Hung Up Goes to The Movies
Watch The King of Comedy with me at Metrograph on Friday!
There’s a scene in The King of Comedy that I think about all the time. This not a spoiler at all, it’s a scene of random cacophony. A half-dozen lawyers and handlers and network executives try to triage a kidnapped late-night host. How to proceed? An executive says the network needs a show to put on the air, a detective discourages the suits from negotiating with the host’s captors. An agent is incredulous, and a lawyer is irate.
“That’s it,” one of them stands up and announces. “We’re suing.” A chorus of confusion: Who is this man, who is he to you, who is being sued, and when. “What do you mean who am I? I’m the one who’s suing, I’m the lawyer. That’s who I am.” It’s not even half of a scene, almost an afterthought to keep the plot moving, and none of these characters even have real names, but I laugh every time I think about it. There are so many people in showbusiness — paper and social contracts between fans, stars, lawyers, managers, directors, camera operators, security guards, bookers, autograph hounds, drivers, doormen — and The King of Comedy is fascinated by all of them.
Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro) lives in his mom’s basement at present but that doesn’t hamper his conviction that he’s the next great talent in comedy. He has dreams about the late-night host, Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis), becoming his mentor. When he’s rebuffed again and again, he’ll settle for Langford as his hostage. Rupert is weird and delusional and ambitious and selfish and desperate and dogged. My favorite part of De Niro’s performance here is how relentlessly obnoxious he is, his constant preening, a man with nothing who is so full of it all.
New Yorkers: On Friday night I’ll be introducing The King of Comedy at Metrograph before the 10p screening. (It’s also playing the rest of the weekend and the following Wednesday.) What a treat! I loved programming that double feature two years ago, and King of Comedy is one of my favorite movies ever made. Hung Up is an attempt to be even half as smart about celebrity and image-making as this movie is.
I hope to see you there! (I won’t say one single word about Joker, which tries to rip off this movie completely.) And I’ll be hanging out in the Commissary beforehand!