Today's Hollywood Reporter has an essay on folks in show business who remain active even after attaining the age of 90. There's a big essay on ten of them — Don Rickles, Dick Van Dyke, Carl Reiner, Norman Lloyd, Cloris Leachman, Marcia Nasitir, Stan Lee, Norman Lear, Betty White and Jerry Lewis. The list would make you suspect that one of the secrets to longevity is working on a series with Mary Tyler Moore.
There are also spotlights on each one of them and video interviews. The video interview with Mr. Lewis is going viral today and Hollywood Reporter itself headlines it, "Watch the Most Painfully Awkward Interview of 2016: 7 Minutes With Jerry Lewis." Lewis is cranky, non-responsive and generally hostile in that way that those of us who follow his career have often seen. In fact, I've seen it so much — sometimes in person — that I've stopped finding it funny or interesting or "the flip side of a great clown," which is how one person once described it.
From all reports, Lewis has always been a volatile personality who is capable of great rudeness. He is also sometimes very charming and funny, and those who know him best from those glimpses defend the abrasive Jerry as an understandable aberration. And to be fair to Jerry, he may have had some reason to be pissed for this particular interview. The guy asking the questions wrote…
Throughout the photo shoot, Lewis complained about the amount of equipment in the house, the number of assistants and how the shots were set up. By the time we sat down for the interview about an hour later, Lewis had worked up a full of head of steam, and it seemed like he was punishing THR by doing the interview but being as uncooperative as possible. As awkward and funny — and it's pretty funny — as the interview is, it weirdly proves the point of the entire package: 90-year-old Jerry Lewis is vital and completely engaged. He's just engaged — almost happy — in being difficult.
And you can add to those factors that the off-camera interviewer seems unprepared to deal with Jerry's confrontational responses and is unable to do much to diffuse the anger or move things to a topic that pleases the interviewee. In any case, I didn't find it funny…but then, I haven't thought anything Jerry has done was funny since about halfway through The Disorderly Orderly. I think what's happened since Jerry hit about age 80 is that the angry, pouty interviews and scolding lectures have lost the occasional twinkle. They never looked good on him but they look worse on a man his age.
So you may not want to watch this. But then again, you might so here it is…
