Some Kind of a Jerk or Something? - The Jerk

“It was never easy for me,” says Navin R. Johnson, “I was born a poor black child.”

Steve Martin’s enactment of the Jerk’s character, Navin, is arguably one of Steve’s best comedic roles ever. This is also Martin’s first starring role in a feature film and will live on in the funny movie realm forever.  Steve Martin was one of three writers on this picture and one of the other writers (Carl Gottlieb) appears in the flick as Iron Balls McGinty.

The Jerk is a must-see farce with one outlandish scene after another, extremely well-placed verbal humor, with enough slapstick buffoonery to keep the lay audience entertained throughout. Steve Martin exerts more energy in this hour and thirty-four minutes than New York uses in a year. From cat-juggling under the pseudonym Pig Eye Jackson to being a second-rate weight-guesser, Martin delivers an extraordinary performance of wacky caricature from start to finish.

In one of the final scenes, which is quite possibly the most memorable, Navin has just lost his multi-million dollar inventor’s fortune. This renders him penniless and consumed by a rather disdainful mood because an upsetting lawsuit regarding the “Opti-Grab”, a handle affixed to the bridge on a pair of glasses to reduce slipping and stress on the frames, awarded all 9,987,652 now cross-eyed plaintiffs the full amount of the suit, which was one dollar and nine cents. Navin is signing checks for $1.09 with his fuzzy-haired, googly-eye pen, and downing some kind of clear booze while attempting to seal the envelopes in his drunken state. Mrs. Wilbur Stark and Iron Balls McGinty are the last two checks he gets to scribble on his insignia before Marie, his wife, shows up crying.

“Why are you crying? And why are you wearing that old dress?” asked Navin.

“Because I just heard a song on the radio that reminded me of the way we were.” cried Marie.

“What was it?”

“The way we were.” bawls Marie, obviously referring to the Barbara Streisand song from the film with the same name. After a bit of hysterical banter, Navin begins his definitive rant about his lack of need for anything else, “except this”. Wearing just his bathrobe over a long-sleeve shirt and a pair of boxers, with his black dress pants unfastened and around his ankles above his leather shoes, Navin unloads a barrage of harsh words upon his weeping spouse. “I don’t need any of this stuff, and I don’t need you! I don’t need anything! Except this…” exclaims Navin as he picks up the ashtray off the table. “This ashtray, and that’s the only thing I need, is this! I don’t need this or this! Just this ashtray, and this paddle game. The ashtray and the paddle game, and that’s all I need!”

“…And this…” he grabs the remote control hastily. “The ashtray, and the paddle game and the remote control and that’s all I need.”

By this time, our over-dramatic comic has made his way from the lounge to the vestibule, and we can see up the green shag-carpeted stairway about as well as we can see out the front door to the lawn full of S-shaped hedges, Grecian statues and three swimming pools. “And these matches. The ashtray, and these matches, and the remote control, and the paddle-ball, and this lamp” he says with diminishing enthusiasm as he picks up the items off the unnecessarily lavish table. “The ashtray, (sob), and this paddle game, and the remote control, and the lamp, and that’s all I need. And that’s all I need too.”

“I don’t need one other thing, not one!” he sputters out, continuing his profuse ramblings, shimmying his feet down the steps on his way out the door, and still carrying the five items he has accrued so far.

“I need this!” he bellows, with an increasing emphasis, as he lifts a chair up by his elbow. “The paddle game and the chair, and the remote control, and the matches for sure!”

Almost completely out the door of the foyer, Navin utters the line for which the movie was named. “Well, what are you looking at? What do you think I am, some kind of a Jerk or something?” He bows his head and continues sobbing, but still has the presence of mind to notice the magazine, “And this! And that’s all I need. This ashtray, and the remote control, and the paddle game, and the magazine…” Marie is left crying to herself with only her trumpet, while Navin is seen still walking along with both arms full of all the odds and ends, still dragging his pants along the ground by his ankles.

“I don’t need one other thing,” moans Navin, slower than before and to himself now because no one else is listening, “except my dog.”

“Grrrrr,” growls Shithead.

“Well, I don’t need my dog.”

So, off scoots Navin, down the street, sporting his collection of random household amenities, and onto a bus he goes. He finds his way downtown and makes a very interesting trade of the ashtray, the paddle game, the remote control, the matches, the lamp, the chair, and the magazine to one homely and homeless woman for nothing but a simple red and white striped thermos. We see Navin coveting his new-found glorious beverage container, and catch up to our wild and crazy character where we first met his jerkiness, in the gutter alongside a couple of what appears to be some of L.A.’s most refined bums.

If there ever was a tale that could never get old and could not be retold, it is the 1979 comedy classic, “The Jerk”, directed by Carl Reiner, starring Mr. Steve Martin in his breakout role. Very few films can come close to touching this level of comedic genius, and unfortunately we will almost certainly never experience this kind of hilarity showcase in our lifetimes by way of any other. Something has happened to “funny” and it’s sad to say, but it really isn’t anymore.