What's your favorite movie?

Roger Ebert posed this question on his blog, and for once I have an answer. I've found it very helpful in life to have stock answers for commonly asked questions. How are you? Fine. What's up with the Phillies this year? Inconsistent hitting. Why'd you become a vegetarian? I'm a finicky eater. And when someone finds out I work for a video company, people perk up and either ask "What's good right now?" or "What's your favorite movie?" Nothing is worse than watching someone hem and haw at a fairly easy question, so I have a stock answer that also usually leads to a pretty animated discussion. (Never answer Citizen Kane, Lawrence of Arabia or Gone with the Wind as the conversation will come to a crashing halt.)

The greatest movie ever made is Rear Window. Two deep characters that are impossible to not fall in love with, the sassy comic relief of Thelma Ritter, and a self-reflexive deconstruction of filmmaking and voyeurism in the film's perfect construction. Whenever this film appears on TV, I end up dropping everything and sitting down and watching it all the way through, and I can't say that about any other movie. It never gets old.

But my favorite movie is Jerry Lewis' The Ladies Man, a revelation that inevitably leads to discussion of Jerry and not the actual film. He carries a lot of cultural baggage, so I have to beg people to please, simply watch his movies. Interestingly, his essential book The Total Filmmaker outlines many tenets of comedy directing, culled from lectures he gave when teaching a film school course. While he was giving those lectures, he was directing One More Time, the nearly unwatchable sequel to Salt & Pepper, and seemingly ignoring every single lesson from his course.

But earlier in the '60s, Lewis was taking his inspiration from Frank Tashlin and producing some of the most innovative, insane and even breathtaking comedies since the silent era. The Ladies Man in particular had the innovation of "video assist," a hookup to the camera that provided a live feed that would become commonplace in just a few short years. It also boasted a massive indoor set that, in the photo above, looks like a dollhouse built to human scale complete with a functioning elevator. This set allows Lewis to set up beautiful physical comedy throughout the house unencumbered by the usual laws space and physics.

Interesting that, for me, two of the most cinematic films ever made take place almost entirely on two single sets. It's the opposite of the massive vistas that are always rewarded come Oscar time. Speaking of Oscars, despite co-hosting the ceremonies several times, Jerry Lewis has never been honored. How about throwing an award his way, perhaps the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for his tireless commitment to the MDA?

– David Gorgos

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