Before Jerry Lewis, a sprite of eighty-nine, took the stage on Tuesday evening at the Museum of the Moving Image, the chief curator, David Schwartz, mentioned that when the Museum opened its doors, in September, 1988, it was with a retrospective of Lewis's films. Lewis, Schwartz said, was supposed to appear there at the time but was unable to do so because of a scheduling conflict-with the TV series "Wiseguy." (Cue the raucous cackles-instantly identifiable as Lewis's-that came from behind the curtains just offstage.)
If that 1988 event had been held as planned, I'd bet that the audience would have been composed mainly of spectators who grew up watching him onstage in the nineteen-forties and fifties as well as in his film comedies of the nineteen-fifties and early sixties, who still watched the Telethon, and who were there for Jerry Lewis the comedian rather than Jerry Lewis the auteur. The love-fest for Lewis at Moving Image this Tuesday, like the one at the 92nd Street Y in 2012, had a remarkably young audience of a new generation of New York cinephiles, which included critics (most of whom write mainly online), programmers, and even filmmakers (though many of those on hand in 2012 weren't here now, having left the margins for the careers that those of us who loved their films from the start knew they'd achieve). Lewis has become a central artistic reference point for the world of young cinema, and his interviewer on Tuesday night suggested why. That interviewer was none other than Martin Scorsese (and Schwartz suggested that the event be billed as "Martin and Lewis").