Jerry Lewis Takes the Temperature of Hollywood, Humanity
Hollywood veteran Jerry Lewis dropped this bit of real talk on assembled television journalists during the Encore portion of the TCA press tour on Friday: "The industry has destroyed themselves. It's no longer relevant because it puts out all of its product on a stupid phone. You're going to put Lawrence of Arabia on that goddamned stupid son of a bitch? [Twitter and Facebook are] wonderful technical advances, but once people see how much it's cluttering their life, they'll figure it out for themselves. We're not going to have human beings in 20 years. People won't be talking to other human beings." Happy Friday? [Deadline]
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It'll be like Hal 9000.
Subsequent shouts of "Lady?!" and "Get off of my lawn!" were heard, followed quickly by murmurs of "Go to bed, old man" from the audience.
JERRY LEWIS--- for years he's taken a lot of crap, mostly by a lot of people that don't know what they're talking about. But when it comes to Hollywood he knows the Industry. Comedian, writer, producer, director-- he's done a lot. Find a copy of THE TOTAL FILM MAKER, and read all about it. Jerry Lewis IS a film-maker, from an era when movies-- real 35mm film--were actually worth while to go see. Bravo, Jerry.
Jerry Lewis is one the last of the "Golden Age' of Hollywood that we all try to imitate and emulate as new film makers but will never be anything like Mr. Lewis has witnessed. I admire and envy him and wish there were more like him to take a stand than worrying about the gags self-serving media has slapped under "political correctness". What a shame that an artist has to weigh every word what he or she says instead of being a true and honest artist. My hats off to Mr. Lewis... and yes, there are millions who still admire and love him and his era of films and film makers. Keep going Jerry and don't let these sissies gag you. God bless and good health.
Jerry is a great personality and a great filmaker... three cheers for him!
Oh, Jerry... I am so sympathetic to what he's saying. And anyone who calls 'em as he sees 'em is aces in my book. If only he would reinvigorate our humanity by releasing The Day the Clown Cried (Ok, that part is snarky- damned internet influence.)
Problem with a comment like that is only a person over a certain age would say it. If I over-heard an intelligent 20 something saying, "What kind of an idiot wants to watch movies on their phone?" I might be more inclined to believe it. BTW, Hollywood is not as relevant because it is now run by money men who wouldn't know art if it kicked them in the nads.
I'm gonna bootleg it for my Droid! (He wouldn't want the money anyway since I am watching it on my goddamned stupid son of a bitch.)
Oh, I don't know, SunnyD. I am only just out of the arse-end of my 20's, and I find the web2.0 culture exhaustingly pointless.
From what I can see, the internet is generally just a forum for us to speak TV at each other. Facebook is your life as an advertising campaign. Twitter is your mind expressed as slogan. Raised on the tube, we speak tube-speak through our now tiny screens. Secreted everywhere in our pockets. Right near our privates.
The medium is the message. And does 140 characters cut through a lot of bullshit? Potentially. But more often, it just leads to glib, reflexive gossip and hip-hunting and a whole, whole lot of unaccountable posing.
Does a "smart" phone and an attention span of five to ten minutes lead to a renaissance of narrative…? … not exactly.
I do believe there's hope, though-- as even though the current youth culture seems barred from actually creating STORY or noticing the arc as it affects them, and are somehow certain that they are "beyond it," immersed in endless digital wallpapers of po-mo mashup-- if one gets in front of them, the audience seems as hungry for truthfully told stories as ever. Maybe even ravenous.
And yes, the suits don't understand why their successful films do actually work, so when they try to reconstitute them into new stews, the flavor is decidedly rank.
Then, not knowing that all they did was repeat a similar set of surfaces with no insight into what made them initially affective, they decide that the dumb old fickle audience must have just lost interest in those kinds of images... a totally clueless tendency from people who are not only uncreative, but who aren't even particularly passionate or engaged viewers of their own product.
The emperors wear clothes in this town. They just don't know why they are wearing them. And they hope the hipster assistant they are exploiting will keep them "cool."
What I love is that the least active and engaged people in the history of the world have gadgets that can provide instant access to tools that James Bond could not find a use for at the height of a grand death-defying intrigue.
We brag about the potential for grandiose distraction at our fingertips, a decadence making us a most unproductive lot-- so busy filling our "boredom" with acts of distraction that we forget to fill it with acts of creation.
It takes a shit-load of discipline to create. And I know that's what I've seen disappearing from the culture (not to mention myself.) Everything's a first draft now. And all that excruciating revision that creates something that touches the timeless human universal is replaced with the new values of timeliness, trendiness, and an aura of creativieness rather than an actual achievement of creation…
Yup, I am sounding like a luddite. Give 'em Hell, jerry!
I hope someone young enough to have lived his whole life with the schizoid presence of the internet pressing on his identity will have the patience to express something about what it's like… in this forum or any other.
Catch Jerry and me up to speed…
Thank you so much for this. I could not relate more. "Everything's a first draft now" is a horrendous reality that changes us -- or at least me, speaking for myself -- for the worse every day.
We are not alone, S. T. There may be at least some solidarity in anxiety.
The following is a beautiful film-- searingly relevant to what we are talking about, exquisitely rendered, and free. If you can fight the entropy of attention span long enough to watch it (not to mention his earlier films) I highly recommend:
http://thoughtmaybe.com/video/all-watched-over-by-machines-of-loving-grace
The statement at the very end of part three is exactly what Jerry means when he says "We’re not going to have human beings in 20 years."
Oh, and finally, in reference to this post's initial title:
Did he take it rectally? 🙂
Be honest, you wrote that on your iPad...
But, in all truth, one of the best comments I have ever read.
But what I find most damaging about this new age it the lack of any kind of censorship. The worst I had as a kid was HBO... Now, kids are jaded before they even hit puberty. Listen to teenagers> Hear that strange boredom in their voice? Thank the internet. When I first got on the internet in my mid-twenties I was traumatized by the free-for-all of sex as violence and pure reality-based evil . It destroyed my world view so I can only imagine what it does to an unformed mind...
you gotta love him but sunnydaze has a point. censorship is bad but kids are exposed to allsorts a lot earlier than anyone who had a childhood pre internet was