Jerry Lewis is giving interviews again, in this case to promote his new movie, Max Rose. I find Jerry Lewis interviews fascinating, not necessarily in a good way. He loves being interviewed and most of his public appearances these days are all or almost all Q-and-A with the audience. About half the Qs seem to be audience members who are thrilled at the opportunity to tell Jer how much they love him and to ask nothing of substance.
The rest go like his press interviews do, which is that he's asked for his viewpoint or about some historical point and he bristles if the question touches upon one of his many, many sore points…and then his A is either hostile or incomplete, or he just plain talks about something else altogether. I heard that his appearance last week at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica was pretty coherent and friendly but the times I've seen him, he seemed guarded and afraid…and sometimes angry if someone asked him to talk about something he didn't want to talk about. And yet he professes to love the Q-and-A format.
Naturally, we are interested in the fate of the Nutty Professor musical. Jerry used to keep announcing it was all set to open on such-and-such a date or at such-and-such a theater when clearly no such arrangements had been made. It did play a limited engagement in Nashville to fair-to-good response, Jerry announced it was definitely going to Broadway by a certain date…and then it disappeared. In this interview, we get this…
There had been discussions of Lewis' The Nutty Professor heading to Broadway in musical form. Under Lewis' direction, the musical version premiered at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center in 2012, and Lewis said the musical had a "bright future" in 2014.
But during his latest interview, Lewis said the classic 1963 comedy, redone by Eddie Murphy in 1996 (with a Murphy sequel in 2000), should be left alone.
"It's too important to leave it just like it is and not take advantage of it," says Lewis. "You don't steal from yourself, at least you try not to. But it's a constant problem, because it was perfect. You want to see how you can revamp it to make it work again. But that doesn't work. Kiss it goodbye and get on with the new stuff."
What the heck does that mean? When he says "it was perfect," does he mean the original movie or the musical? Which one does "you can revamp it" refer to? Beats me but since he doesn't say otherwise, I guess there are no plans to do the musical anywhere again.
Then in this interview, we get this…
It was reported in 2015 that Lewis' archives were going to the Library of Congress and that The Day the Clown Cried may at last be available for public view in 10 years' time. Lewis has other thoughts on the matter.
"Never," he said as to whether the film would finally be shown publicly. "After I'm dead 30 years you won't see it. I've got it worked out so there's nothing to show."
Anyone want to hazard a guess what that means? I mean, apart from the obvious fact that Jerry likes to keep his interviewers off-balance with cryptic answers? No wonder he loves Trump.