Yes, Jerry Lewis is a genius. And to anyone who questions that assertion, I advise you to take a long, hard look at his run of hilarious, formally experimental, self-directed films from the early ‘60s: The Bellboy, The Errand Boy, The Nutty Professor (his deconstruction of the Martin/Lewis relationship), The Patsy (his darkest film), and his Technicolor masterpiece, The Ladies Man.
Friday, March 16, 2007
Happy 81st Birthday, Jerry Lewis!
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2 comments:
Couldn't agree more . . . except . . . Jerry Lewis has always steadfastly denied any Martin & Lewis implications in Nutty Professor; and even though one should always take anything a filmmaker says about their own work with a big grain of salt, I tend to believe him.
I mean, if he wanted to conceal what the film actually is (an exploration of his own personality) he'd be more likely to claim Buddy Love as a grotesquely caricatured Dean Martin (I'm assuming, by the way, you're referring to Martin & Lewis's actual partnership, not their stage/screen personae . . . in that case you'd have to send out a search party to find such echoes in the '63 film), just for the convenience, if nothing else. Instead, he's gone out of his way countless times to dispel such comparisons.
It's what Prosecutors call a 'Statement Against Interest', and them things are always admissible.
Jerry Lewis always claimed that his alter ego in the "Nutty Professor" portrayed all that was most undesirable in a person.
He can protest all he wants, but clearly he was playing Dean Martin, who, quite frankly I adored from the age of 9 until now, years after his death.
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