we would be remiss if we did not acknowledge the passing last week of Morgan Spurlock,

documentary filmmaker at age 53. Now, we actually had a few requests, believe it or not,

to comment on the passing of Morgan Spurlock because we are familiar with his work on this

podcast, most famously supersized me. I was initially reluctant to talk about Morgan Spurlock because

obviously we, we weren't fans of his work. Ben, I don't want to piss on the guy's grave. It's

very tragic that he died of cancer at such a young age. No, but the thing is, we're fans of him as a

person, so. Yeah, well, you know, he worked very steadily until all of a sudden

around 2017, he stopped working very steadily, which is very interesting, isn't it? I am

interested in commenting on him, though, because of what he represents. Well, our movie on this

episode is a short, 38-minute film, sort of an essay film from 2012, called Jerry and Me, by an Iranian-American filmmaker named Mernaz Syed Vafa.

I had seen this movie when it was new, and my mind was put to it this week because, frankly, I wanted something that

ambiently captured some of what I've been feeling in the current moment, but, you know, in a way

that wasn't really on the nose about it. In this film, Mernaz Saeed Vafa tells us about her

upbringing in Iran, as well as her later experiences in Britain and the United States, through the lens of her

relationship with American popular culture, in particular movies, and in particular, the art of

Jerry Lewis. At the height of Goddard's radical period, he described Lewis as the only American

director who has made progressive films, which of course is one of those statements that when

you hear it, you laugh and you think that sounds ridiculous. And at least for me, it plants a seed in

my brain and never stop staying there. Gendar also described Lewis as a director as being more like

a painter than a director, which is, if I could boil down the history of

film criticism to one line, I think it might be that one. It's such a provocative statement

that nevertheless has a kernel of truth to it, that I don't know, just keeps growing and growing

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