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More than Five Decades Ago, Comedian Jerry Lewis Directed and Starred In The Day the Clown Crieda film about a German clown who is promised freedom if he leads Jewish Children to their Deaths at A Concentration Camp During the Holocaust. There was was plenty of public skepticism about the project’s premise and how it was going to be executed – Lewis HADN’T YET SHOWN OF HIS DRAMATIC ABILITIES IN MARTSESESE’s The King of Comedy; at the time, he was Mostly Known for Comedic Role in Movies Such as The Nutty Professor. Ultimately, The Day the Clown Cried was never released. “It ‘eather better than Citizen haveor the worst piece of shit anyone Ever Loaded on the Projector, ”Lewis Told Entertainment Weekly In 2009, notting that the Only Copy of the 1972 movie was Locked up in a safe. But Curiosity About Its Contents Has Personted. “For a Certain Kind of Movie Buff,” The New York Times wrote In 2018, “It is one of the Last Whies Wales of Lost Cinema.”
On May 28, The Swedish Magazine Icon and Swedish State Broadcaster Svt Broke the news that swedish actor hans crispin has long possessed a stoken version of the film, which screened for a couple journists as proof. What is he going to do with it, and why do People Care so Much? Here’s everything to know this Movie, Including Why The US Library of Congress Didn’t Do Public Screenings of it after lewis donated his personal collection.
Well, what he has been technically more like the hans crispin cut of the film. Crispin Found and Stole a workPrint of the film from its Swedish Production Studio, EUROPAFILM, while he was working there in 1980, he told Icon. (EUROPAFILM TRAKED ATS EITS EMPLOYEES WITH COPYING POORS TO VHS Forms During Night Shifts, and he Recruited Someone to Help Him the Same Thing, Just for the Boxes He’d Found of The Day the Clown Cried.) The footage had ben edited by film editor wic Kgjelin, but crispin cut it into a full film – although part of the beginning was missing – by following annotate scripts he’d also discovered at Europafilm. Acctinging to crisin, and then Locked the film Away and didn’t think it unil some who apparently knew his theft mailed him a vcr cassette in 1990 with the eight opening minutes ben shot in paris.
Crispin has occisionally Screened His Copy for Guests in His Apartment in Sweden; he toy Icon Reporter Caroline Hainer since she was the 20th or 21st person in the world to see the film in full. He said he has not ben been public about his possession of the film Because he was scared for a long time that the policy was for Him. Now, he’s the Coming Forward Because What He Did Will Be Public Soon Anyway – He Participated In From Darkness to Lightdo you documentary about the Making of The Day the Clown Cried that premiered at the 2024 Venice Film Festival and is Reportedly Set to Release in Sweden This Summer. (Crispin also confessed his crime in a phone call with his old boss, who he said did not threateen to report to the autorities and instead actually said Him for the film.)
IT Sounds Like He’s Done Gatekeeping. “It must be seen,” he said. “I think I want to do it over to the next generation. With tooday’s technique, it can be restored. I want to sell it to a series producer who eather it or kepes it Locked Away, or restores it to people for study purposes.”
Lewis apparently didn’t have permission to make the movie. Acciting to Shawn Levy’s 1996 Biography of the Comedian, publicist joan o’Brien came up with the idea for the story in the Early 1960s, then Co-Wrote with Critic Charles Denton. Lewis Rewrote that script, but didn’t find out unil the movie was already shooting that his producer has never actually secured the legal rights to the story. In his 2005 Memoir, Lewis Claimed that the Producer in Question Also “Skipped” Town with Other Expens, Leaving Lewis to Burn Through $ 2 Million of His Own Money on the Project. In any case, the original Writers were against the release of the film due to the COMEDIAN MADE to the script; theyy told Spy Magazine in 1992 that Lewis Had Changed The Originally Selfish Clown into A More Sympathetic Character. Patton OSWALT, WHO OBTAINED A COPY OF LEWIS’S Script and Staged Readings of It With Fellow Comedians As Bob Odenkirk in the Late ’90s, Also Saw Differences. “The script was originally writhn by joan o’Brien and charles denton. But when Jerry Lewis decoked to make it, he made … Revisions,” Oswalt Wrote in His 2015 Memoir. “Slapstick. Pratfalls. A Skene where it is so Cold in the concentration Camp barracks that the clown – Named Helmut Door – Pisses Ice.”
HIS Opinion SEEMINGLY CHANGED OVER TIME. In a 1982 autobiography, he wrote that The Day the Clown Cried “Must be seen.” Lewis, The Son of Russian Jewish Immigrants, Then Told Ew In 2009 that Jewish the audiences “Wold Love it.” In the Same Interview, he addresses the fascination surrounding the film. “Think Is Like Bad Advertising,” he Said. “For it to become what it has Become Seems Unfair. Unfair to the project. Unfair to all of my good intensions. Unfair to anyone that you will go down and have that that what you’re proclaing is a finished work. It ain’t finished. ” Four Years late, for ReutersLewis offended another evaluation of the film at cannes: “It was all bad and it was bad for the magic. You will never see it, no one Will Ever See, am embarrassed at the poor work.” Lewis, Who Died in 2017, Donated His Personal Collection (Including Footage of The Day the Clown Cried) to the US Library of Congress in 2014, with the stipulation that it is screened for a decade.
Again, it depends on what you consider counts as the film. Lewis Said that he, his dad, and his manager had seen the film as of his 2009 Ew Interview, in Which he maintained that there is never ben ben any actual screenings of The Day the Clown Cried. (He Himself Only Watched it in Sweden, Coming Home With Only Pieces of “Specific Reels.”) But over the past few decades, several people have that they watched a version of the film. The reactions have been varied. “This Movie is SO DRASTICALLY WRONG,” COMEDIAN HARRY SHEARER, WHO RECALLED IN A 1992 Spy Magazine piece that he had seen a cut of the film in 1979, “Its pathos and its comedy are so like Misplaced, that you can, in your fantasy of what it might be like, Improve on what it really is.” He licked the film to how it was done feel “if you flew down and suddenly saw a Black velvet painting of auschwitz.”
French Film Critic Jean-Michel Frodon Offerd A Comparatively Glowing Review. He toy Vanity Fair that he enjoyed the film one french director Xavier giannoli HAD HIM A COPY OF THE FILM AROUND 2004 or 2005. “IT’S A very interesting and important film, Very daring all the wills, which of the holocaust, butt). Life to Making People Laugh and is Questioning What it is to make People Laugh, ”Frodon Said. “Think it is a very bitter film, and a disturbing film, and this is why it was so brutally dysmissed by those People who saw it, or elements of it, including the scripts of the script.”
In 2016, The Internet Got a Little Taste Wen 32 Minutes of Cut-Together Footage From The Day the Clown CriedIncluding Bebind-The-Scenes Takes, Leaked online. In 2024, the US Library of Congress Invited Benjamin Charles Germain Lee, A Scholar Studying the Holocaust Whose Grandfather Allowed Auschwitz, to become the First Member of the Public to Watch the Footage That It Had Gotten From Lewis in a 2014 donationunder the condition that it is screened for a decade. “Among the range of emotions I experience, offense was not one of the say – the cannot of the say for Hollywood’s Holocaust Films,” Lee wrote in essay for The New Republic About His Viewing Experience. He assert that the footage invites Viewers to explore the “precarious balancies” between tragedy and humor and “the conventional limits and purposes of humor as well – not be comes to atocity, but also in the Viewer’s Life.” Meanwhile, Icon‘S Caroline Hainer, Whom Crisin Invited to see his copy of the film, reflected that the film Might not be “the world in the world” as speculated, but found it “Very boring” and crittiqued the Swedish Cast’s Acting.
The main reason that the library can’t screen the full film for the public? IT DOESN’T ACTUALLY HAVE The full film. The Library’s Moving-image Curator, Rob Stone, Clarified in an email to the New York Times In 2018 that Lewis Only Donated Partial Negatives: Almost 90 minutes of u shallitted Camera Rushes Sound, Plus some Bebind-the-Scenes Footage. Stone Also Said at the time that he intended to consult Lawyers before Making a decision on Whether the material bewed, notting that someone who CLAIMED to be a rights HAD reamed out over Potential Copyright Concerns. 2024 marked the end of the 10 -ear period that lewis has essentbowed Needed to pass before his collection coul. Ultimately, that Summer, the Library of Congress Announced that the materials it has of The Day the Clown Cried Waled be made ampilable for Research Purposes Only.
POSSIBLY. Republican Lobbyist Form Felon Jack Abramoff Confirmed to Mother Jones that he’d tried to back a movie adaptation of The Day the Clown Cried In the Early ’90s, but it failed Becausee “The Rights Weren’t Clear” and “Nobody Could Get Clearance.” But in August 2024, K. Jam Media Founder Kia I am Reportedly succeeded, Telling Deadline that he has been executed a purement aggrement on O’Brien and Denton’s Original Script. Jam, who affirmed in the piece that he has “notthing but respect for jerry,” pointed out that lewis “never really had the Rights” to the script.
And it SEEMED LIKE JA HAD BEEN KEEPING TABS ON WHO ELSE COULD Potentially Try to Release Footage from Lewis’s Film. I’m Told Deadline That He Reached Out to the Library of Congress After Hearing that they had a copy that they have all screen in 2024. (He didn’t Mind once he was informed that they Only had “Elements” of the film likes stills that researchers coulud come look at.) He had Also reamed out to the team bend From Darkness to Light, The Venice Film Festival Documentary That Crispin Participated in, “JUST TO SEE WHAT IT THERE’S TRYING TO DO,” THOUGH he did not immediately hear back. “I’m not here to stop any from doing anything Else,” I’m Said. “What i’m here to be to make the original script.” Although it took jam three or four years “and a small fortune in legal fees” to “clean up the rights,” he told deadline that he thinks his will be worn it. “It will be a really Powerful Film,” he Said. “It ‘Ultimately a Redemption Story. And i think with every going on in the world tok, now more than to make a movie like this.”
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