The Contenders:
Jack Nicholson: Chinatown
Al Pacino: The Godfather Part II
Art Carney: Harry and Tonto (winner)
Dustin Hoffman: Lenny
Albert Finney: Murder on the Orient Express
Showing posts with label Lenny. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lenny. Show all posts
Friday, February 28, 2020
Monday, April 8, 2019
Friday, February 23, 2018
Friday, October 21, 2016
Friday, March 21, 2014
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Lenny
Film: Lenny
Format: Internet video on laptop.
Format: Internet video on laptop.
Really good stand-up comedy is hard, but it’s not that uncommon. Truly great stand-up, though, is rare and wonderful to behold. When you see a great comedian, someone who is really transcendent, it’s almost always someone who is pulling from a great storehouse of pain to make that comedy. Listen to Patton Oswalt talk about his depression. Listen to Tig Notaro talk about her breast cancer. Richard Pryor’s best material came from the worst episodes of his life. Bill Hicks dug into the bedrock of his soul to create routines that are still funny and still relevant 20 year after his death. And all of them owe a huge debt to Lenny Bruce.
Bob Fosse’s film Lenny is about the brilliant but troubled and doomed comic whose meteoric career made him a massive star and equally made him a victim of the times in which he lived and performed. Bruce’s arrests and various trials on obscenity charges are fascinating in no small part because they seem so tame by current standards. Certainly some of his work is still shocking and has incredible power, but the things for which he was dragged into court are heard nightly on cable television. Still, for the time, Bruce flouted the law whenever possible. It made him a legend, and also probably killed him in the end.
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