Before he became the grumpy grandpa who bitches about Marvel movies while all he does lately are Mafia flicks, Scorsese used to make other stuff such as this. When it was first released in 1983, it tanked! The movie cost around $20 million to make ($65 million today; we’d call it an indie flick with such a small budget), and only gained a disappointing $2.5 million ($8 million). Scorsese wouldn’t regain his clout until 1990 with Goodfellas. I’m guessing due to the too many similarities with the overrated Taxi Driver but years later, King was finally recognized as a great movie before being Internet Famous led to the Establishment risking financing something to get those damned kids to the traditional outlets; e.g. Netflix giving a show to the Miranda Sings lady. This is also the actual movie Joker references, NOT Taxi Driver; DeNiro did star in both is all they have in common.
The plot centers around Rupert Pupkin, an off-kilter, super-fan of Jerry Langford; in this alternate Scorsese reality, a Jerry Lewis-like host runs the most popular late-night show from New York. Definitely fake because Jerry Lewis isn’t the insufferable asshole he was when not doing his “comedy.” Not only is Rupert a super-fan, he’s an aspiring stand-up comedian who hopes one day to be a guest host for Jerry. King constantly displays all the warning signs regarding Rupert:
- He’s part of a stalker community with crazy heiress Masha played by the barely funny and not very talented Sandra Bernhard.
- He lives with his mother; years before this has become normalized via the shitty economic policies of Reagan to Biden.
- He knows where Jerry lives in NYC and in the faraway ‘burbs.
- You see fantasies of being Jerry’s best friend and people wanting his autograph.
- He is quite charming and a sharp dresser as a poor, unknowing bartender falls for him. Manson had a weird charisma too.
- Lastly, he practices hosting Jerry’s show with high-end recording gear in a mock-up of how the desk and chairs are laid out with cardboard standees for Jerry and possible guests few recognize now. Today, Rupert would be a podcaster! (Guilty! Except I’m not stalking Dana Gould, Dave Anthony & Gareth Reynolds, Tracy V. Wilson & Holly Frey nor Robert Evans.)
One evening, Rupert hitches a ride home with his hero via limo because he helped the host get past the throng of autograph seekers. Jerry sees Rupert in a suit, figures, he’s OK. They make small talk and obviously Rupert asks for Jerry’s advice on how to get a gig. Jerry tells him matter-of-factly to start small at clubs, gain traction, etc. In short, the path Jerry took over a couple decades earlier; how it used to work before HBO, cable, YouTube, podcasts, streaming and TikTok. Plus no stand-up comics ever gained mainstream attention without appearing The Tonight Show under Carson until Sam Kinnison. Rupert, being obsessed, mistakes this as an invitation to be on Jerry’s show and do his routine (aka a tight ten).
We all know how the story will pan out, this movie is now 40 years old and the spoiler rule isn’t in effect! Rupert gets frustrated since he’s ignorant about how Jerry’s life and work are structured; show business 101. He has to deal with producers and assistants whose job is to screen guests, material, etc. Some of it is to protect Jerry but most of the time, he doesn’t have the hours in a day to review everything, his primary task is to rest up and prep for the next evening’s show.
Eventually Rupert loses patience and conspires with Masha to kidnap Jerry. Against all odds, they pull it off. In exchange for Masha’s assistance, she gets to have a private dinner with Jerry the hostage (taped to a chair). Rupert then calls Jerry’s right-hand, show runner Bert (Carson’s legendary producer Fred De Cordova in the role). Once Bert receives the secret passcode Jerry set up between them, Bert knows this isn’t a prank. Rupert listens to the demands in exchange for the host’s freedom:
- Rupert gets to perform his Tight Ten uncensored as he assures Bert it’s clean.
- Bucking tradition, he goes right on after the guest host opens the show.
- The guest host will have no monologue, no sidekick banter, no commercial break between it all.
- As the show is taped around 5:30 PM, Jerry will be freed after Rupert’s routine is aired on the network at 11:30 PM in its entirety.
Bert immediately calls the cops, the FBI, the Network, Jerry’s agent, so on. NYPD rejects Rupert’s requests, the FBI agrees. The Network is baffled. Jerry’s agent sides with the fuzz. After Bert consults a producer who had met Rupert a few days earlier and had listened to his audition tape, Rupert wasn’t keen on her feedback, he chooses to overrule everyone and says Jerry’s safety comes first. Rupert goes on. Here’s the the part of the movie which blew me away when our protagonist has the break of a lifetime…he’s actually good! Let me clarify. Compared to the big names of 1983, Rupert isn’t Rodney Dangerfield, Richard Pryor nor Joan Rivers funny. He’s a middle-of-the road type most people liked then. The jokes are clever, inoffensive yet he’s competent enough to open for other big names or headline at Caroline’s and the Comedy Store, you’d see him on the syndicated Evening at the Improv on TV during the Eighties.
Before Rupert turns himself in, he makes sure the bartender he tried to impress changes the channel on the bar’s TV to show his appearance. She’s amazed and horrified. Then again, she remembers he did say during their date, “Better to be king for a night than a schmuck for a lifetime.”
King concludes with an epilog showing how Rupert is elevated to celebrity status: other shows want to book him, he has a best-selling biography, he’s on the cover of the major magazines, etc. Rupert is living his dream…after he finishes serving the prison term he receives. I’d say the ending is open to interpretation. Was this just the conclusion Scorsese and screenwriter Paul D. Zimmerman had in mind? He goes on to be famous, not another crazy person? For Scorsese, this would be a twist. His previous works tend to have sad, dark and cautionary endings. It was also frequent with Seventies Movies. I personally feel the Eighties® didn’t really begin until the Summer of 1982 and then overlapped into the Nineties with the first Gulf Distraction. Or is King a warning about the different means super-determined individuals will take to get into the spotlight, despite a minuscule few predicting that in the near future, technology will make it easier? I leave it up to anyone who cares. Given how the prediction business is littered with tons of wrong answers. I will stick with my first hypothesis.
I want to finish with a little trivia regarding The King of Comedy which dovetails with the great book The Comedians by Kliph Nesterhoff. Even when I was a teenager, I saw the ads and trailers and thought, why would anyone in their right (or wrong) mind kidnap Jerry Lewis since he’s not funny after you turn 13? Why cast him as a talk-show host too? He’s just the asshole from those old movies being an annoying dork and on Labor Day, he hosts a telethon your grandparents watch. Kliph’s book explains. When Johnny Carson landed the hosting duties of NBC’s The Tonight Show around 1962, he wasn’t done with his obligations to a game show on ABC for roughly a year. During the weeks he wasn’t available, NBC gave various guests the chair. Surprisingly, Lewis had an incredible week. It was on par with John Oliver’s time subbing for Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, that good. ABC felt NBC picked the wrong guy so they gambled on giving Lewis his own show in Hollywood, similar to the The Tonight Show but with more sketches and it would be the cornerstone of their Saturday evening programming…The Jerry Lewis Show!
Another quick side note, ABC was always a distant third in the TV ratings war against the older, more robust NBC and CBS due to the network not being broadcast everywhere in America; Austin’s dedicated ABC affiliate want on the air in 1972! So ABC was the network willing to take the huge risks to score viewers; similar to Fox in the Nineties or WB/UPN in the Aughts.
So ABC gave Jerry carte blanche to remodel the El Capitain theater in Hollywood, hire writers, etc. It was all in his contract and terms; this also made him the highest paid TV star for 1962-63; $8 million for 40 episodes. Too bad they didn’t have someone powerful enough to rein in his tremendous ego. Jerry pissed away money on trivial matters such as costly bathroom fixtures and he had a secret button under his desk to countermand the camera director over which angle should be aired.
Remember when I used the verb “gambled” earlier? Well ABC rolled snake eyes on Jerry’s big debut in the Fall of 1963. It was live. There were equipment failures. Jerry was flat and he never regained the mojo he displayed covering for Carson. I guess it predicted Meatball Ron’s announcement on the Musk’s pathetic Twitter! The coupe de grace came with JFK’s assassination. All the networks suspended their regular programming for a couple weeks as America’s obsession with JFK would pathetically be exceeded by Diana Spencer in 1997. The Jerry Lewis show had its final show in mid December before permanent cancellation. It was humiliating for ABC. They spent the equivalent of $120 million in 2023 money for 13 episodes that made the 1980-81 season of SNL look brilliant. This amount is a bargain compared to the dozens of boondoggles today’s Wall Street driven TV is today but it’s the long explanation why Jerry Lewis got the role.
Lastly, given how risk averse assholes like Zaslav and Iger are, I anticipate an unwanted remake! Here’s my pitch! Rupert Pupkin is played by Tom Hardy and in an ironic turn, the Jerry Lawford role goes to Chevy Chase. I’m confident many will get this mean joke.