Jerry Lewis has no time for this interview about how old he is

LOS ANGELES -- Why?

It's the eternal question, but it's also a handy answer if you're 90 years old and some pesky whippersnapper with a notepad is peppering you with questions about your age.

The Hollywood Reporter this week published "Creative until you die," a series of nifty -- if somewhat macabrely titled -- interviews about showbiz luminaries still working after age 90. Dick Van Dyke, Cloris Leachman, Don Rickles, Betty White ... there are more than you might think.

THR books editor Andy Lewis (no relation, we hope) traveled to Lewis' home in Las Vegas to interrogate, errrr, interview the famously difficult comedian, who was obviously in no mood that day to talk about how advanced age was affecting his career.

This one, though, was a little rough from the start. In his THR piece, Lewis writes:

Throughout the photo shoot, Lewis complained about the amount of equipment in the house, the number of assistants and how the shots were set up. By the time we sat down for the interview about an hour later, Lewis had worked up a full head of steam, and it seemed like he was punishing THR by doing the interview but being as uncooperative as possible.

Boy did it ever.

Lewis gave a series of one-word answers, mocked the interviewer's chuckling and was generally an uncompromising grump. Not that the questions were inclined to warm him up -- like, for instance, putting him in the same breath as three long-dead people ... ?

"You come from a generation a little older ... I think of Bob Hope, George Burns, Sinatra, many of whom you knew, many of whom didn't wanna -- or didn't retire either ... do you see any similarities with them?," (Andy) Lewis asked.

"None," is the reply.

But this is a thing better experienced than described. Just check out the video:

Lewis (the interviewer) spoke by phone with Mashable on Tuesday, and it was clear that the interview didn't go as planned.

"I'm fine to admit that I'm the butt of this joke," chuckled Lewis, who said he volunteered for this particular interview because he thought it'd be fun. It wasn't -- at least not in the moment -- as things went sideways long before he got a single question in.

"It was totally clear it wasn't going to go well," he said. "When I walked in the house I could see him sitting on the couch watching the TV ... at that point I could see he was in a bad mood and it would be a hard interview and, yeah. I got a little bit flustered."

Lewis (again, Andy we're talking about here) seemed a bit downtrodden about it all -- "I feel somewhat like I failed," he said -- taking little solace in the fact that his fumbling around perhaps the most difficult interview subject in Hollywood had created the day's best viral video.

Hey, to win, sometimes you gotta lose.

"I wanted it to go well, and it clearly didn't, but ... it takes two to make a terrible interview, so," he said. "I didn't want to go back to the office having failed. I'd hoped he'd take the bat on one of those questions and the conversation would start. I was just trying to get my job done."