whatever happened to working your way up?
Note: today’s entry was mostly written while sitting in the waiting room while my car was getting maintenance, so access to some resources was limited.) The Jerk begins outside a movie theater--where a "comedy thriller" is playing--and includes director Carl Reiner as himself, with a direct reference to his filmmaking. (His going cross eyed because of Navin's Opti-Grab leads to Reiner to yell 'cut' too late while filming, which leads to a car crashing, actors die, and Reiner leads the class-action lawsuit against Navin.) These Hollywood references matter in a film that deals so much in issues of class. Navin grows up poor (and black) in the south. Upon getting to the city, he gets a low class job as a gas station attendant. He works as a carnie. It is sheer luck that he succeeds at all in his life; while it is Navin's ingenuity that leads to him making the Opti-Grab, that is the only evidence of any cleverness on his part (plus, perhaps, his delay of ...