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      • Slapstick Comedy A simpleminded, sheltered country boy suddenly decides to leave his family home to experience life in the big city, where his naivete is both his best friend and his worst enemy.
      www.imdb.com/title/tt0079367/
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  2. The Jerk: Directed by Carl Reiner. With Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters, Catlin Adams, Mabel King. A simpleminded, sheltered country boy suddenly decides to leave his family home to experience life in the big city, where his naivete is both his best friend and his worst enemy.

    • (65K)
    • Comedy
    • Carl Reiner
    • 1979-12-14
  3. en.wikipedia.org › wiki › The_JerkThe Jerk - Wikipedia

    Plot. Navin Johnson, a homeless person sleeping in a stairwell in Los Angeles, addresses the camera directly to tell his life story. The white adopted son of black sharecroppers in Mississippi, Navin grows to adulthood naïvely unaware of these circumstances.

  4. Of all days, the guileless Mississippi boy, Navin Johnson, discovers that he's not the natural-born child of an impecunious African-American family, on his birthday.

  5. Aug 8, 2023 · Here’s how IMDb describes The Jerk: “A simpleminded, sheltered country boy suddenly decides to leave his family home to experience life in the big city, where his naivete is both his best...

    • Ben Lindbergh
    • Steve Martin Based The Film Off A Line from His Stand-Up.
    • Martin Co-Wrote The Script with The Screenwriter of Jaws.
    • Mike Nichols Was Initially Reported as The Director.
    • The Original Title Was Easy Money.
    • The Jerk Came from Dostoyevsky.
    • The Role of Marie Was Written For Bernadette Peters.
    • Martin and Reiner Carpooled to Work Every Day.
    • Martin Was Not The Cat Juggler, Officially.
    • The Gas Station Is No more.
    • Bill Murray Was Cut from The Film.

    The film proposal was based on Martin’s “It wasn’t always easy for me; I was born a poor black child” routine. Navin saying he doesn’t need anything, then picking up different items he does need, is also from his act.

    Carl Gottlieb, who was nominated for a Golden Globe for the screenplay for Jaws, co-wrote The Jerk and also portrayed Iron Balls McGinty in the movie. Michael Elias (The Frisco Kid, Head of the Class) was the third credited writer. "Our goal was to have a laugh on every page," said Martin.

    The Graduate director departed the project less than a month after it was reported that he would be at the helm of The Jerk. Nearly a decade later, Nichols directed Martin and Robin Williams in a 1988 Lincoln Center production of Waiting for Godot.

    A few years later, that became the title of a Rodney Dangerfield movie. Money to Burn was also considered. For a while, the film's official title was The Jerk (A Wild and Crazy Movie).

    "It needs to be something short, yet have the feeling of an epic tale," Martin said to his director, Carl Reiner, one day. "Like Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, but not that. Like The Jerk."

    Martin and Peters were an item by the time filming began. They met in 1977, when they were both on the Kenny Rogers celebrity softball team. A few months later, Martin asked her out after they taped an episode of Hollywood Squarestogether.

    This was due to the gas shortage. "Every day ... we came up with at least one or two new jokes on the way to work," said Reiner.

    Even though he looks a lot like Navin Johnson, the actor credited for playing the carnival performer with the unique skill was “Pig Eye Jackson.”

    The madman (M. Emmet Walsh) hated the cans at a gas station in Pasadena, California. It’s now a Carl’s Jr.

    He played a “flamboyantly gay decorator” who designed the mansion, in a scene that has never seen the light of day. The day after The Jerk made its debut, Murray admitted he was cut from it during Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update segment, before joking that the movie was a “dog” and “there’s something missing.”

  6. “The Jerk” is all gags and very little comedy. After Martin hits the road, he has a series of adventures as a gas pump jockey, a weight-guesser in a sideshow, a hapless lover of Bernadette Peters , an inventor of a gadget to keep your eyeglasses from falling down.

  7. The Jerk is a 1979 American comedy film directed by Carl Reiner, and co-written by and featuring Steve Martin in his first starring role. The film follows Navin R. Johnson (Martin), a bum, who tells his life story.

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