The King of Comedy

In 1982, two years after Raging Bull, Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese reteamed to make The King of Comedy. Scorsese was in a weird place, deciding he only wanted to make documentaries. Then he asked De Niro to make The Last Temptation of Christ, but De Niro wanted to make a comedy. He had the rights to a script by Paul Zimmerman that Michael Cimino was originally set to direct. Scorsese ended up making it. It bombed.

The King of Comedy, like Network and The Truman Show, was a film ahead of its time. It's attitude about celebrity--people being famous just for being famous, and the pursuit of celebrity by stalkers and autograph hounds--resonates even sharper today. I don't know that I had seen it since I saw it when it first opened, but it feels a little quaint given the society we live in now, with the Kardashians and Honey Boo Boo. It is still, though, a brilliant film, and is one of De Niro's best performance.

He plays Rupert Pupkin, a classic loser who lives with his mother, appears to be jobless, and dresses bizarrely (he is most reminiscent of the fashion choices of Pee-Wee Herman). He longs to be a professional comedian, but is too lazy and psychopathic to actually work for it, going to open mic nights and the like. Instead, he wants to start at the top, and manages to get into the limo of Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis), a Johnny Carson-like talk show host. Lewis brushes him off, telling him to call his office, but De Niro takes it seriously, being a pest and not being able to hear the word no from Shelley Hack as Lewis' secretary.

Along with another Langford stalker, Sandra Bernhard, they kidnap Lewis in order to get De Niro on the show. This works, and Pupkin gets his fame. In a coda reminiscent of Taxi Driver, De Niro largely goes unpunished, and society takes a beating.

The film is full of similarities to Taxi Driver. Rupert Pupkin and Travis Bickle are both from the same gene pool, and it's hard to say who is crazier. Pupkin does not commit violence, but he threatens it. Would he really have the talk show host killed if his demands are not met? We are led to believe yes. Pupkin is a man who has watched television his whole life, who has a mock talk show set in his basement, with a cutout of Liza Minelli (among others) and has the ass-kissing lingo down to a tee.

The movie is remarkable in a couple of other aspects. One, it is probably the best acting Jerry Lewis ever did. He plays it completely straight, a simmering cauldron of resentment (he's not a happy man, judging by his eating dinner alone in his spacious apartment). When De Niro and the girl he's trying to impress (the real Mrs. De Niro, Diahnne Abbott) invade Lewis' country home, you may be tempted to watch through your fingers, as De Niro just can't believe that Lewis wants to throw him out. From their one meeting, he has associated himself as a friend of Lewis'.

Secondly, this is really the only great role that Sandra Bernhard had. Almost beautiful in her ugliness, she plays a rich girl who wants to have sex with Langford. While Pupkin gets on the show, she tries to seduce him in an improvisation that is just perfect (Lewis is encased in masking tape). I'm sorry that we don't learn her fate, as the last we see of her is running down the street in bra and panties, yelling Jerry's name.

The script also makes a bold choice in allowing us to see Pupkin's act. It's not good, but it's not terrible, and to show the sheep-like quality of audiences, they laugh at it anyway. You sense that with work, lots of work, Pupkin could have been a professional comedian--he knows all you can know from watching, such as timing. De Niro studied professional comedians (he also talked to his own stalkers) and would make another film years later playing a comedian in The Comedian (didn't see it, but it was roundly panned).

The King of Comedy is criminally underrated as both a film and a sociological statement. It was depressingly accurate in its prediction about celebrity and fame.