Whether you believe Jerry Lewis is a comic
genius, a braying clown, a shrewd show - biz pro who carefully cultivated a popular stage and screen
persona, a hopeless egotist with a cringing need for attention, or simply a comic with a gift for manic physical humor that clicked with audiences in the fifties and sixties, most people agree that The Nutty Professor was his greatest film
as a director and his most interesting variation on the child - man figure he had transformed into Hollywood gold.
Screenwriters John Ronson and Peter Straughan (who very loosely based the character on Frank Sidebottom, the comic
persona of the late U.K. performer, Chris Sievey, amongst other musicians) are aware of the thin line between madness and
genius, but rather than exploit that tired trope, they use it
as a jumping off point to explore issues
as inherent to both art and life
as identity, voice, creative output, and that age old question of what it really means to sell out.