"There isn't a day in my life when I don't think of it."
There's been much talk about and fun poked at the Jerry Lewis movie called "The Day the Clown Cried". Written and directed by (and starring) Jerry, it was an attempt at finding a line somewhere between comedy and poignancy in the Holocaust.
Plot spoiler alert: that line doesn't exist.
Schadenfreude spoiler alert: Jerry knew it first.
The movie was never released because Jerry hated it. He owned the only copies and they are locked away. A potential screening has been discussed, to take place 50 years after he has passed away, but ever since the movie was completed, there's been a perverse desire by many to get a look at what may very well be the worst movie ever made - no doubt so they can make fun of it. There is one person outside of Jerry's immediate circle who has seen it, and that person described it as "wrongheaded" which I think is a shining example of someone finding the perfect word.
Jerry knew he'd laid an egg, but it gets much worse than that. It was a failure that completely knocked him on his ass and I think just about took the wind out of his sails forever. Consider he made 27 movies in the 14-year span from 1957 to 1970. "Clown..." was completed in 1972, went unreleased, and he made no more movies until 1980. It essentially put the brakes on his career. There wasn't anything of note past this save for his bit part in Scorsese's outstanding "The King of Comedy".
You could blame it on getting older and falling out of fashion, but Jerry was so embarrassed by the work he did in "Clown..." it haunted him for the rest of his life. He usually refused to answer any questions about it. He would get upset when people tried to bring it up. He was shocked that he could have made something so awful. Shocked that he poured his heart and soul into something that ended up being not only the worst thing he's ever seen, but possibly the worst thing anyone could ever see. Goofball "Martin and Lewis" Jerry spent the rest of his years shellshocked by his own wrongheadedness. "There isn't a day in my life when I don't think of it" is a quote from an interview 44 years after the film was completed.
We're supposed to stay optimistic and keep trying, keep creating and moving forward. After all this, I think there's probably a lesson here about the creative process. Also one about learning to handle failure. Maybe something about succumbing to imposter syndrome. Jerry was probably dumbfounded that he stepped so far outside himself, and I'm sure spent much time thinking he was a fraud. People can goof all they want on this movie and take easy potshots at it forever, but none of that could ever come close to affecting Jerry in a way that surpasses his own torture over it. God forbid any of us should be so scorned by our own creativity.
[Edit: or our own addition to Percodan. By this point in his life, Jerry was hooked on pills. “In 1965, they gave me one Percodan that took me through the day. And by ’78, I was taking 13 a day, 15 a day.“ We can do the math to figure out how many he was likely up to in 1972. The whole “Clown…” fiasco was probably a drug-addled endeavor, and I’d bet his lack of creative output afterward was directly related to his steady diet of pain pills.
