1983 - THE KING OF COMEDY, Scorsese's extreme comedy of discomfort

Weirdo Rupert Pupkin wants in on the world of show business and along with fellow weirdo Masha,  kidnap talk show host Jerry Langford.

The King of Comedy is the film that showed that Jerry Lewis could give a very serious and straight performance as the Johnny Carson like talk show host.  It also shows DeNiro developing and playing a character who is even stranger than Travis Bickel from Taxi Driver.

Robert De Niro's creepy uber celebrity fixated nerd Rupert Pupkin is really something to see.  Many critics commented on the similarity between the equally obsessed Travis Bickel, but I think De Niro was attempting something different here.  Say what you want about Travis Bickel, but at least he had a persona even if it was a messed up persona.  Rupert Pupkin is a man so obsessed with celebrities and the lure of show business  that he has completely channeled his character into  that of a mediocre reprocessed TV personality.

The writer Paul D. Zimmerman was extremely unhappy that Scorsese got most of the credit for The King of Comedy, but this is a Scorsese film through and through.  

The King of Comedy also closes out Scorsese's somewhat traditional film making technique.  After this film he really ramps up his style with an even more flamboyant camera and editing style starting with After Hours.

Because they couldn't top the crazy Rupert Pupkin character, Scorsese and DeNiro  never filmed a story about such a disturbed character again.  The King of Comedy was also a box office disaster which probably didn't help.


109 minutes.