The film also features Bernadette Peters, M. Emmet Walsh, Catlin Adams, Maurice Evans, and Jackie Mason.

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.

Navin finds a job as a gas station attendant, where he attempts to detain some thieves but accidentally destroys a nearby church.

However, Navin is soon named as defendant in a class action lawsuit brought by millions of Opti-Grab customers who have become permanently cross-eyed after using the device.

Navin loses the suit and is ordered to pay $10 million in damages, leaving him broke, and he storms out into the street after an argument with Marie.

[3] Basing his film proposal on a line from his act — "It wasn't always easy for me; I was born a poor black child" — he fleshed out his ideas into a series of notes he intended to deliver to studios.

[5] However, Picker convinced his new employer Universal Studios to sign a distribution deal for the film, which would leave Martin in creative control of the project.

[7] He adapted several bits of his standup act to fit within the film, such as a monologue in which he emotionally exits a scene, remarking "I don't need anything", but nevertheless picking up each object he passes on his way out.

This included Mohammed al Fassi's mansion in Beverly Hills, Pasadena, Westlake Village and Devonshire Downs in Northridge.

[4] In shooting the film, Reiner "ran a joyful set", according to Martin, with the cast and crew eating lunch together each day.

[9] Martin's favorite moment of the film, as he detailed in his 2007 memoir Born Standing Up, was the scene in which he and Peters sing "Tonight You Belong to Me".

[citation needed] Another scene that was cut featured Gailard Sartain as a Texas oil millionaire who tearfully begs Navin for money to replace the cracked, dried-out leather seats on his private jet.

Navin grants his request and he gratefully states: "Now I can fly my friends to the Super Bowl like a MAN, and not some damned BUM!

"[12] The television version features a scene in which a forlorn Navin, trying to forget Marie, spends six hours on the Round Up carnival ride.

The site's critical consensus reads: "Crude, crass, and oh so quotable, The Jerk is nothing short of an all-out comedic showcase for Steve Martin.

[15] Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that The Jerk "is by turns funny, vulgar and backhandedly clever, never more so than when it aspires to absolute stupidity.

The author of the review referred to Steve Martin's silly, exaggerated acting as complementary to the early comedian Jerry Lewis.

[25] In a 2015 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Steve Martin was asked if the film would be accepted in this day and age with all of the "heightened racial sensitivity."