Jerry Lewis: The Total Film-Maker

dude come on.

mine was in french for chrissakes.

yours does have a funny photo, though.

But mine has Judd Apatow!

zee pigs refuse to search for truffles until you remove ze final option

Yours, admittedly, does include the Curious George legacy.

this is the worst tragedy in the history of the ilx.

you might even say it was the day the clowns cried.

If mods want to delete this one, I'm cool.

we'll let dr. morbius decide.

one is obviously for his best directorial effort, the other his acting. considering his skill at both, i think both threads are valid.

"skill"

Seriously? Hating on Jerry is still a thing?

I've been a huge fan in the past and remain so currently, but recent re-watches have made me feel he's the directorial equivalent of asperger's. I could easily see myself falling out of love with this director.

Wait. How did two Jerry Lewis polls happen on the same day? He's not dead, is he??

Departed thread got off track

No, just a Morbs-related clusterfuck in The Departed thread.

(x-post)

i have to give it to eric though because "the total film-maker" has made me lol every time i've looked at it.

xpost

not sure what you mean by that. would that make tati full-on autistic ?

Paul Sorvino: The Total Film-Maker

Coleman Francis: The Total Film-Maker

do you own a copy, strongo?

Would buy Coleman Francis: The Total Film-Maker for a dollar.

i own all the coleman francis movies, morbs. come on now.

including the supressed directors cut of the the skydivers.

The Day The Curly Killed

francis/truffaut

Well, anyway, the man's a stone cold genius. I prefer him to Chaplin, Keaton, Tati, who else ya got? At least seven of these are masterpieces but The Ladies Man stands as quite possibly the greatest film comedy of all-time. I grovel before him while dreaming of a 12-DVD box set of his greatest (which, as always with Jerry, also means his grossest) telethon moments.

Red Zone Nutty

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

anybody recall seeing Jerry in "Wiseguy" (the Ken Wahl tv show)?

Yep he was great, and even squeezed in "Very good, one in a row!"

would've been 94 today, and I bet he's glad he's not here

have Dean & Jerry in Pardners in the house, might watch that later

"You should only get COVID! I hope you get COVID."

https://assets.mubi.com/images/notebook/post_images/24936/images-w1400.jpg

<3

Pardners is unusual in that Dean Martin gets to be funny for a few bits, almost unique in their movies (vs clubs and TV). He also seems like he's auditioning for his solo career.

Agnes Moorehead (v briefly) plays Jerry's WIFE and MOTHER! JL and Dean have dual roles.

They also address the audience directly at the end to tamp down breakup rumors (utterly misleading).

https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts-culture/2024/01/05/jerry-lewis/

Were any ILXorz besides Morbius waiting for the donor restrictions on The Day the Clown Cried to expire? Rob Stone (LOC) on Facebook has been WTF? about this article, and as of now there are no plans for an open-to-the-public screening at LOC's Culpeper location.

Another LOC employee told me that starting at some point in 2024, the TDtCC material will be viewable by appointment at LOC premises in DC. If anyone is coming to DC to see this let me know.

I mean, I've been hoping to see it in my lifetime, yes

BTW, I know I fired this poll off in extreme bad faith against ILX, but zero votes for The Patsy is abominable

I think all of the 1960-1964 films are great in slightly different ways so The Patsy just kind of gets lost in the vote splitting among them.

True, tho I'd extend the streak to at least Three on a Couch

(If there's a weak one in there, it's The Family Jewels)

I think i slightly prefer The Family Jewels to Three on a Couch but I can definitely see how after 1964 it gets a bit more subjective. I actually kind of like The Big Mouth too but I’m not gonna run around recommending it.

Same with me with Hardly Working and Cracking Up

I was skimming around this thread and came across this, proffered seriously from an ilxor back in 2011:

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.

Uh, no. That's a load of bollocks wrapped in high-flown rhetoric, trying to sound profound

Hardly Working is weirdly hard to see. I’ve only seen bits of it on TV and would like to see the whole thing, especially because it was filmed in the area I grew up in.

xp KJB does have his blind spots, but he knows more about movies than any current member of ILX in my book

OK, "as much"

I like KJB's post even if I think saying Lewis is greater than Tati is utter madness

We disagree on good Joan Crawford movies.

otoh I introduced him to the negroni and that's all we drink when I visit him.

Cold water continues to be thrown on the idea that there exists a complete print of TDTCC.

There seems to be a lot of buzz about that article on the unreleased Jerry Lewis film THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED saying it's finally been screened, don't believe it! For what I heard all the LOC has is 13 cans (about 90') of unedited camera rushes without sound, that's all! Also: pic.twitter.com/umoxq6Yi9H

— Jon W. (@rarefilmm) January 8, 2024

So we're saying Harry Shearer is a liar?

Jolly "Fats" Weehawken Airlines is till an in-joke in my family

xp Yes. At the very least he exaggerated how much of it he saw.

that's what Lewis said: ""Harry Shearer is a liar. And I hate to say that but it's true. No one has ever seen that film except me, and I know because I have the only print of it." I can't find the orig. source for that but I followed the story when he said it, sometime early 00s I think. I think Lewis had a rough cut that he assembled when they had to cut production and leave Sweden. I think Shearer probably saw something like this. But I don't think there's an opening-to-closing-credits print in existence.

"Zack Snyder--Do your stuff!"

xp except Lewis didn’t have a “print” of it?

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

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 remember reading a Charlie Brooker column where he was talking about Rod Hull and Emu, and how the act depending on you holding two contradictory ideas in your head at once, first that Emu was just Rod Hull's arm in a puppet and second that Emu was actually a real conscious being acting independently of Rod, if you watched the act and just saw Rod jabbing at Michael Parkinson with his arm that wouldn't be funny, and if you actually thought that a real emu was attacking Michael Parkinson that wouldn't be funny either, but seeing both at the same time made it funny, and something about Jerry Lewis's slapstick feels like that where you have to have these two contradictory ideas, think that he's hapless and without agency and the world is acting on him, but also be aware at the same time that he's actually totally in control and doing all of this himself, and admiring the elegance with which he pretends to be clumsy?

But, unlike Tati, making you aware of the effort the entire time

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.