I enjoyed reading Scott Feinberg‘s 6.6 Hollywood Reporter interview with Jerry Lewis, which was basically about publicizing Paramount Home Video’s Nutty Professor Bluray box set, which streeted on June 3rd. Feinberg is always well-prepared and in the zone when he interviews old-time Hollywood legends, and he holds his own with the sometimes cantankerous Lewis. Lewis will eat you alive if you haven’t done your homework. You need have your shit wired tight and then some. I know, having interviewed the guy back in ’95.

The best take-away is Lewis mentioning that he changes his socks four times day because it makes him feel renewed. Obviously an extravagant habit. To do that you’d have to own…what, at least 30 pairs of socks that you like? (Most of us have a few pairs of cool socks and several more pairs of what-the-hell, nothing-to-shout-about socks.) If you only owned 30 pairs you’d have to wash and dry them two or three times per week. If you owned 50 pairs you wouldn’t be such a slave to the wash cycle. I immediately decided to try a variation. Henceforth I’m a two-pairs-per-day man. Managable. Change in the late afternoon or early evening. Thanks to Lewis and Feinberg for the idea…seriously.

I naturally wondered if Lewis owns a few pairs of gold-toe socks (Feinberg gets a demerit for not asking, and Lewis gets a huge HE demerit if he in fact owns a few pairs of those awful things) or whether he wears those brightly colorful, crazy-patterned socks you can get at Urban Outfitters.

Lewis excerpt from his appearance at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival: “Lewis is 87, and he’s still plenty sharp. I laughed out loud several times. He’s cruel and dismissive, okay, but he’s fucking funny.”

Lewis excerpt from 1995 Sundance Film Festival interview: “I sat down with Jerry Lewis to talk about Funny Bones. The interview happened at the Stein-Erickson. Right away you could feel the testy fear-factor vibe, but I enjoy that as it sharpens your game. Several people (publicists, etc.) were sitting and standing around us in a semi-circle; it was almost like we were performing.

“A year or two earlier I’d read and enjoyed Nick Tosches‘ Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams, so I asked Lewis if he’d read it. He had, he said, and I knew right away I’d stepped into the shit. The book was hurtful to a friend, he said, and that was the end of it. ‘Ask me something else,’ he said, steam literally hissing out of his head like a radiator, ‘before I get pissed.’ Before?

“But I liked Lewis overall. He’s tough, shrewd, funny, been around, done it all, seen it all.”