43: Late Style Jerry Lewis (with Will Sloan) (Patreon)

Toronto-based writer and podcasting king Will Sloan returns for a discussion of the fascinating final film works of director Jerry Lewis: 1980's Hardly Working, released in Europe a full year before the stateside release, where it was a surprise box office hit, and 1983's Cracking Up (a.k.a. Smorgasbord) which did not get an American theatrical release. Both films contain everything you love and hate about Jerry Lewis: his great skill as a filmmaker, performer and comic genius, but also his preening vanity, his defiance, his self-absorption.

We discuss these two anti-comedy classics in detail, plus his acting sidetrips of the Late Style period: The King of Comedy, Slapstick of Another Kind, and mercenary work in France.

Plus a chat about Spike Lee selling Bitcoin and the release of the dreaded Space Jam: A New Legacy.

Follow Will Sloan on Twitter.

Listen to Will’s great podcasts The Important Cinema Club and Michael and Us.

Trailer for Hardly Working (Lewis, 1980)

Opening title sequence to Cracking Up (Lewis, 1983)

Trailer for one of Jerry’s eighties French comedies, The Defective Detective (Gérard, 1984)