Blowing up on an interviewer would play into their hands by gifting a juicy story. His genius instead is to give something that’s boring, tense and unwatchable all at once. Case #1 on screwing an interviewer for being an ass clown.
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The interview was part of a series specifically with working performers who are over 90, to chat about that issue, someone else posted. Jerry Lewis is simply a raging asshole, and has been for a long, long time (forever?)
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[quote=“NickyG, post:22, topic:91711”]
The interview was part of a series specifically with working performers who are over 90, to chat about that issue, someone else posted.[/quote]
You mean an anonymous youtube commenter?
If it was made clear to Lewis that his age would be the focus of the interview, and he agreed to do it anyway, then he perhaps should have engaged in better faith; it is possible to answer stupid questions with grace, as I assume the others did, though it is by no means required. However, I doubt he was given an accurate picture of what the interview would be like.
You can ask people about working in their 9th decade without being an ageist jackass about it. I’m nowhere near Lewis’s age, but I’m old enough to be sensitive to this crap and I found the framing of the questions to be deeply offensive.
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Maybe you’re just getting old and cranky?
or even tenth
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I would say “more sensitive to ageism.”
[quote=“LemoUtan, post:25, topic:91711”]
or even tenth[/quote]
Quiet right, he started performing at 5 so is well into his 10th decade of working.
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I’d be most appreciative if you would take a couple of the more ageist-jackass-y questions from the interview and render them in a non-jackass-y way, please? I was unsure about my own ideas for how it could be done, and I’d be interested to see your approach. Many thanks.
I wonder how this crew even made it past the lawn they were told to get off of.
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Got a transcript?
OK, let’s try:
Do you ever make any concessions to being, you know, old, older when you’re performing, how do you keep the material fresh for yourself?
Besides being a yes/no question, and the Freudian stumble where you call him “old”, it is a question that sounds like gibberish if you (a) don’t think of yourself in old/young terms, and (b) have never had a problem with material being stale.
How about asking instead:
“You are much more experienced now than you were when you were years ago, how does that experience inform your work today?”
Mostly the questions aren’t asking much of interest, they’re just ways of asking, “aren’t you too old to be working?” (or at least they sound that way to older ears). They are also completely generic, with no sign that you have more than the most superficial familiarity with his work.
For example,
“What do you think attracts you to younger fans?”
(Well, why shouldn’t his work be attractive to people of all ages?)
“Do you have a favorite period in your career…where you look back on it and you were happiest, or most creative?”
“Do you have advice for young 80-year-olds…”
Also, the repeating of questions he’s already answered - the one about retirement, the one about whether he thinks working keeps him from dying, etc - he’s not an idiot, he knows what you just asked, and has signalled that he is insulted by the question. Move on.
Having forced myself to rewatch the interview, I have a question for you. How many of his movies, and spanning what period, did you watch in, say, the week before the interview, as part of your preparation? Because from the questions it sounds like your preparation was based on practically no familiarity with his actual work, only his Wikipedia entry, and if he sensed that there’s probably nothing you could have done to get him to open up.
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I’m not a fan of his work but I thought he was great in King of Comedy (aka Taxi Driver 2) mostly because it was so dark.
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Trainwreck on all levels. The interviewer didn’t seem to have a mic, yet he failed to get Jerry to answer in full sentences. Good training on how not to conduct an interview.
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Maybe the questions about his age ticked him off, but I’ll bet George Burns or Betty White or Mel Brooks could have been sitting in that chair and muster the showbiz professionalism to give the kid what he wants and not be an asshole.
We are all better off respecting Mr. Lewis’s wishes on this one, methinks.
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As I wrote above,
[quote]
it is possible to answer stupid questions with grace, as I assume the others did, though it is by no means required[/quote]
Not answering offensive questions with grace does not make you an asshole, sorry. In any other context this would be considered victim-blaming. The general philosophy of Boing Boing is that it is not OK to be a racist, a sexist, an anti-Semite, a homophobe, etc; that really ought to extend to it not being OK to be ageist, but somehow that doesn’t seem to be the case.
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Don’t they teach this in Journalism 101? He just asked about a hundred yes-no questions, and we’re surprised the answers were yes and no? Even I know better.
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Before this week when was the last time you had anything to say regarding him or even thought of him?
I’m a comic, and despite being devoted to the history of my thing I rarely think of Jerry.
And when you’re 90, don’t you want to still fuck with people? He’s trolling for his own amusement and it’s a better interview than you would get if he just answered all the questions he’d be willing to answer.
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So Jerry Lewis is still an asshole??? What’s new about that, and who gives a shit???
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Guess who got paid per question and not by the number of words.
He enjoyed his interview with Charlie Rose:
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I don’t like his movies. However, his performance during a season of Wise Guy was spectacular.
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