“The King of Comedy” (1982) is a rather simple tale of two unhinged people – Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro) and his friend Masha (Sandra Bernhard) – who work hard to make it to the top, but not via climbing the ladder; instead by finding a shortcut. It inspired Todd Phillips to mash it up with another Martin Scorsese film, “Taxi Driver” (1976), for his modern statement on mental illness, “Joker” (2019).
This lone notable film from writer Paul D. Zimmerman – as watchable as it is awkward — is never for a moment interested in labeling or presenting a solution to the maladies that afflict Pupkin and Masha, a contrast to “Joker.” Nonetheless, it’s a fascinatingly personal story of a low-key villain. De Niro gives off a taut-wire vibe due to his residual Travis Bickle-ness.
The mean streets of the entertainment industry
Instead of exploring the mean streets of prostitution, armed robbery and drug dealing, though, “King of Comedy” is about a different mean world: the entertainment industry. The camera treats Pupkin to a hero’s gaze, and theater-goers perhaps thought for a hot minute that he is the put-upon good guy, busting his butt yet unable to break through on New York City’s stand-up comedy circuit.
“The King of Comedy” (1982)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Writer: Paul D. Zimmerman
Stars: Robert De Niro, Jerry Lewis, Sandra Bernhard
The film opens with him faux-rescuing late-night host Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis) from a dangerously adoring mob. He has higher ambitions than the autograph seekers; he wants to be booked on the show.
Langford is the actual put-upon person. In one segment that’s like Woody Allen’s “Stardust Memories” (1980) in a nutshell, he walks down the sidewalk without his entourage and is besieged by a “fan” who says “I hope you get cancer” when he declines to take the pay-phone receiver to talk to her nephew.
Stardom nominally allows for stress-free activities like golf at one’s remote residence, but it’s hard to stay at the top and live a life of total leisure. In a throwback theme by today’s inflationary standards where few can afford to buy a home, “King” posits that success and money do not solve everything. (Indeed, Pupkin and Masha are not even bad off. They both live in nice homes in NYC despite not seeming to have jobs. Their concern is not a lack of riches so much as a lack of fame.)
As we learn in the limo conversation between Pupkin and Langford, the host got his lucky break when Jack Parr was sick one night. But also he honed his craft; his audience rapport and smooth delivery look easy after years of hard work. It’s soon clear that Pupkin is not willing to start at the bottom-rung clubs. “King” isn’t a story of someone driven crazy by never getting a break; it’s the story of someone who doesn’t want to put in the work (in the traditional sense).
Waiting for his break
Pupkin demonstrates faux-perseverance. He says he’ll wait as long as he needs to in Langford’s reception room. “Gilmore Girls’ ” Rory Gilmore would later get a job at the Stamford Eagle-Gazette with this made-for-fiction tactic. In the reality of “King,” it doesn’t do any good. Plus, he’s not even allowed to wait there; security removes him.
What starts as the slightest “can’t catch a break” fable soon turns into something tragic, dark and comedic … if you like your comedy as black as an overcast, moonless night. Pupkin doesn’t realize Langford is brushing him off during the limo ride; that’s understandable. But to miss the assistant’s clear, polite and fair analysis of his comedy tape (good delivery, but the jokes need work; hit the clubs and our scout will check you out) illustrates that Pupkin can’t listen.
Like Bickle and the Joker, Pupkin is in his own world. Scorsese doesn’t achieve this blurred reality with the same deft touch as in “Taxi Driver.” For a while, it seems he and Zimmerman want us to wonder what’s real and what isn’t in the mind of a nutjob, but ultimately it’s not much of a puzzle.
(SPOILERS FOLLOW.)
Clearly, the whiplash from Pupkin asking for a break to Langford asking Pupkin to take over his show for six weeks indicates that the latter scene is in Pupkin’s imagination. But then Pupkin is on a date with an attractive bartender, Rita (Diahnne Abbott). Is that also in his mind? I would’ve said “Absolutely, yes,” especially since there’s a man in the background staring at Pupkin as if wary of this crazy person talking to himself.
Pupkin appears to live with his mother, whose nagging voice calls from offscreen for him to keep it down when he’s recording his comedy tape. So apparently he has a very (perhaps overly) kind parent who lets him live there rent-free. He does not seem to have a job. (Some viewers have suggested the mother is in his head. But then one must also wonder if his home is in his head. The rabbit hole can deepen fast.)
Also, one might wonder if Masha is real – or if Rita is a fantasy version of Masha – and I kind of wish “King” had ended with the curtain pulled back to reveal what really happened from the POV if neutral observers, like “The Sixth Sense.” But Zimmerman and Scorsese don’t go too far down the path of different “realities”; “King” is always simpler than you’d think it would be.
(END OF SPOILERS.)
Good delivery of mediocre material
Zimmerman particularly walks a tightrope in writing Pupkin’s material. He’s exactly what the movie presents him as: a novice comedian with a good delivery and mediocre material. He has practiced the cadence so much to an empty room that he’s become smooth. But without an audience, he doesn’t have an inkling of what lands as funny.
“King of Comedy” spends time being unhinged, notably in Masha’s strange seduction of the taped-to-a-chair Langford. (She’s more traditionally weird, perhaps; the unusual look of Bernhard compared to De Niro — whose Pupkin seems professional at first glance — might encourage this reading.)
But the film doesn’t slow down to examine why these people are unhinged. (Is it nature or nurture? Internal or external? Something about NYC? Something about the Eighties?) In some ways that’s less interesting than “Joker,” in some ways more. And unlike Bickle, Pupkin doesn’t even have an obsessive moral code. Pupkin is so identity-focused that he doesn’t observe; Bickle is so observant that he loses his identity.
(SPOILERS THROUGH THE END OF THE POST.)
And yet, “King” hits us with a gut punch of a punchline. Pupkin’s insane scheme works. He kidnaps Langford, goes on the show, and does his act to decent applause. That in and of itself does not launch his career. The fact that he got on the show via holding the host hostage launches his career. (He just has to do a couple years in prison first.)
It’s a tale so bluntly wacky that I feel it must be based on a true story, but it isn’t. Famous-for-being-famous celebrities somewhat take a Pupkin-esque shortcut, but without doing anything illegal. And people who do something grandly illegal, such as The Unabomber, sometimes get attention, but they aren’t widely admired.
If “The King of Comedy” posits that a path to fame (rather than infamy) is possible by taking a law-breaking shortcut, the real world (rather surprisingly) counters that this precise thing is not quite possible. But it’s on the edge of plausibility, a little more real and a little less surreal than is comfortable.