Miskatonic University PressOf the many, many, many excellent pieces on SCTV, “Jerry Lewis Live on the Champs Elysees” is one of the best. “Lewis is back, and France has got him!”
Inexplicably Martin Short as Jerry Lewis suddenly appears in a boy’s sailor uniform midway through a harangue:
And the point is, they’re terrified of a perfectionist! And if a Jerry Lewis ain’t gonna get a distribution deal, because of some ferkakte twelve-year-old with the pimples on his face, who’s head of the studio—this week—who doesn’t know from Hardly Working or The Errand Boy or Cinderfella, who only knows from Eva Braun with the big fahoyvens or the airplane smashing into the thing. Where are you, the public, expected to find the love, and the caring, and the feeling, and the good, and the nice? And even if you did, it wouldn’t be the good kind, because of the difference caused by the earlier thing.
Absolute genius.
(I can’t not point out it should be “Champs-Élysées,” and Martin Scorsese’s name is misspelled. Having Scorsese direct is a beautiful touch.)