Martin Scorsese
Re per una notte

Dressed in an improbable colorful jacket, Rupert Pupkin feels like he's finally someone: everyone applauds him, the television show's announcer obsessively repeats his name amidst the thunderous clapping, and he looks, proud and aware, toward his audience, finally ready to make his debut with a personal show, surpassing his idol, Jerry Langford.

How we get to this point is told by Martin Scorsese in one of his most caustic yet poetic films, little understood by critics and even less by the general public, "The King of Comedy" ('83).

The King - the King - is, in fact, Rupert, an aspiring amateur comedian with a few screws loose, living with his mother in a squalid and dilapidated New York tenement, hoping to be noticed by his idol Langford, host of a "One Man Show" that hits it big on TV over the weekend.

Rupert's persistent attempts - meticulously preparing his comedic acts and jokes in the apparent quiet of his home - to get noticed by the host prove unsuccessful, as Langford and his circle of collaborators show little interest in the quirky sorties of the annoying amateur comedian who intrudes into Jerry's car, his production company offices, and even his country home. Seeing the futility of these attempts, along with his desperate companion in misadventure Marsha, Rupert then thinks of making a name for himself in the television world in an unorthodox way, putting into action a plan that somehow will allow him to live far more than the usual, Warholian, fifteen minutes of fame.

Caustic and poetic, as I mentioned above, this film is.

Caustic in its depiction of humanity entirely devoid of great values and great prospects, whose sole purpose in life seems to be obtaining the latest autograph of Langford to add to their extensive collection; in its depiction of the television world as a professional environment where talent and expressive originality do not exist, only the monotonous expression of the host and his collaborators focused on creating a commercial product that doesn't upset anyone; in its depiction of the New York suburbs where, unless you're an untamed boxer or drive a yellow cab with a mohawk, not much of significance is likely to happen to you, while your life passes monotonously.

Poetic in the part where the eccentric Pupkin, more mad than sane yet harmless and certainly not bloodthirsty like other characters in Scorsese's filmography, pursues his absurd goal of becoming a television star a bit like Don Quixote, addressing his distant idol Langford with familiar intimacy; in the part where the protagonist's perseverance and multifaceted ingenuity, clashing with the indifference of the current powerful, seem to lead nowhere; in the part where it describes humanity, since unrepresented by the media, dragging itself through its ordinary life, searching for something that doesn't exist, represented by the icons of the cathode tube and their semblance of reality (there’s something Platonic about this).

Brilliantly portrayed by a De Niro in top form, who describes Pupkin's latent madness in subdued, never showy tones, almost in anticipation of an explosion that never occurs, paradoxically making the whole narrative quite tense, the film should also be remembered for the unusual performance of Jerry Lewis, in his last great cinema appearance: unlike the character constructed over decades of career, the crazy, overexcited, and decidedly offbeat Lewis portrays in this work a man of few words, almost mute, inscrutable, with subtle cynicism, perfectly representing the world impervious to the protagonist's madness, and essentially, his perfect alter ego or reverse.

Pupkin and Langford represent, in fact, the two sides of the same, thin madness: as the former seeks to escape anonymity, the latter wishes to be anonymous, as if a balance between the desire to be seen and the desire to disappear were, in Scorsese's depicted world, impossible.

I'm not sure why, but recalling this film during an episode of a popular Thursday night show, while a fifty-something bartender proudly declared to the cameras of having participated in the selection for some reality TV to give her life a "twist," I was overwhelmed by a strange sense of emptiness.

Who knows, maybe she didn't have Rupert Pupkin's flair, and that's what disconcerted me.