" dominatrixish musical number, WTF.

Yeah, always thought that bit was completely fucking bizarre. Not unlike the little clown puppet in The Errand Boy, but at least the clown was trying to (clumsily) teach Jer something about himself.

i'd say Sylvia Lewis (the dancer who was Miss Cartilage) was too

lengthy excerpts of October's dialogue with Scorsese; great stuff

MS: The thing about The Ladies Man and The Bellboy and The Family Jewels and all these films is, we didn’t learn in the sense that we went to the theater to learn. What I was fascinated by was that the structure of the story was so loose that you can open a door and can get into an orchestra with Les Baxter. You can get the house cut in half. There’s Helen Traubel, she’s doing her routine. I mean, there’s a story, but is there a plot? I don’t know! And so, with these pictures, it opened out heads to say, you know, you don’t have to be stuck to a three-act structure in terms of narrative. You can make a film about a guy trying to get into a building. But this really freed us in terms of thinking about what cinema is. So in terms of the timing within the frame, he does that masterfully, of course. But then in terms of the editing, how does one deal with that, if you come in for a tighter shot? When, as you set the time in The Colgate Comedy Hour, you put your foot in the turkey dinner? You remember? I saw that live.

JL: “Take your filthy hands off that bird!”

MS: The timing was impeccable. And you told me there was a slave camera, another camera that picked it up immediately. Have you had some very interesting relationships to these kinds of situations in the editing room? In terms of pacing.

JL: Well, you know how many times you plan something for a wide shot with a lot of animation and then all of a sudden you come to it and it’s not what you really want to do. And you start trimming and taking a piece from here and a piece from there… And I’ll play that back when I sit in the editing room, and I’ll do what I used to call “death march” footage—you I going to get killed unless you fix this!—and you talk to yourself once in awhile.

MS: It’s true, because the pacing is like music. And you do music. You know, as a recording artist, you conduct an orchestra. Comedy is music that way. Cinema is music. That timing carries through. It’s impeccable. I’d seen some of the Chaplin films earlier, but they are not the way your stuff was presented at that time in the late ‘50s/early ‘60s. To be able to respond to a visual image that had such fluidity to it in terms of pacing and comic timing. We’d never really seen anything like it. And the scripted scenes and improvised scenes… The improvisation that you would do physically would fit within the scripted scene. That’s another issue, I think: you had more control of it because you were doing it.

JL: I had holes to fall in all over the set. No, really. You never know when I’m going to use one! [Laughter] I gave of myself completely. I’ve got so many more scars on my body, you’d think I’d played NFL football! I came out of a three-story window into cardboard boxes, which were supposed to save me, and I landed on the corner of them. I’ll show that to you later. [Laughter] No, I won’t.

http://www.filmcomment.com/blog/jerry-lewis-and-martin-scorsese/

tonight's post-screening fare of Hollywood or Bust promises footage of multiple Dean & Jerry reunions -- there's more than just the mid-'70s telethon, beats me.

i def think Living It Up is the most underrated of the Dean & Jerry films i've seen

http://www.bkmag.com/2016/03/02/the-best-old-movies-on-a-big-screen-this-week-nyc-repertory-cinema-picks-march-2-8/4/

Never saw that one. Haven't seen a ton of D&J, for that matter...just Hollywood or Bust, Artists and Models (my favorite of these three), and You're Never Too Young. The latter was my introduction to Prime Jerry/Jerry The Genius, and it completely turned me around -- prior to seeing that, I was the typical anti-Jerry snob, only thinking of him as the telethon guy. As soon as he started to move, it was, "Ah, so THAT'S where Pee-Wee Herman got about 70% of his schtick!" (among other realizations)

Violet Lucca on work, wealth and self-made men in JL's films....

Being the utterly wonderful noveau riche narcissist he is, Lewis would always portray these man-children while wearing a large gold pinky ring, giant wedding ring, and, sometimes, a gold watch, giving more than a touch of cognitive dissonance to his performances. (As I have posited elsewhere, the wedding ring might’ve diffused any guilt he experienced about his rampant infidelities at the time.)...

Despite their anarchic goofiness, this cycle of films embody some readily identifiable long-standing myths about class and class mobility in America. In The Errand Boy (61) and The Patsy (64, which effectively blends The Errand Boy with The Bellboy), delivery boys achieve fame through their clumsiness, and rise to become comedians of Lewis’s stature—even though, in fact, pratfalls and rubber faces require greater-than-average muscular control. (Myth: exceptional talent alone will get you ahead; it’s only a matter of time before you’re noticed.) In It’s Only Money (62), Lewis’s idiot private eye turns out to be the long-lost nephew of a wealthy heiress; in The Family Jewels (65), Lewis’s lovable idiot chauffeur gets to be Donna Butterworth’s daddy and inherits the millions. (Myth: you only need that one dead relative you didn’t know existed to cash in. This one is pervasive judging from the number of inheritance scams and unclaimed money services.)

http://www.filmcomment.com/blog/jerry-lewis-wealth/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZbpYq2TA0U

rewatch of his (theatrical) directorial swan song tonight

pitless watermelon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Klg0R9wQSaM

They had what I assume to be a 1st ed. hardcover copy of the book this thread took its name from in the collectibles case at my local Half-Price for $100.

I saw that book for cheap once and inexplicably didn't buy it. A new printing is rumored.

Jerry has a "pointless cameo" as Nic Cage's dad in a new thriller.

http://variety.com/2016/film/festivals/the-trust-review-nicolas-cage-elijah-wood-sxsw-1201729052/

90!

http://m.lasvegassun.com/blogs/kats-report/2016/mar/15/jerry-lewis-at-90-its-a-monster-number/

Happy birthday, Jerry!

not sure i've posted the 'turkey dinner' sketch, recently discussed by JL with Scorsese.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erLJdTPa2i4

Max Rose to be distributed this summer, finally

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/jerry-lewis-max-rose-lands-876217

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10208938637327723&set=a.1603159283429.2080924.1369518799&type=3

OK, so a documentary about The Day the Clown Cried has just come on my TV screen...

... ugh, Terry Wogan

Was just watching that too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbZIyXNRxos

We've got ten years to wait.

thx guys for staying on form

party time

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/friars-club-hosts-90th-birthday-tribute-jerry-lewis-38268340

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1UHm8DcRAo

Max Rose is nothing special, tho Old Jerry has a nice gravitas. (The most kinetic performance in the film is a one-scene climactic spin by Dean Stockwell.)

JL entered the packed MoMA theater (assisted by his people) for it, got a standing ovation, and loudly asked "When do we eat?" The he did his usual passive / aggressive japery in the postscreening interview and Q&A. Someone asked him what growing up in Newark was like in the '30s. "Do you want to know about my bris? Jesus Christ. NEXT!"

and here it is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm9v8yFrQic

the only thing that survives of Jerry's animated TV show from '70 (to which he did not actually contribute; Squiggy from LaVerne and Shirley played Jerry). looks like about 99% racial stereotype stuff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0g6-vEDTLw

i vaaaaguely remember the existence of that

RIP Bill Richmond, co-writer on 7 Lewis films

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/bill-richmond-dead-jerry-lewis-904166

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

Mel (Brooks) and I only worked together on the script for THE LADIES' MAN for about two weeks. Mel and I would pitch ideas back and forth to each other. Once we had a good idea Mel would say, "Let's run it by Jerry and see if he likes it." So we'd call Jerry, and Jerry would say, "I can't talk right now, but let me get back to you." Now if anybody had a bigger ego than Jerry Lewis, it was Mel Brooks. Jerry did this to Mel about four times, so finally Mel literally just said, "Fuck this, I quit." So that left me to write the movie.

http://blog.tvstoreonline.com/2015/05/part-one-three-time-emmy-winner-and.html

Oh man, had totally forgotten about the animated show! I could still recall parts of that great bubblegummy theme song, but not a thing about the cartoon itself.

A pretty good Egyptian tomb sketch from JL's '67-69 NBC show, with a very game and funny Janet Leigh, with Jer as the nutty professor (who he recycled frequently in this series). There's a DVD if you'd like to see it w/out soup and subtitles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ioy920ZAnj8

DECONSTRUCTING JERRY: LEWIS AS DIRECTOR
A special dossier to accompany the Jerry Lewis program of the Melbourne International Film Festival 2016.

The comedian went on to discuss the duality in his own mind between his screen personality and the man who plays him, he spoke of the person on the screen as “him”. “Sometimes I write a memo in the morning”, he explained, “and then later, on the set when it’s carried out, I rebel against it – I’ve forgotten that it was me that asked for it.”

The only trouble with my doing my own screen writing is that I get so involved with the character I play that the perspective gets distorted and I begin to send out messages which have nothing to do with what I started out to create.

http://sensesofcinema.com/2016/jerry-lewis/