Why It Ranks
The Jerk made Steve Martin a movie star and grossed $100 million in 1979. The phone book scene is the funniest celebration of nothing in cinema. Martin proved that a comedy built entirely on one man's obliviousness could sustain a feature. Carl Reiner directed with perfect restraint. 'I was born a poor black child.'
The Film
The Jerk is Steve Martin's first starring role and one of the purest expressions of comic genius ever filmed. Martin plays Navin R. Johnson, a white man raised by a Black sharecropping family who sets out to discover the world with zero understanding of how anything works. The phone book scene ('The new phone book's here!'), the special purpose scene, and the final departure where Navin takes 'just one more thing' until he is carrying everything he owns — these are Martin at his most brilliantly, beautifully stupid.
Fun Facts
Steve Martin co-wrote the script with Carl Gottlieb and Michael Elias — much of Navin's dialogue was improvised on set.
The Opti-Grab glasses invention in the film later inspired real novelty products.
Bernadette Peters and Steve Martin were a real-life couple during filming — their on-screen chemistry was genuine.
Carl Reiner directed the film in 55 days — he later said Martin needed minimal direction because he inhabited Navin completely.
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