Jerry Lewis: Captain Beefheart of comedy or blubbering dummy? Answer in next week's Parade magazine!

I watched four more movies in the last couple of days. The one that really stood out was "Yeelen" (Souleymane Cisse), but the others were "Guardian of the Night" (Jean-Pierre Limosin) and "The Big Mouth" and "Cracking Up" (both Jerry Lewis). I've been on a weird little Jerry Lewis kick for the past few months, mostly because I have no idea whether his movies are good or bad. One thing I do know about them is that they are some of the weirdest goddamn things I've ever seen. If you've never seen an old Jerry Lewis movie (I'm talking about the ones he directed), try one some time. Or maybe don't. I can't truly recommend any of them, but if you die without seeing at least one, you're missing out on something. What you're missing out on, however, I'm not exactly sure. The films' pacing and sense of comic timing are the strangest I've ever seen. I'm not sure how to even describe what I mean, but I'll try. The tempo of the films is both languid and kinetic, and Lewis' directing style is simultaneously tight and economic (sometimes even bringing to mind the crime films of Don Siegel and Robert Aldrich in the 1950s) and indulgent and sloppy. He's also a fan of long, awkward pauses in conversation, something you don't find in most other slapstick comedy. Most of the jokes are painfully unfunny and generic (though a few are actually hilarious), but he drags them out for such ridiculously absurd lengths of time that you have to laugh or at least admire his audacity. There's something a little queasy and off-putting about his acting and comic timing, but I have yet to pinpoint exactly what it is. That these films were popular in our culture at one time is pretty astonishing. It's some of the most uncommercial stuff I've seen, a little disturbing and sick and a whole lot weirder than super-contrived shit like "Napoleon Dynamite," a movie that never stops trying to sell you on how oddball it is. Jerry Lewis is the real deal, a sick fuck who thinks he's making "normal" films but is actually giving audiences a guided tour through a deranged mind. Either that, or they're just a bunch of really stupid films full of tired jokes given an odd sense of pacing due to inept, egotistical direction. I only get this feeling once in a while, but even if it's true, these films are stupid, tired, and inept in ways previously unknown to man. Idiot or genius? This question can only be answered by Kathleen Hanna on the next Le Tigre hit, "What's Yr Take on Jerry Lewis?" Currently Reading: The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry