Jerry Lewis: The Total Film-Maker

Has anyone other than Von Sternberg with Dietrich had such a magnificent and unified winning streak as Lewis did from The Bellboy through Three on a Couch?

― Anne of the Thousand Gays (Eric H.), Sunday, August 20, 2017 3:38 PM

Sturges from The Great McGinty to Hail the Conquering Hero.

I just checked The Errand Boy out from Netflix.

The Errand Boy has some of his most self-glorifying schmaltz, esp at the end.

JCLC, nothing exceeds like excess!

(ie start with The Bellboy or The Ladies Man)

my favorite M&L sketch

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

an array of fans....

http://deadline.com/2017/08/hollywood-reaction-jerry-lewis-nutty-professor-patton-oswald-1202152593/

Errand Boy is as good a starting point as any (I actually prefer it -- slightly -- over The Bellboy). The schmaltz (and there isn't that much) doesn't/can't detract from some of the most hilarious moments ever committed to film.

Dean & Jerry's best was mostly in clubs and TV; this is an exception

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PicUbw-zVI

the title title

https://www.scribd.com/document/197257057/The-Total-Film-Maker-1971-out-of-print-for-educational-purposes-only

obit roundup, from JL biographer Shawn Levy to Marc Maron to The Forward

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/4845-the-daily-jerry-lewis-1926-2017

note thru from my sister's boyf that he is watching cinderfella w/my niece (9), and she is chuckling away

thus is the tradition passed down

Perrin on his Lewis "re-education" and watching him rehearse SNL.

https://dennisperrinblog.wordpress.com/2017/08/21/when-clowns-cry/

STOP WITH THE BRUSHING! https://t.co/CKH59ao8zX

— James Urbaniak (@JamesUrbaniak) August 20, 2017

hahah <3
HOLD IT

The lunch scene in The Errand Boy was somethin'.

watch the Miami one!

podcast

http://www.thecinephiliacs.net/2017/08/the-total-film-maker-jerry-lewis-1926.html

Interesting quote circa The Bellboy, after CC's political exile obviously:

"To compare me to Chaplin is ludicrous in a sense. Chaplin was a real master. I'd have to work fifty years to begin to touch what he did. But we work differently. I don't impose my thinking as a person on an audience. I don't think comedy has room for a political approach."

That next-to-last sentence is self-deception, of course.

Orson Welles:

“When he goes too far, he’s heaven; it’s just when he doesn’t go too far that he’s unendurable.”

Spot on, there.

the Genius inseparable from the Asshole

http://www.tiff.net/the-review/au-revoir-mr-lewis/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkVw32vafPE

i love that! this scene is in the theremin documentary

Marty's remembrance

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/sep/01/jerry-lewis-martin-scorsese-king-comedy-nutty-professor

TCM is showing some Jerry today: Nutty Professor @ 5pm pst, King of Comedy @7pst, The Stooge @9pm & Bell Boy @ 11pm

I hope the Carpenters saw the last 30 seconds of this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7j-oWaNUkc

Lazy impersonations of Lewis focus on the mania and miss those pauses the perfectionist, preternaturally gifted physical comedian would lace into his bits. A random limb swiftly raised then replaced just as quickly, the intention realized as useless almost the instant it’s conceived; the trailing-off sentence fragments and swallowed coughs, a need to articulate the dilemma strangled by the pointlessness (or impossibility?) of the effort; the childlike defensive stance, crouched so his butt sticks out and face juts forward, and cautious tread—more a single legged-pivot with, somehow, forward momentum—around the problem; the hand briefly cradling the brow beginning to seethe. It’s a magnificent collection of cancelled gestures and never-stated oaths, as if even Lewis’s frustration was being frustrated. And then—and only then, snarky shouters of nasal freundlavens should note—the explosion.

But it’s where these outbursts are embedded, particularly in Lewis’s self-directed films, that sets them above. Working hard on the Martin and Lewis pictures, developing his craft even as he began reaching for a relevancy and pathos beyond the gibbering of The Kid (a stagehand on their TV show once asked what bit of business Lewis was endlessly rehearsing; “Shakespeare shit,” snarled Dean), Lewis began second-guessing and bossing around such talented but uninspired directors as Norman Taurog; but Frank Tashlin he studied. From the former animator he learned the infinite possibilities of a cartoon world made flesh, and the visual advantages of a bright, modernist palette. To Tashlin’s anarchic satire of mid-century America, Lewis added the element that shall forever divide his followers from his detractors: an ego that was monstrous, to be sure, but also so self-aware of its own needs and limitations it couldn’t help but be tuned in to its fragility as well, and the permeability of what we like to think of as our immutable selves. “The Lewisian person is not merely inconsistent,” Chris Fujiwara has written, “he is discontinuous.”

http://parallax-view.org/2017/08/22/not-find-hilarious-celebrating-jerry-lewis/

Watched Who's Minding the Store? the other day. Taking note of the incredible number of brand name department store items constantly on display made me think about how these films, whether Tashlin or Jerry-directed, always give you so much to look at in the backgrounds and how often it's of a consumerist nature. There's also, for example, the supermarket-destruction scene in The Disorderly Orderly and all the modernistic hotel trappings in The Bellboy. Even as "satire of mid-century America" these films really revel in the most modern aspects of consumer culture. And Jerry's dork characters often sport cool, contemporary clothes (by Sy Devore?), which make them (him) seem that much more up-to-date.

Would have to say the out-of-control vacuum cleaner bit in Who's Minding the Store? has got to be one of Jerry's all-time best set pieces. Complete chaos, total madness.

Watched The Geisha Boy too and was somewhat disappointed that the Jerry character couldn't have found more time for the young Suzanne Pleshette in addition to all the time he devotes to the little Japanese boy. Couldn't quite understand his coolness to her.

I rewatched The Bellboy last night; both Jerrys undone by modernism.

I also noticed in my first watch of The Delicate Delinquent that, as a single 'juvenile' slumdweller, he was wearing his wedding ring.

I've noticed that Jerry wears his wedding ring in every one of his films (at least in the solo years)!

At least one of the obit thinkpieces also mentioned his expensive watch, jewelry etc in Hardly Working, to name one.

Wondering what Serge G and Jane B had to do The Day the Clown Cried. My skills aren't good enough to understand the Dutch voiceover.

please explain

There is a Dutch video discussing and showing the filming of The Day the Clown Cried and Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin are on set. Can't find right this second.

apparently they were just visiting

Still

Jerry made some home productions w/ his famous friends; there's scuttle butt about trying to get some shown publicly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAFNo_rq7rc

Watched Jerry's hourlong 1959 TV remake of The Jazz Singer, which is primarily a fascinating piece of psychohistory, and of course ends with him singing "Kol Nidre" in a tallis and clown nose.
(He also does a funny bit with a trumpet at the start.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBe0qy5k8vk

Watched that a few years ago; fascinating indeed. And it's the first appearance of Serious/Angry Jerry, right?

first? not sure

you all have been remiss

https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/tag/A%20MUBI%20Jerrython

my friend Steve wrote this about JL's 'record act' and subsequent mimicry

https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/jerry-lewis-satirical-impressions-in-pantomimicry

talking at U of C, 1971

The things that I do, of course, are terribly lowbrow. I’m not talking about reviews now. I’m talking about general consensus, that comedy is lowbrow. But you take someone like Stan Laurel, who had the greatest dignity and the most influence of any man I’ve ever know. And he was just chucked under the rug. I finally found out the reason for it: most people fear comedy. Because the truth of it is like a bone coming through the skin. Comedy is nothing more than a mirror we hold up to life. And people don’t want that.

I did an exhibition one night for my class, but they didn’t understand why I felt that way. I told them about a party that I went to in New York—the Jet Set. It was the only night I ever vomited for an hour straight. I never saw anything like it in my life. Just a breed of people that I just can’t begin to tell you about. I didn’t dislike them—I couldn't understand them. Someone would say, “Hello, and how are you,” and turn away, and walk, and you can’t say, “How are you” yet. “How are you”—and I’m about to say—I never got “fine” out. And they’re leaving and they’re shaking hands and leaving…but—I watched this one woman who had a dress on—and it looked like it was painted on her. And there was a terribly funny man there—Jonathan Winters, who’s truly a genius. Hysterical. And this woman fought the laughter back because it would in fact either split the dress—or it would have to bend. And she was getting convulsed. (Laughter.) Her face was still red. But she wasn’t going to budge in that goddamn dress. She was not about to enjoy. And that’s terribly sad. And I showed the students exactly how she stood.

https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/an-afternoon-with-jerry-lewis

I think CinemaScope and Panavision were made for a rabbi and 7,000 sheep in a desert.

1980 interview by Cahiers:

CAHIERS: We've wondered here if a clown character would work on television?

JERRY LEWIS: I don't believe so. Television... the simple view of television... Look at this box (he points out a sumptuous tv set in the room and opens it). To communicate, you need concentration. Listen, Absorb. Maintain a thought. Look at this set. It's off. Yet I see a table, a couch, a statue with bare breasts. My training was a darkened theater where there's concentration, larger than life. That (vengeful gesture towards tv), is smaller than life. Just this information, unconsciously and psychologically, makes you look at tiny characters, dwarves. Remember when you were a child and you tried to measure with your fingers the distance between two stars? It's la meme chose. For me. If I go to the cinema... WAW!, it takes me, and there is a place for me, for you and you and you. We can all communicate between each other; that's why when we're in a cinema and the movie is bad, it's really bad. For me it's, (hateful gesture), it's about news and sports. Because in sports there is nothing to communicate but who wins and who loses. If you watch a football match and a player scores a goal... (he applauds) The image of a little man is fine, it doesn't have to be larger than life. But if you want to touch people, their hearts and minds, you can't be distracted. You've all seen that in Hollywood (he holds his hand out while looking the other way): "Hello! Nice to see you..." Bullshit. Distraction. And I say let's take these people and put them in a dark empty room with just a little light on them and they will shake hands and yes, they will meet!

CAHIERS: On French television not long ago we saw A KING IN NEW YORK by Chaplin. It was surprising to see how, as he aged, Chaplin became bitter. Most comedians judge others and society more and more as they age, and are morally more and more demanding. Their films become tougher. Do you think this could apply to you?

JERRY LEWIS: If they do to me what they did to Chaplin, yes. I don't think it's as inevitable as all that. There is nothing that I should be bitter about. Chaplin had many reasons to be bitter. Sometimes this hardness is just the expression of a job less well done. The artist realizes it and tries to force things. But Chaplin, they broke his heart. They were unfair to him. Today, can anyone tell me if Chaplin was a communist? And if he had been, what does that have to do with his work? As long as his work makes people happy... There are certainly people doing good work today who may be communists, but I don't care, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone . The last time I was in Paris, I did a series of interviews and I didn't know that one of the journalists I was speaking to was a communist. So what? I was initially worried and then I wondered why: they were good people, they printed what I said, which is not always the case... Nobody comes and explains to me what a communist is. My children asked me this question, I answered: I'll tell you, I'm going to Europe to find out. But I agree with you about A KING IN NEW YORK. What a film!

CAHIERS: One last question: what do you think of the new generation of American filmmakers?

JERRY LEWIS: I like them. But you have to watch them. Spielberg is a good filmmaker. But we should've never let him make 1941 (1979). He's not a comic filmmaker. When you have success in a field, you mustn't change. The man who's very good at repairing the phone, should he also be a brain surgeon? No. If you don't watch the young filmmakers, they'll be eaten alive by the money-men. Spielberg, Lucas, Bogdanovich, Randy Kleiser, they were all my students. They risk disappearing either because they cannot master their success, or because the money-men will steal their talent, turn it on their heads, and not know what to do with it. It's like wine, if you open it too early, it's vinegar. We can't speed up the creative process. We don't do in a year what takes twenty-five years to grow. Hemingway did not begin by writing THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA. We learn from what we've done, not from what others tell us. And we are our best judges. Because we know what we did. When we're young we get our heads together, we figure out that what we do is good. But great works come from big mistakes, not great successes. I don't like it, but that's how it is. And the young American filmmakers you're talking about, they've learned their craft but haven't learned patience. We are all impatient in a way, but if you are too impatient, you won't last long. Then there are those who make mistakes, can't stand it and slink away.

https://kinoslang.blogspot.de/2018/02/maybe-we-can-get-it-weaved-no-2.html

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DctFAK4W4AcvB4b.jpg:large

i open bidding on Stan Laurel's studio pass, which I saw JL pull out of his wallet in 2012

i've only seen the episode of the Seinfeld Coffee series with Garry Shandling, but I'm going to have to catch the one in the new season with Lewis at some point. JL orders breakfast: “I’m gonna have three fried eggs up, and a large order of very very very stiff bacon.”

haha

That series is pretty hit-or-miss, but Jer will be reliably cantankerous and/or hilarious.

The @believermag has made its archive available for free online, include probably the most essential essay on Jerry Lewis, B. Kite's 2-part "The Jerriad": https://t.co/EAds0EZRWx + https://t.co/NYteyav5Hg pic.twitter.com/vLZ13amGvH

— Notebook (@NotebookMUBI) July 27, 2018