The King of Comedy

Although Martin Scorsese probably thought that he was making a movie that would be a TV version of Day of the Locust, the resulting picture, 1983's King of Comedy now seems weirdly prophetic -- the action in the film presages certain aspects of Reality TV:  ultimately, The King of Comedy stages a cringeworthy encounter between a wannabe star and a real celebrity.  As in The Apprentice or the various talent shows judged by famous stars, the gist of the thing is simple:  a novice entertainer with no real talent except for self-abasement endures a series of humiliations that lead to his apotheosis as a star.  Although Rupert Pupkin's triumph is probably purely imaginary -- the film's signals this by some sinister soun dcues in the picture's last minute -- nonetheless, the loser seems to be king for a day.  This is the essence of Reality TV and the celebrity culture explored by Scorsese's movie.

Made shortly after the operatic savagery of Raging Bull, The King of Comedy is a much smaller and more restrained film.  It looks a little bit low budget and Scorsese's camera is uncharacteristically inert for much of the film.  Raging Bull was a self-conscious masterpiece -- a demonstration of film's capacities as they existed in the late seventies, an example of bravura movie-making in which the young director showcased his skills and craft.  By contrast, The King of Comedy is a chamber-film and, it seems, home-made in large part -- the cast is full of Scorsese's relatives and DeNiro's wife plays an important role in the picture.  Looking sleek and athletic, Scorsese treats himself to a cameo -- he plays a giggling TV director, laughing at one of Pupkin's lame jokes.  The soundtrack, which is brilliant, was devised by Robbie Robertson, Scorsese's erstwhile roommate. (Members of The Clash apparently visiting Scorsese also get a cameo and Van Morrison's "Wonderful Remark", written for the film, plays over the closing titles.)  The imagery is restrained and I don't think anyone uses the word "fuck" or any its derivatives or affiliates.  There aren't any overtly horrific shots; the film's graphic energy is based in its editing:  it's hard to define exactly how the film is edited, but shots seem to last too long and, then, are cut in unexpected ways -- the picture has a jangly, ragged sort of rhythm.  In its form and plot, the picture reprises Taxi Driver -- Robert DeNiro (Pupkin) plays a deranged outsider, a loner who seems incompletely unaware of the painful impression he makes on other people.  Like Travis Bickle, he has aspirations toward a pretty girl, but always ends up doing or saying the wrong thing.  Bickle stalks a presidential candidate; Pupkin stalks Jerry Langford, remarkably played by Jerry Lewis.  Langford is the host of a late night talk show -- a figure like Johnny Carson.  Pupkin has an accomplice, a rich mentally ill girl played by Sandra Bernhard.  The two of them kidnap Langford and ransom the star for an agreement that Pupkin be allowed to perform some stand-up comedy on Langford's talk show.  Implausibly, the network executives agree and Pupkin performs -- he delivers a crushingly unfunny monologue that dramatizes the origin of his quest for stardom in a horrific childhood.  The FBI arrests him when he finishes the stand-up routine.  On his way to jail, he persuades them to stop at the bar where his would-be girlfriend works -- with the other barflies, they watch the monologue.  A surreal coda, similar to the ending of Taxi Driver, suggests that Pupkin becomes famous, writes a best seller and ends up, in fact, as a real fixture on late night talk shows.  But the soundtrack loops on the word "wonderful" and there is a raucous, sinister and distorted edge of the jocular music accompanying Pupkin's arrival on stage and we are left with the suspicion that this contrived happy ending is just one of Pupkin's deranged fantasies -- throughout the film, we have seen Pupkin's reveries intruding into the action without any extrinsic sign or marker to establish that we are now seeing the protagonist's fantasies and not reality as posited by the film.  Indeed, it's hard to distinguish between reality and Pupkin's deranged fantasies in the film's last two reels.  (In some ways, Pupkin is like Hitchcock's Norman Bates -- we see him in his basement interacting with life-size cut-outs of celebrities; the basement is clearly a theater of the imagination -- it has immense galleries and Tv sets in mirrored corridors.  Periodically, Pupkin's mother is heard off-screen shouting at him.  But, in his comedy monologue, Pupkin reveals that his mother has been dead for nine years.  The picture veers into the horror of madness as damnation that Hitchcock exploited in Psycho.) 

The film's programmatic title shot, a pair of hands trying to push through a glass window establishes the movie's theme:  in the shot, the glass window looks like a TV screen and the hands of the viewer are pressed against that screen.  It's everyone's aspiration to press through the screen of their TV and emerge as a celebrity in Celebrity-Land on the other side of the glass.  Scorsese has the courage to make Pupkin singularly unsympathetic -- the man is a monster, seeming ingratiating at first but, also, pressing things much, much too far.  He imagines himself not only the equal of Jerry Langford but his superior -- in his fantasies, Langford begs Pupkin to take over his late-night talk show for six weeks so that the star can rest.  Pupkin's romantic interest. the pretty barmaid, seems reasonable and rooted in some recognizable form of reality -- although, she lives in a hellish flat similar to the roost of whores and murderers that Bickle raided to save Jodie Foster.  But when she is taken to Langford's mansion on Long Island, she surreptitiously steals a souvenir of her adventure.  Vital to the film's design is Jerry Lewis' talk show host.  Lewis plays the man as every bit as isolated and peculiar as the pathetic Rupert Pupkin -- he seems to live alone in a white museum of a house (and a white museum of a Manhattan townhome).  Lewis delivers a remarkable restrained performance -- he is highly disciplined and, indeed, frightening.  Langford, shot in slow motion, is like one of Scorsese's hero-worshiped gangsters, a "made man" who struts through a crowd with the sleek aplomb of a rat-packer.  At the end of the film, Langford looks at a bank of TVs for sale, all of them showing Pupkin's awful monologue on Langford's show -- the look of sheer, impenetrable hatred on Langford's face is alarming.  Lewis plays Langford as a cipher, an unapproachable entity.  When he is released by his pathetic captor played by Sandra Bernhard -- she's stripped for him to her bra and panties -- he has no hesitancy at firing the gun she has been wielding point-blank into her belly.  (It shoots blanks.)  Then, he punches her in face and flees her apartment.  Bernhard's part is underwritten and we don't have much sense for her character or backstory -- she is wildly argumentative and seems to be some sort of poor little rich girl.  But she is also perfectly cast.  In one memorable shot, interposed with a close-up of Langford, she blows him a kiss -- her face is dark and looks bruised and it is animate with a terrifying mixture of lust and despair.  Scorsese lets the darks in his images dramatize the darkness in the script -- each time Pupkin emerges from the skyscraper where Langford has his offices, he pushes his way through dense, inky darkness -- it's just a trick of contrast but one that makes a powerful point.