The blog of author Dennis Cooper

Author: DC (Page 899 of 1103)

Michael J. Pollard Day *

* (restored)

 

‘Michael J. Pollard may not be a household name, but anyone that ever saw him in a film or television show instantly will recognize his face. He always reminded me of a kid that had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar and his face said that he knew no excuse to extricate himself from the situation.

‘Pollard was born Michael John Pollack Jr. in Passaic New Jersey on May 30, 1939. He has been acting since 1959 and is still active 53 years later in 2012. He was married to Beth Howland, who television fans will remember her playing Vera on the Alice situation comedy. They were married from 1961-1969.

‘Since Pollard was only 5′6″ he had to play youthful roles into his 20’s. One of the most hilarious shows I have seen him in is the April 30,1962 episode of The Andy Griffith Show, when he played Barney Fife’s cousin Virgil who could do nothing right. He was 22 when this episode was filmed.

‘Fate intervened when he was cast as Jerome Krebs the weird cousin of Maynard G. Krebs on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, portrayed by Bob Denver, when Denver was going to be drafted in the Army. However, Denver soon returned when he was classified 4-F, which resulted in the dismissal of Pollard from the series.

‘Once again fate handed Pollard more bad news, when after starring as Hugo Peabody in the Broadway version of Bye Bye Birdie the role was given to Bobby Rydell, when the role was changed to require a singer.

‘In 1966, at twenty-six, Pollard played the role of an alien boy in CBS’s Lost in Space. That same year, he portrayed Bernie in another NBC espionage series, I Spy, in the episode “Trial by Treehouse”, alongside series stars Bill Cosby and Robert Culp with other guest stars Cicely Tyson and Raymond St. Jacques. Also in 1966, Pollard played the role of Stanley the runny-nosed airplane mechanic in the Norman Jewison comedy, The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming opposite Jonathan Winters, Brian Keith, and Carl Reiner, among many others.

‘Pollard played a 14-year-old despite being 27 in a Star Trek episode, when he played Jahn in the “Miri” episode. He played C.J. Moss in Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde in 1967 and would receive an Academy Award nomination in the Best Supporting Actor category, a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and he won a BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles.

‘Three years later he starred in Little Fauss and Big Halsey with Robert Redford. Another memorable role was when he played the homeless man who thought Bill Murray was Richard Burton in the 1988 film Scrooged.

‘Pollard’s most important role and greatest performance was in the 1972 film Dirty Little Billy. The film covered the very early days of Billy the Kid, just after the mother and step-father moved from New York, a little examined and very formative period in Billy’s life. Dirty, ugly, gritty, too real for many, but an accurate depiction of what a tiny frontier town was like, the film is must, and it offered a “James Dean” role for Michael J. Pollard. Dirty Little Billy is a sleeper that was about 40 years too early to be appreciated.

‘More recent photos of Pollard shows he is the same Michael J. Pollard, just a little older. He is still very busy at 73 having appeared as “Stucky” in the 2003 Rob Zombie-directed cult classic House of 1000 Corpses, having released Sunburnt Angels in 2011, having completed The Woods this year, and currently starring in a film called The Next Cassavetes.

‘Even though Pollard is not that well-known, actor Michael J. Fox inserted the J in the middle of his name out of respect to Michael J. Pollard. Pollard will probably always be known as the man, who has a familiar face but very few will be able to remember his name.’ — collaged

 

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Stills


























































 

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Further

Michael J. Pollard @ IMDb
Michael J. Pollard @ film reference
Michael J. Pollard @ Facebook
‘In Praise of Michael J. Pollard’
‘Michael J. Pollard Movies List: Best to Worst’
‘The Magic Mirror: An Essay of Analysis
‘The Michael J Pollard Diet’
‘whatever happened to michael j pollard?’
‘“That Guy” Actor of the Week: Michael J. Pollard’
‘Michael J Pollard As The Boy Who Lived On The Other Side Of The Mirrors’
‘I was going to purchase a signed photo of Michael J. Pollard, no questions asked, when … ‘

 

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Michael J. Pollard For President
‘In 1968, DJ-turned-singer Jim Lowe (who hit the top of the charts in 1956 with “The Green Door”) recorded “Michael J. Pollard for President” on the Buddah Records label. The record, which contains sound bites from U.S. Senator Robert Kennedy of New York and Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago, extolled Pollard’s qualifications for the Oval Office: “Those who saw him as C. W. Moss/ Know this hippie is really boss!” Pollard himself can be heard at the end of the song: “Furthermore, if I’m elected for President…hey, man! President of what…?” The 45 failed to make the record charts, possibly because the use of Kennedy’s voice on a comedy record after his assassination was considered to be in poor taste. (Pollard was just 29 years old in 1968, and thus ineligible for the presidency in any case.)’ — collaged


 

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The Sexy Flying Machine that Burst from a Cloud

 

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Michael J. Pollard Flower Power Car

 

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Extras


‘HAVE YOU SEEN MICHAEL?’ (2008)


Michael J. Pollard in 2010


Michael J. Pollard walking in Los Angeles (2011)


Michael J Pollard & Kevin Kelly rehearsing ‘IN LA WITHOUT A CAR’


Michael J.Pollard interviewed on ‘The Method Actor Speaks’ (2012)

 

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Interviewed by Roger Ebert (1969)

 

“Hey, man, my wife and I were up until 7 this morning, rapping about things,” Michael J. Pollard says, lighting a Camel and taking a mouthful of coffee.

“It’s nice to still be able to talk to your wife after four years. Maybe it comes from living in Los Angeles. Andy Warhol’s dream city. New York builds hostility. If we had lived in New York, we might not have lasted three years. Well, we’ve been married three years, but living together four years. I moved in the very same day I met her. No flowers, no Whitman Samplers, nothing.”

Pollard is very small, weighs maybe 120 pounds, and wears a cowboy hat, Levis, a flannel cowboy shirt, a belt with a big brass buckle.

“I used to think I was Bob Dylan,” he says. “I heard Dylan’s new album the other day. Nashville Skyline. It has a cut on it by Johnny Cash. Hey, sometimes I think I’m Johnny Cash. “Dylan doesn’t sound the same on the new album. He sounds like, oh, Gordon MacRae. He’s about four octaves deeper. And he doesn’t look like he used to look. His voice used to be way up there; now it’s way down there.”

Pollard smiles, and you know what Walt Disney was thinking when Disney promised to make him the biggest star since Mickey Mouse.

“Hey, we’re making this movie,” Pollard says. “It’s going to be called Goodbye, Jesse James. I’m making it with some friends in New York. It’s about these four guys on a rooftop, they’re going to assassinate these people. This man and a chick. Actually, the man and the chick are going to assassinate the four guys, so everybody gets shot. No, the chick tells the story. No, she gets shot too. Hey, everybody gets shot.”

Pollard’s eyes widen at the irony of it.

“Then I’m making this movie for Paramount, called Little Fauss, Big Halsey. About two guys and a chick who meet in Nebraska and go motorcycle racing. No guns.”

Pollard was in Chicago to promote Hannibal Brooks, his first film since he played C.W. Moss, the getaway driver in Bonnie and Clyde. The title role is taken by Oliver Reed, who escapes from a German stalag by piloting an elephant across the Alps. Pollard tags along as the inept leader of an anti-Nazi guerrilla squad. The film was directed by Michael Winner, who previously directed Reed in The Jokers and two other films.

“Reed and Winner were pretty close, having made all those films together,” Pollard said. “And Winner is a fast director. He usually only takes one or two shots for every scene. He’s faster than Roger Corman. But for my scenes, he was taking 17 or 18 takes, man. And no two the same. I can’t ever get them to come out the same anyway.”

Was the role written with you in mind?

“Yes. Well, no.”

Some of your scenes seem to resemble the great scenes in Bonnie and Clyde. Like the scene in the gas station where you meet Bonnie and Clyde.

“Yeah. That gas station scene, you know what? That was the first scene we shot in the whole film. And we did it in one take. Then Arthur Penn and Warren Beatty spent the rest of their time making me play against that scene. I guess they didn’t want me to seem too funny.”

But the scene where you were the getaway driver and you parked the getaway car…

“Yeah. We made that up. See, I can’t drive a car.

There was this guy teaching me, but I couldn’t learn. So here I was stuck in the parking place, and Penn said, Okay, do it that way.”

Pollard shrugged. “Violence. Everybody’s criticizing violence,” he said. “In Bonnie and Clyde, they criticized the violence. That’s dopey, man.

Everybody’s violent. They’re criticizing themselves. Everybody will realize that in a year or so and start on something else. I don’t know. Hey, maybe they’ll start on humor in movies. Too much humor in movies. Children laughing too much.

“But, you know, we make such a big thing about movies. Like sex in movies.

Americans can’t handle sex in movies. Like this whole thing…you know, these two movies, Stolen Kisses and The Graduate. Well, they’re both about the older woman, right? But we have to make it funny. In The Graduate, we make fun of the older woman. But Truffaut, he doesn’t have to do that. In Stolen Kisses, the older woman just teaches the young guy what it’s all about.” Pollard shrugged, took a drag on his cigarette, thought a moment. “Which is what older women are for, I guess.”

Pollard shook his head in disbelief. “Up until 7 this morning,” he said. “Oh. For years I’ve been putting down drinking. Last night, I drank. Wine. My mouth is dry. Hey, I’m a paradox, even to myself. Here I am in Chicago. You know those Plaster Casters? Hey, they’re in Chicago, right? I read about them. I wouldn’t mind meeting the Plaster Casters, I’ll say that much. Well, my old lady might mind. But I mean…well, I don’t do weird things just to do weird things. I’m just weird, man…”

You mean you really can’t drive a car?

“Nobody ever taught me.”

But you ride a motorcycle.

“Yeah, I learned that making the Hell’s Angels picture. But I don’t drive that much. I lied.”

A short silence. “Hey, I don’t know if I’ll call it Goodbye, Jesse James, after all,” Pollard said.

“Maybe I’ll call it Rattlesnake. That’s a good title.” Pollard paused. “I dunno,” he said, “I may not even do it.”

Besides making personal films, what else are you into? “Painting. I paint some. And I write…oh, little things. Maybe someday I’ll put them together into bigger things. Little poems and things. And I paint. I have this white canvas, and on it in vermilion letters is spelled s-e-n-c-e. No, that’s wrong. S-i-n-s-e. Yeah. Sinse.”

What does it mean?

“That words can’t express what you feel.”

 

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24 of Michael J. Pollard’s 112 roles

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TV: The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1959)
‘Michael J. Pollard played Maynard Kreb’s cousin Jerome, also a beatnik. Jerome was intended as a replacement for Maynard when Bob Denver was drafted in mid-1959, and was written out of the show after Denver failed his Army physical and returned to the series.’ — Wiki


full episode

 

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TV: The Andy Griffith Show (1962)
‘Pollard appeared in episode #2-30 of CBS’s The Andy Griffith Show (April 30, 1962), as Barney Fife’s clumsy young cousin, Virgil, who stops by for a visit and manages to wreak havoc at the courthouse in fictional Mayberry, North Carolina.’ — Wiki


Excerpt

 

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James Neilson Summer Magic (1964)
‘Ostensibly a remake of Mother Carey’s Chickens, Summer Magic has little in common with the earlier film other than the idea of a widowed mother suddenly finding herself in an uncertain financial situation. The Disney version is very typical of the kind of live-action family fare the studio turned out at this time — pleasant, a little too cute, and somewhat bland. Dorothy McGuire is warm and motherly, Deborah Walley is great fun, and in a small part, Michael J. Pollard makes a distinct impression. Mills’ next film, The Chalk Garden, would afford her the chance to better stretch her dramatic muscles.’ — collaged


Excerpt

 

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TV: Lost in Space (1966)
‘Bittersweet episode of Lost in Space has the always watchable Michael J Pollard, especially adept at portraying weirdos, guest starring as a mischievous boy who lives in a dimension on the other side of an alien mirror found by Penny (Angela Cartwright, this episode a vehicle mainly for her) and “Bloop” (her alien monkey pet) during a cosmic radiation storm. Dr. Smith (Jonathan Harris) notices that the mirror has this goat head made of platinum (as well as, platinum lining the mirror), with designs on chiseling the precious metal for possible financial benefits later. Bloop “enters” the mirror which serves as a portal to the boy’s dimension, is given a bell, and goes back to Penny, who wants her pet to show her where it found the toy. This leads to Penny accidentally stumbling into the dimension where the lonely boy wants to play games and have fun. Penny, however, is afraid of this eerie, dream-like place, full of statues (seemingly right off the set of a Universal Studios Mummy picture) and “items discarded by others no longer interested in them” (essentially, these are all props probably found around the studio, like a chandelier among other things used to dress sets). Also present is a monster with one eye and husks, for which the boy wants Penny to play hide and seek with, but all she wants to do is get home to her family. Pollard is so youthful and playful here, he really plays his part like a child stuck in the body of a young man, eternally trapped in the body of a teenager, never to grow old but longing for companionship.’ — IMDb

(watch the entire episode)

 

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Norman Jewison The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966)
‘Harkening back to the studio days of the 1950s, The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming brings together an accomplished cast and crew who create a great comedy-of-errors in a family-friendly environment, as well as a film that still offers a powerful impact. Michael J. Pollard, who will go on to be the goofy Bonnie-and-Clyde sidekick, shows that quirky tendency here.’ — collaged



Excerpt

 

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TV: Star Trek (1966)
‘Kim Darby and Michael J. Pollard guest star in this Star Trek prime episode where Darby is in the title role. They are 300 year old children on this planet, a handful of survivors whose growth has been slowed, but not halted. When they reach puberty they will die of the same plague that their parents did. When the Star Trek away team beams down, they all with the exception of Leonard Nimoy due to his Vulcan anatomy all start coming down with what killed the inhabitants. William Shatner has an interesting problem, the only ones who can help are the kids, but they are children and reason like children. But Darby is entering puberty, we know because she finds the grown up captain of the Enterprise attractive. By the way the Enterprise away team are referred to as ‘Grups’ a slang contraction for grownups. And Grups are the enemy of kids. An interesting episode to say the least.’ — IMDb


Excerpt

 

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Roger Corman The Wild Angels (1966)
The Wild Angels is a work of questionable exploitation and the second popular film to tap into public fascination with outlaw motorcycle gangs since The Wild One (Laslo Benedek) in 1953. With a modest budget of about $350,000, and the promise of complete artistic control, Corman hired his friend Charles Griffith to write the screenplay, and the two of them based the script on real stories recounted to them by members of the San Bernadino Hells Angels. Corman shot The Wild Angels in three weeks and entirely on location, at his insistence. His assistant at the time was a young Peter Bogdanovich, who essentially rewrote the script while the film was in production, and the editor was none other than Monte Hellman. Richard Moore is credited as the cinematographer, although it is hard to tell who shot, wrote, or edited individual scenes in this typically communal AIP production. Cast: Peter Fonda, Nancy Sinatra, Bruce Dern, Diane Ladd, Buck Taylor, Mark Cavell, Michael J. Pollard.’ — Senses of Cinema


Trailer

 

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Arthur Penn Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
Bonnie and Clyde is considered a landmark film, and is regarded as one of the first films of the New Hollywood era, since it broke many cinematic taboos and was popular with the younger generation. For some members of the counterculture, the film was considered to be a “rallying cry.” Its success prompted other filmmakers to be more open in presenting sex and violence in their films. The film’s ending also became iconic as “one of the bloodiest death scenes in cinematic history”. Michael J. Pollard received an Academy Award nomination in the Best Supporting Actor category for his performance as dim-witted gas station attendant, C.W. Moss C.W. Moss. He also won a BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles.’ — collaged


Trailer


Excerpt


Michael J. Pollard interview for BONNIE AND CLYDE

 

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James Goldstone Jigsaw (1968)
‘In this thriller, Jonathan Fields (Bradford Dillman) awakens in a strange apartment and finds a dead woman floating in the bathtub after he suffered an LSD-flashback the night before after being dosed by Michael J Pollard. Finding blood upon his hand, he can only wonder how he is involved in the woman’s death. He hires private detective Arthur Belding (Harry Guardino) who has him take another dose of LSD in order to see if he can remember what had happened. Jigsaw is not so much a “who dunnit?” as it is a “how high were they when they dunnit?” film with original music by Quincy Jones and a notable hip-’60s cast that shows off Bradford Dillman’s considerable charisma, Pat Hingle’s dexterity in reaching his chin with his tongue, Victor Jory as smarmy as ever, Hope Lange once again hopelessly attracted to a crash-and-burn type while struggling with propriety, let alone sobriety, and Michael J. Pollard mumbling monologues while effortlessly exhibiting all the cachet of one of those troll dolls from grade school.’ — Twitch Film


Trailer

 

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Michael Winner Hannibal Brooks (1969)
‘British PoW Brooks (Oliver Reed) is assigned to look after an elephant named Lucy, to whom he grows devoted. En route with the elephant from Munich to a safer zoo in Innsbruck, Brooks accidentally kills the Nazi member of the escort (Karsten) and then sets off with Lucy over the mountains to Switzerland. Michael J. Pollard is tiresomely flaky as one ‘Packy’, leader of a private army, and Oliver Reed is not much more than Oliver Reed. Pretty good, though, for a Michael Winner film.’ — Time Out (London)


Excerpt

 

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Sidney J. Furie Little Fauss and Big Halsy (1970)
Little Fauss and Big Halsy is an uneven, sluggish story of two motorcycle racers – Robert Redford playing a callous heel and Michael J. Pollard as a put-upon sidekick who eventually (in modified finale) surpasses his fallen idol. Hampered by a thin screenplay, film is padded further by often-pretentious direction by Sidney J. Furie against expansive physical values. What is very disappointing is the lack of strong dramatic development. Redford’s character is apparent in his very first scene; it never changes. It is in effect the carrier frequency on which Pollard and others must beat, the end result is erratic. Pollard is very good in lending depth to his character, though his dialect often obscures his dialog.’ — Variety


Trailer

 

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Stan Dragoti Dirty Little Billy (1972)
Dirty Little Billy stars cult legend actor Michael J. Pollard as ‘Billy’ and is a tale of how an inept New York teen brought out west transforms into a menacing outlaw. The chemistry between the characters, the balance of humor and drama, and how the story is told, causes my “little grey cells” to dance with ideas. It doesn’t matter that this is fiction inspired by Billy the Kid’s life, or that there aren’t any admirable figures. This is finely crafted entertainment with a scenario that could be set nearly anywhere in the proceeding centuries, presenting the banding of society’s misfits and how each one is molded. This film will be of interest not only to American and Spaghetti Western fans, but to both cinephiles and movie watchers in general.’ — My Kind of Stories


Excerpt

 

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Lucio Fulci Four of the Apocalypse (1975)
‘After escaping death and then wandering through the desolate Utah frontier, gambler Stubby (Fabio Testi), boozer Clem (Michael J. Pollard), pregnant prostitute Bunny (Lynne Frederick) and off-kilter Bud (Harry Baird) enter into a cat-and-mouse game with a vicious and sadistic sharpshooter named Chaco (Tomas Milian). When Chaco crosses the line with Bunny, Stubby exacts revenge. Lucio Fulci directs this explosive spaghetti Western.’ — dvd.netflix.com


Trailer

 

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Jonathan Demme Melvin and Howard (1980)
Melvin and Howard is a 1980 American comedy-drama film directed by Jonathan Demme. The screenplay by Bo Goldman was inspired by real-life Utah service station owner Melvin Dummar, who was listed as the beneficiary of USD$156 million in a will allegedly handwritten by Howard Hughes that was discovered in the headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City. A novelization of Goldman’s script later was written by George Gipe. The film starred Paul Le Mat, Jason Robards, Michael J. Pollard, and, in an Academy Award-winning performance, Mary Steenburgen.’ — collaged


Trailer

 

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Edward Murphy Heated Vengeance (1985)
‘This is a really bad film, and I mean that in the best possible sense. Everything about this film is so totally inept that it is frequently hilarious. Vietnam-vet Hoffman returns to the country to meet up with his lover, but is kidnapped by the crazy Sergeant Bingo, who has a bit of a grudge because Hoffman tried to send him to jail for rape of a Vietnamese girl. He manages to escape, and Bingo then sends his men out after him, into the jungle. You know you’re in trouble when a the cover of a film brags, “Filmed on the same location as Apocalypse Now!” The film can be boring, but there are some hilarious scenes that makes it well worth a watch. I liked the first shot of the movie, which consists of a man firing a machinegun straight into the ground from a helicopter, obviously not more that a few feet above ground. And the bad guy screams and cries and whines like a big sissy, and screams so much that it is, in some scenes, completely impossible to understand what he’s saying.’ — IMDb


Trailer

 

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Maurice Phillips Riders of the Storm (1986)
‘A group of radical Vietnam vets become broadcasting pirates and take on a Presidential candidate in this crazy comedy. The vets and their leader, “Captain,” are television raiders flying all over the country in a B-29 they turned into flying broadcasting station S&M; TV, jamming the airwaves wherever they go. Their self-assigned mission for the past 20 years is to keep the public informed about government activity to stop them from launching another foolish war like Vietnam. To do this they monitor the broadcasts of other television stations and when they don’t like what they hear, they bust in and expose the lies. The bulk of the story centers around their final mission: an all-out attempt to keep Mrs. Willa Westinghouse, an ultra-conservative Presidential candidate and strong proponent of the Cold War and military strength, from winning the election.’ — Rotten Tomatoes


Excerpt

 

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Fred Schepisi Roxanne (1987)
Roxanne doesn’t wallow in misery. Steve Martin’s script and his performance allow fleeting moments of genuine pathos without ruining the film’s comedic tone. When Roxanne tells C.D. she’s enamored of a guy in town, C.D. thinks he’s the lucky guy. After Roxanne describes her man as “handsome,” thereby eliminating C.D. from the suspect list, Martin plays his heartbreak with a devastating, stinging brevity. And when Roxanne discovers she’s been tricked by both C.D. and Chris, rather than emotionally break down, Hannah provides a glimpse of the Elle Driver she’d become 16 years later in Kill Bill. Her physical response is the funniest moment in Roxanne. Roxanne is elevated by some fine supporting turns. The fire department volunteers, which include Michael J. Pollard, Fred Willard and Damon Wayans, are a nice blend of comic incompetence in dire need of heroic redemption.’ — Slant Magazine


Excerpt

 

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Richard Donner Scrooged (1988)
‘In 1988, Pollard played the role of Herman (the homeless guy who thought Bill Murray was Richard Burton) in the movie Scrooged.’ — Wiki


Trailer

 

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TV: Superboy (1989)
‘Pollard is noted for his short stature, which had him playing child roles well into his twenties (including on Star Trek, where he played one of the inhabitants of the planet of children in the episode “Miri”) and resulted in a recurring role as the diminutive trans-dimensional imp Mister Mxyzptlk in two episodes of the Superboy television series.’ — Wiki


Excerpt

 

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Andrey Konchalovskiy Tango & Cash (1989)
‘In 1989, Pollard played ‘Owen’ the inventor of super weapons and a super car in Tango and Cash, starring Kurt Russell and Sylvester Stallone.’ — Wiki


Trailer

 

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Michael A. Simpson Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland (1989)
Teenage Wasteland contains female nudity, innovative gore (there is, after all, an evolving creativity in Angela’s calling as a murderer), and loud music. The directions to this horror recipe are adhered with careful precision, and the film lacks its own, characterizing taste; Teenage Wasteland contains all the ingredients and risks no extraneous addition. Teenage Wasteland is thematically impotent and unentertaining. Though there is a discernable humor in its deliberate employment of horror clichés, the same joke is told over and over — and in its frequency the punch line is less effective with each overpronounced utterance. And the joke wasn’t very funny to begin with. Cult legend Michael J. Pollard plays a minor role.’ — notcoming.com


Excerpt

 

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Barry Shils Motorama (1991)
Motorama is an American road movie released in 1991. It is a surrealistic film about a ten-year-old runaway boy (played by Jordan Christopher Michael) on a road trip for the purpose of collecting game pieces (cards) from the fictional “Chimera” gas stations, in order to spell out the word M-O-T-O-R-A-M-A. By doing so he will supposedly win the grand prize of $500 million. The film features cameos by Drew Barrymore, Flea, Michael J. Pollard, Jack Nance, Robert Picardo, Martha Quinn, and Meat Loaf.’ — collaged


Trailer

 

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Clark Brandon Skeeter (1993)
‘A small town in the desert is terrorized by over-sized mosquitoes (hence the rather cutesy title). Ecology-minded thriller is fairly pallid, even by the standards of low-rent B-flicks and monster-genre schlock, with laughable special effects and poor dialogue. Former teen idol Clark Brandon co-wrote the script and also directed–and may have been in over his head. Brandon was lucky to get ever-surly Charles Napier cast as sheriff Ernie Buckle, yet Napier has played this kind of character far too many times by now and can’t bring anything fresh to the scenario (it doesn’t help that Napier also looks a little sheepish about the whole mess). Michael J. Pollard gets some laughs as a local weirdo, but the rest of the players are at a complete loss.’ — IMDb


Trailer

 

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Rob Zombie House of 1000 Corpses (2003)
‘A cobwebbed, mummified horror entry that makes obvious, cartoonishly grotesque demands for attention. The endless gore and violence make the experience torturous — and not just for the victims in the movie. The end results are almost strangely devoid of thrills, shocks or horror, other than the sight of not one but two former Oscar nominees (Black and Michael J. Pollard) reduced to such a pitiable career state.’ — collaged


Excerpt

 

 

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p.s. Hey. Michael J. Pollard was/is a charismatic charm-smith of an actor in a bunch of cool, often offbeat films. Get into him today please. And if you’re in LA, please come see PERMANENT GREEN LIGHT tonight at 7:30 pm at Civic Center Studios.

Directed by Jerry Lewis *

* (restored)

‘Jerry Lewis is the only American director who has made progressive films. He was much better than Chaplin and Keaton. He could have made marvelous movies, but he won’t now…because of the time in which he is living. If he had lived during the October Revolution, he might have made a magnificent movie.’ — Jean-Luc Godard

‘The setting: a small movie theater on Paris’s Left Bank, not far from the Latin Quarter as well as the chic stores on rue de Grenelle and boulevard Saint-Germain. The time: 14.00 on a recent Wednesday afternoon. The scene: 25 or so people lined up in the hot July sun waiting for tickets to go on sale for the inaugural screening of an actual two-week Jerry Lewis film festival. Today’s movie is The Nutty Professor—or Docteur Jerry et Mister Love, as the 1963 film is known in France. A Jekyll-and-Hyde takeoff, it is widely regarded as among Lewis’s finest works as writer-director-star. The ticket queue is well behaved but palpably eager.

‘Whetting our appetite, a handbill for the retrospective quotes Robert Benayoun, film critic and director of the documentary Bonjour Monsieur Lewis, on The Nutty Professor: it is a work that “confirms” Lewis as “not only a corrosive satirist but . . . an audacious colorist, and a bold juggler of sonic effect.” A catalog, written by the film historian Emmanuel Droux, author of Le Cinema Burlesque, pokes fun at critics who cite this movie as the masterpiece in Lewis’s oeuvre—as if there were only one! That said, Droux notes that The Nutty Professor “remains a staggering film,” so much so that even Americans, despite their inexplicable aversion to Lewis, seem to appreciate it. That is true: Eddie Murphy remade the picture in 1996, successfully enough that a sequel followed in 2000, and a third has been threatened. In 2004 the original was added to the Library of Congress’s National Film Register (though it is possible this was merely a harmless sop to French sensibilities at a low point in Franco-American relations).

‘The Parisians outside the theater are happy to share their own enthusiasm for Lewis’s work. I introduce myself to one elderly, stylish woman—unabashedly gray hair, nicely coifed—and explain in my infantile French that Americans are fascinated and amused by the French passion for Lewis and would she be so kind as to explain why this passion persists. “Pourquoi?” she asks with a shrug. “Pourquoi?” The question lingers in the air, rhetorically, philosophically, as if the answer were both obvious and beyond words.

‘A younger woman—silk scarf despite the heat—answers me in English. “Because he is funny,” she says with a smile and an infectious laugh. Bien sûr: That would be my answer, too, if I agreed with it.

‘A middle-aged man—cargo shorts, mandals—is eager to talk “Jerry.” He praises the director’s technical innovations, including his pioneering use of video playback; bemoans older prints of the films in which Lewis’s mewling nasal-isms were dubbed into French (“You miss the nuance—it would be like for you hearing Gérard Depardieu in English”); and speaks knowledgeably about even the more obscure corners of the filmmaker-star’s oeuvre, including The Day the Clown Cried, an unfinished and rarely seen Holocaust-circus drama.

‘The man turns to his wife, and in French, as best as I can make out, they discuss the perfection of a particular camera movement from The Ladies’ Man (1961), which is also on the festival program. “Jerry is one of the best directors of the 1960s,” the man then says to me in English, summing up, a hint of emotion in his voice. “I put him with Godard and Leone.”

‘The tickets finally go on sale, and we file into the theater. By the time the lights go down, the auditorium is a third to a half full, maybe 120 people; not a Cannes premiere, but not bad—even in a country with nearly 11 percent unemployment—for a Wednesday afternoon.

‘I have seen The Nutty Professor before and am not a fan, though sitting among this audience, in this city, I hope to discover whatever it is that has previously eluded me. I do like some of Lewis’s earlier comedies with Dean Martin—try Artists and Models or Hollywood or Bust, both directed by Frank Tashlin—but most of his work as a director and solo star I find . . . well, unfunny, I guess I’d have to say.

‘The humor continues to elude me this afternoon but no one else: the audience laughs appreciatively at even the corniest gags and most belabored slapstick, digging deeper now and then for scattered belly laughs and guffaws. One woman gasps “Non!” in pleasure-pain when the director telegraphs an impending pratfall involving barbells.

‘I half-get the intellectual appeal: as a director, Lewis takes the kind of formal experiments Hitchcock loved and applies them to comedy. The Nutty Professor, for instance, has some nice bits involving exaggerated sounds as well as long silences. Lewis’s gags may not make you laugh, but you can unpack them—the ones that involve more than him crossing his eyes—the way you can unpack a Hitchcock camera move, a Godard edit, or the color of a Douglas Sirk set.

‘Speaking of which: this has been advertised as a restored version of The Nutty Professor, but the hues are wan and bleached out, lacking the acrylic, color-wheel pop I remember from previous viewing—and as my friend on line pointed out, with Lewis “everything is about the color.” A New York audience at Film Forum, say, or Lincoln Center, would be screaming at the projectionist and demanding refunds. But the Paris audience doesn’t seem to care. Bathing in genius, even improperly filtered genius, appears to be reward enough. Or maybe Jerry intended the hues to be wan? A reflection of the colorless, dehumanizing modern society that is the comedian-trickster’s foil? Anyway, lights up. Applause.’ — Bruce Handy

 

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Stills























































 

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Further

Jerry Lewis @ IMDb
The Official Jerry Lewis Comedy Museum and Store
Jonathan Rosenbaum ‘The Lewis Contradiction’
‘Was there ever a man or movie star less ordinary than Jerry Lewis?’
‘Repelling Rejection, or: The Disappearance of Jerry Lewis, and Some Side-Effects’
‘You Have To See… The Ladies Man
‘METHOD TO THE MADNESS OF JERRY LEWIS’
‘Digging Down Deep: Jerry Lewis in Conversation With Peter Bogdanovich’
‘OF JERRY LEWIS, THE FRENCH, AND AN UNDYING MYTH’
’11 Facts You May Not Know About Jerry Lewis’
‘”The Jerry Lewis”: The Untold Story of the Beastie Boys Single That Never Was’
King of Comedy: The Jerry Lewis Page
‘Jerry-atrics!’
Book: ‘Why the French Love Jerry Lewis’
‘The Ramones on the Jerry Lewis Telethon’
Jerry Lewis Fans Forum
‘Jerry Lewis and Love’
JERRY LEWIS FOREVER JOURNAL

 

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Martin Scorsese, Jacques Rivette, Louis Malle, Luc Moullet, Orson Welles, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Jean-Luc Godard reflect on Jerry Lewis

 

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Jerry Lewis interviewed by Dick Cavett

 

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Jerry Lewis Teaching Filmmaking at USC in 1967

 

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The Total Film-Maker, Jerry Lewis’ book on filmmaking, is taken from 480 hours of audio tape, recorded as Jerry taught filmmaking at the University of Southern California, 1970. It’s considered one of the best books written about filmmaking ever. It was printed in 1971 and has been out of print since then.’ — Cinephilia and Beyond

 

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13 of Jerry Lewis’s 13 films

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The Bell Boy (1960)
The Bellboy opens with a comically defensive apologia-cum-defense of the film’s alleged “plotless” nature via Jackie Mulchen (actually character actor Jack Kruschen), the “executive producer in charge of all productions” at Paramount, who describes the film as nothing more complicated than “the diary of a few weeks in the life of a real nut.” In retrospect, the nod toward modesty that kicks off Jerry Lewis’s career as a director is probably a punchline in itself, as The Bellboy clearly sets a standard of self-involvement and examination in Lewis’s work that is so successfully hermetic that it scarcely needs the approval of the audience. (In fact, the film’s centerpiece scene portrays Lewis conducting an imaginary orchestra in front of a vast ballroom of empty chairs, in effect suggesting that all the cinema of Jerry Lewis needs is Jerry Lewis.) The Bellboy is nearly silent, in what could easily be taken as a nod toward French comedy titan Jacques Tati, though Lewis centralizes and foregrounds his cinematic alter ego (the bumbling, premasculine social misfit) whereas Tati spent his career trying to move himself back into the fabric of society. It could more likely be that the silent schematic is merely one characteristic of a cinematic work by a man intent on stripping away all elements that might distract from his more immediate themes: celebrity solipsism, as well as the havoc wreaked on solipsism by the intrusion of an alter ego. (It’s a theme that would eventually be refined and partially sterilized in The Nutty Professor.)’ — Paste Magazine


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The Ladies Man (1961)
‘Whether you’re a fan of Lewis’s eccentric comedy or not, this film is worth watching for its legendary “dollhouse” set alone, supposedly the largest built by that time (it occupied two Paramount soundstages), and still one of the most elaborate ever constructed. Within the film, the dollhouse is an all-female boarding house, where Lewis’s character (the woman-hating Herbert Heebert—obviously a stab at the recently published Lolita) rents a room for reasons quite frankly unimportant (i.e., so that there can be a movie). Once ensconced, Lewis restlessly mines the cavernous interior for jokes (did you see the part where he splits into four, four minutes into the above clip?) as well as metatexual play. Unsurprisingly, that set inspired homages in several other films: Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin’s Tout va bien, Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and others.’ — Big Other


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Jerry Lewis on “The Ladies’ Man”

 

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The Errand Boy (1961)
‘The perfect companion piece for Jerry’s directorial debut The Bellboy, The Errand Boy is both its mirror and its opposite. Again, we’re given a minimally-plotted series of outrageous gags riffing on the misadventures of a lowly schlemiel in a big, pretentious institution — but whereas The Bellboy was a quiet film, a silent film homage in an environment of luxury and relaxation, The Errand Boy is more like a noisy, manic film shoot wrap party capturing all the crazed energy of the biz. It’s also Jerry’s love letter to filmmaking — shot all over the Paramount lot, it’s a virtual documentary of the industry that could have been called “A Day at the Studio.” The film gives you riffs on every aspect of filmmaking, from ADR sessions to test-screenings, and every profession is gently mocked from the mailroom shlubs all the way up to the starlets. A rollicking, raucous, timeless romp!’ — Cinefamily


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The Nutty Professor (1963)
‘For decades, Jerry Lewis has been the butt of jokes having to do with the French. Despite his particular genius onscreen, and his technical prowess offscreen as an innovative Hollywood director, most Americans have written him off as if to say, “if the French love him so much, they can have him.” Even Lewis detractors will begrudgingly admit that The Nutty Professor (1963) is a good and funny film. Lewis plays a dual role as the nerdy weakling Professor Kelp and the arrogant, super-cool nightclub lizard Buddy Love, after the professor invents a formula to make himself stronger and more confident. Mostly he does this to impress his unbearably adorable student Miss Purdy (Playboy Playmate Stella Stevens, in her most famous role). Lewis presents the film with a bright, bold color palate, emphasizing primary candy-store colors, but darkening them for the appropriate moments, such as the first (fairly frightening) transformation sequence. His eye for visual and aural humor really comes out here, as in the sequence when a big buffoon of a student stuffs the professor onto a shelf. We hear the stuffing and the tinkling of glass, and then the student walks across the frame, giving a slow reveal to the visual payoff. Lewis also shows a genius for silence, timing long, quiet moments before a gag, such as visiting the dean’s office and sinking into his soft leather chairs with a withering sigh.’ — Combustible Celluloid


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Jerry Lewis on ‘The Nutty Professor’

 

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The Patsy (1964)
‘In one of the most self-reflexive films in the Lewis canon (originally conceived as a sequel called Son of the Bellboy), The Patsy chronicles a young bellboy chosen at random to be transformed into a famous actor, Pygmalion-style, by an out-of-work entourage who just lost their movie star employer in a freak accident. What transpires is a stage-by-stage satire of the Hollywood machine, and some of Jerry’s best signature fake-bad performance pieces — a hapless and hilarious attempt at lip-synching, the ultimate cringe-inducing, cricket-chirping standup act, and a singing lesson that literally brings down the house. Here, Jerry’s perfectionist nature also shines, as the famous “vase” sequence is a master stroke in physical timing — requiring weeks of rehearsal just to stage himself catching a plethora of falling vases in mid-air a fraction of a second before they would smash on the ground. The last of Jerry’s big-budget Paramount pictures, The Patsy closes out an era in style — and with plenty of deep laughs.’ — Cinefamily


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The Family Jewels (1965)
‘In his Senses of Cinema profile on Jerry Lewis’s directorial career, Chris Fujiwara notes that The Family Jewels is something of a transitional film between Lewis’s classical period and his diffuse, presumably more uncontrolled films. Considering that it brings back a reasonable facsimile of Dr. Julius from The Nutty Professor, it occasionally plays like the extended version of his film-capping curtain calls. In a storyline that dangles perilously over the edge of cutesiness at a number of turns, Family Jewels centers around a rich, recently orphaned girl, Miss Donna Peyton (Donna Butterworth, in a thankfully unsugary performance that’s half precociousness and half tomboy), who will inherit her family’s $30 million till if she successfully chooses one of her six uncles to be her new father. Like Nutty Professor, the film’s premise seems to center around a very clear set of narrative rules, but they are all but undercut in the first scene by the notion that Donna’s most suitable guardian is her family’s chauffer Willard (Lewis, who also plays the film’s parade of six uncles). The two exchange hugs, kisses, in-jokes, and every other possible iteration of filial love to the extent that the film’s eventual plot outcome is as devoid of “suspense” as possible. This accounts for the vaguely funereal tone of the film, set clearly by the scene Fujiwara isolates: the desultorily contemptuous monologue spoken by Donna’s Uncle Everett (in clown make-up) about how much he loathes his audience, “squealing brats” all of them.’ — Slant Magazine


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JERRY LEWIS directing ‘The Family Jewels’: tribute

 

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Three on a Couch (1966)
‘“There couldn’t be two Christopher Prides,” is one of the first sentences with which Jerry’s character introduces himself. That Pride is an artist given to masquerade and manipulation for reasons of the heart once more underlines the prominence given by Jerry to parallels between his film incarnations and his real-life situation. Overall, Three on a Couch may not be Jerry’s greatest achievement, but the touching and even the dark parts of his shenanigans resonate. Despite a few quintessentially Lewisian detours into the crazy—for example, an incredible, incoherent monologue in entomologist disguise, consisting of perfectly timed rapid-fire half-sentences nervously delivered with utmost conviction—this is the first of his directorial efforts for which he takes no co-writing credit. The screenplay is essentially a typical farce, obliquely reflecting that boulevard theatre perennial Boeing Boeing, the film adaptation of which Jerry had co-starred in a year earlier. Three on a Couch follows Jerry’s deliberate divorce from the “kid” aspect of his persona, already announced in many ways with The Family Jewels. As Pride, he is the romantic lead, whose mounting hysteria is purposely more interesting than anything relating to the three dream-lover types (plus one’s sister) that he impersonates, which register almost as sarcastic self-parodies (cigar-chomping cowboy, nerd scientist, etc.). The film builds to a climax with an extended party scene, but Lewis replaces Blake Edwards’ elegance with his own impressive, increasingly oppressive and nightmarish arrangement of frenetic comedy via crisscrossing encounters. Also worth noting is that the multiplication of Jerry here is a ruse, just a series of performances, and not some surreal proliferation as elsewhere. Stalwart supporter Kathleen Freeman, usually suffering sensationally at the hands of Jerry’s slapstick, is even allowed to switch sides for once—while Buddy Lester climbs new peaks of inebriated inspiration, including an unforgettable cab-door slow-burn—then saves the day after Jerry’s trick has been exposed and only the threat of suicide remains. A work of disconcerting containment.’ — Cinema-scope



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The Big Mouth (1967)
‘If Thomas Pynchon were a filmmaker instead of a novelist and had directed only The Big Mouth, he might have understandably left it at that—so we should be grateful Jerry stepped in and continued. In the film, individual identity implodes (its arbitrariness, a key Lewis theme, becomes fully threatening) while paranoia is rampant, possibly even inevitable as the only sane reaction to an insane world governed by unspeakable forces—no wonder Jerry as Gary Clamson gives up speaking as the narrative progresses, amplifying the link to The Bellboy with its (almost-)mute Jerry and vacationland premises, this time San Diego in full colour and turned completely sour. Mild-mannered bank examiner Clamson’s annual fishing holiday disintegrates after he (literally) reels in his gangster double and is given a treasure map, which Fu Manchu-type enforcers (ridiculous fake beards included) try to retrieve, resulting in three nervous breakdowns, each hood frozen into an eternal stage of comedy: a dumb dog, a stooge (Larry Fine), and a Buddy Lester showcase of twitching nerves and garbled speech. Police are of no help, but suffer their own breakdown, sidetracked into debating the meaning of their own codes; an FBI agent turns out to have long retreated into mental collapse. Jerry disappears into disguises (Kabuki in Sea World?), but there is no refuge, only hysterical extension (as in the Möbius strip chase moment and the good ol’ leg-stretch gag) or elliptical reduction, as overall breakdown leads towards wanton aggression in all directions. (This is especially true of the finale, in which several protracted showdown possibilities—helicopter rescue; then Clamson cornered by gangsters on the shore only to be saved by the unlikely reappearance of his double—are telegraphed via a handful of quick shots.) Meanwhile, Robert Aldrich’s house composer Frank De Vol strolls around to intermittently interrupt the proceedings as narrator, madly dashing off in the end to expose that he’s not wearing trousers. Painfully funny indeed, The Big Mouth precedes Preminger’s Skidoo and Edwards’ The Party by a year, and like those films is a visionary splintered-society satire cutting through delusions. (What’s real? Advertising and Col. Sanders, who appears in an otherwise pointless cameo.) Only complaint: it should be longer.’ — Cinema-scope


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One More Time (1970)
‘Understandably, but unfortunately, neglected even by Jerry enthusiasts (and not included in the retrospective, but unearthed on an old VHS tape), this is the only film Jerry directed without starring in: a sequel to Salt and Pepper (1968) with Sammy Davis, Jr. and Peter Lawford as the eponymous groovy-guys duo drawn into a murder plot. Which brings us to the problem with the narrative (much more pronounced here than in Three on a Couch), which weighs down the film with exposition and weak comedic banter, filmed competently enough and allowing for occasional auteurist insights. (There’s a good reason why Jerry usually prefers a freewheeling structure.) But the interest lies elsewhere, in digressions like a butler serving a meal so slowly that inserts show Lawford growing a beard, flowers withering, and white streaks appearing in Davis’ hair, or a non-sequitur trip to the cellar leading to a monstrous line-up unique in horror history, as Davis’ Hammer pals Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing cameo unbilled in their signature roles. Sudden urges for punchy visualizations are welcome, but rare: at a funeral, the leg-parade of hot black-clad groupies sidetracks an assassin’s cross-haired gaze; a weird explanatory flashback while looking at the painting of a castle (the corresponding picture-postcard view on film comes with the end credits). But Jerry is always tickled by performance, notably Davis’ songs and comedy routines, which obviously cannot compare to the Jer. His actors put on acts for each other (a costume party included), and Jerry lavishes the insistent attention on them that he usually centres on himself. It is at times hard to bear, leaving the audience with a koan to contemplate: What’s Jerry without Jerry? (A bandleader’s voice.)’ — Cinema-scope


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Which Way to The Front? (1970)
‘Probably the most sustained demonstration of rhythmic brilliance in Jerry’s work. He starts out bored at a board meeting, sucking on a pacifier, as palpable exhaustion, even despair, hangs over his richest man in the world, Brendan Byers III, and his staff. These protracted silences are followed by an increasingly breathless movement to a pile-up of rat-a-tat pseudo-Teutonic gibberish, mostly—but not only—by Jerry himself, who is seen preparing by listening to “Music to Mein Kampf By.” Confronted with the draft board’s rejection (the one word that the supercapitalist cannot bear), Byers III insists on “every man’s right to be killed fighting for his country.” The year is supposedly 1943—the insert of the date itself a quiet joke in the opening scene, with decor, attire, haircuts, etc. undisguisedly contemporary, as are later stylistic choices like transition swish-pans and punch line freeze-frames. But how far can you be from Vietnam? The absolutely idiotic yet stroke-of-genius coda even continues (ending) the war in Asia, Jerry-trademarked buck teeth and all. Before that (and long before Tarantino), this Jewish retribution fantasy updates the old Nazi impersonation shtick to The Dirty Dozen (1967) times: buying his own army, Byers starts a private war, leading first to his German double Field Marshal Kesselring, with everybody in the platoon getting to strut their version of his silly walk, before Kesselring is captured in a surreally spasmodic scene, then abruptly replaced by Byers, causing a topsy-turvy confusion. (Soon after, Jerry-as-Byers-as-Kesselring mutilates/decorates a German soldier bearing Lewis’ own birth name, Levitch.) As a finale, there’s the uncanny meeting of finance and Führer, who first performs The Great Dictator (1940) ballet in slow motion, then does a satchel-with-a-bomb exchange pas de deux with Jerry. Which way to the Clown? The mind boggles.’ — Cinema-scope


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The Day the Clown Cried (1972)
‘Jerry Lewis has sworn repeatedly over the years that he would never let the 1972 movie about a clown who led Jewish children to their deaths during the Holocaust, which he directed and starred in, see the light of day. In the film, Lewis plays a down-on-his-luck German circus clown named Helmut Doork, arrested after drunkenly mocking Adolf Hitler and placed in a concentration camp awaiting trial. He later boards a train headed to Auschwitz packed with Jewish children, and, once there, is forced to perform for them, Pied Piper-style, as they are led to the gas chambers. Helmut joins them in the gas chamber in the film’s final scene. The unseen film, its premise seemingly ripe for epic failure, has grown into a cult-obsession for cinephiles over the years. Those few who have seen it say it is as bad as it sounds: “You’re stunned,” says comedian and The Simpsons voice-actor Harry Shearer, who has seen the full film, of the movie’s awfulness.’ — The Hollywood Reporter


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rare clips from the film set


Jerry Lewis answers THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED question

 

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Hardly Working (1980)
‘What a comeback: “Jerry Lewis Is Hardly Working,” is the pun in the credits, and the shorter, lesser US cut is even front-loaded with a montage of signature moments from earlier films, set to the famous typewriter sketch accompaniment, as if Jerry needed a reintroduction after a decade of big-screen absence. Made on the cheap and on the spot in Florida (closing a circle with The Bellboy), this may be the most melancholic film in the Jerriad despite numerous uproarious bits like the Japanese chef assault. In The Family Jewels, Jerry’s classic clown make-up masked the bad, here it can no longer mask the sad: Bo Hopper, insecure circus performer, has his brief moment of affirmation, then the banks close down his tour. “There is no place for clowns in this world,” Bo later muses (except for politics, he adds: Hardly Working was released first in West Germany 11 days after Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, and over a year later in the US), and his attempts to gain employment are inevitably foiled by a natural penchant for disaster (demonstrations range from elaborate slapstick at a gas station to an off-screen symphony of shattering glass as he’s shown out of a mirror factory). Applying himself as a mishap-prone postal worker, Bo gradually manages to fit in, until he succeeds with a postal delivery tour de force of mechanical precision—he’s become a cog in the machine, but realizes it will cost him his soul. It’s the outsider’s fictional last stand in a real landscape of economic decline, still saturated by commercial content, with Jerry’s generally overemphasized product placement reaching the point of inversion: the world itself has become a billboard. It’s product as magic potion, as phrased in the opening narration of The Errand Boy (1961), whose depressive undertow has spread outwards from Hollywood to conquer the Earth. Down to Jerry’s disappearance into the landscape in an undistinguished last shot, this would have been a perfect final film.’ — Cinema-scope


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Cracking Up (1983)
‘Thus, inevitably, he made another, making the ever-present concept of suicide in Jerry’s films (literally or artistic, attempted or accidental) the through-line for a last loose, soaring series of sketches, stripped down to essentials. Jerry—”Who else?” asks the credits, while Marcel Marceau beautifully sings the main theme—plays Warren Nefron, first seen failing to end his life (loose noose, etc.) until a gunshot is discharged into a TV set, which shoots back: the world reclaimed as stage for a final performance, including a bit of bank-robbing turned musical show for the surveillance camera, or minutes of meticulous slipping and sliding on squeaky furniture and a red studio floor in the office of a psychiatrist whom Warren regales with his grotesque family history reaching back to 15th-century France. There are further misguided suicide attempts: dousing himself in gasoline, Jerry casually searches his pockets only to realize he has forgotten a lighter, then stoically wanders off in wet defeat as the wind whistles. Ultimately redemption is glimpsed, although the rest of the world is instantly engulfed by chaos again. A tacked-on last scene shows Jerry leaving a screening, asked how the movie was: “It’s really good, you know!” The only possible shortcoming, as pointed out by Jerry expert Chris Fujiwara: “Too entertaining.”’ — Cinema-scope


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p.s. Hey. So this will be my last live p.s. for, I would guess, approximately a week as I’ll be caught up in the screenings of PERMANENT GREEN LIGHT and traveling. If you’re in SF (Feb. 3, 4) or LA (Feb. 7) please come. You’ll get restored posts in the meantime, and I’ll give a heads up about the exact date of my live return in the posts’ truncated p.s.es once I know. Thanks! ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. I know, I remember. It was beautiful even to drive by that. Thanks about my lag. Unfortunately I jump on a plane to SF today, but I’ll be fine. ** Nik, Hi. Oh, my trip has been about warding off sleepiness so far and trying to extend the time of my bedtime so I won’t be too zoned out for the screenings starting tomorrow. We’ll see. There are screenings in San Francisco tomorrow and Monday, and then Zac and I will drive back to LA for the one here. Other than that, see some friends, I hope. As far as DVD extras, other than an interview, I don’t know. That might be it. On the LCTG DVD, we had a scene we’d shot but decided not to use in the film that we liked, so that was the Extra. Oh, good news about Peggy Ahwesh’s class. I would have imagined that will be pretty cool. That’s a nice first film combo. Yes, I’ve seen both, and it’s a sharp juxtaposition. I’m a big Maddin fan. Thanks a lot. You have swell weekend, and, well, next week, and I look forward to talking with you again pronto. ** _Black_Acrylic, Thanks, Ben. I’m off to SF today, but hopefully that’ll work. Oh, shit, should I remove that link? I doubt they’d be able to find it, but I’m happy to. Great luck with the applications. ** Damien Ark, Hi, Damien! Yeah, the PGL + Puce Mary combo should be pretty killer. They’re a good couple, I think. Well, that is indeed extremely good news, man! Whoa! Killer! Yes, I will share right now, for sure. And I’ll get to it asap, of course. Fantastic! Everyone, A great treat! The awesome scribe Damien Ark has some excerpts from his forthcoming novel ‘Fucked Up’ available for your reading pleasure on the Expat Press site, and, needless to say, I super encourage you to reward yourselves with a read. Here. Again, congrats! That’s really such good news! Take care, buddy. ** Keaton73, Ooh, beautiful destruction. Nothing better? ** Okay. This weekend I return to life my post making the case for Jerry Lewis as a filmmaking auteur, which is a controversial idea outside of France, I think. Give it a chance. The blog will see you on Monday, and I will rejoin it and see you again in some days. Have great weekends, etc.!

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