|
Though it's probably wrong to weep as we do for Rupert Pupkin, the delirious stalker at the heart of Martin Scorsese's incredible The King of Comedy, it's the movie's fault: as played by Robert De Niro in a performance Scorsese calls his best (an assessment with which I must concur), Pupkin is too human to inhibit compassion--you should never laugh at a naked man. As the film opens, Pupkin helps Carson-esque talk-show host Jerry Langford (a searing, brilliant Jerry Lewis) through a horde of fans and into his limousine. In gratitude and, subtly, out of fear of litigation (Rupert injured his hand on the limo's door), Langford gives Rupert a moment of his precious time; it turns out that Rupert is an aspiring stand-up, has a tape, wants him to play it, yadda yadda yadda. "Come by my office," Langford says. It's not an invitation, but a brush-off.
We learn less about Langford than we do about Rupert. Jerry's got a ritzy pad, a place in the Hamptons--he probably forgets acquiring any of it. He regards his fans with robotic affability, cracking jokes with them until they've worn out their welcome, inviting the unforgettable harangue "You should get cancer!" from an elderly woman Langford leaves unsatisfied. (Lewis suggested this autobiographical moment to Scorsese.) Rupert, whose powder-blue wardrobe is so loud as to be hostile like bared teeth, craves the kind of fame that will empower him to dismiss others; he wants the respect that Jerry commands, the applause he earns, the friends he has... He's stalking Jerry not to "have" Jerry, that meaningless stalker's lament, but to assume Jerry. Rupert and Masha (Sandra Bernhard), a more traditionally (i.e. sexually) obsessed fan of Jerry's, are two different animals even though they're in cahoots to fulfill their disparate goals.
Scorsese's most effectual technique for locating Rupert's nerve centre is to furnish glimpses of his fantasy life, and in one particular dream sequence, The King of Comedy holds up a mirror to our collective consciousness: Rupert guests on "The Jerry Langford Show" and participates in an impromptu wedding ceremony (with a girl (Diahnne Abbott, De Niro's real-life partner at the time) who, in truth, abhors Rupert) performed by his principal from high school, whose vows include an apology on behalf of everyone who ever failed Rupert by refusing to believe in him. We're left feeling at once violated, ashamed, and exhilarated.
The picture doesn't look like much on purpose, with the camera static in master-shot for an appreciable length of the running time. Scorsese has said that he wanted to do The King of Comedy in the style of Edwin S. Porter, a filmmaker from the pre-Griffith silent era, before a cinematic vocabulary had made itself evident. (The epilogue of Scorsese's Goodfellas pays homage to--that is to say, steals in no uncertain terms--the final jolt from Porter's 1903 short The Great Train Robbery.) The approach was a reaction to the difficult-to-sustain kinetic energy of Raging Bull, but it also grounds the picture in an undaunted realism--with less starkness, we might accuse this worst-case scenario of being, well, a comedy.
Scorsese has been called a seer for 1983's The King of Comedy, as the ending predicts a mid-nineties rash of Joey Buttafuocos, all the way to Moby's recent hollow fringe celebration "We Are All Made of Stars." If anything, the picture is actually an Orwellian response to the events that surrounded the release of Raging Bull: Mark David Chapman's assassination of John Lennon; the murders of Dorothy Stratten and Dominique Dunne; and the attempt on Reagan's life on behalf of Jodie Foster. (A viewing of Scorsese's own Taxi Driver motivated Foster fan John Hinckley to kill the President.) The King of Comedy is resonant upside-down and sideways, in terser words, a humane satire (if there is such a thing) that was Scorsese's magnum opus 'til Kundun came along.
Fox--unforeseeably, as the film's distribution rights have bounced around a roulette wheel for years--presents The King of Comedy on DVD in a 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer of impressively-preserved elements. Gone is the heavy grain of the VHS and televised versions, which especially benefits a low-light encounter between Langford and Masha late in the picture. This is the first time I took stock of the picture's rouge-centric colour scheme--reds tended to collapse to earth tones in previous editions. The remastered Dolby 2.0 stereo track sounds less tinny than expected.
Bonus material includes a gratifying retrospective doc--"A Shot at the Top: The Making of The King of Comedy"--featuring alternating interviews with Scorsese and Bernhard circa 2002. Here, Scorsese says that he found his way into Paul Zimmerman's screenplay (which didn't excite him at first) after seeing the dark side of the fame he'd acquired from Raging Bull. ("Is Rupert Pupkin more violent than [Taxi Driver's] Travis Bickle?" he asks. "Maybe.") Bernhard laments her post-Scorsese career, saying that "Marty"'s implicit trust in her ruined her for other directors. Excerpted therein but also receiving their own section are two deleted scenes: one finds Langford greeting more fans at a crosswalk, the other Langford delivering a monologue to his televised audience that I suspect was cut because it's an act as opposed to the sort of current-affairs riffing one encounters on a late-night talk show. The King of Comedy's bracingly honest trailer, a Canadian TV spot, and a random-sampling still gallery round out the disc.-Bill Chambers
© Film Freak Central; filmfreakcentral.net. This review may not be reprinted, in whole or in part, without the express consent of its author. |
Buy at Amazon USA
Buy at Amazon Canada
DVD GRADES:
Image A-
Sound B
Extras B |
DVD VITALS:
Running Time
109 minutes
MPAA
R
Aspect Ratio(s)
1.85:1 ONLY, 16x9-enhanced
Languages
English Stereo,
English Mono,
French Mono,
Spanish Mono
CC
Yes
Subtitles
English, Spanish
DVD-9
Region One
Fox
Buy THE KING OF COMEDY posters at Moviegoods (click on image)
Published: January 6, 2003
|
dvd reviews: a to k | l to z | special categories