This week the Substandard tackles the Academy Awards—which films of the past 50 years truly deserved to be Best Picture, which ones didn’t, and what movies got snubbed? JVL has the temerity to question American Beauty, Vic only saw part of Blue Lagoon, and Sonny admits he did theater. Please Sonny, we want some more!
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Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:
* In talking about Schindler’s List, Victorino claims that part of the movie’s genius is the occasional moment of levity. Like
this scene, where Oscar Schindler is interviewing for a typist. He also recounts what it was like to see Schindler’s List in Austria. Unclear if he was
making out during the movie.
* Sonny has a
medium-sized essay arguing that Francis Ford Coppola’s run during the 1970s was the greatest decade any director has ever had. Don’t worry. I won’t tell Scorsese about this.
* But what you’re all really here for is Jerry Lewis’s Holocaust clown movie.
To be honest, I can’t believe that this is a thing and that I’d never heard of it before. Jerry Lewis. Directing a movie. Starring Jerry Lewis. As a clown. Working in a concentration camp. Helping make the little Jewish children laugh. On their way to the gas chamber.
Ayfkm?
It’s so bad—so utterly horrific—that I can’t believe it’s not a dark, dark parody. The kind of thing that writers on The Simpsons would have come up with, but then discarded as being too awful.
But it’s called
The Day the Clown Cried and it’s as real as it gets.
Here’s what we know: The film’s backers originally tried to get Milton Berle, and then Dick Van Dyke, to take the starring role. They both declined. Then they went to Lewis. He accepted. Principal photography took place in Sweden in 1972. In 1973, it was invited to screen at Cannes. It never did.
The Day the Clown Cried was never screened publicly and it receded into the mists, becoming, like Roger Corman’s
Fantastic Four, a lost movie.
And, perhaps because of this, it became an object of intense curiosity. A piece in Spy magazine interviewed Harry Shearer, who had finagled his way into seeing a print. Here’s what he had to say about it:
Patton Oswalt somehow got his hands on a copy of the shooting script for the movie and, on his 28th birthday,
staged a live performance of The Day the Clown Cried with some friends, including Bob Odenkirk and David Cross. (Unclear if Cross
wore cut-offs.)
Then, in 2014,
a few minutes of footage of the film leaked out onto the internet. A few months later,
more footage leaked. And finally, last year,
a full 30 minutes of the movie made it out into the wild.
But fear not: Lewis has given the master-print to the Library of Congress, with instructions that it may be released in June of 2024.
If you can’t wait that long, there’s a documentary on it, called The Story of The Day the Clown Cried, and it hints at what’s to come.
* As always, you can download the episode here and subscribe to the Substandard on iTunes or on Google Play.
And you should go give us a five-star rating just for the Jerry Lewis stuff. We earned it this week.
