I told my friend Dave to go watch Funny Bones (1995) and he asked me if i had seen King of Comedy, which I hadn't so we were both on assignment, cross the Atlantic. For whatever reason I expected KofC to give some insight into Jerry Lewis' comedy, and comedy in general. I saw a book called King of Comedy (about Jerry Lewis), so maybe I'll have to investigate that. The film KofC is concerned with formality, procedure, naiveté', childhood, adolescence, crude, polished crudeness.
Though I dislike writing spoilers I must add this detail, because for me it sums up the entire film. Please don't read this if you haven't seen the film, or if you plan on seeing the film without preconception. -stop-. As you know the film is painfully embarrassing, taking extra time to crystallize; deliberate over its own uncomfortable stature. From the beginning we slowly ooze off our seats and couches into the bowels of Dali's paintings like persistence of memory and clocks chime time. But the crux of the film pivots around the fact that it was a plastic gun. Not only are these two (DeNiro & Bernhard) psychotic, delusional, and (possibly) mildly autistic (autism, which basically means a genetic/biological auto-ism, or "self"-ism), they are also, in the end, overgrown children. There is an innocence to them, and this innocence is materialized in the plasticity of a gun and foam pellets. So the murder weapon is an Oldenberg. In contrast then, it is the world of celebrity which is cold, rigid, dinosaur, and aging. And it is within this comparison that the Scorsese delivers the punchline of the film.
Redemption is too strong of a word, I do not think De Niro is redeemed. But as the film closes, we have witnessed his pathos pathetic-ness, in his lonely and alone celebrity moment of auto-biological-comedy, which we see, not delivered to the TV-live audience, or to us in the theater at home, but to the high school sweetheart of yesteryear. (For which this is all about maybe, but maybe not). But then, there he is standing on the bar, on the bar, like a trapeze artist with his arm around, (the TV), now announcing the king of comedy.
Though I dislike writing spoilers I must add this detail, because for me it sums up the entire film. Please don't read this if you haven't seen the film, or if you plan on seeing the film without preconception. -stop-. As you know the film is painfully embarrassing, taking extra time to crystallize; deliberate over its own uncomfortable stature. From the beginning we slowly ooze off our seats and couches into the bowels of Dali's paintings like persistence of memory and clocks chime time. But the crux of the film pivots around the fact that it was a plastic gun. Not only are these two (DeNiro & Bernhard) psychotic, delusional, and (possibly) mildly autistic (autism, which basically means a genetic/biological auto-ism, or "self"-ism), they are also, in the end, overgrown children. There is an innocence to them, and this innocence is materialized in the plasticity of a gun and foam pellets. So the murder weapon is an Oldenberg. In contrast then, it is the world of celebrity which is cold, rigid, dinosaur, and aging. And it is within this comparison that the Scorsese delivers the punchline of the film.
Redemption is too strong of a word, I do not think De Niro is redeemed. But as the film closes, we have witnessed his pathos pathetic-ness, in his lonely and alone celebrity moment of auto-biological-comedy, which we see, not delivered to the TV-live audience, or to us in the theater at home, but to the high school sweetheart of yesteryear. (For which this is all about maybe, but maybe not). But then, there he is standing on the bar, on the bar, like a trapeze artist with his arm around, (the TV), now announcing the king of comedy.