The King Of Comedy

Over the weekend we lost comedy legend Jerry Lewis. There was no denying that he was a genius at playing the fool, either alongside his longtime comedy partner Dean Martin, or as a solo act later on. But by the late 70's and early 80's, Lewis had grown kind of long in the tooth for his slapstick brand of humor and he wasn't packing them into theaters like he once did. But in 1982, Lewis had a stroke of brilliance and reinvented himself as a straight man to Robert De Niro in Martin Scorsese's darkly comic The King Of Comedy.

De Niro plays Rupert Pupkin, a man desperate for fame. He thinks he see's an opportunity towards his goal after rescuing late night talk show host Jerry Langford, Lewis, from a rabid fan, Sandra Bernhard. After this chance encounter, he thinks that Langford is going to book him on his show. He even thinks the two are best friends, which couldn't be further from the truth. The desperate Pupkin, with the help of Bernhard, decides to kidnap Langford and won't release him until he gets his shot in the spotlight.

This is a brilliant film that's just as timely today, with our fame obsessed culture, as it was upon it's release. It was an extremely gutsy role for Lewis to take on. He totally drops his clown shtick that he relied on for years and let's De Niro and Bernhard have the laughs. De Niro is terrific as well playing a character that is somewhat a chattier version of his Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. Pupkins demons aren't as on the surface as Bickle's but he is just as troubled. Bernhard is a scene stealer in her first major role.

Oddly enough, after Raging Bull, Scorsese was thinking about retiring from feature films. He still wanted to make his pet project, The Last Temptation Of Christ, with De Niro in the lead. De Niro didn't want to take on another heavy project after Bull and bought the rights to Paul D. Zimmerman's script for Comedy. He thought that he had lined up his Deer Hunter director, Michael Cimino, to direct, but he backed out so that he could film Heaven's Gate. Luckily De Niro was able to convince Scorsese to take on the project.

Another fun little fact, Scorsese approached Johnny Carson to play the role of Langford. This makes total sense since the character seems to be loosely inspired by him. Carson politely declined.