"Le Jour de Jerry, et la nuit", was later published in the film journal Trafic. In 2017, shortly after Lewis's death, Bruce Handy's article in Vanity Fair, The French Critic Who Saw Jerry Lewis's Infamous Holocaust Movie and Loved It, brought to light a previously unpublished interview with Jean-Michel Frodon. The French critic claimed to have seen a copy of the film in 2004 or 2005 at the invitation of director Xavier Giannoli who owned a bootleg copy. Frodon did not know how Giannoli obtained his copy, and Giannoli declined Handy's request for comment. Frodon reported that while the copy he watched was obviously a rough preliminary edit, it generally followed the published script and did not seem to be missing any major story elements. His experience viewing the film is as follows, Frodon further denies there is any sentimentality in the film, calling it "very meaningful" and stating Lewis is "not indulging himself, he is self-caricaturing. He is playing a very unsympathetic character. He's selfish and totally stupid. ... The film finds what I consider a cinematic answer to some real, serious issues, using a kind of stylized setting, both in the costumes and the sets. It's not pretending to be realistic. Instead, it has a very obvious fairy-tale feeling—not fairy tale, but tale. ... There are details like in the Grimm Brothers." and "For me, one of the many elements that draw such negative reaction to the film in the U.S. is that this performance is very far from what is expected from him." It was one of the earliest mainstream films to deal with the Holocaust and to directly depict the Nazi concentration camps. Lewis interviews and responses Due to the film's mystery and mythology, Lewis faced decades of questions by reporters. Lewis offered the opinion that it was all bad, an artistic failure because "I lost the magic". Quoted in Entertainment Weekly: "You will never see it. No one will ever see it, because I am embarrassed at the poor work." In 2001, an 'inquisitive heckler' mentioned the film to Lewis during one of Lewis's motivational speeches, indicating that the man had heard the film might be eventually released. Lewis replied to this comment with "None of your goddamn business!" The same year, Lewis responded to a reporter's faxed request for information about the movie by calling and telling him: "As far as discussing [the movie],