Rereading my favorite book about Jerry Lewis - the one by Chris Fujiwara. He mentions the same tendency I noted about Lewis's character in THE LADIES MAN (pictured). The way Fujiwara puts it: "Herbert comments on his own reactions and his own situation." Fujiwara even cites, as I did, "the skin of his back caught in the crack of the door." Now that's a sight gag you can FEEL! In the very same paragraph, Fujiwara comments on the sort of dialogue in THE PATSY that fascinates me. It has, he writes, "a rapidly self-correcting, self-denying quality, as if the Lewis character were rewriting his own being and commenting on the process of doing so." Fujiwara!
Friday, June 08, 2012
Rewriting His Own Being
Rereading my favorite book about Jerry Lewis - the one by Chris Fujiwara. He mentions the same tendency I noted about Lewis's character in THE LADIES MAN (pictured). The way Fujiwara puts it: "Herbert comments on his own reactions and his own situation." Fujiwara even cites, as I did, "the skin of his back caught in the crack of the door." Now that's a sight gag you can FEEL! In the very same paragraph, Fujiwara comments on the sort of dialogue in THE PATSY that fascinates me. It has, he writes, "a rapidly self-correcting, self-denying quality, as if the Lewis character were rewriting his own being and commenting on the process of doing so." Fujiwara!
