You Go Uruguay

The title of this "post" alludes to a Groucho Marx joke which I will not explain or contextualize because I know you don't care. And you know what? It hurts. Another thing you don't care about is a certain kind of coincidence I like. "Like" is a strong word. Anyway, I'm going to tell you about it. So, I was reading in this Witold Gombrowicz book about his reaction to the works of Simone Weil, and I was thinking, I don't know anything about Simone Weil. And then I watched a Godard movie the same day and a character repeatedly brought up Simone Weil! When I emailed Megan with this exciting news, I put an extra L in Weil... that's just how little I know about Simone Weil, which is just a bonus detail especially for you not to care about. Later that day, or maybe it was the next day, my brother told me that he had purchased one of my books from a used book store, and he texted me a photo of the inscription, in which I had praised the previous owner of the book to the high heavens. You wouldn't believe how lovingly I inscribed this book. My brother was incensed that the guy had ditched it. Though the the book was inscribed to him using his first name alone, I am almost 100% sure I know who the guy is, though I was surprised by how seemingly devoted I was to him at one time, or maybe I just tend to gush. I wondered to myself with my simple childlike brain, gee, where is that guy now? Whatever happened to him? So I looked him up, and he moved to Uruguay some years ago. I wasn't mad to begin with, but if I had been, how could I have stayed that way? I wouldn't pack up any books by me if I were moving to Uruguay! Okay. We're not to the end of this story yet! So then I picked up Gombrowicz again and he's taking a little trip on a boat, during which (from the translation by Lillian Vallee) "we practically reach the green shores of Uruguay." Now, I bet you think those are all the things you're not going to care about. But there's more! Here's where the ouroboros comes in. So! As you may not care about recalling, the diary of Witold Gombrowicz is an official Million Dollar Book Club selection. All right! Here's the thing... the guy who unceremoniously (I assume... or maybe there was a ceremony!) dumped my lushly inscribed book before moving to Uruguay is the editor of one of our future Million Dollar Book Club selections! (We have a list.) Or I should say he was the editor of one of our former future Million Dollar Book Club selections, for I immediately made a motion, which was seconded and passed (as there are just two of us) for him to be crossed off all of our lists until the end of time. I wasn't mad, but it was what Witold Gombrowicz would have done. Half his diary consists of taking stuff like that personally!

Three Times the Owl

As I often do between book-club books, I picked up Ovid and randomly opened to yet another owl: "three times the owl/ Wailed out his cry to warn her." I don't want to say what the owl was upset about, but it was pretty sick stuff. Let's just say the owl had some good reasons! You're once, twice, three times an owl, and I love you, to paraphrase Lionel Richie. Which reminds me: back when I went to Sunday school, some folksy Christian troubadours came by as a special treat one time, and I was mesmerized by a short-haired young woman in a French-style striped shirt (you know, like Jean Seberg in BREATHLESS, basically, though I had not seen it at the time), who strummed her guitar and sang words about Jesus to that Commodores song, as I still remember: "You're once, twice, three times a Savior." That's what we thought was cool!

I Don't Want to Be Here

Let's get this over with. So, Dr. Theresa and I were watching the horror movie THE FUNHOUSE as part of our yearly Halloween thing we do. I noticed that a cigarette lighter was used as a clue in an interesting way, which really pissed me off. That's right, I use coarse language now, and I use it freely. I knew that the vital cigarette lighter clue meant that I would have to laboriously append a new entry to my index of things I (sort of) regret leaving out of my cigarette lighter book, which no one cares about, except maybe Ace Atkins, who texted yesterday to inquire whether he might borrow a gruesome detail from it in the service of his new work. But let us travel back in time, to our viewing of THE FUNHOUSE, and how my shriveled heart gave a hint of shuddering back to life as I thought about my entire section on matchbooks as clues. So interesting, I smugly mused, to see a cigarette lighter used in a matchbook way here in this film THE FUNHOUSE. I could tell everyone a thing or two about how unusual that is. Then I remembered, hey! The epigraph of the book is about a cigarette lighter as a clue, big deal, Godard even says (in the epigraph) how damn famous it is, that billions of people will remember it. (It's the cigarette lighter from STRANGERS ON A TRAIN... a false, planted clue, which would be an interesting distinction if I cared about anything anymore. You could say, for one thing, that in both cases [THE FUNHOUSE and STRANGERS ON A TRAIN], the lighter benefits the villain, whereas the matchbook is usually valuable to the detective or "good guy"... how I hate myself!) What's so special about this damn cigarette lighter from THE FUNHOUSE? Well, it appeared to be a white Bic, which, as Megan Abbott pointed out to me during the research phase of my book, is thought by some to be bad luck, which superstition ended up in the book, and I guess this lighter would have made a good addition to that section, as it (as hinted parenthetically above) alerts the murderous monster to the presence of the hapless teens, but then again, maybe the lighter was pale yellow. This was weeks ago. Days ago? It was the 19th. I'm so tired of looking things up.

Something of the Young

I was remarking to Megan Abbott that James Dean's performance in EAST OF EDEN really had something of the young Jerry Lewis in it, and Megan told me that James Dean actually worked with Jerry in SAILOR BEWARE (as seen above; that's James Dean nearest to Jerry in the background). James Dean's one line in the movie is "He's a professional!" And it's about Jerry Lewis. But as you know, I don't "blog" anymore, and the former facts are not enough to get me temporarily "blogging." But! I watched SAILOR BEWARE today and there is a scene in which Dean Martin is smooching with Betty Hutton and Jerry intervenes, volunteering to trade places with Betty Hutton! And here we are. I have mentioned before ("click" here) that the supposed subtext between Dean and Jerry is not subtext at all, but plain, simple text. And this confirmation is reason enough to "blog," I think. As long as I have you here, I think I will mention that I watched CONTEMPT tonight. Jack Palance's character is named Jerry, and I couldn't help wondering whether Godard had Jerry Lewis in mind. He always has Jerry Lewis in mind! And I could imagine the character "Jerry" played by Jerry with some of the imposing menace he displayed in THE KING OF COMEDY. But! When Jack Palance throws a film can like it's a discus, with such startling physicality, well! I've never said this before, but Jerry couldn't have done it better. I do believe Godard might have had Jerry in mind, though, because he certainly had Dean in mind: Michel Piccoli's character explicitly idolizes Dean Martin, and wears a hat, he says, to look like him:

If I were still "blogging" I would mention that Dr. Theresa and I could not agree tonight at which theater in Atlanta we saw CONTEMPT on the big screen. We did agree that we saw it with our friend Heather, with whom I used to be in a band. But I'm not "blogging" anymore, so that kind of thing is immaterial. I do realize that I can't stop thinking of Jerry in movies he is not in (EAST OF EDEN, CONTEMPT), and that probably means there is something seriously wrong with me. CONTEMPT ends with the word "Silencio!" which put me in mind of MULHOLLAND DR., which put me in mind of Jerry Lewis. Please send help.

Jerry 101

I just heard that Jerry Lewis passed away. Dr. Theresa and my pal Phil Oppenheim alerted me simultaneously. I feel terrible! I am going to try to update an old "post" that had ninety introductions to Jerry Lewis for the curious. I am going to try to find eleven things to add so I can call it "Jerry 101." [As a work meeting was coming up as this "post" was being typed, several, though not all, of the hastily retrieved final additions may be of a lesser quality. - ed.] 1. How is Edgar Allan Poe like Jerry Lewis? 2. For that matter, what would Kierkegaard say about Jerry Lewis? 3. Bob Dylan got "deeply into" Jerry Lewis. 4. Jerry was a hero to Richard Pryor. 5. Jerry shares expressionistic instincts with iconic rappers. 6. He made Orson Welles laugh. 7. Freudian aspects of Jerry. 8. He played a gig with Thelonious Monk. 9. A trusted method of immersing yourself in Jerryness. 10. Don't believe me? Take it from bestselling novelist Laura Lippman! 11. Don't believe Laura Lippman? Perhaps famed method actor Edward Norton is more to your taste. [See also - ed.] 12. Consider Jerry Lewis as the forefather of David Lynch. 13. So can it be a coincidence that Lynch was cast in a part originally written for Jerry Lewis? (See also.) 14. As muse to hardboiled Don Carpenter. 15. Jerry's spectacular use of color. 16. Jerry is the inventor of anti-comedy, his aesthetic also appropriated by the cinematic underground. 17. Read the great Jerry monograph by Chris Fujiwara. 18. Jerry a hero to Michael Palin of the Monty Python comedy troupe. 19. Jerry an inspiration for the British version of THE OFFICE that everyone used to love so much. 20. Jerry makes me think of the French painter Henri Rosseau. 21. Do you think Jerry is redundant? No, he is "unfolding redundancy." Joke's on you! 22. Do you like Godard? Well, Godard based some of his scenes on Jerry Lewis scenes. Like this and that. 23. Some maintain that 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY would have been better with Jerry in it. 24. Speaking of which, was Jerry an influence on Boorman's groundbreaking POINT BLANK? I don't know, but he should have starred in it. 25. How about that prescient scene in THE BELLBOY that anticipates Scorsese's THE KING OF COMEDY? Or the possibly relevant fact that Jerry directed parts of THE KING OF COMEDY? 26. The Cinderfella dance! 27. Jerry frequently appears in THE BELIEVER magazine, if that's your cup of tea. 28. I intuit a connection between Jerry and J.D. Salinger. 29. And supposedly Salinger considered Jerry to direct the movie version of CATCHER IN THE RYE, maybe. I said maybe! 30. Jerry's influence on GOODFELLAS. 31. Jerry Lewis is part of Philip K. Dick's mystic vision of the entire universe. 32. You should watch lots of Jerry Lewis so you can practice the fun habit of saying things like Jerry Lewis. 33. Even nature itself aspires to sound like Jerry Lewis. 34. Jerry Lewis is a good singer. 35. Maybe you identify with Jerry's world-weary attitude. 36. He hung out in a diner with Marilyn Monroe. 37. Blair Hobbs detects an aesthetic kinship between Jerry and the photographer William Eggleston. 38. Jerry was an inspiration to Bruce Springsteen. 39. Think of Jerry as a poet. 40. Need a dissertation topic? How about "Medical Ethics in the Films of Jerry Lewis"? 41. In a hilarious practical joke, Jerry ruined Dick van Dyke's meeting with the queen! 42. Jerry was instrumental in getting the great Stan Laurel his honorary Oscar. 43. Jerry is handsome! 44. Maybe you are a "conspiracy theory buff." Well, for real the CIA tampered with one of Jerry's movies. 45. Maybe you're an animal lover. Well, Jerry bought a hearing aid for his dog. 46. Jerry is subversive! 47. Quentin Tarantino + Jerry Lewis = True Love 4ever. 48. (Maybe because he anticipated one of Tarantino's more radical and disruptive narrative decisions by 40 years.) 49. Does he irritate you and make you uncomfortable? MAYBE THAT'S JUST WHAT JERRY WANTS! 50. For example, he once stuck his nose in Frank Sinatra's eye. 51. And took some of the starch out of Tony Curtis by flicking ashes on his jacket. 52. Jerry is complicated. He "both depicts and manifests inadvertent disclosure." - J. Hoberman. 53. Jerry's influence on the Beastie Boys. 54. Jerry appears in works by acknowledged comic geniuses John Hodgman and Michael Kupperman. 55. But perhaps you prefer authors from Mississippi, a chunk of land with a notable literary history. If so, you should be aware that Tom Franklin and Frederick Barthelme have put Jerry Lewis in their well-regarded "Mississippi" novels. 56. So has Don DeLillo, though he is not from Mississippi, nor are his novels set there. 57. ARE you a historian, by the way? Then consider Jerry's breakup with Dean in its implications as "a national trauma." 58. Francis Ford Coppola cites Jerry as an influence. 59. Which reminds me: I recently read an interview that Scorsese did with Lewis in which he (Scorsese) cites THE LADIES MAN as an influence. I always assumed the scene in question was drawn from SATYRICON. But SATYRICON came out after THE LADIES MAN, so maybe SATYRICON was influenced by Jerry too! I just now decided that, while typing this. 60. Jerry's darker side a fruitful subject for literary speculation. 61. Speaking of which, John Waters said Jerry Lewis was "probably a monster!" Can there be a higher compliment? 62. Although (see previous "link") John Waters went on to praise his taste in costuming. So that subject is worth contemplation. 63. Though, intriguingly, to Waters's original hypothesis, Jerry repeatedly acknowledges the collusion of the innocent with the monstrous, especially within a single individual. (See also.) 64. Jerry's art provides some of the same challenges and rewards as Sun Ra's. 65. Jerry envisioned hosting Queen Elizabeth, Jimmy Hoffa and Helen Keller on a talk show. I still want to write that play. 66. Fascinating undercurrents to his on- and off-screen chemistry with Dean Martin. 67. I wrote a pretty good article about him once if you can find it. 68. And this "post" is all right. 69. Try to solve Jerry's universal problem. 70. The complex transparency of Jerry's genius can be profitably compared to Brian Wilson's. 71. Jerry reveals the intrinsic flaws in the very notion of successful human communication. 72. Maybe that's why he's constantly "rewriting his own being." 73. But before he rewrote himself too much, here's a 13-minute clip of young Jerry at his brashest and most engaging. 74. Jerry's anarchic devouring of the hand that feeds him. 75. Maybe you are from the "dance world." Did you know that many highbrow choreographers turn to Jerry Lewis for inspiration? 76. Similarities between Jerry and the great Italian giallo director Mario Bava, if that's your thing. 77. Jerry is a model of tact and restraint compared to the makers of Jason Bateman movies. 78. As Jerry is, so you will be. As you are, so once was he. 79. Jerry, like Elvis, was a target of snobbery and classism. 80. I mean, even when he ended the Oscar broadcast EARLY, the powers-that-be still despised him. He gets under "the man's" skin. 81. For example, when everybody in "the establishment" was dumping on Arthur Penn's BONNIE AND CLYDE, Jerry was one of the first to proclaim its greatness. 82. Did he inspire a character in a Wes Anderson movie? Probably not. But I think he inspired a character in a Noah Baumbach movie. 83. Touchstone for towering cartoonists Lynda Barry and Gilbert Hernandez. 84. Jerry deemed a subject worthy of the Savannah College of Art and Design. 85. Jerry cut short his formal education and set out to educate himself. 86. Jonathan Rosenbaum knows a lot about movies and he loves Jerry Lewis. 87. Tough-to-please James Wolcott likewise. 88. Camille Paglia seems happy about Jerry Lewis. 89. Even comedians who resist his influence must grapple with his legacy. 90. Jerry blurs assumptions about gender. 91. Hey, Sandra Bullock likes Jerry Lewis. 92. And John Sayles says "he did it all," though he was likely just being polite. 93. Jerry helps redeem the troubling "monkey riding dogs" trope. 94. Jerry advances clowning from sadness to rage. 95. Jerry's singing provides ballast in one of those ubiquitous "peak TV" shows that no one can get enough of. 96. Just the thought of Jerry Lewis makes someone laugh alone in a parking lot. 97. Jerry makes comedy of our basic existential choice. 98. See my AV Club interview on Jerry Lewis's literary influence, I guess. 99. Jerry of sufficient interest to narrowly escape being drunk-dialed by Cary Fukunaga. 100. Noted author Megan Abbott finds that watching Jerry is "akin to psychosexual quicksand"! 101. Appropriately at this moment, Jerry Lewis distracts me from James Joyce's elegiac short story, "The Dead," supplanting death with life!

The Original Skeeky Kid

Megan Abbott and I have been reading lots of books about movie people together. We read some books about Orson Welles, then we read about Walt Disney, then Bunuel's autobiography (first recommended to me by Bill Taft), which, to my astonishment, did not have an owl in it, though there were rats and spiders and one or two bats and hair growing out of cracked-open tombs. And those were just his childhood memories! As you know, I don't "blog" anymore unless I read a book with an owl in it, and that brings us to MY SIDE by Ruth Gordon, which Megan and I are reading now, in which a certain Miss Jerome is described as a "five-foot, brown-haired, brown-eyed, parchment-skinned ninety-pound replica of a hoot owl." And that's Ruth Gordon just getting warmed up! I'll tell you one mysterious word she likes to employ: "skeeky." Even Megan, who loves to do research (remember when she found out all about "friendship clubs"?), had trouble tracking down examples. I looked in my GREEN'S DICTIONARY OF SLANG, VOL. 3, P-Z, and found only "skeek," with examples drawn from the early twenty-first century, which seems to be directly opposed to the way Ruth Gordon uses "skeeky." Skeekiness, in Ruth Gordon's usage, is a condition to be desired. The only helpful example Megan could find comes from a magazine short story from 1915: "he spilled a line of bunk about her being the only and original skeeky kid." This fits nicely within the time period that Ruth Gordon is writing about when she uses "skeeky." So! Now that I've got you here and I read a book with an owl in it, I can tell you about an unrelated matter that has been on my mind. I watched the Welles version of THE TRIAL, and it pretty much ended with - SPOILER! - Anthony Perkins alone on a desolate shore with a lit bundle of dynamite. And that reminded me of PIERROT LE FOU, which also ended with its isolated protagonist standing in a lonely spot with a lit bundle of dynamite. And then BANG! Is this a genre? I think I need to find a third example before I can say it's a genre. Oh! While I was watching THE TRIAL, Megan happened to tweet - not knowing that I was watching THE TRIAL - that it was Jeanne Moreau's birthday. And then there she was in THE TRIAL! Jeanne Moreau, I mean. And there I was not knowing it was her birthday. And just about the first line she has in THE TRIAL is, "If you're stuck for something to say, try happy birthday." Isn't that a weird coincidence? Well, I thought it was a weird coincidence. Okay, I'll see you next time I read a book with an owl in it!

Is This a Desolate Hill

Hey! Remember when I wrote that book about cigarette lighters? And occasionally I used to see a little something I wished I had thought to include in my book about cigarette lighters? Last night I watched POINT BREAK for the first time ever - that's right! - and when the guy in the Reagan mask used a lighter and some gas to torch a car, it seemed like a significant vision, and I thought, eh, MAYBE I would have put that in my cigarette lighter book, but I didn't really care that I hadn't. BUT THEN I watched CRACKING UP. Hey! Remember how my old copy of CRACKING UP was defective? So, by utter coincidence, I ordered a new copy just a day or two before Megan Abbott went to see CRACKING UP at MoMA. And I haven't seen the ending in some years.

And near the end, Jerry goes up on a desolate hill and douses himself with gasoline and tries to set himself on fire... but he can't find his lighter! And I knew JUST where I should and would have put that in my manuscript. I wanted to include a still from that sequence for you, but I couldn't find a good one on the "internet," so here's one from PIERROT LE FEU, which, if I am recalling correctly, ends on a desolate hill with some explosive materials.

The Ninety Paths to Jerry

Soon it will be Jerry Lewis's 90th birthday. So I have "punched up" an old "post." In the old days there were only fifty, but now there are NINETY different ways to approach Jerry, should you find him unapproachable. I present this as a public service. Choose the path that's right for you! 1. How is Edgar Allan Poe like Jerry Lewis? 2. For that matter, what would Kierkegaard say about Jerry Lewis? 3. Bob Dylan got "deeply into" Jerry Lewis. 4. Jerry was a hero to Richard Pryor. 5. Jerry shares expressionistic instincts with iconic rappers. 6. He made Orson Welles laugh. 7. Freudian aspects of Jerry. 8. He played a gig with Thelonious Monk. 9. A trusted method of immersing yourself in Jerryness. 10. Don't believe me? Take it from bestselling novelist Laura Lippman! 11. Don't believe Laura Lippman? Perhaps famed method actor Edward Norton is more to your taste. 12. Consider Jerry Lewis as the forefather of David Lynch. 13. So can it be a coincidence that Louis CK cast Lynch in a part originally written for Jerry Lewis? 14. As muse to hardboiled Don Carpenter. 15. Jerry's spectacular use of color. 16. Jerry is the inventor of anti-comedy, his aesthetic also appropriated by the cinematic underground. 17. Read the great Jerry monograph by Chris Fujiwara. 18. Jerry a hero to Michael Palin of the Monty Python comedy troupe. 19. Jerry an inspiration for the British version of THE OFFICE that everyone used to love so much. 20. Jerry makes me think of the French painter Henri Rosseau. 21. Do you think Jerry is redundant? No, he is "unfolding redundancy." Joke's on you!

22. Do you like Godard? Well, Godard based some of his scenes on Jerry Lewis scenes. Like this and that. 23. Some maintain that 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY would have been better with Jerry in it. 24. Speaking of which, was Jerry an influence on Boorman's groundbreaking POINT BLANK? I don't know, but he should have starred in it. 25. How about that prescient scene in THE BELLBOY that anticipates Scorsese's THE KING OF COMEDY? 26. The Cinderfella dance! 27. Jerry frequently appears in THE BELIEVER magazine, if that's your cup of tea. 28. I intuit a connection between Jerry and J.D. Salinger. 29. And supposedly Salinger considered Jerry to direct the movie version of CATCHER IN THE RYE, maybe. I said maybe! 30. Jerry's influence on GOODFELLAS. 31. Jerry Lewis is part of Philip K. Dick's mystic vision of the entire universe. 32. You should watch lots of Jerry Lewis so you can practice the fun habit of saying things like Jerry Lewis. 33. Even nature itself aspires to sound like Jerry Lewis. 34. Jerry Lewis is a good singer. 35. Maybe you identify with Jerry's world-weary attitude. 36. He hung out in a diner with Marilyn Monroe. 37. Blair Hobbs detects an aesthetic kinship between Jerry and the photographer William Eggleston. 38. Jerry was an inspiration to Bruce Springsteen. 39. Think of Jerry as a poet. 40. Need a dissertation topic? How about "Medical Ethics in the Films of Jerry Lewis"? 41. In a hilarious practical joke, Jerry ruined Dick van Dyke's meeting with the queen! 42. Jerry was instrumental in getting the great Stan Laurel his honorary Oscar. 43. Jerry is handsome! 44. Maybe you are a "conspiracy theory buff." Well, for real the CIA tampered with one of Jerry's movies. 45. Maybe you're an animal lover. Well, Jerry bought a hearing aid for his dog. 46. Jerry is subversive! 47. Quentin Tarantino + Jerry Lewis = True Love 4ever. 48. (Maybe because he anticipated one of Tarantino's more radical and disruptive narrative decisions by 40 years.) 49. Does he irritate you and make you uncomfortable? MAYBE THAT'S JUST WHAT JERRY WANTS! 50. For example, he once stuck his nose in Frank Sinatra's eye. 51. And took some of the starch out of Tony Curtis by flicking ashes on his jacket. 52. Jerry is complicated. He "both depicts and manifests inadvertent disclosure." - J. Hoberman. 53. Jerry's influence on the Beastie Boys. 54. Jerry appears in works by acknowledged comic geniuses John Hodgman and Michael Kupperman.

55. But perhaps you prefer authors from Mississippi, a chunk of land with a notable literary history. If so, you should be aware that Tom Franklin and Frederick Barthelme have put Jerry Lewis in their well-regarded "Mississippi" novels. 56. So has Don DeLillo, though he is not from Mississippi, nor are his novels set there. 57. ARE you a historian, by the way? Then consider Jerry's breakup with Dean in its implications as "a national trauma." 58. Francis Ford Coppola cites Jerry as an influence. 59. Which reminds me: I recently read an interview that Scorsese did with Lewis in which he (Scorsese) cites THE LADIES MAN as an influence. I always assumed the scene in question was drawn from SATYRICON. But SATYRICON came out after THE LADIES MAN, so maybe SATYRICON was influenced by Jerry too! I just now decided that, while typing this. 60. Jerry's darker side a fruitful subject for literary speculation. 61. Speaking of which, John Waters said Jerry Lewis was "probably a monster!" Can there be a higher compliment? 62. Although (see previous "link") John Waters went on to praise his taste in costuming. So that subject is worth contemplation. 63. Though, intriguingly, to Waters's original hypothesis, Jerry repeatedly acknowledges the collusion of the innocent with the monstrous, especially within a single individual. (See also.) 64. Jerry's art provides some of the same challenges and rewards as Sun Ra's. 65. Jerry envisioned hosting Queen Elizabeth, Jimmy Hoffa and Helen Keller on a talk show. I still want to write that play.

66. Fascinating undercurrents to his on- and off-screen chemistry with Dean Martin. 67. I wrote a pretty good article about him once if you can find it. 68. And this "post" is all right. 69. Try to solve Jerry's universal problem. 70. The complex transparency of Jerry's genius can be profitably compared to Brian Wilson's. 71. Jerry reveals the intrinsic flaws in the very notion of successful human communication. 72. Maybe that's why he's constantly "rewriting his own being." 73. But before he rewrote himself too much, here's a 13-minute clip of young Jerry at his brashest and most engaging. 74. Jerry's anarchic devouring of the hand that feeds him. 75. Maybe you are from the "dance world." Did you know that many highbrow choreographers turn to Jerry Lewis for inspiration? 76. Similarities between Jerry and the great Italian giallo director Mario Bava, if that's your thing. 77. Jerry is a model of tact and restraint compared to the makers of Jason Bateman movies. 78. As Jerry is, so you will be. As you are, so once was he. 79. Jerry, like Elvis, was a target of snobbery and classism. 80. I mean, even when he ended the Oscar broadcast EARLY, the powers-that-be still despised him. He gets under "the man's" skin. 81. For example, when everybody in "the establishment" was dumping on Arthur Penn's BONNIE AND CLYDE, Jerry was one of the first to proclaim its greatness. 82. Did he inspire a character in a Wes Anderson movie? Probably not. But I think he inspired a character in a Noah Baumbach movie. 83. Touchstone for towering cartoonists Lynda Barry and Gilbert Hernandez. 84. Jerry deemed a subject worthy of the Savannah College of Art and Design. 85. Jerry cut short his formal education and set out to educate himself. 86. Jonathan Rosenbaum knows a lot about movies and he loves Jerry Lewis. 87. Tough-to-please James Wolcott likewise. 88. Camille Paglia seems happy about Jerry Lewis. 89. Jerry blurs assumptions about gender. 90. Hey, Sandra Bullock likes Jerry Lewis.

Movie Theater Pizza

About a month ago, when DIRTY GRANDPA opened, I mentioned in an ADVENTURE TIME meeting (in which I regularly participate from Oxford, Mississippi, while everyone else is in Burbank), that I wished Kent were in town so we could go see DIRTY GRANDPA together. Kent reminded me that he was coming here for a visit soon. I said I wasn't sure whether DIRTY GRANDPA would be playing, and Kent predicted it would still be "the number one movie in the country, like TITANIC." We shared a chuckle, you may be sure! So Kent finally got to town, and DIRTY GRANDPA was still playing, and we went to see it, accompanied by Bill Boyle, a De Niro expert and completist. Kent and I arrived at the movie theater an hour early, ha ha! But it is not a joke, despite my ha ha. Kent ordered himself a little cheese pizza from the movie theater's kitchen. I prayed to God he would consume it before Bill arrived. Bill, as you know, makes the best pizza in town, and such a movie theater cheese pizza would be an affront to him!

So Bill arrived and we all stepped into the movie theater to watch DIRTY GRANDPA, on practically the one-year anniversary of when Kent and I went to see 50 SHADES OF GREY in Silver Lake. Bill and Kent and I had the whole place to ourselves for DIRTY GRANDPA! But just before the movie started (or was it just after?) an earnest young couple came in to test the boundaries of their tender new love by going to see DIRTY GRANDPA. The credit sequence was striking, as you may see above. "It's like a Godard movie!" I kept screaming into the emptiness. I was also proud to notice that Dirty Grandpa wore a hat just like a hat I wore when I was twenty. Here you can see it on the movie poster Kent photographed right outside the theater. I think a bird has pooped on the Plexiglas, just under the "n" in "Grandpa."

Or that may be the designer's flourish, emphasizing the dirtiness of the Dirty Grandpa. After the movie, Bill and Kent and I adjourned to the City Grocery Bar to discuss many aspects of DIRTY GRANDPA.

The Leopard

I just watched a whole TV series that Godard made. And my main thought was WOW! This is what a TV series is in France! One part I especially loved was when Godard talked with deep love for Italian movies, and how they always shot the visuals first and added the audio later. This has never bothered me! My friend Eugene told me about it from personal experience! I was just thinking about it when I watched the movie version of THE LEOPARD. Because there is no way that dude sounds as magisterial as the actual Burt Lancaster. But I have heard a lot of dummies complaining about how the audio doesn't "match up" with the video in Italian movies. WHO CARES? That is just some fake rule some dope made up. And Godard put it beautifully, though I can't recall exactly: "The language of Ovid and Dante continued through the images." That's not it, but something like it! And at the very end of the TV series, Godard said, "If a man visited paradise in his dream, and received a flower as a sign of his visit, and he had this flower in his hand when he woke up, what can we say? I am this man." WHAT! I BELIEVE IT. I don't have that quite right either. And he was probably quoting somebody. He is always quoting somebody. Also, he uses the Jerry Lewis movie HARDLY WORKING as an important recurring touchstone, so go to hell.

Pushing the Anthodites

Don't watch this youtube clip. This is another thing that's just for McNeil. It's Jerry Lewis guest-hosting THE TONIGHT SHOW with Bob Hope as his guest. It will just confirm all your worst feelings if that is your inclination. Shame on you! Bob makes a bunch of awful ethnic jokes about the Italians and Irish then he makes an off-color remark about Ed Sullivan and then Bob and Jerry have some reactionary banter about "the young people today." It's 1970! Bob is wearing a striped jacket and what I think might be a powder-blue silk shirt. The commercials are included! One is for "wild blueberry" flavored cigars! An antiperspirant commercial shows us a new direction - understated, semi-documentary, almost like Godard shot it, it reminded me of MASCULIN-FEMININ. Edit out a few seconds here and there and it could be an indictment of pop consumerism. Repressive desublimation? No! But it used "revolutionary" techniques to sell antiperspirant. It really does stick out in the clutter. Don Draper probably thought of it. And of course you can see right there the world passing Bob and Jerry by. Then there's a charming local ad for Skyline Caverns, just a photo of two nice women standing in some caverns, I guess. (Not the photo presented here, obviously, but something similar.) And the announcer plays up the "anthodites" they have in the caverns. And when I looked at the present-day homepage for Skyline Caverns, well, they are still pushing those anthodites pretty hard! When we get back to the show, there's a lot of underlying hostility between Bob and Jerry, I think, some muttering about an incident in their past I couldn't quite make out. They're muttering at and over each other on television! Or maybe my hearing is going. Something about Bing Crosby. (A late addendum! Here ["click"] is some info about when Bing Crosby got scared that Jerry Lewis was going to pull off his hairpiece. Also - ironically, given how the times seem to have rushed past Bob and Jerry - a brash, pitiless, hilarious and supremely energetic young Jerry is giving Bing [by implication] a bunch of stuff about being old and passe.) Then when Bob leaves THE TONIGHT SHOW set, a big bunch of pencils gets knocked off the desk. Freudian! And Ed McMahon subserviently bends over and picks up all Johnny's pencils (another telling gesture!) and praises Bob Hope in a way that makes Jerry jokingly - but also not jokingly - prickly and defensive. Maybe all this helps confirm a bunch of scintillating analysis McNeil and I recently did of Bob and Jerry. My attention wandered so I may have missed a few things. Jerry asks Bob how much time Bob would give him on Bob's new special and Bob says "Thirty seconds" and Jerry says something and Bob says, "You bow for thirty seconds." Zing! It sounded like an ad-lib. A hostile ad-lib! But I don't know. And once Bob has gone, Jerry says a bunch of passive-aggressive stuff about how he admires the way Bob puts himself out there as a product. Anyway, why are you still here?

Big White Pie

First of all let me say maybe I was a little too hard on IF A MAN ANSWERS yesterday. I mean, if I didn't find the image of the big white pie arresting would I have spent so long searching the "internet" for it? Like J. Hoberman said in the New York Times today, "'The Nutty Professor' both depicts and manifests inadvertent disclosure," and I'm certainly no better than Jerry Lewis in that regard. And how snobbish of me to suggest that the film could not be put into conversation with LA CHINOISE. The palette of the fantasy pie sequence is pretty close to Godard's, and who knows? Godard might get a kick out of that big white pie. It's not hard to imagine an entirely white pie in a Godard movie. That big white pie might have put Godard in mind of his man Tashlin. And anyway, when Godard was making LA CHINOISE he wrote this on a big poster, according to the book I have about Godard: "It is the rich who create languages and who endlessly renovate them from top to bottom... A school that selects, destroys culture." Know what I mean? Because I don't. I sort of do. I think I do. Besides, the big white pie makes me think of a line I like from a recent New York Times obituary. It's for the original "Miss Subways," upon whom "Miss Turnstiles" was based in my sister's favorite movie ON THE TOWN, and it tells how a later Miss Subways "was said to have received 258 marriage proposals, at least 182 orchids and, from a lovelorn bakery worker, a vast lemon meringue pie." I've watched a couple of Will Rogers movies in my Lonely Film Festival. "He's like Brando!" I yelled, but I yell that about everybody. This one Will Rogers movie, STEAMBOAT ROUND THE BEND, has a musical saw in it, which reminded me of when Megan and Jimmy got so excited about Marlene Dietrich's ability to play the musical saw. In the movie, Anne Shirley goes to see her betrothed in jail (he's set to be hung for murder!) and he shows her how he's been spending his time learning to play the musical saw. He plays "There's No Place Like Home" and all the other prisoners hum it with intricate harmonies and lugubrious pathos. (The book that came with my John Ford box set [Ford directed STEAMBOAT ROUND THE BEND] quotes Darryl Zanuck poking fun at "the kind of thing John Ford does when he is stuck and has run out of plot. In these cases, somebody always sings and you cut to an extreme long shot with slanting shadows.") This movie also has a wax museum in it, which is, as we know, something Megan Abbott generally enjoys. Anne Shirley's character's name in STEAMBOAT ROUND THE BEND is Fleety Belle, which is the kind of thing Jimmy and Megan might like too.

Comparatively Subtle Winkie

Wow, I have been watching a lot of movies over the past two days. More than normal, even. Gorging on them, really. I don't think it's safe. I feel funny. But I'm on hiatus, so what else am I going to do? It's been a lot like a McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival, but McNeil isn't around so it's a Lonely Film Festival. Oh, sure, Dr. Theresa sits in once in a while but she does things during the day like a real human. Coincidences pop up, the kind you get during an actual McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival. Why, just today I accidentally watched two movies in a row with Cesar Romero in them - 25 years apart in the making! Imagine if you will the awakening of my giddy childlike wonder at such an occurrence. The first Cesar Romero movie was WEE WILLIE WINKIE, starring Shirley Temple. It was in this John Ford box set I've had for years, filled with oddities by that director I've only begun to sample. The next Cesar Romero movie was IF A MAN ANSWERS, which McNeil gave me years ago, but not as long ago as he gave me that John D. MacDonald novel I finally read. IF A MAN ANSWERS was still in the plastic. In more ways than one! It made the blunt, sentimental colonialist propaganda of WEE WILLIE WINKIE look downright politically subtle by comparison. Ford at least gave his murderous revolutionary bad guy (Cesar Romero) some warmth and complexity. Meanwhile, the greatest fantasy that Sandra Dee's brain can possibly generate is that of tying on an apron and serving an enormous white pie to Bobby Darin.

(I regret that I found only this single tiny, low-grade representation of the giant fantasy pie on the "internet." But you can tell that it's a really big pie, right? Also some birds fly out of it but one of them just seems to lie there and flap sadly and I don't think that was on purpose.) After all that I guess I thought I should have some Godard, kind of like slugging back a shot of wheatgrass. But LA CHINOISE made me think of McNeil too. You know how McNeil loves carpet and furniture in the movies! And LA CHINOISE is a movie about furniture. That is a lie I just typed with my own fingers but I guess I'll stick by it, I mean, look at that lamp. At least you could put WEE WILLIE WINKIE and LA CHINOISE in conversation with each other, I mean, they were made on the same planet, hey, I told you I was going crazy, okay, time to take an aspirin and watch more movies.

Dreaming About Capitalism

Dozed off watching more of BACHELOR IN PARADISE... had hazy thoughts about capitalism... Bob Hope and Lana Turner in parallel aisles of a supermarket, moving the same way at the same speed, but unaware of one another, cut off from true connection by a bright wall of goods... looked like Godard to me... or was it Jacques Tati... Hey, remember that other time a Bob Hope movie reminded me of Godard? Ha ha ha oh boy gee life is pointless. Woke up and watched some more. Look at this neat bar Bob has in his house. Then he donned an ascot and gave a talk to a ladies' garden club about how to make their marriages sexy.

Not Surprisingly, Nixon

Would you be interested and thrilled if I told you that I thought of another connection between Norman Mailer and Nixon? No? Who cares? The way I remembered it, Godard asked Nixon to play King Lear before he asked Norman Mailer. Turns out I have no idea what I'm talking about. But when I looked it up in the Godard bio I have, I found out that Godard DID offer Nixon half a million dollars to appear in one scene with Mailer. "Not surprisingly, Nixon did not respond," writes Richard Brody. I also learned that Lee Marvin agreed to play King Lear and then backed out. Lee Marvin as King Lear! I know you don't care but I am going to sit here and think about it. Well, what if I told you that there are several disorienting references to "Romney" in Mailer's book, only he's talking about Romney's dad? Still nothing? Okay. Well, I guess I have been going around for decades with a knowing air, misleadingly asking people, "Hey, did you know Godard offered Nixon the part of King Lear?" Hey, GLINDA OF OZ is weird. There's "a shelf of books that were written in blood" - shades of Lovecraft! - and Dorothy has lines of dialogue like, "No, I'd rather die quickly." (!)

50 Ways to Love Your Lewis

Maybe you want to love Jerry but you don't know how! I have decided to help out the Encore movie channel by supplementing its day-long Jerry marathon and tonight's Jerry Lewis documentary with 50 "blog" "links" suited to various interests. Remember, these are JUST THE FIRST 50 WAYS TO LOVE JERRY OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD. They MAY NOT ALL BE RIGHT FOR YOU. Please feel free to browse among them, "clicking" away on your exciting search for YOUR OWN PERSONAL PATHWAY TO JERRY. 1. Read the great Jerry monograph by Chris Fujiwara. 2. Do you like Philip K. Dick? Well, Jerry Lewis appears in his EXEGESIS - which is ONLY HIS ECSTATIC VISION OF THE MEANING OF THE WHOLE UNIVERSE! THAT'S ALL! 3. Speaking of authors, do you like authors? Maybe one of your fave authors has included Jerry Lewis in a book: Tom Franklin has! So have Don DeLillo, Lynda Barry, Lorrie Moore, Frederick Barthelme and many others! Classy! 4. Let's keep going with this author thing. How is Edgar Allan Poe like Jerry Lewis? "Click" here to find out! 5. Yeah, and what would Kierkegaard say about Jerry Lewis? 6. Maybe you are from the "dance world." Did you know that many highbrow choreographers turn to Jerry Lewis for inspiration? 7. Jerry thought Dean Martin smelled great! That's a nice detail. 8. Similarities between Jerry and the great Italian giallo director Mario Bava, if that's your thing. 9. A trusted method of immersing yourself in Jerryness. 10. Don't believe me? Take it from bestselling novelist Laura Lippman! 11. Don't believe Laura Lippman? Perhaps famed method actor Edward Norton is more to your taste. 12. Consider Jerry Lewis as the forefather of David Lynch. 13. Jonathan Rosenbaum knows a lot about movies and he LOVES Jerry Lewis! 14. Tough-to-please James Wolcott likewise! 15. When I was listing authors who have included Jerry in their work I forgot John Hodgman. 16. And Michael Kupperman! 17. For that matter, Jerry is in my novella JUNGLE GERONIMO IN GAY PAREE. 18. Jerry a hero to Michael Palin of the Monty Python comedy troupe. 19. Jerry an inspiration for the British version of THE OFFICE that everyone loves so much. 20. Jerry makes me think of the French painter Henri Rosseau. 21. McNeil's Theory of Potential Energy. 22. Do you like Godard? Well, Godard based some of his scenes on Jerry Lewis scenes. Like this and that. 23. Some maintain that 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY would have been better with Jerry in it. 24. Jerry's spectacular use of color. 25. How about that prescient scene in THE BELLBOY that anticipates Scorsese's THE KING OF COMEDY? 26. The Cinderfella dance! 27. Jerry frequently appears in THE BELIEVER magazine. 28. I intuit a connection between Jerry and J.D. Salinger. 29. And supposedly Salinger considered Jerry to direct the movie version of CATCHER IN THE RYE, maybe! I said maybe! 30. Jerry's influence on GOODFELLAS. You like GOODFELLAS! 31. Jon Stewart of the popular DAILY SHOW often does Jerry Lewis impressions, but if he is too hep for your taste, crusty David Letterman also impersonates Jerry from time to time. 32. Speaking of which, maybe you should watch lots of Jerry Lewis so you can practice the fun habit of saying things like Jerry Lewis. It's fun! 33. Even nature itself aspires to sound like Jerry Lewis. 34. Do you like singing? Jerry Lewis is a good singer! I guess he can do it all. 35. Maybe you identify with Jerry's world-weary attitude. 36. He hung out in a diner with Marilyn Monroe, so that's cool! 37. Blair Hobbs detects an aesthetic kinship between Jerry and the photographer William Eggleston. 38. Jerry inspired Bruce Springsteen. That's right, BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN! 39. Think of Jerry as a poet. 40. Need a dissertation topic? How about "Medical Ethics in the Films of Jerry Lewis"? You're welcome! 41. In a hilarious practical joke, Jerry ruined Dick van Dyke's meeting with the queen! 42. Jerry was instrumental in getting the great Stan Laurel his honorary Oscar. 43. Jerry is handsome! 44. Maybe you are a "conspiracy theory buff." Well, for real the CIA tampered with one of Jerry's movies. Brood on that for a while! 45. Maybe you're an animal lover. Well, Jerry bought a hearing aid for his dog! 46. Jerry is subversive! 47. Quentin Tarantino + Jerry Lewis = True Love 4ever. 48. When everybody was dumping on Arthur Penn's BONNIE AND CLYDE, Jerry was one of the first to proclaim its greatness. 49. Does he irritate you and make you uncomfortable? MAYBE THAT'S JUST WHAT JERRY WANTS! 50. For example, he once stuck his nose in Frank Sinatra's eye.

Jolly Fats

Well, this is a happy day for me. I see from the "stats" that someone found this "blog" by searching for "movie with jerry lewis where there farm animals on plane." Sir or madam, I am so delighted to inform you that the film you are seeking is CRACKING UP. Foster Brooks is the pilot of the airplane for Jolly Fats Weehawken airlines. The scene to which you are referring inspired a scene in the Godard movie SOIGNE TA DROITE. Goodbye forever.

Fie, Tattered Maltin

Just watched BOY, DID I GET A WRONG NUMBER on TCM, thanks to a tip from Brian Z. Why does everybody hate it so much? My tattered Maltin assigns it one of its numerous pious "BOMB"s. I can imagine Godard loving this movie. For me, it's the kind of repressive desublimation we can all get behind: the harmlessly transparent and superficial kind. Like, Bob Hope refers to policemen as "fuzz," as in, "I've got more fuzz on my tail than a French poodle" (the line quoted to me by McNeil when he called - of course - to discuss the movie a few minutes ago). And Phyllis Diller, riding a motorcycle, squirts mustard into the faces of hapless "fuzz" through their driver's side windows, causing them to crash, which makes her cackle as she anarchically squirts more mustard onto the road. If I am recalling correctly, and I almost certainly am, my ex-boss Lisa once told me that Phyllis Diller on a motorcycle was one of the iconic images of her youth. Yet I searched the entire "internet" and couldn't find a still of it. So here's Elke Sommer holding an apple. See? Doesn't it remind you of CONTEMPT?

The Great Big List of Jerry Lovers

Add NEW YORKER editor Richard Brody (who wrote a book about Godard I once famously thumbed through) to the great big list of Jerry lovers. Our man Sepsey found a spot on the "internet" where Brody compares the Mike Leigh film HAPPY-GO-LUCKY to HOLLYWOOD OR BUST and THE DISORDERLY ORDERLY, and writes of the lead actress (pictured), "Kudos to Sally Hawkins for channelling her inner Jerry Lewis."