On Thursday, comic Jerry Lewis made an appearance at the Cannes Film Festival, where his new film "Max Rose" is being premiered. At his press conference, he was asked by a reporter about his opinion on women doing "broad comedy" - a sub-genre in which female comics use exaggerated indecency or boorishness as fodder for gags. Lewis answered that he "can't see women doing that". "It bothers me," he said. Asked who his favorite female comics were, he jokingly listed Cary Grant and Burt Reynolds, eliciting laughter from journalists present, before saying, "I don't have any." Watch Lewis's signature slapstick style below.
Of the comedic style associated with women like Melissa McCarthy or Sarah Silverman, Lewis said, "I cannot sit and watch a lady diminish her qualities to the lowest common denominator. I just can't do that."
It is not the first time Lewis has expressed an unfavorable opinion about female comedians. In 1998, he said watching women do comedy "sets me back a bit", a statement he has never repudiated.
Lewis stars in "Max Rose", which was written and directed by Daniel Noah, as a newly widowed jazz musician who becomes worried that his deceased wife may have been deceiving him throughout their marriage. In Cannes, he said of the film, "I thought it was the best script I'd read in 40 years ... it's an incredible movie, that's going to give a lot of people a lot of pleasure. Daniel Noah wrote from his heart and put it on paper."
He added, "It's a wonderful thing to think about people who are ordinarily ignored, and the elderly taught us all, we know everything we know from them."
The film will mark a departure from Lewis's comedic work.
"It was a very difficult thing to do for the crazy clown who has been doing one thing for 60 years," he said. "Everything I did in the business in the last 60 years I had to put in a trunk and lock it."
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