Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro) can’t get his foot in the door. A 34-year-old who dreams of a stand-up slot on the late-night talk show hosted by Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis), he haunts the basement of his mother’s New Jersey house, practicing his act and boasting of his future glory to anyone who’ll listen. When his efforts to get Jerry’s attention fail, he teams up with the well-heeled loony Masha (Sandra Bernhard), another of Jerry’s stalkers, to take matters into their own hands. This plot sparks Martin Scorsese’s lucid, agonizingly sympathetic riff on the intertwined fates of the delusional bozo and the public artist whose lives are equally warped by fame. Much as it may wonder at the powerful workings of show business and studio craft, as well as the streets of early 80s New York, Scorsese’s tale takes as its main subject the ineffable factor of genius — which Jerry has, Rupert lacks, and no desire or effort can replace, hinting at the director’s own there-but-for-the-grace-of-God self-portrait.

As Langford, the host of a popular late-night talk show, slips out of his New York office and goes for a walk down the street, everyone seems to recognise him. A middle-aged taxi driver sends his compliments, an ovation issues from construction workers overhead. Then a woman on a payphone asks him to talk to her nephew. As he walks away, she shouts after him: “You should only get cancer. I hope you get cancer.” One of the driest jokes in the film is that after this encounter, Jerry Langford’s annoyed expression doesn’t change much when the two deranged losers kidnap him at gunpoint. Sure, a more memorable irritant than having someone wish cancer on him, but it falls within the same general ballpark.

In contrast to Langford’s A-lister, imprisoned by his own fame, Rupert Pupkin has no discernible talent; he seeks a career like Jerry’s nonetheless, the fulfillment of an imagined destiny. Unlike Travis Bickle, the disturbed antihero of Scorsese’s Taxi Driver also played by De Niro, Rupert is a schemer, not a killer: his delusions of grandeur include a future where he can become the king of comedy by seizing the throne.

Despite flopping on release, The King of Comedy has since become a touchstone for films as recent as Todd Phillips’ Joker, which essentially cast De Niro in Lewis’ role. Like most entertainers, Rupert is a creature of empty ambition, an outsider who by all rights ought to remain one. The kidnapping plot constitutes only Rupert’s latest and most desperate attempt to cut the line. One night outside the stage entrance, he manages to finagle his way into Jerry’s limo after protecting him from another crazed fan, Masha (a brilliant Sandra Bernhard), who pounces on him after a taping. Jerry indulges Rupert’s pitch about his dynamite stand-up material enough to give him the classic brush-off, the number to one of several layers of secretaries who exist to turn away comedians without representation. Thus, when he and Masha hold Jerry at fake-pistol-point and shove him into Masha’s car, it’s all part of the plan for Rupert, whose fantasies constantly outpace his grip on reality.

Rupert spends his spare time in the basement, sandwiched between cardboard standees of Jerry and Liza Minnelli, trading one-liners to the laughter and cheers of an imaginary audience. (When he projects too loud, his mom, delightfully voiced by the director’s real-life mother Catherine, shouts down for him to “lower it”.) In one of the film’s most effective gambits, Scorsese cuts straight into Rupert’s delusions by making them indistinguishable from any other scene; an eerie foreshadowing of the ‘main character syndrome’ that’s taken over internet culture of late. 

After the summer of Barbenheimer, of audience participation based on pointing at the screen and saying ‘literally me’, critic-turned-screenwriter Paul D Zimmerman’s monologue for Rupert’s comedy slot seems more relevant than ever. Like much of today’s media, the monologue is certainly not terrible — rather, exquisitely mediocre. Rupert, an ardent student of the late-night monologue, possesses just enough talent as a mimic to convince a studio audience that he belongs on television; his hackneyed jokes come out as such because he has nothing deeper to express. He wishes only to achieve fame, to stand up his invisible enemies and delight his equally invisible friends. In that regard, he illustrates a uniquely American success story.