Call Him Monsieur Lewis

In a high-stakes game of international intrigue and power politics, the French conglomerate Vivendi has shocked Hollywood by imposing an 11th-hour condition on its buyout of the liquor and entertainment giant Seagram Co. that insiders fear may scuttle the deal.

Sources close to negotiations confirm that, in addition to obtaining Universal Studios and its vast film archive as part of the deal--including the one film in the catalog starring comedian Jerry Lewis--Vivendi has upped the ante by demanding Lewis himself be thrown in.

Vivendi, however, is portrayed as only a pawn in a plot spawned by none other than the government of France. A recent secret note to the Vivendi board of directors from the French minister of culture sheds light on the machinations behind the daring effort to bodily export Lewis to France. “This nutty crazy-boy Jerry of the elastic mouth and legendary spit-take,” runs the note, “is already the sole Double Lifetime member of the Academie de la Comedie Francaise. The national honor now demands that France must claim him for its own. The Republic’s hands-down most popular, most beloved funny man must be a French funny man.”

While feverish bargaining continues in Los Angeles, the even more feverish situation that triggered this unprecedented turn of events continues to fester in Paris. It was there, at the ornate Palace of Brains, that the idea of obtaining Lewis for France was reportedly hatched as a desperate “quick-fix” solution to placate the mob and buy time. This, as the fuse of revolt is once again being lit in the streets of Paris. Late word from the palace has it that the beleaguered culture minister is barricaded in his office against the onslaught of angry demonstrators who blame him for fact that there currently is no French culture.

Indeed, their 700-page “Manifesto of Condemnation” makes for bitter reading fare--and explains the urgency of the get-Jerry plan in chilling detail.

“With Sartre, de Beauvoir, Malraux and their peers all dead,” states Point 423, “the once-proud French Academy is forced to take out want-ads for philosophers to fill a void so total that French television cannot find enough of them to stage the beloved four-hour, 10-men arguments about the meaning of despair that are the bedrock of its programming.”

In Point 657, it is observed that “imprisoned Foreign Legion deserters are forced to read contemporary French novels,” a comment on the state of French fiction only underscored by the fact that out-of-work translators now constitute 64% of the nation’s unemployed.

Point 721, focusing on French film, is even more dire. “With Truffaut gone and other pioneers of the New Wave suffering from director’s block,” runs the charge, “our domestic industry languishes.” It has been so long since a French film won an honor at Cannes, the section continues, that the embarrassment can be ended only by recasting this event as the Can Festival at Philm, a small town near the Belgian town of Lens.

Unmentioned in the manifesto, perhaps because it is so self-evident, is the current plight of French popular music: More than a thousand clubs and arenas have been shuttered in the past six months alone after waiters, bouncers, bartenders and even management walked off the job rather than listen to any more of it. A new depression-treatment center has just opened in suburban Paris, specifically for French radio disc jockeys. And French pop music, a distinctive blend of synthesized ‘70s disco and ‘60s American bubble gum, is now listed in 35 countries as an instrument of torture and banned from entry.

The injection of Lewis into this debilitated cultural milieu would clearly galvanize an apathetic nation if--and it’s a big if--the self-confessed comic genius could adjust to life in a place where people talk and smoke even more than he does, the telethon is unknown and he might never learn to tell other entertainers apart because all are named Johnny. Then, too, Lewis, a resident and booster of Las Vegas, would probably see the architect’s plans for any new home he built in France swiftly rejected.

Yet, amid all such nail-biting and negativity, a bright side has been glimpsed by one highly placed Hollywood executive. “Hey, pal,” he burbles, “look at it this way. If we give them Jerry, it could mean he’s kept, once and for all, from ever finishing “The Day the Clown Cried.’ ”