Jerry Lewis Interview 1983 Brian Linehan's City Lights

city lights on location joins Jerry Lewis on location in Miami the film is the king of comedy before I express my enthusiasm for you and the film I'd like to thank you and what I want to thank you for I've never met you not had an interview with you before it's just the reality for me of making my youth a more pleasant place because the memories of specific movies I've talked about you so often behind your back people in the industry the other one one of you know talking to Shirley MacLaine about artists and models talking to people Oliver and saying things about what Jerry Lewis meant to those of us for whom Saturday afternoon at the Bijou was something that got you through Monday to Friday mm-my thank you thank you you're welcome that I love to hear that I love that when people say I've grown up with you I really like that it's true it's nice I mean 48 films 56 years 51 of those years devoted to entertaining us yeah I've been busy in hell haven't I you had a killer the last couple of years yeah pretty much when when I said hello and told you that I was a Canadian you told me something I did not know about you and that was something called the gaiety theatre yeah in Toronto right it was the only burlesque house in Toronto and one of the better Bareilles couses there was the Palace Theatre in Buffalo there was the gaiety in Toronto and you played the two weeks if you were lucky you played Buffalo first then you play Toronto well in Toronto that was my first time in Canada I was terribly shook at the thought of going from Buffalo to Canada when I realized I didn't have a passport I mean that's really naive right and I went through the process of finding out how I get across and I said you get on a bus idiot you right over there but the Gaiety theatre was across the street from the Statler Hotel and the Statler Hotel looked a little like Beirut does today it was just one floor of war rooms and I think I'm staying at the Statler until they walked me across the street and they said do you think you're going to pay four dollars a week at a real Statler now the Statler is gone in toronto the Gaiety theatre is gone and all of what I just told you you could just wonder about but check it and you'll see it's true all right and I made a hundred and ten dollars a week Canadian her us I don't think I think it was paid in Canadian yeah I lost Daniel lost money I knew I got screwed going on that date listen it could have been worse now it's 20 cents on the dollar you won't really want to go to Mexico and have some fun as long as it's not do you want it when when you talk about the King of Comedy and you say you have said I'd love to have you think it's great acting but all I had to do was react to Robert De Niro's creation of Rupert Pupkin when I sit there and have Laurence Olivier's biography open after having read yours and Lord Olivier maintains that great acting is reacting it's listening can we qualify what seems to be your minimization of reacting and listening if Lord Olivier said that he probably knows what he's talking about and if I said the other I probably don't I like what he said I got to it okay I just I just think that so many extraordinary things I know so many extraordinary things were going on on the set with you Martin Scorsese Robert De Niro and company I mean you weren't you went off for two days to winston-salem North Carolina to play golf and while you were gone Robert DeNiro said I want to watch exactly like Jerry's you know he wanted mine he wanted your own watch yes did you give Tim yeah he would not do the scene unless he was wearing my watch and we had a sent to New York at my driver drive it out in a limo from New York to the location which was a couple hours away and until I got security to open the suite at the hotel calling from North I line that watch got to Bobby around four o'clock that afternoon the scene was only a two line scene in the whole picture he was wearing a jacket and a shirt but he wanted to wear that watch which helped him he was supposed to emulate me the character that helped him now you want to call that eccentric cuckoo nuts bonkers I say that's the stuff that gets Raging Bull on the screen and no one will have a dispute it with an artist like Bobby I won't if I heard the story I would say well that's nuts come on I've directed actors before and I've seen how they work and so on when I watched this whole process I repeat whatever Bobby DeNiro does to get that kind of performance on the screen don't tell me he's bonkers he knows what he's doing as an artist who cannot only be referred to as the total filmmaker but published a volume as the total filmmaker and can lecture at universities the way you do you are the disciplinarian you are on the set when you find yourself on a set with Martin Scorsese and there seems to be ostensibly a lack of discipline because it's 8 o'clock in the morning and Jerry's not only on time he's early and the crew was chuckling because they didn't Marty she didn't show up until 1:30 or 2:00 o'clock that afternoon it was mind-boggling the first few days I never had never seen that kind of a sloppy discipline it wasn't sloppy at all it was all by design and I think Bobby De Niro's performance is on that screen again when I'm aware that Martin Scorsese can say I was a Jerry Lewis fan before this began Jerry Lewis was helpful not only as an actor he was helpful as the total filmmaker when you turn to Robert De Niro and you say before a scene your timings too good Rupert Pupkin isn't that good right and you teach Robert De Niro how to be less good it was tough it's tough to teach someone how to time poorly but Bobby learns his craft and learns what he has to do and in this case he learned it just a hair too well and he was just too slick and then Marty came to me and asked me to help Bobby be less than slick and I stopped I would I would assume that the slickness came from those days and weeks that robert deniro spent in a screening room studying clinically all of your films when you could do a visual gag to Robert De Niro on the set and he could name the movie the scene that preceded it and what was about to happen wasn't it just a little alarming to think is this man going to do all 48 of my movies including smorgasbord and slapstick while I'm here it's a little alarming when you're looking at one of the greatest actors that ever lived who could easily be referred to as the largest fan you have in the world that's that's that's disarming and alarming and mind-boggling and and very very humbling when your director Martin Scorsese sends you out onto the street in New York and Jerry Lewis and Jerry Langford somehow cinematically become one and we see this reaction there's there's an extraordinary sense of there's a movie happening within a movie and there is a man playing the most famous television person in the world and this famous man in the world walking down the street and I had the feeling that Scorsese had sent you out on a mission of cinema verite and Jerry Lewis was being challenged to get down that street while they were doing a tracking shot wasn't there an incident of a little old lady who came out and did what can only be described as a triple take knowing it was Jerry Lewis and finding an assistant director came out and got her out of the shot oh yeah yeah she walked about 40 feet with me she just couldn't believe it you are really and I want her to know there's a truck right there with camera and crew and I couldn't get it out she's I don't believe that you're are you telling me that you're him and I'm walking and she went some forty feet with me and we've got all that footage and I had to keep going because we had a second camera at the end of this setup and I had to meet that so I'm trying to get as far around as I can and shake her hoping they're gonna zoom a little tighter to lose her we have her she's full inch ain't a movie but she's in that piece then of course I'm walking down the street and all the construction workers yell hey Jerry and it all works we talked about Marty and I talked about if there was going to be so much street stuff in New York let's call the character Jerry now there's one marvelous moment in the film where I'm standing totally alone at 65th of Madison and this lady walked up and she looked at me and she's looking at the traffic lights and she looked at me again and looked at the traffic light and then she leaned forward he said Jerry Lewis son of a gun if she'd had just said Jerry son of a gun we'd have had it and we'd had kept it but she put the name together and I looked at her I said son of a and we cut it would have been super if she did you're such a well the time I got sorry though well Jerry Langford is not based on any one individual you did have what you described as a casual conversation with Johnny Carson there was one description where Jerry Langford might be a combination of Johnny Carson and Walter Cronkite where his flippancy is never sacrificed for his trustworthiness and/or dependability to his audience when we sit there and we watch this and realize what really is happening in the world how we see the underside of celebrity what really happens with celebrity being wheeled into surgery being asked by Helen for your autograph there's a sense of being so frightened the movie terrifies in one aspect while you're being entertained and you're looking and listening and learning you're frightened it frightened me that way because it's real it's real it's honest it's out there have to be aware of it the word fanatic is a frightening word well what's the first three letters fan that's it that's the name of town scratch a fan when you were having one of the one of the confrontation scenes with Robert De Niro and in that unique improvisational way racial slurs epithets were being thrown at you you were both building into the scene you said it was frightening when you did it but when you saw it on the screen it was a doubly frightening why doubly when you saw the result well because I am performing something I've never performed before in that in that intensity kind of performance now to see the character or to see myself because I had no mask or no disguise that I'm used to seeing the silly Jerry hide behind it was doubly frightening because I was watching myself play a real-life moment in my life the insipid idiocy of the fan is the fanatic and watching myself portray myself celebrity quote endquote being annoyed and literally harassed by that maniac it's frightening I've never been able to look from the outside in when I'm being harassed and you're not interested in looking from the outside in when you're being loved because you don't particularly care about seeing that the joy of it happening is all you need when your mother told you very early on that all your life you were going to have a love affair with humanity and she only hoped you never found it fickle have you ever on occasion yes uh-huh but it's okay as long as there's 90 that hug you and ten won't the percentages will keep me going when you talk about being resilient never being happier in your life when all of us have picked up newspapers and read that you are with your friend dr. Michael DeBakey but denton cooley is looking in that you're fine new life new new attitude toward a new life new marriage and your father's advice about you're going to love the Racquet kid because if you don't it isn't going to work alright I think that those two statements from your mother and father what I'm asking is what has been the secret of your resiliency I really don't know I think that I've been so afraid this is just conjecture now I think I've always all my life been so afraid of being a coward that I never was one whatever the cost no matter what and I do not think courage goes out of style can I resolve something because I'm sitting in front of the filmmaker who has been quoted on more than one occasion as having described American critics as but at the same time some some you can come out and say about Pauline Kael as good as it's ever going to be I vote Bosley Crowther not as articulate but he loved the cinema and ripped my ass off every time I came out with a new movie right Judith Crist cares a lot Richard Schickel Richard Schickel but this this doesn't come up a lot I mean most often one reads about you or here's the Jerry Lewis has again denounced critics as or had a confrontation some of them some I'm here to offer the quotes on those you do respect there are many that I respect what would an Academy Award nomination for your performance and King of Comedy mean to you at this point if indeed it would mean anything oh and deer would mean a great deal any man that tells you that an award given to you by your peers doesn't mean anything's a liar I think that those that won't accept it because of a credibility factor or based on their own personal integrity is one issue I allude to George Scott is not choosing to accept that I respect that while I am troubled that he didn't have that moment that he earned any man would be proud to be the recipient of a nomination like that I don't particularly agree with the Academy I've made that very clear I think that there's a lot that needs to be done to make it perfect but I would be very honored and very proud and then I'll take my disputes with them to them directly another time another day after I get the award I'll be very humble and swell and I'll say such nice stuff I'll give them all diabetes I'll be so sweet it's called blowing smoke once that's over and I got that sucker on my mantle I'll tell them what I really think of them I just think it's important to remind myself in front of you that you are the man who in your criticism of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said let's give the awards to the great contributors while they're alive let's recognize people's contributions while they're around to here and when you talk about what they've done with certain great people it's it's the people who have contributed to the world of comedy who are most often dismissed but I have been accused of wanting the Comedy category because I wanted an award I don't belong in that category I'm talking about and that's not false modesty I'm talking about Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel I'm talking about Harry Langdon and Larry Semon and ham Hamilton the people that made the motion picture industry it all started with those men don't wait till they die to acknowledge them that's all it's or ever been about we don't have a category for the very reason that there is an Academy common Keystone Cops started it all how do you dare not have a category for comedy when you've got one for the engineer that puts a bulb in a men's room that troubles me bothers me it's wrong what you're saying is that comedy is lowbrow and it cannot be acknowledged by those of us who are thespians oh really so it might be dangerous if I'm nominated I might say all of this in the acceptance speech do you like Jerry Langford the character yes don't like that man yeah I liked I liked playing him I didn't have to really dig too deeply to find out what he was all about because he was very close to what I am so if there's any degree of narcissism and my being I like the character and he was real and honest and true and it wasn't a hell of a lot you could do with him other than what was done because he was an interactive with Bobby that was so if they didn't work in concert I felt both of them thinned out now I'm talking like a filmmaker they did thin out when they were not in concert but the whole picture is when they're together king of comedy is a paid accompli and it's available to moviegoers while we wait for slapstick Kurt Vonnegut slapstick and your production of smorgasbord all right is there any concern that millions of people are going to go into the King of Comedy see your creation of Jerry Langford see the artist working in a way none of us were prepared for before we walked in and then have to in a sense start a game saying the Jerry you knew and loved before is back to thrill you a game I haven't any concerns about that no no not really because an actor must do what he does and although I have for most of the better part of my life been very clear to an audience what will happen when they work on the theater this is just a departure and it should be only a minimal one for them they should know that after this it's going to be okay to go again okay if they don't I'll take out ads I've enjoyed being with you thank you Brian I enjoy it too what I told you earlier I meant and I'll say it perfectly whenever I see your show at home I enjoyed it I had never met you but you do you do your homework and you make everyone that you interview come off very well thank you you're welcome very much and if it doesn't happen with me you'll get some letter I thank you again thanks Brian pleasure

Channel: Brian Linehan's City Lights

Views: 56,126

Keywords: The King Of Comedy (Film), Jerry Lewis (Composer), City Lights (TV Program), Brian Linehan (TV Personality), Robert DeNiro, Talk Show (TV Genre)

Id: n1xue8T3ooI

Length: 21min 13sec (1273 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 16 2015