The recipient of an honorary Palme d’Or at this 12 months’s Cannes Movie Pageant, Robert De Niro has a protracted historical past with the Croisette. In 1983, the legendary actor joined director Martin Scorsese and co-star Jerry Lewis in bringing The King of Comedy to the fest. The black comedy marked De Niro’s fifth movie with Scorsese, approaching the heels of his finest actor Oscar win for his or her 1980 collaboration, Raging Bull.
King of Comedy stars De Niro as Rupert Pupkin, an aspiring comic with psychological well being points who turns into obsessive about showing on the late-night present hosted by his idol, Jerry Langford (Lewis). Paul D. Zimmerman, a former Newsweeok movie critic, had penned the script greater than a decade earlier than it acquired made; director Michael Cimino was initially connected however acquired held up with Heaven’s Gate. When Scorsese joined, he hoped to solid Johnny Carson as Langford and has stated that the real-life late-night host spurned him by quipping, “You already know one take’s sufficient for me.”
Scorsese was unwell all through the shoot. He had not too long ago been hospitalized for exhaustion and pneumonia after filming a number of films in fast succession, however first-time producer Arnon Milchan pushed him to start out filming King of Comedy a month forward of schedule resulting from a looming administrators’ strike. Within the 2004 guide Scorsese on Scorsese, the director recalled that the “unusual film” included a tricky scene the place Pupkin reveals up at Langford’s residence: “It took two weeks, and it was simply so painful as a result of the scene itself was so excruciating.”
twentieth Century Fox had launched the movie in theaters on Feb. 13, 1983, and critics had been impressed, with THR’s assessment deeming it “a significant achievement for all involved.” However the darkish movie fizzled on the field workplace, accumulating simply $2.5 million ($8.4 million at present). “Individuals in America had been confused by The King of Comedy and noticed Bob as some type of model,” Scorsese stated about De Niro, who would go on to guide the Cannes jury in 2011. “However I felt it was De Niro’s finest efficiency ever.”