KING OF COMEDY
A film review by Kevin Cogliano
Copyright 1996 Kevin Cogliano
Movies To Watch So You Won't Be So Stupid #1
Hi, kids. This will (hopefully) be the first in a series of essays - NOT reviews - of films that I call Hidden Treasures: movies that have slipped through the cracks of the mainstream and are currently languishing on the shelves of your local video retailer.
Keep in mind that these essays are 1) entirely my own opinion and 2) right.
De Niro and Scorscese are the Tag Team Champions of the filmic world. For my money, these two artists are the greatest director/actor collaborators in the history of the medium. But while Travis Bickle and Jake LaMotta have spawned a million undergraduate film essays, little has been said about their creepiest creation - Rupert Pupkin.
Rupert is one of the greatest losers of all time, a whining, desperate and pathetic man who carries only one insane conviction: that he has the makings to be a legendary stand-up comedian. De Niro plays him like the buffoon that he is, wandering the streets of New York in badly-tailored suits and a cheesy moustache. Pupkin physically resembles a cross between Sean Penn circa FALCON AND THE SNOWMAN and Pee-Wee Herman.
Like most obsessed people, Pupkin eschews the whole notion of paying your dues in the show-biz world. He wants to start at the top. He wants a shot at the Tonight Show.
Of course, it's not REALLY the Tonight Show, but it might as well be. The alternate-reality Carson show in this movie is hosted by Jerry Lewis - a television personality so oily that you expect him to slide off the screen leaving only a thin film of grease behind.
Lewis is so shockingly brilliant in this film that it continues to amaze me. God knows I can't stand Jerry Lewis. His success as a popular comedian is one of the Great Mysteries Of The Universe, like the fact that, against all odds, Dennis Hopper isn't dead yet. Lewis is so perfect as the slimeball T.V. star that you are forced to wonder if he's actually acting at all. Perhaps he really IS a slimeball.
Rounding out this unholy trinity is Sandra Bernhard, who De Niro enlists to help with the kidnapping of Lewis. She plays a rich Jewish princess who is madly in love with Lewis, which means she's obviously a few bricks short of an outhouse. The best comic scene in the film is between her and Lewis when she tries to seduce him as he's tied to a chair with duct tape, utterly immobile. "Let's do it right here on the table, Jer," she breathes, and Lewis just stares, transfixed by terror.
Scorscese's direction in KING OF COMEDY is miles away from the baroqueness of CAPE FEAR and CASINO. His camera is a detached and impartial recorder of this New York madness. Scorscese has a reputation for being over-the-top visually, but he proves in KING that he can just as easily be restrained and subdued if the story demands it.
Along with AFTER HOURS, KING is my favourite Scorscese movie. There's not a wasted frame or missed comic moment - but, like all great comedy, there's a real sense of menace and incipent danger beneath the proceedings. KING OF COMEDY is a movie where you laugh because you're too nervous to do anything else.
--
Kevin Cogliano
{write any snide comments to:wp327@freenet.victoria.bc.ca}
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