I like Jerry Lewis. I like him enough that when he made his Broadway debut in Damn Yankees, my friend Paul Dini and I flew back just to be in the audience for opening night.
I like the guy but to be a Jerry Lewis fan is to cringe often at the man's excesses, ramblings, self-serving statements, angry lash-outs at those he thinks have wronged him, etc. On that great new boxed DVD set of Laurel and Hardy films (this one), he babbles on about their history, getting it all wrong, apparently unaware that there are in this world people who actually know the truth. If someone had made so many errors telling the story of Martin and Lewis, he'd have been furious…but he just goes on and on doing this stuff. Given that he's 85, you might excuse it because of age. Trouble is, he's been like this all his life.
Jerry Lewis: Method to the Madness is the new two-hour documentary that's now playing on the Encore channel. What's wrong with it is summarized in the second on-screen title card at the end — an Executive Producer credit for Jerry Lewis. I don't know how much he actually did on it or what kind of freedom filmmaker Gregg Barson had, but you wish someone could or would tell Jerry, "Uh, it isn't a great idea to announce you were the top guy in charge of an overexcessive tribute to yourself."
Not only that but it's a tribute that so deifies its subject that the mortal can't measure up to the hype. The clips of his work do not demonstrate the brilliance described by the talking heads that range from Jerry Seinfeld's to Carol Burnett's. There may be no clips in the world by anyone that would. I can well imagine younger folks, unfamiliar with Lewis's body of work, watching this, hearing of his comedic genius…and then wondering what's so spectacular about wedging the entire mouth of a drinking glass in your mouth for half a century. All the material of Lewis on-stage in his eighties is a little sad in that way.
The film is primarily about Jerry's work, as opposed to his off-stage life, though there are exceptions such as the looks at his relationship with his father. In both categories — personal and professional — the good parts are mentioned and the bad parts are hurried past or in most cases, omitted altogether. There's plenty about how Jerry's successful films were successful; almost nothing about how or why they eventually stopped being successful. The superstar days of Martin and Lewis are dwelled upon in depth; very little about how or why they ended. There's the great moment of the reunion on the Muscular Dystrophy Telethon; almost nothing about criticisms of the telethon and zero about Jerry's ouster from it. Lewis has had many hills and many valleys but in this overview of the man, it's nearly all hills. Nothing about The Day the Clown Cried. Nothing about Jerry's failed TV projects or the Jerry Lewis Cinemas. There's Carol Burnett talking about the greatness of Jerry; nothing about his occasional statements that female comedians, Carol Burnett included, are never funny.
Why in two hours of telling us what a legend he was and is, wasn't there time for that? Most viewers, even before they see Jerry's Exec Producer credit, will leap to a simple assumption. The filmmaker wouldn't have gotten his "unlimited access" (as it was called in the press releases) if he'd wanted to visit the valleys.
We've had a number of these "life of great comedian" documentaries lately. I thought the one about Don Rickles had some of the same problems of fawning that the Jerry Lewis one had, though not as many…and it fawned over Rickles as a guy who was great on a Vegas stage, as opposed to a guy who revolutionized comedy and filmmaking. The one about Joan Rivers made her out to be about the unfunniest, most unpleasant woman on the planet. The one about Phyllis Diller (also by Mr. Barson) was incisive and revelatory, and it really put her career in the proper context and perspective.
This time, I'm afraid Barson tackled a subject with skin so thin that it could not withstand his own reality. The resulting portrait, intended or not, is of a star in need of unrelenting bootlicking and praise, far exceeding his own considerable achievements. I'm not suggesting that's inaccurate. In fact, it may well be that in that sense, Barson did the perfect job of showing us the real Jerry Lewis.