Sim1Review of Lenny
March 26th 2007 03:29
King Lenny
The film Lenny is the story of brilliant but tortured comic Lenny Bruce. Directed by Bob Fosse and staring a very young Dustin Hoffman it’s a classic movie. More than classic. Fosse, famed chorographer, director and dancer – it’s easy to see the connection, this film dances through the tragic life of a man before his time. Bruce and his boozy, druggy, jazzy, dodgem car lifestyle.
Boo-hoo them. The point was lost in the blah-blah of ignorance.
Anyway, shot in black & white and done interview doco style, before that was hip, this is ground-breaking. An insight into how you can tell an important story but still make it entertaining. And the movie is only the smallest snapshot of Bruce’s life – you should read the biography.
Fosse said, "I like - not exactly sad, but melancholy endings. They seem more true to life". His own death was and Lenny Bruce’s was certainly that.
But in 2003 his daughter Kitty and his ex-wife Honey joined a movement to overturn his obscenity conviction;
ALBANY, New York - Comedian Lenny Bruce was granted a posthumous pardon by Gov. George Pataki for a nearly 40-year-old obscenity conviction prompted by a foul-mouthed political commentary.
Pataki called his decision, the first posthumous pardon in New York state history, "a declaration of New York's commitment to upholding the First Amendment."
The campaign to win a pardon for Bruce was supported by his ex-wife and daughter, more than two dozen First Amendment lawyers and entertainers including Robin Williams, the Smothers Brothers and Penn and Teller.
Floyd Abrams, a leading First Amendment lawyer and member of the campaign, said Pataki's decision "is really a major step forward in recognizing the mistreatment of Lenny Bruce personally and of the First Amendment that Bruce defended."
During a November 1964 performance at Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich Village, Bruce used more than 100 "obscene" words. Undercover police detectives attended the show, and later testified against Bruce. The charge was Giving an Obscene Performance.
He was convicted following a six-month trial. Bruce mishandled his own appeal, and, beset by legal and financial problems, died of a drug overdose in 1966 with the conviction still on the books.
He was 37.
Until next time and happy film-making.
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