Steve martin movies the jerk

1979 film by Carl Reiner

For other uses, see Jerk (disambiguation). For the dance, see Jerk (dance).

The Jerk is a 1979 American comedy film directed by Carl Reiner and written by Steve Martin, Carl Gottlieb, and Michael Elias (from a story by Martin and Gottlieb).

This was Martin's first starring role in a feature film. The film also features Bernadette Peters, M. Emmet Walsh, Catlin Adams, Maurice Evans, and Jackie Mason.

Steve martin movies the jerk

Critical reviews were mostly positive, and The Jerk was a major financial success.

Plot

Navin Johnson, a homeless person sleeping in a stairwell in Los Angeles, addresses the camera directly to tell his life story.

The white adopted son of black sharecroppers in Mississippi, Navin grows to adulthood naïvely unaware of these circumstances. He is unable to dance in rhythm to the spirited folk songs played by the family, but finds that he can do so perfectly to a champagne-style song on the radio.

Seeing this moment as a calling, he excite