Interview with “Shari & Lamb Chop” Director Lisa D’Apolito

In her latest documentary, Shari & Lamb Chop (which I reviewed out of DOC NYC 2023), director Lisa D’Apolito—whose previous documentary, Love, Gilda, is about the late actress and comedian Gilda Radner—explores the life of Shari Lewis, famous for her various television stints that began in the 1950s and ran until close her to death in 1998 at the age of 65. Her most celebrated creation was Lamb Chop, a sock puppet brought to vivid life through Lewis’ awe-inspiring talents as a ventriloquist. After a long festival run, the movie is finally getting a theatrical release starting July 18, courtesy of Kino Lorber. Just this past week, I had a chance to chat with D’Apolito via Zoom, and what follows is that interview, edited for length and clarity.

Christopher Llewellyn Reed: I don’t know if you remember my review from 2023, but in it I talk about how I know Shari Lewis from this magic book she co-wrote with her father, Abraham Hurwitz. [holds up book to camera] I’m actually in between ages: I’m too young to have seen Shari Lewis in her first TV iteration  and I’m too old to have seen her when she came back. I decided to watch your film at DOC NYC because I had seen your previous film, and I’d heard of Shari Lewis, but I didn’t realize how familiar her face was to me. This was my favorite magic book as a kid; I used to love doing tricks from it. It was really quite nice to realize, “Oh, that’s who she was!” Before you started making this film, what did the name Shari Lewis mean to you?

Lisa D’Apolito: Well, I was also in between the two different ages, but I always knew Lamb Chop and I remember Shari being on Hollywood Squares and different talk shows and things like that. I didn’t really have a relationship with Shari, though. I had a relationship with Lamb Chop because I just thought Lamb Chop was so adorable. And so when I was approached about the film, that was actually when I found out her father was the official magician of New York City. I was like, “What?” And then the magic part was actually a really big, big draw for me. 

CLR: Did you do magic tricks as a child as well, or later?

LD: No, but I was a magician’s assistant in high school. I got in and out of boxes and stuff like that. I didn’t do the magic. I was like the assistant as opposed to Shari, who never would’ve been an assistant.

CLR: I was very much an amateur magician for a while, so that’s why that was quite something to me. So, you were approached to make this film. Who approached you and how did they pitch the story to you?

LD: Well, actually through Love, Gilda, I became friends with Gene Wilder’s nephew, Jordan [Walker-Pearlman], who had a production company, and he knew that I was looking for another unsung female hero. So he called me up because one of the producers he works with had met Mallory Lewis, Shari’s daughter, at some fundraising event. He was the one who said to me, “What do you think about Shari Lewis?” I was like, “Shari Lewis?” She was never on my list. That was when I started to do the research about her and just fell in love with her. I didn’t know she was so much more than what I imagined her to be.

CLR: And she really is. One of the things that blew me away, watching the doc, was the incredible breadth and depth of her ventriloquism talents. You mentioned an “unsung female hero” subject; do you feel she gets the credit that she deserved? I mean, she was on TV a lot, so people recognized her. But that was some of the most amazing ventriloquism I have ever seen. Do you feel she gets the recognition she deserves? 

LD: Oh, no. I don’t think so at all. But I think that when you talk to ventriloquists, she does, because I think they know how difficult it is to do two characters and yourself and sing and not move your lips. So in the world of ventriloquism, she’s revered. I think she’s so seamless about it that you don’t even know. An audience member once said to me, “I didn’t even know she was a ventriloquist,” because she does Lamb Chop so seamlessly. I think anyone watching the film will see how difficult it is, but I think in the ventriloquist community, she is the best.

CLR: What really struck me was just everything else she did, with the timing, the two different voices; it was exceptional. So, I saw and reviewed this film at DOC NYC 2023. It’s now finally coming out in July, 2025. Could you talk about the movie’s journey from festival run to distribution?

LD: I don’t really know what happened. With Love, Gilda, everything happened so quickly because it was the opening night film at Tribeca. So this film has just taken a while and it’s gone to a lot of festivals. I think the audience has been built through these festivals. I think that was a big way to keep the film alive. And then we were really lucky to have Kino Lober, a great distributor, come on board, and then now it’s all happening. But it’s been quite the journey. And I think for the last year-and-a-half, for me, it was just keeping the film in front of an audience so that people could see it. 

CLR: There’s such an immense archive that you have to navigate in this movie, and you include footage of her father, Abraham, too. Could you talk about navigating that and working with your editor, Andrea Lewis?

LD: Well, I think it seems like a lot of footage, but it’s never really enough. You never get enough of the archive that you want. So it was really a struggle to try to find anything that’s personal. For me, to be able to see Abe in the parade was a good, amazing find. In terms of Andrea, my editor, she had the big challenge of going through all the shows, and I think that what Andrea did is she brought another level to the film that I wasn’t even aware of, because she started to realize, watching the shows, that Shari was speaking through her puppets many times. So Andrea brought that awareness. And then we started looking for situations where that could add to Shari’s story, and we could have examples of her speaking through the puppets without telling the audience that’s actually what they’re seeing. That was what Andrea brought to the table, and I thought that was really amazing.

CLR: That is quite an insight. Could you elaborate further, just in general about documentary filmmaking, when you say there’s never enough archive? How does this compare to Love, Gilda in that respect?

LD: Well, with Gilda, it was a journey, too, to get the real archival. But once Gilda’s brother gave me access to his storage unit and the personal stuff he had from Gilda, when I started to find her audio tapes and her diaries, it gave me a great insight into her. With Shari, it was a little more difficult because she didn’t leave any of that stuff behind. And in her interviews on television, she was very, very guarded, and very particular about how she wanted to come across. We did find one interview, however, that I use a lot in the film, and I think it’s the only interview where Shari reveals who she is, where the interviewer asks, “Who is the real Shari Lewis?” And I think he got into her more than anyone else. That’s what I was looking for: the real Shari Lewis.

CLR: It’s great that you found that. Now, in documentary films, you can use music as much as in fiction films, and you have a composer, Miriam Cutler, who I think does a great job. Could you talk about the process of working with her on this film?

LD: I worked with Miriam on Love, Gilda, too, and she taught me a lot about working with a composer, because Miriam and I are both into character. We’re both into bringing out character and emotion, and Miriam works with different beats of emotions and uses different sections of music to express the emotion that’s going on. And I think that she is just brilliant. In the scene where Shari is on her last television show and she sings her song, and then Miriam composes the aftermath of that song, it still makes me cry. 

CLR: That’s the “Hello, Goodbye” song, right?

LD: Yes. And then after that, it’s Miriam’s music, and I think that Miriam’s music, with what Andrea put together as an edit … I mean, every time I’ve seen the film, people have been emotionally touched by that part. And I think that’s really the music that gets to you, and it should, A good composer can work with existing music, too, because there is a lot of music throughout the film, so there’s a challenge of balancing original music with the music that’s there.

CLR: What was it like navigating the family dynamics within the film? Because you had to work closely with Mallory, her daughter, and she was with you at the DOC NYC screening. How did that affect your thoughts, in terms of telling that aspect of the story? There are some challenging moments, because the relationship was sometimes strained since, as Mallory says, “There could only be one star, and that was Shari.”

LD: I think, with every film, there’s a fine line of making sure the estate is happy. But, for me, I’ve never met Shari, so I wanted to create a true Shari. So there are always things to work on, and I think it’s about trust, too, because I don’t think I’m the kind of filmmaker who’s trying to get some salacious story across, but I do want to tell the truth of how things are. And Mallory and I worked together on it, but it is my film, and she had to trust me. And trust is hard when you’re giving your mother’s story and your own story in there. So I think we built trust, and there were times we had to discuss things, but I think in the end, Mallory and her family are really happy about the portrayal of Shari.

And that happened on Gilda, too. Talking about Gilda’s eating disorder was a very uncomfortable thing to people. And so I think you have to give the truth, but in a way that is respectful to the person and not trying to create drama. What I found, because there were some people—it wasn’t Mallory, but there were a lot of producers on the film—who would love to tell a different story in order to make it more salacious or dramatic. And you can’t make up a story of somebody’s life. Their life is what it is, and it’s unfair to create drama that’s not there. So Mallory and I always worked really well together because I think she trusted what I was doing, and I had to trust what I was doing, too, because I am not going to make up things that aren’t there just to create a more dramatic story. 

CLR: What did you learn about Shari Lewis in the making of this documentary that surprised you the most?

LD: The most? I think her tenacious spirit, and the fact I don’t think she ever let herself down. Anything she got hit with, she jumped up and reinvented herself. I don’t think she ever lived in the moment of “poor me.” It was always, “Let me just keep going.” I think she was a lesson in so many different things, including standing up for yourself. She was a 4’11’’ little performer that people underestimated, but she was always the boss, the boss of her creative life and the boss of her career as much as she could be. She was still reliant on networks and investors and things like that, but she was always in charge of her life and her career.

CLR: She is an inspiration to us all. Well, Lisa, thank you so much for chatting with me. I wish you all good things with the release of the movie.

LD: Thank you!

Christopher Llewellyn Reed

Chris Reed is the editor of Film Festival Today. A member of both the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) and the Washington DC Area Film Critics Association (WAFCA), and a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic, Chris is, in addition, lead film critic at Hammer to Nail and the author of Film Editing: Theory and Practice.