"The King of Comedy" The paranoid delusions of a comedian who calls himself King.

Scorsese and improvisation

Jerry Lewis, a famous American comedian, plays Jerry Langford, a popular comedian who is relentlessly pursued by Pupkin. From the 1950s to the 1970s, he made audiences laugh with his exaggerated singing, dancing, and clearly deformed acting in a series of American films known in Japan as the ``Bottomless Series''. I'm acting.

As Scorsese says, ``Jerry didn't need a script,'' many of the scenes involving Jerry in this movie are improvised. Jerry praises Pupkin's talent while massaging his face with both hands, and Pupkin, who has broken into the villa, moves around aimlessly in the large living room, seemingly unsure of what he really wants.

Particularly outstanding is the look on Jerry's face when he's tied to a chair and tied up with tape wrapped around him like a mummy. The exquisite expression on his face, which looks like a stunned look of confusion and disgust, makes a scene that should have been a scene of madness somehow seem comical. This is also the scene where we can see that Pupkin's paranoid delusions have begun to grow and his behavior has finally begun to go erratic.

"The King of Comedy" (c)Photofest / Getty Images

Scorsese started using improvisation in the first place because when he first started making films in the 1970s, the studio system that allowed him to make the films of Hollywood's Golden Age, which he had longed for, had collapsed. Furthermore, he was moved by seeing people like Marlon Brando and James Dean portrayed on screen with natural acting that looked like real people, and that was a big part of why he wanted to make movies like this.

Also, it seems that the reason he started involving his mother and father in parts of his films was to come to terms with not being able to film, which he had longed for. In this film, Scorsese's real mother plays Pupkin's mother (though only her voice). In the scene where De Niro is recording a comedy line on tape in his room, as soon as he presses the record button he yells out that his meal is ready. She didn't seem nervous, thinking she was just a friend of Scorsese's in the room, even though she was in the room with Academy Award-winning actor Robert De Niro. De Niro said he always couldn't help but laugh when he saw that.