LENNY – Dustin Hoffman – d: Bob Fosse
Lenny (1974)
Director: Bob Fosse
Screenplay: Julian Barry, from his own play
Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Valerie Perrine, Jan Miner, Stanley Beck, Gary Morton
http://www.dailymotion.com/videox1y6kq
Bob Fosse’s 1974 biopic Lenny has two chief assets: the still relevant free speech issues it raises and Valerie Perrine, as a marvelously tragic Honey Bruce. The film itself is neither riveting nor entertaining; in fact, it 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 spirit 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 but 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. (The film 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 protagonist 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 gaps 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. And, 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 almost always falls uncomfortably flat.
Bob Fosse’s direction is hardly any help. Throughout much of the film, Fosse’s touch is either too heavy or too squeamish. Bruce’s private dramas are handled with an overemphasis that turns them into lurid melodrama, while sex scenes and drug-soaked orgies could have been directed with more verve by cloistered nuns.
And if Alan Heim’s editing is generally excellent, the narrative comes to a grinding halt whenever Fosse’s self-indulgence takes over. Honey’s striptease show in the beginning of the film, for instance, seems to last longer than all of Cabaret’s musical numbers put together. Near the end, when we’re in the Rags Part II section of Lenny, Fosse forces us to watch a (purposely) horrendous comedy act in which Lenny is shot from above and at long range. The director wants to make us squirm as we watch Lenny disintegrate before our eyes, and squirm I did — out of sheer boredom.
Fosse’s direction is clear and focused only when the film’s anti-censorship theme comes to the fore. Lenny vibrates with pathos and intelligence — and at times even humor — whenever its anti-hero, whether in courtrooms or nightclubs, exposes the hypocrisies of mainstream American society. In one instance, he talks about Zsa Zsa Gabor making loads of money for shows in Nevada, a state where teachers earn $6,000 a year. Now, that is obscene, he says. And who in his or her right mind could disagree? (Of course, many would also find Lenny Bruce’s expenditures on drugs obscene, especially when compared to the yearly $6,000 earned by Nevadan teachers.)
Although some commentators have asserted that things have changed radically in the last 40 or 50 years — pointing out to the release of Lenny itself as an example — much remains just as it was in Lenny’s day. If Lenny Bruce were to go on national radio or television to talk about those same old issues while using the same old four-letter words, he would still have both the government and conservative groups on his tail.
At the beginning of the 21st century, while leaders lie about the imminent threat of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, it is the (almost) bare breast of a pop singer that leads to cries of obscenity from the guardians of American morality. To paraphrase Lenny Bruce, you still can’t see bare breasts in most of the mainstream American media. If you do, there’ll be an uproar — unless, perhaps, they’ve been maimed.
6 Academy Award Nominations
Best Picture: Marvin Worth
Best Direction: Bob Fosse
Best Actor: Dustin Hoffman
Best Actress: Valerie Perrine
Best Adapted Screenplay: Julian Barry
Best Cinematography: Bruce Surtees
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Tags: Bob Fosse, Classic Movies, Dustin Hoffman, Film Reviews, Julian Barry, Lenny, Lenny Bruce, Oscar 1974, Oscar Movies, Sex, Socially Conscious Movies, Trailers, Valerie Perrine
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Lenny the character did admit in one of his routines that he was a hustler himself … I think it was right after the part about how much a school teacher makes on an annual salary in Nevada … maybe you wanted him to balance out his sermonizing with more admission that he was a decadent sort of person, but seems unfair to leave out the little part where he did (since it’s such a hobby horse of yours)
See third-to-last paragraph.