If you’re getting as sick as I am of all the Leonardo DiCaprio hype, you might want to get your fix of Scorsese somewhere other than Gangs of New York. Luckily, the DVD of The King of Comedy is hitting stands now.

This film was dismissed by a number of critics at the time, and didn’t exactly catch on with audiences either. It’s stunning to think now. To me, this is Scorsese and De Niro at their very best. De Niro’s depiction of Rupert Pupkin, the ultimate, celebrity-obsessed loser is astonishing in its detail and nuance. Better still is the strange synergy that exists between De Niro and costars Sandra Bernhard and Jerry Lewis (as the Johnny Carsonesque Jerry Langford).

There’s a making-of doc in which Scorsese recalls that Entertainment Weekly called King the dud of that year (shame on that insipid rag!) while Bernhard recalls her technique at creating the kidnapping sycophant role. There are two scenes not seen in the original cut: one brief street scene and the complete Jerry Langford monologue as he opens his show. Scorsese also reveals that the bit where a fan attempts to get Lewis to speak into a payphone and then yells that he should die of cancer when he declines the request was culled from one of Lewis’s actual experiences. Beauty! :

» Matthew Hays