Jerry Lewis: Method to the Madness'

Gregg Barson is a documentarian, not a comedian. But when Jerry Lewis let him know that more than a dozen people were waiting in line to tell his story, Barson offered a persuasive punch line.


"Yeah, but they're not me," was Barson's comeback, followed by a momentary quiver of fear that he'd gone too far with the veteran star.


"He said, `I like that. You know why? Because you remind me of me,'" Barson recalled. That chutzpah-fueled exchange led to "Method to the Madness of Jerry Lewis," debuting 8 p.m. EST Saturday on Encore. Other airings include 11:30 a.m. EST Sunday and 8 p.m. EST Tuesday.


The film focuses on what makes the 85-year-old — and still working — Lewis tick as a performer and filmmaker. Those looking for dish on his family life or breakup with stage and screen partner Dean Martin or abrupt departure from the Muscular Dystrophy Association telethon he'd nurtured for nearly five decades won't find it here.


Barson, who describes himself as being "in heaven" whenever he caught a Lewis film on TV as a youngster, said his intent was to focus on Lewis' career from vaudeville on and his contributions to comedy and movies.


Still, there is a lot of him to cover. He got his first professional laugh in 1931 at the age of 5; performed in burlesque and vaudeville, across the Borscht Belt and in fancy nightclubs; made Hollywood studio films and post-studio independent films; worked on television and on Broadway; wrote, directed, acted, sang and stuffed things in his ears. Barson had access to Lewis' own stock of archival footage, which yields treasures: Lewis and Martin at breakneck speed onstage at the Copacabana, Lewis at work on the set, snatches of home movies that hint at the excitement of it all. And he filmed the comedian, now 85, in concert, in rehearsal, and on a 2009 trip to the Cannes Film Festival, where the paparazzi flashbulbs pop and the citizens take him seriously.


The impression here is of a life that went from triumph to triumph, though other accounts, including Lewis' own, reveal deep valleys between the peaks, personal and professional. Even his difficult, epochal parting with Martin comes off as a sort of act of friendship. (Of their intense connection, he says, "I think people are frightened of a homosexual probability — they didn't want to recognize that these were two people who loved each other," though their widespread popularity would seem to say that this frightened no one at all.) The long, later years when work was harder to come by — and when come by was not always good — evaporate in this telling. There is no mention of Lewis' famous unreleased Holocaust film "The Day the Clown Cried," the flat comeback "Hardly Working" or its pretty respectable follow-up, 1983's "Cracking Up," the last film he directed. (It begins with a suicide attempt.)


Whatever "Method" leaves out, most of what it includes is worth a look. Even Lewis' recent stage show — filled with the sort of weak risque jokes older audiences seem to love and featuring as lively a version of his antic younger self as he can muster — is revealing in its way, a demonstration of desire in the face of age.


Spitting fake broken teeth from his mouth, the man once known as the Monkey mutters, "What a stupid way to make a fortune." He doesn't mean it, I am at least half sure.