if it isn't, already, and, along with the "Lenny Bruce Performance Film", may become known as the definitive video overview of the life and work of this iconic, visionary, controversial and seminal American artist, satirist and comedian.
Perhaps the one important event in Bruce's life, overlooked by, or perhaps deliberately excluded from, the film, is the near-fatal injury suffered by Bruce's wife, Honey, in a car accident.
It would have been good to see interviewed in the film, people that knew Bruce, that were heard in Larry Josephson's "Modern Times" radio documentary, "Lenny Bruce Remembered", such as Orin Keepnews, Sid Mark, Mort Sahl, Jean Shepherd, Albert Goldman, and Sherman Block, but I suppose one cannot have everything, and it IS Bob Weide's film, not Larry Josephson's. We DO hear from Bruce's mother, wife, and last girlfriend, Lotus Weinstock, in the film, as we do in the radio documentary.
It also would have been good to see and hear Bob Dylan talk about the real-life incident he mentions in his song "Lenny Bruce" :
"I rode with him, in a taxi once, only a mile and a half, seemed like it took a couple of months"
if indeed that did happen, but perhaps that was between the two of them only.
I will close by quoting from the end of Bruce's autobiography. I think the words are Dick Schaap's :
"Finally, one last four-letter word concerning Lenny Bruce : Dead. At forty. That's obscene."
Perhaps the one important event in Bruce's life, overlooked by, or perhaps deliberately excluded from, the film, is the near-fatal injury suffered by Bruce's wife, Honey, in a car accident.
It would have been good to see interviewed in the film, people that knew Bruce, that were heard in Larry Josephson's "Modern Times" radio documentary, "Lenny Bruce Remembered", such as Orin Keepnews, Sid Mark, Mort Sahl, Jean Shepherd, Albert Goldman, and Sherman Block, but I suppose one cannot have everything, and it IS Bob Weide's film, not Larry Josephson's. We DO hear from Bruce's mother, wife, and last girlfriend, Lotus Weinstock, in the film, as we do in the radio documentary.
It also would have been good to see and hear Bob Dylan talk about the real-life incident he mentions in his song "Lenny Bruce" :
"I rode with him, in a taxi once, only a mile and a half, seemed like it took a couple of months"
if indeed that did happen, but perhaps that was between the two of them only.
I will close by quoting from the end of Bruce's autobiography. I think the words are Dick Schaap's :
"Finally, one last four-letter word concerning Lenny Bruce : Dead. At forty. That's obscene."