The Theater of the Matters: The Big Mouth

Jerry Lewis plays a hapless accountant named Gerald Clamson who, while on vacation in San Diego, becomes embroiled with the mob in a search for lost diamonds. From this pretext of a scenario, Lewis mounts a rebellion against the dominant laws of cinema via stasis, delay, and entropy as organizing principles. The Big Mouth is a film composed of gags, liberated from dramatic continuity and identification, propelled only by the narcotic of the filmmaking apparatus, the bewitchment of image and sound, and the hypnotism of matter.

This event is programmed by The Theater of the Matters, a new film screening troupe focussed on films “lost in the cosmos” and “found on a scrap heap,” with an eye toward curiosity, illumination, and contradiction.