The King of Comedy

I find it kind of interesting in this day and age the way in which pop culture almost sustains itself through continuous pop culture. I'll be honest, the only reason I've ever heard of this movie, much less wanted to watch it, was because this movie is said to be an inspiration for the new Joker movie that is set to be released this upcoming weekend. I might talk a little more in depth about the self perpetuating pop culture that we live in and how I don't totally see that as a bad thing, but I want to talk about this movie on its merits first.

King of Comedy follows the story of a lonely, unsuccessful stand up comic by the name of Rupert Pupkin (played by Robert De Niro). Totally by luck, he is able to gain access and have a very brief conversation with his idol, a late night host by the name of Jerry Langford (played by Jerry Lewis).

In an attempt to get rid of him, Jerry tells him to submit his stand up work to his office and they'll see if they can get him on the show.

But Rupert takes this very seriously, doing everything in his power to make sure he gets his 5 minutes of fame on the Jerry Langford show, showing up at Jerry's office and homes and refusing to leave, as well as eventually kidnapping Langford and extorting the production staff to put him on the air.

Throughout the entire movie, Rupert is having these fantasies in his mind where him and Jerry are great friends and have a great working relationship as two professional comedians together.

This was my favorite part of the film. This movie came out in 1982 and it looks old in my honest opinion. But one way or another, the cuts to Rupert's fantasies work phenomenally because you're not totally sure which ones are the fantasies and which ones are reality until you see Jerry's reaction to Rupert and eventually, those fantasies start to blend with Rupert's perception of reality.

He imagines Jerry invites him out to his summer home so Rupert brings the woman he's trying to start a relationship with (played by Diahnne Abbott) to the summer home saying, "Jerry is expecting me".

It should be noted that the performances in this film are pretty darn good.

If you grew up like I did with Robert De Niro being more of a pop culture figure than knowing his body of actual work, you'd be remiss if you didn't know that there is a reason he's such a huge figure today and that he doesn't ACTUALLY need to work because he has put in so many good performances and has a pretty large range. This movie shows that range because it creates a very different character than the Italian tough guy De Niro has grown parody levels of acclaim for.

Rupert Pupkinis a loser, he's a dweeb, but he's persistent. De Niro is able to create this really interesting character and it's great to see something different than the Italian Mobster they are literally using computers to make him younger to play again in The Irishmen. It was good to go back and realize that he's more than that stereotype and remind myself why he has that place in pop culture.

The performance of Jerry Lewis was pretty good as well as Diahnne Abbott and Sandra Bernhard who plays an equally obsessed fan of Jerry Langford's

What I found most interesting about this film was the way in which it has aged. The movie is a dark comedy so its injecting comedy into a situation that usually isn't funny and sometimes is even inappropriate for humor. The part I find interesting is this movie's use of comedy and how the movie has both aged really well in the era of the internet, and how it has aged horrendously in the age of the internet.

On one hand, this movie is really funny. I think the humor in this film is paired well with really uncomfortable but well done tension, along with the obsessive performance of De Niro as Pupkin. When I realized the humor in it, the movie became a little more entertaining than perpetually uncomfortable. The uncomfortable tension is apart of why the film is enjoyable, but if it wasn't offset by the humor of Pupkin just being a doof, that constant tension would be annoying after a while.

But the humor is essential in the way in which this movie has aged perfectly and aged terribly at the same time.

The movie shows the dark underbelly of fan culture and people's love for public figures.

Obsessive fan culture has been a thing for decades. The desire to be apart of the entertainment business through any means necessary has been around for centuries.

The interesting part of this movie is the utilization of comedy in these really uncomfortable situations where a man, who really does absolutely nothing wrong except not call the cops a lot earlier is tied up and forced to have dinner with an insane Sandra Bernhard while his other captor exploits his crime to become famous.

I get it, its a black comedy. But I got the feeling, and I could be totally wrong, that more of this movie was played up for laughs than it would be today and that is both a good and a bad thing. The movie provides for a window into a time where certain topics were able to be laughed about because not as many people were affected by it and wackos like De Niro and Bernhard's character's felt like they were isolated incidents.

Now with the internet, these wackos are in almost every comment section and they're not that hard to find. And it also shows the importance of timing. Would this movie have the same impact today as it did in 1982?

Of course it is impossible to know. Even though it has been alluded that this upcoming Joker movie is going to pull inspiration from King of Comedy, I don't even know how close its going to be to the film and the difference in genre makes me suspect that despite the similarities, the tone and execution probably put these films in two different categories that its very hard to really make any hard comparison of today's impact versus the impact in 1982.

Now is it weird that there has already been so much controversy about a film that only critics and a few fans have seen and that follows the story of a comic book character, yes. But this is the world we live in.

I can't speak to Joker too much because I haven't seen it, but De Niro said upon the release of this film that perhaps it didn't do well commercially because it took on a topic people didn't really want to discuss, I assume fan culture, obsessive people going the extra dangerous step further in their pursuit of happiness, and violence.

Well we live in a world where we can't really escape that. The internet has given lonely, frustrated people a platform for their disturbed views to fester and it really is interesting watching both how this movie hits it on the head, while at the same time kind of underplays obsessive fan culture for laughs.

On a lighter note, I do think King of Comedy in today's perspective represents how we should be scratching that nostalgia itch we have these days.

Nobody is remaking King of Comedy, not because its some beloved film, but because its the opposite. I only heard of it because of this Joker movie but that is in essence how we're perpetuating this nostalgia kick. The Joker film is hopefully its own film with inspiration from King of Comedy. On top of that, I didn't realize that Family Guy has parodied this film so one of the scenes might look really familiar if you've only seen the episode where Meg kidnaps Brian because she's in love with him.

But that's the interesting way pop culture self sustains itself and I don't see either of those examples as bad. It reminds us of things that once were, more than likely taking inspiration from it, but at the end of the day making our own thing* (sometimes out of an existing comic book character).

King of Comedy made me think a lot which is good. Its pretty concise with each scene and the run time clips along which is good. The performances are very good, especially from De Niro.

I think time will really have to say whether or not its a film that is going to go down as something really memorable for me. I caught it right before it left Amazon Prime, but I think right now it feels very relevant and worth recommending other people check out if they have the opportunity. I eventually want to watch it without the context of Joker, but until then, I was engaged with the film and I'm glad I saw it, at the very least so I can have this dialogue about it.

But have you seen King of Comedy? What do you think of it? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Thanks for reading!