Lost Films

jaime marzol · Post by **jaime marzol** » Tue Jan 22, 2002 12:16 pm

jeff, bitching avatar you are sporting there.

if it's not a bundle of trouble, i would like to hog the avatar i'm using, welles 2, to myself.

Welles Fan · Post by **Welles Fan** » Wed Jan 23, 2002 1:07 am

Hmm..Now I'm not sure that someone hadn't already used Falstaff for an avatar. I'm now gonna try this Iago look for a while.

Harvey Chartrand · Post by **Harvey Chartrand** » Wed Jan 23, 2002 11:46 am

Chad Everett as he is TODAY is not a bad actor, actually.
He had a nice cameo in the Psycho remake (only Everett and Robert Forster delivered the goods in Gus Van Sant's sorry mess) and of course Everett's scorching 10-minute scene with Naomi Watts in Mullholland Falls is sensational!
And why are we knocking Jerry Lewis so much? He is a national treasure. If anyone out there would care to drop their knee-jerk anti-Lewisism, they might check out The Big Mouth, Who's Minding the Store? and The Patsy — undeniable works of comic genius. I am sure that someday, there will be an Avenue Jerry-Lewis in Paris.
(Obligatory Orson reference: When awarded the Légion d'honneur by the French government, Welles told President François Mitterand that he was one of those Americans who hoped his soul would go to Paris when he died.)

jaime marzol · Post by **jaime marzol** » Wed Jan 23, 2002 1:36 pm

oh yeah, i had forgotten, chad everett, that great method actor. how could i forget. and the genius of jerry lewis, why it's spilling out all over the place.

was watching donald cammel documentary on IFC, frank mazzola was there talking about cammel. he's not going to do anything about OSOTW, i can feel it in my bones. never trust a guy who wears a cheap hairpiece.

jaime marzol · Post by **jaime marzol** » Thu Jan 24, 2002 2:36 am

You wonder if when Abrams, Zucker, and Abrams cast
Chuck Conners, Chad Everett, Lloyd Bridges, and William Shatner in AIRPLANE II, if they knew something that Harvey hasn't realized yet.

Harvey, they are stiffs.

Jeff Wilson · Post by **Jeff Wilson** » Thu Jan 24, 2002 9:33 am

Actually, Harvey is right about Chad Everett in Mulholland Drive - he's great in a small role as a aging leading man who has an audition with the main character. One of the best scenes in the film. Can't say I agree about Lewis, but people have different opinions, especially on humor.

jaime marzol · Post by **jaime marzol** » Thu Jan 24, 2002 10:25 am

i would tend to say that lewis has whatever it is that he has 10 fold over whatever it is that everett has. but that is only my opinion.

to me, everett has always been a guy with fiberglass hair, and a yellow turtle neck under a sports coat. it seems chad gets the jobs that all the tv shnook actors like allan alda turn down.

and what about that ultra hip name, chad. i wonder what that is short for.

years ago i saw a man's hairspray called chad. i thought, "oh, how appropriate, if you want to look like an unemployed actor, this is the hairspray to use."

i strike extra-manly pose for camera as lights reflect off my fiberglass hair. i hold up can of chad hairspray, "when i need extra-hold, harder than the side of a boat, i use chad."

jaime marzol · Post by **jaime marzol** » Thu Jan 24, 2002 11:55 am

i wonder why i haven't seen chad in tv commercials. you'd think he could use the money to pay some bills. what has he been doing? tv shows? has he been making commercials and my limited commercial tv viewing hasn't found him yet?

what about sprint? they have been using a lot of stars who are past their prime. why not chad, a star that never had a prime. we should start a petition here. all 40 members of wellenet will switch to sprint if they get chad for a commercial, but he has to wash that stuff off his hair.

(whispers to self: "my god, i'm being ruthless with chad. next thing you know he will join wellesnet and post some injured reply. hope he doesn't die any time soon, i'll feel guity about this post.")

*

Jeff Wilson · Post by **Jeff Wilson** » Thu Jan 24, 2002 5:52 pm

Chad apparently was a heavy boozer who found God. But there is no chadeverett.com or anything, so the opportunity is there for some enterprising soul. He is apparentlly also in excellent health, so I don't think you have anything to worry about, Jaime.

Welles Fan · Post by **Welles Fan** » Thu Jan 24, 2002 10:57 pm

Posted by Harvey Chartrand:
If anyone out there would care to drop their knee-jerk anti-Lewisism, they might check out The Big Mouth, Who's Minding the Store? and The Patsy — undeniable works of comic genius. I am sure that someday, there will be an Avenue Jerry-Lewis in Paris.

If Avenue Jerry-Lewis is a surety, then Rue de Jim-Carey cannot be far behind, IMO.

jaime marzol · Post by **jaime marzol** » Fri Jan 25, 2002 3:12 am

i didn't know chad was a heavy boozer who found god. bet it was faith in the lord that helped him get rid of that fiberglass hair. he looks better in that pic jeff posted than i have ever seen him look. bet he could get some acting jobs if he changed his name.

is he on religous programs now making a living from repenting his past life? there is a healthy living to be made these days from repenting.

(i could start www.chadnet.com. get iconboard software, appoint myself webmaster, then sit and wait for chad everett fans to pour in and discuss his film. i'll make a fortune! i'll finally be able to afford a mistress, maybe two mistresses!)

Le Chiffre · Post by **Le Chiffre** » Fri Jan 25, 2002 9:10 am

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (jaime marzol @ Jan. 25 2002,03:12)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"> bet he could get some acting jobs if he changed his name.[/quote]
A new career if he changed his name? Good one, Jaime. Lynch, like Tarentino, seems to have a soft spot for washed up TV and Hollywood actors like Chad Everett. Robert Blake actually had a pretty good cameo in LOST HIGHWAY.

Someone tried to kick my ass on Google's David Lynch newsgroup a couple of days ago for suggesting a few movies that reminded me of Lynch (including Welles' THE TRIAL). I appeased him, in part I think, by comparing Lynch to Welles, because of his willingness to dabble in many different media. Not that I think there is anyone even remotely comparable to Welles in today's film world, but Lynch, despite his occasional infantilism (remember that Manson-like cow sculpture?), is probably the closest thing we have.

Jeff Wilson · Post by **Jeff Wilson** » Fri Jan 25, 2002 1:42 pm

While at the bookstore yesterday, I was browsing the film section and noticed a book called Why the French Love Jerry Lewis. Intrigued, per our discussions here, I picked it up, and I have to say, it sounds fascinating. Here is the back jacket copy:

"Vividly bringing to light the tradition of physical comedy in the French cabaret, café-concert, and early French film comedy, this book answers the perplexing question, "Why do the French love Jerry Lewis?" The extraordinary emphasis on nervous pathology in the Parisian café-concert, where the genres of the Epileptic Singer and the Idiot Comic took center stage, and where popular comic monologues and songs included "Man with a Tic" and "I'm Neurasthenic," points to a fascinating intersection between medicine and popular culture. The French tradition of comic performance style between 1870 and 1910 nearly exactly duplicates the movements, gestures, tics, grimaces, and speech anomalies found in nineteenth-century hysteria; the characteristics of hysteria became a new aesthetics.

Early French film comedy carried on this tradition of frenetic gesture and gait, as most film performers came from these entertainments and from the circus. Even before Chaplin's films triumphed in France, film comics were instantly recognizable from their pathological gait, just as Jacques Tati would be a half-century later. Comedy, a genre that dominated French cinema until World War I, has often been linked to a mass public for film; the author elucidates this link by proposing a broadly generalized cultural-medical phenomenon as the explanation for the dominance of the comic genre. Comic performance style drew from a group of nervous disorders characterized by the psychological automatism emanating from the "lower faculties": nervous reflex, motor impulses, sensation, and instinct.

Building on her previous work on hysteria, the cabaret, and pathologies of movement in the films of Georges Méliès, and drawing on over 400 French films made between 1896 and 1915, the author contributes to a new theory of spectatorship at work in the cabaret, in shows of magnetizers, and in early French film comedy. Jerry Lewis touches a nerve in French cultural memory because, more than any other film comic, he incarnates this tradition of performance style."

Who wouldn't want to hear a song called "I'm Neurasthenic"? That's fantastic.

Cole · Post by **Cole** » Sat Jan 26, 2002 9:56 am

So this love affair with Jerry Lewis really is a French thing! And someone actually had to write a book about it to explain why. Bizarre.

Mteal: You were chastised on a David Lynch news group for comparing THE TRIAL to a Lynch film? As much as I like David Lynch, and I like him quite a bit, he is a mere amateur next to Welles. But I think if I had to pick one Welles film that looks most closely like a Lynch film it would be TOUCH OF EVIL, not THE TRIAL. TOUCH OF EVIL has some of that strange, violent ugliness that Lynch seems to enjoy. I’m thinking especially of the scenes with Janet Leigh in the motel with Dennis Weaver and the Grandi boys. THE TRIAL is too abstract for Lynch, though it is strange like some Lynch films.

jaime marzol · Post by **jaime marzol** » Sun Jan 27, 2002 3:06 am

jeff, this book's explanation sounds well researched, but it just doesn't add up. jerry lewis' genius arrived at through a study of films made between 1896 and 1915?

the vindictive explanation, that the french think lewis is a genius for his personification of the moronic americans, is
more fun, and makes more sense,

"I'm Neurasthenic," what a wonderfull song title.