Lenny – 1974
This movie must have been pretty topical for its time, and it isn’t that I don’t think it could be relevant today. It’s just that it was a slow and plodding movie about a historical figure that, quite honestly, very few people remember today. I’ve heard the name Lenny Bruce associated with the counter-culture movement of the 60s. But I had no idea who he was or what he stood for. This movie is dramatized documentary about his rocky career.
Apparently, Lenny Bruce, played by Dustin Hoffman, was a stand-up comedian. At least, he started out as one. But as his career progressed, his comedy turned into pure social commentary which he occasionally made funny. Eventually, he stopped being funny and became nothing more than a mirror, showing how people in the 1960s were hypocrites who allowed social injustices to be commonplace. He showed us how greed, corruption, and worst of all, the apathy of the society in which he lived were responsible for social atrocities.
Was he right? Yes, he was, but he seemed to have forgotten what made him popular in the first place. When his comedy act became a rant on the ills human nature, people stopped wanting to see him. Then, the crowds he drew in were only there to see if he would say something obscene or be arrested. And his frequent drug use didn’t seem to help either. Neither did the great love of his life, his wife, Honey, played by an actress I have never even heard of before named Valerie Perrine. She was a stripper, but he called her his “Shiksa goddess.”
The only other two significant roles in the film were his mother, Sally Marr, played by Jan Miner, and his manager, Artie Silver, played by Stanley Beck. The movie was, as I mentioned, a dramatized documentary. The film cut back and forth, and was told through interviews with Lenny’s wife, his mother, and his manager. There was also plenty of Bruce’s stand-up material, performed by Hoffman. The film’s climax was the comedian’s death by morphine overdose.
Now, this isn’t a review about the career of Lenny Bruce. It is about the film. The real life of Bruce may have been fast-paced and interesting. But I’m sorry to say that the film was slow and plodding. And while Hoffman’s performance was very good, I think he was upstaged by Perrine. Her acting was incredibly good. She carried much of the film’s emotional drama.
Honey, like Lenny, was a drug addict and she played that part of the character amazingly well. There was one scene, in particular, in which she is strung out on heroine of some other drug, and calls Lenny to ask for money. She was so real and it was almost heartbreaking to watch. Perrine did a fantastic job and really deserved the Oscar nomination she received, though she lost to Ellen Burstyn in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.
So, as with any film that is based on a true story, I looked into the story of Lenny Bruce’s life and found that the movie followed all the key points, but glossed over others. For example, when Lenny and Honey were divorced, there was actually a custody battle for their daughter, Kitty, which the film didn’t mention. Or even the first time the comedian was arrested was ignored, which was for impersonating a priest as part of a get rich quick scheme. And just as a side note, his scheme worked. Dressed as a priest with a stolen collar, Lenny Bruce solicited over $8,000 in donations for a leper colony in British Guiana. He gave #2,500 to the real colony and kept the rest. Not surprisingly, the film also really played up the romance between Lenny and Honey.
Another scene that caught my attention was Hoffman’s portrayal of Bruce’s final performance. At least, it was his final performance showed in the film. He was sick and high, and dressed in two items of clothing: a raincoat and a sock. He was pathetically dazed and incoherent. He was clearly having a very difficult time putting any kind of understandable thoughts together. He could barely stay on his feet. It was an awkward scene that was uncomfortable to watch, and it was very well played.
My main complaint about the film was its slow pacing, which wouldn’t have been so bad, except that it was a biopic about a man in whom I was never personally interested. Still, it had its moments which held my attention. But not far behind that was the fact that it was filmed in black and white. Most black and white filming went away in the 60s, and I completely understand why director Bob Fosse chose to make it a black and white film. It was because of the movie’s biopic documentary angle. Filmed footage of the real Lenny Bruce would have been taken in the 60s, and at that time, most low-budget documentary footage would have been black and white. But I don’t think the film would have lost anything if it had been filmed in color. Then again, it wouldn’t have enhanced it either, so I guess that one is just a personal preference.