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Fable of the "daffy bastard," gazing into the limo from the freeze-framed frenzy. Warhol's dictum about celebrity suits the tenacious parasite who wants his fifteen minutes right away, Rupert Pupkin, "often mispronounced and misspelled." (Robert De Niro's rendition of the bundle of delusional desperation wrapped in polyester suits is one of the decade's indelible portrayals.) Cardboard cutouts populate the cellar that is his domain, his fantasies of fulsome success are promptly undercut by Mom telling him to hush. The talk-show doyen (Jerry Lewis) embodies the showbiz he covets, a chance encounter is all it takes for the would-be joker to invite himself into his home with mortified squeeze (Diahnne Abbott) in tow. Kidnapping alongside the rich groupie (Sandra Bernhard) follows, a logical next step for the guy who messes up the hostage's cue cards and asks for a stick of gum at gunpoint. "Even though this is a strange situation, there are moments of friendship and moments of sharing or whatever." A Jerry Lewis film seconded by Martin Scorsese, a vision of cinema's expressionism yielding to television's flatness, the manic bleakness the Eighties deserve. The camera finds Pupkin clutching a public payphone as if hanging on to a life raft, then peers at him being chased by security through the vertical widescreen of an office door. The autograph collection is his Holy Book, his own hopeful signature can barely be read next to Marilyn Monroe's or Sid Caesar's, "the more scribbled the name, the bigger the fame." The upshot is a grim Oedipal confession in the guise of a stand-up monologue about bullies and vomit, and there's Scorsese chuckling as the show director. (Freed from captivity, the hardened old pro pauses his escape to contemplate the usurper's grinning image multiplied across a wall of TV sets.) "Better to be king for a day than schmuck for a lifetime." The coda revises that of Taxi Driver by locating no trace of redemption in the barren spotlight. With Shelley Hack, Margo Winkler, Kim Chan, Frederick De Cordova, and Tony Randall.
--- Fernando F. Croce |