LENNY Review d: Bob Fosse scr: Julian Barry

LENNY (1974)

Direction: Bob Fosse

Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Valerie Perrine, Jan Miner, Stanley Beck, Gary Morton

Screenplay: Julian Barry; from his own play

Oscar Movies

Dustin Hoffman, Lenny

Bob Fosse's 1974 biopic Lenny has two chief assets: the still relevant free speech issues it raises and Valerie Perrine's scene-stealing turn as the tragic Honey (Marlowe) Bruce. The film itself is neither riveting nor entertaining; in fact, Lenny is a major letdown, considering all the talent involved — director Fosse, fresh from his Academy Award win for Cabaret; cinematographer Bruce Surtees; star Dustin Hoffman — and the fertile material at hand: the life and times of Lenny Bruce, the stand-up comedian who became one of the top representatives of the anti-Establishment movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Julian Barry's mostly conventional screenplay (from his own play) follows the old pattern of the entertainer who goes from rags-to-riches-to-rags, with added touches of post-mortem Citizen Kane-like interviews. At first, we follow the rising trajectory of the Jewish standup comic, from his days as a second-rate entertainer telling lousy jokes to half-asleep audiences to his unexpected success as a counterculture icon thanks to his trademark mix of mordant social commentary and hair-raising expletives.

In his private life, Lenny is as outrageous as his standup routines. The self-obsessed performer becomes a drug addict and a sexual orgy habitué. His wife, a WASPish stripper named Honey, also gets immersed in Lenny's drugs-and-alcohol universe though the couple eventually separates.

At about that time, Lenny's career hits a snag when government authorities actively persecute him for his "obscene" humor. Initially, Lenny fights back, but as the pressure mounts the increasingly neurotic and self-destructive entertainer lets himself fall ever further into his own private hell. Lenny, in fact, implies that Bruce's death was a suicide caused by the Establishment's unrelenting persecution. (In December 2003, New York governor George Pataki pardoned Lenny Bruce for his 1964 obscenity conviction. It was the first posthumous pardon in New York state history.)

Unfortunately, Lenny's moments of innovative storytelling are few and far between, while profound insights into Bruce's character are almost nonexistent. For instance, never does either Fosse or Barry raise the issue that the film's antihero became rich as a preacher who sermonized against the inequalities and hypocrisies of American society; a preacher who then squandered his money on lavish cars and homes, plus heroin, cocaine, and assorted mind-altering substances.

Additionally, numerous narrative elements are left unexplained, such as the frequency of Lenny's drug abuse (it's not clear if he ever sobered up during the last ten years of his life), the comedian's relationship with his daughter (shown only briefly), and his frequent womanizing (which is only hinted at). Most importantly, I could never quite tell if Lenny's appeal was mostly a result of the shock-value of his jokes or a direct consequence of the messages they conveyed.

Another of Lenny's major problems is the casting of Dustin Hoffman in the title role. Hoffman, a highly cerebral actor who does quite well in revealing Bruce's neuroses and obsessions, generally fails when impersonating Lenny the comedian. True, Lenny is not a comedy, but its subject is a comedian. And comedians are called "comedians" because they are supposed to be funny.

In the film, nightclub audiences do laugh at Lenny's jokes, but I was left with the impression that those people are merely responding to cue cards. With the exception of a sketch in which Hoffman/Bruce cracks jokes about "blah-blah-blahing" — a euphemism for cock sucking — the humor in the comedy acts falls uncomfortably flat.