The King of Comedy

[marginalgloss]

I watched The King of Comedy for the first time over the weekend, and I think it might have already become my favourite Martin Scorsese film. 

My partner found it almost unbearable; she could appreciate it, but she had difficulty 'enjoying' it. But I loved every minute of it, perhaps because I found something uncomfortably familiar about Rupert Pupkin. As someone who has been quietly doing his own creative thing (in my case writing) for a very long time, and who finds any kind of self-promotion - or indeed any real self-expression - incredibly challenging, there's a lot about him which is familiar to me. The way in which I secretly crave recognition while being too afraid to actually work for it through normal means; the way in which non-codified social interactions are awkward for me to the point of painfulness; the craving for the arts as a kind of release for the kinds of impulses most people satisfy from entirely ordinary means. And of course there's the occasional cameo by the violent manifestation of my Id, probably also played by Sandra Bernhard. 

But in a way I found it comforting rather than embarrassing to watch. It's much like how I feel about Curb Your Enthusiasm, a show which I've also been (re)watching. I love Curb because it takes the most absurd, overwrought inventions of my own anxieties and lays them out as if they were something that could actually happen. It's like somebody over-thought every situation in the same way I frequently do, except it doesn't end up with me getting stabbed or pushed in front of a train. It's a way of saying: see, maybe it won't be so bad? If this idiot can muddle his way through, so can you?

[Roderick]

The King of Comedy is superb! Rupert Pupkin - such a non-standard roll for Robert de Niro too.

[twmac]

I was about to start watching King of Comedy after reading most of that. Then you drew parallels to Curb Your Enthusiasm and you lost me completely.

[Patrick R]

I would say that The King of Comedy skirts on the edge of not being a comedy at all the way Curb never does. The tones are very different, what they share is that socially awkward situations (which, in The King of Comedy, turns directly into extreme anti-social behaviors) that are mined for maximum tension. But it's easy to imagine someone loving The King of Comedy while not finding it funny at all, while it's impossible to imagine the same with Curb.

[Roderick]

I didn't watch King of Comedy as a comedy at all. It's a drama about a seriously delusional man who turns into a borderline psychopath.

[Chris]

I think one big difference between Curb and The King of Comedy (both of which I love) is that the character in Curb has no real stakes, because ultimately he is very wealthy and has an essentially functional life, and can do whatever he wants without much risk of real reprisal. That really changes the meaning of what's going on with these two characters.