{"id":104,"date":"2009-01-21T16:04:10","date_gmt":"2009-01-21T21:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/makeemlaugh\/?p=104"},"modified":"2018-09-10T16:04:40","modified_gmt":"2018-09-10T20:04:40","slug":"great-lines-jeffrey-ross-on-roasting-jerry-lewis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/makeemlaugh\/video\/all-interviews\/great-lines-jeffrey-ross-on-roasting-jerry-lewis\/104\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeffrey Ross on Roasting Jerry Lewis"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"width: 640px;\" class=\"wp-video\"><video class=\"wp-video-shortcode\" id=\"video-104-1\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" preload=\"metadata\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"video\/mp4\" src=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/makeemlaugh\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/14\/files\/jeffreyross.mp4?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/makeemlaugh\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/14\/files\/jeffreyross.mp4\">https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/makeemlaugh\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/14\/files\/jeffreyross.mp4<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n<p><strong>Jeffrey Ross<\/strong>: I roasted Jerry Lewis at the Friars&#8217; Club.\u00a0 And at first I didn&#8217;t wanna do it.\u00a0 And the roast master called me up&#8211; in L.A.\u00a0 I was in L.A. at the time.\u00a0 Richard Belzer called me up.\u00a0 He said, &#8220;Who the hell are you to say no to Jerry Lewis?\u00a0 This is the last time you&#8217;re gonna have to roast a legend like Jerry Lewis.\u00a0 Get your ass on a plane.\u00a0 Do it for me.\u00a0 Do it for Jerry Lewis.\u00a0 Do it for yourself.\u00a0 This is a huge, huge comedy icon.\u00a0 You gotta come out and roast Jerry Lewis.&#8221;\u00a0 So I do.\u00a0 And I&#8217;m writing jokes for days, getting&#8211; &#8217;cause you&#8211; you know, you gotta bring your A game when you&#8217;re roasting a legend like that.\u00a0 And to his credit, he was a great sport.\u00a0 I said&#8211; I said, &#8220;Jerry Lewis was huge in France.\u00a0 Then again, they don&#8217;t even know when they stink.&#8221;\u00a0 The one thing they said was, &#8220;You know, Jerry&#8217;s very sort of&#8211; sensitive about doing jokes about, you know, muscular dystrophy.\u00a0 And could you stay away from that?&#8221;\u00a0 That&#8217;s all I have to hear, you know.\u00a0 I&#8217;m going right for it. But if you&#8217;re saying it to his face, somehow it&#8217;s okay.\u00a0 And I said&#8211; I sorta slowed it down.\u00a0 I had my sorta rat-a-tat-tat delivery.\u00a0 And I took a deep breath and I said, &#8220;You know what, Jerry?\u00a0 A lotta people make fun of you, but they don&#8217;t talk about the good things that you do.\u00a0 What about the fact that just this past Labor Day a six year-old kid got up out of his wheelchair and walked for the first time to turn off the Jerry Lewis Telethon?&#8221;\u00a0 The subject that they told me not to talk about was the biggest laugh I got, the biggest smile that Jerry made the whole day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/makeemlaugh\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/14\/files\/jeffreyross.mp4 Jeffrey Ross: I roasted Jerry Lewis at the Friars&#8217; Club.\u00a0 And at first I didn&#8217;t wanna do it.\u00a0 And the roast master called me up&#8211; in L.A.\u00a0 I was in L.A. at the time.\u00a0 Richard Belzer called me up.\u00a0 He said, &#8220;Who the hell are you to say no to Jerry Lewis?\u00a0 This is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3494,4065],"tags":[4082,4031,4070,4084,4002,4083],"class_list":["post-104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-interviews","category-great-lines","tag-jeffrey-lewis","tag-jeffrey-ross","tag-jokes","tag-muscular-dystrophy","tag-richard-belzer","tag-roast"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Great Lines ~ Jeffrey Ross on Roasting Jerry Lewis | Make &#039;Em Laugh | PBS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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