Make Films Not Movies

With the recent release of Shutter Island, Martin Scorsese once again brings a tale to the screen. There was a time in the maverick director's career that he didn't use Leonardo DiCaprio - The King of Comedy is one such time.

A naive loser Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro), who happens to be a hopeful comedian, manages to catch the ear of his comedic idol Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis as a rather candid and short-tempered version of himself) and invite himself for an audition. When Langford's office is dismissive of Pupkin, he grows increasingly disturbed until, goaded on by fellow Langford fan, Masha (Sandra Bernhard), he crashes his hero's home and takes him hostage.

Scorsese takes a film about comedians, co-starring a comedy legend in Lewis and works it into a menacing heist film not any less tense than his earlier work Taxi Driver (1976). Seemingly never far from lashing out violently during the hostage situation, De Niro's Pupkin has gone from a pathetic and celebrity obsessed loner who lives and has a fake TV studio in his Mother's basement to Travis Bickle without the mohawk. It is the slow burning tension that leads the viewer towards what seems like inevitable violence.

Jerry Lewis' BAFTA nominated performance as Langford underpins Scorsese's comment on celebrity and our dangerous obsession with it. The obvious differences in Langford's professional and private personas show that Pupkin and Masha are not even stalking the real deal.

Made in 1983 but feeling like a late 70s feature thanks to the drab colours and Pupkin's ridiculously dated dress sense, The King of Comedy is among Scorsese's best work and probably his strongest at that point until Goodfellas (1990).