Crowning the King of Comedy

We’re all aware, at least if we watch American television, that right now talk-show hosts are something of an endangered species. Gone are the days when a man like Johnny Carson (or Jay Leno) was a friendly face in our living rooms, poking impish fun at celebrities and politicians without fear of retribution. Now Stephen Colbert’s months at CBS are numbered. And Jimmy Kimmel seemed to have gotten the axe when the powers-that-be disapproved of one of his jokes. (Surprisingly, the backlash was such that he was quickly reinstated.)

 But itl makes you wonder why anyone would risk it all to tell jokes on late-night television.  What exactly is the attraction? The money? The laughs? The opportunity to take on the status quo? The need, pure and simple, to connect with an audience?

 These thoughts flitted through my mind as I sat down to watch an unlikely 1982 film by Martin Scorsese, one that contains no gangsters and no boxers. (Yes, there’s a taxi-driver or two, but not in a role of any significance.) You could say, though, that this—like so many other Scorsese projects—is a film about an obsession. Robert De Niro, starring in his fifth film for Scorsese, plays Rupert Pupkin, an intense young man determined to make it as a stand-up comedian. None other than Jerry Lewis, then in his fifties, plays Jerry Langford, a comedian of the Carson ilk with a wide base of adoring fans. By happenstance, Pupkin protects Langford from a frenzied mob, then tries to worm his way into the great man’s home and heart as a way of launching his own career as a comedian. What does he want? To commence his own climb to fame and fortune via the opening spot on Langford’s nightly broadcast. How does he go about achieving this? With the manic determination that marks so many Scorsese protagonists. And, of course, a little touch of mayhem.

 It's fun to see De Niro, hyper-familiar in brutal parts, desperately playing at being ingratiating. And Lewis, eschewing his usual comic shtik, is convincing as a very private man forced to make nice, much against his nature, to someone who has obviously gone off the rails. For me the big surprise is comedian Sandra Bernhard, who essentially plays De Niro’s partner in crime, working her own surprisingly sexual obsession with Langford while helping clear the way for Pupkin’s leap into the big time.

 This is not, despite its title, a movie that is full of chuckles. But it does use very black humor to probe the excesses of fandom, something which continues—thanks to the Internet—to be more and more a part of our everyday world.  The King of Comedy builds to a climax and then a coda that have aroused much discussion: the movie doesn’t end in the likeliest of ways. Some moviegoers (like me) have appreciated its heavy-duty irony; others are not so sure.

 Admirers of Scorsese are apparently divided on the merits of this film. Some critics of the day embraced De Niro’s character as the flip side of Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle; others (including the influential Pauline Kael) were convinced Scorsese had lost his way. If Wikipedia is to be believed, such cinema wonderworkers as Akira Kurosawa and Wim Wenders have ranked The King of Comedy among their very favorite films. Fans in today’s Hollywood include Steve Carell and Jack Black, who would like to star in a remake. I don’t suspect that this will happen anytime soon, if ever. But the nature of comedy, as a subject, never truly grows old.