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Guess who's coming to Broadway?
Hint: He's a legendary comedian and filmmaker that the kids at Cahiers du Cinema refer to as "L'Idiote Stupide."
From yesterday's New York Times:
Hey, ladies (and gentlemen)! Jerry Lewis is headed back to Broadway, this time in the director's chair. The veteran comedian, last seen on a Broadway stage as Applegate in the revival of Damn Yankees in 1995, will direct a musical adaptation of his hit 1963 comedy, The Nutty Professor, that is planned for the 2010-11 season. That film starred Mr. Lewis as the nebbishy Julius Kelp, who invents a formula that transforms him into the debonair Buddy Love. (A 1996 remake starred Eddie Murphy as the overweight Sherman Klump and his suave alter ego.) The adaptation will feature music by Marvin Hamlisch (A Chorus Line) and lyrics and book by Rupert Holmes (Curtains).
That's some heavyweight talent, and I actually think that The Nutty Professor is a terrific template for a musical comedy; after all, the Jekyll and Hyde thing notwithstanding, it's essentially the Faust story, just like Little Shop of Horrors, and that worked pretty well onstage.
Anyway, here's hoping that the new show has a musical number at least as terrific as this one, from another of Jerry's early, funny films -- the 1958 classic Rock-a-Bye Baby.
If truth be told, I really posted that video for lurking fans of the whole downtown NYC Noise Rock scene of the 80s. You know -- Mars, DNA, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks...bands like that. And speaking of DNA, as you will doubtless notice, Jerry's guitar solos sound pretty much exactly like that band's Arto Lindsay. Obviously, if Jerry had been hanging out on the Bowery circa 1984, it wouldn't just have been the French hailing him as a genius.
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