The King Of Comedy vs Chicago

I’m not sure I can be trusted to recommend movies. And no, not because of that whole Showgirls thing. Until last week, I had never seen The King of Comedy. Sorry, sometimes it takes me a while to get with the times. Sometimes I don’t see the big summer blockbusters until the end of summer. I’ve been known to watch Oscar-winning films after the Oscars have aired. So, you’ll forgive me if I waited twenty years to see The King of Comedy, right? Hey, I’ve been busy. Elementary school was harder than it looked.

Anyway, as you probably already know, The King of Comedy was directed by Martin Scorsese and stars Robert DeNiro. I know. DeNiro and Scorsese. What’s my problem? DeNiro plays Rupert Pupkin, a man obsessed with talk show host Jerry Langford, played by Jerry Lewis. Langford is a Johnny Carson type, one of those smooth-talking Rat Pack-ish celebrities like we don’t see anymore. Talk show hosts used to present themselves as the coolest guy in the room, impeccably dressed, dropping roast-style insults at the sidekicks and bandleaders, or even people in the audience. I’m not sure when the tide turned, but I’m pretty sure it was somewhere around Johnny Carson’s last divorce. His humor turned darker and more personal, and suddenly, appearing on a talk show didn’t seem like your fantasy, rather, you began to think that maybe you could have your own show. And one by one, different versions of you started popping up. Guys with problems, guys who thought wrestling sneakers looked good with suits, guys with giant heads and funny voices. Guys like you.  I’ve heard Conan O’Brien say that The King of Comedy is his favorite movie. I think I know why.

By the way, happy anniversary, Conan.

Rupert Pupkin is in his mid-thirties and lives in his mother’s basement. He’s turned his room into a miniature television studio, complete with a “sound board” and lights. His “set” includes talk show-style comfy chairs, occupied by cardboard cutouts of Jerry Langford and Liza Minnelli.  He never really interviews them. He does a nice little kiss on the cheek, and then laughs at their unheard jokes. Well, I suppose he hears them, but I’m pretty sure I don’t wanna know what he thinks they’re saying. Rupert has a plan: he’s going to get his stand-up comedy act on the Jerry Langford show. He’s already got the wardrobe—a series of brightly-colored leisure suits—and Jerry owes him one. The movie opens with Jerry being mobbed outside his studio, with one fan in particular (Sandra Bernhard) making things difficult for him when she barricades herself, screaming and slapping the windows, inside his limo. Rupert jumps in to help, getting her out of the limo and Jerry in, conveniently with Rupert by his side. Jerry agrees to let Rupert call his office and schedule an appointment to hear his comedy.

And so, Rupert starts a near-endless series of trips to Jerry’s office, each time given the brush-off by either secretaries or by Jerry’s personal assistant. Jerry’s assistant is played by Shelley Hack, who my brother will tell you was the worst Charlie’s Angel ever, although she’s good in this. Also, her appearance here makes me virtually unstoppable in that Kevin Bacon game (That game is getting way too easy. He makes too many movies. Let’s switch it to, say, Six Degrees of Rick Moranis.) These sequences are funny (no one can ever remember Rupert’s name) but there’s so many of them. It seemed like every five minutes he was trying to get into that office. Although I suppose that’s the point. Eventually, he gets a tape of his comedy sent in to Jerry. It’s a pretty genius tape, complete with intro and applause, but it doesn’t get Rupert anywhere. Maybe this time next year, if he’s a professional comic, someone from Jerry’s staff can come see his act, mmkay? That’s not what Rupert has in mind. He wants to be famous right now, thank you.

As Rupert becomes more desperate to get on the show, his actions become funnier, but also pretty creepy. He’s somehow managed to get a girlfriend, kind of, and takes her to a “party” at Jerry’s house. Of course, it backfires horribly, leaving Rupert’s girlfriend embarrassed and frightened, and Rupert oblivious, as always.

Rupert’s gonna be on that show though, no matter what. He enlists the help of the Bernhard character, and they take over the airwaves. Kind of.

The King of Comedy surprised me over and over. Each scene is alive with the possibility that something ridiculous or funny or scary might happen. I never knew what direction a scene was going to take, like when Bernhard is holding Jerry captive and goes off this weird champagne monologue “I wanna be black!...I wanna be Tina Turner!” As with most of Scorsese’s movies, the acting is terrific (I shouldn’t have been surprised by the power of Bernhard and Lewis’ performances, but I was). And, as usual, there are unforgettable images, like when Rupert is performing before a black-and-white wall of audience members, and the camera keeps backing up until Rupert is boxed in, just where he wants to be. The things Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Zimmerman are saying about the media and fame probably seemed outlandish back in 1983, but now they seem completely plausible. Rupert’s status at the end of the movie is scary, but not surprising.

The King of Comedy has parallels to other Scorsese movies; New York is as much a presence here as it is in Mean Streets and Taxi Driver. Likewise, Rupert Pupkin isn’t such a far cry from Travis Bickel. For his true movie counterpart though, Rupert had to wait almost two decades. Rupert Pupkin, meet Roxie Hart.

What Roxie Hart wants more than anything else is to see her name in lights. She wants her own vaudeville stage show, singing and dancing and cracking wise. She’s cute and she’s got spunk, and gosh darn it, she just might make it some day.

Oh yeah, and she killed a guy.

But that’s cool, cause Chicago (and Chicago) is full of singing dames who killed a guy. It’s also full of cheats and liars and drunks and floozies. Everybody wears black, everybody gets a song.

I think Chicago is a good time. It’s probably a little overreaching to call it Best Picture, but hey, isn’t that always how it is with a good time? Frankly, at this point I’m a little exhausted by it. It’s been on DVD for a couple weeks now, with extras and deleteds and commentaries and I dunno, bouncing ball lyrics and what have you, but I haven’t picked it up yet.

A lot has been made about Chicago marking the return of the musical, even though

a. Moulin Rouge, O’ Brother Where Art Thou, Evita and Everyone Says I Love You were given the exact same credit. And

b. I’m not sure anyone missed the movie musical.

O' Brother Where Art Thou came close for me, only…they weren’t really singing.  Moulin Rouge came closer still, but the Casey Kasem Long-Distance Dedication song choices were a little distracting, and the massive amounts of edits made it appear as if some scenes were done in dozens of takes. Chicago, luckily, sticks to its storyline, and makes its actors step up to the mike.  We’re given two basic performance styles. One is stylized and well-lit and is probably supposed to evoke old Hollywood but instead looks like old Madonna videos that looked like old Hollywood. The other is dark, smokey, piano bar stuff. Think Michelle Pfeiffer in The Fabulous Baker Boys. (Why no one thought of her for this is beyond me.) The latter is my favorite, and luckily, it happens over and over, usually with Renee Zellwegger as Roxie. At one point, she’s snaking around on a piano in a nightgown, and she becomes a big fat movie star right before our eyes (the same way Pfeiffer did a decade or so ago). She’s like Marilyn Monroe with a stairmaster.

Of course, Roxie, like Rupert, just wants to be famous. Can’t someone just make her famous so we can all go back to our lives? Anyone? We see people like this all the time in the media and on reality shows. Make her famous for something, anything, now. Of course, in Roxie’s head, there is a reason:  huge, well-staged and edited song-and-dance numbers, everyone hot and boozy.  Her reality isn’t much better than Rupert’s. She’s married to a loser (because Chicago has been captured on film, John C. Reilly plays the put-upon husband. This time though, he sings, surprisingly well.) She has an audition that wouldn’t have been out of place in Waiting For Guffman (the little gesture she makes for the word “great” is ridiculous, and of course, right on.)

Listen, I think everyone in Chicago is pretty damn impressive. Catherine Zeta Jones sings and dances as well as anyone who’s ever been in a musical (yes, including the one you’re thinking of. And the other one.).  I’ve heard people say they were annoyed by her cell phone commercials and couldn’t stop thinking about them during the movie, which is valid, but I figure everyone in this movie does commercials overseas, so somewhere, one of them is annoying someone. Queen Latifah is so freakin’ sexy and fun and probably the best pop star turned actor ever (Yes, better than whichever one you’re thinking of. And the other one.) Still though, I couldn’t take my eyes of Renee Zellwegger. The way she shimmies her fringe and bats her eyes.  And she’s got a sweet, scratchy voice (she sounds like Erykah Badu meets Betty Boop, or maybe Janis Joplin, from that parallel universe where she works at a summer camp).

I came this close to comparing Chicago to The Matrix Reloaded.  Everybody wears black, half of it isn’t actually happening, answers are gleaned from a wise African American woman and a grey-haired white guy.  Don’t believe me? Watch Neo fighting the rapidly-multiplying Agent Smiths. Then watch “Cell Block Tango”, with Velma Kelly singing with rapidly-multiplying back-up dancers. It all happens quickly, everyone wears black, and in the end, it’s as if it never happened. Not counting Kelly’s ability to shift facial expressions, it’s the same scene.

The King of Comedy:  A-
Chicago:  B+