Film: The King of Comedy

From an early stint on The Richard Pryor Show to one-woman stage acts and standup routines to recurring roles on Roseanne, Pose, and American Horror Story, actress Sandra Bernhard has booked just a handful of film roles that truly allow her talents to shine. Bernhard is dangerously electric in her breakout big-screen role as Masha, an Upper West Side obsessive fangirl who teams up with zealous aspiring comic Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro) to kidnap their favorite late-night host (Jerry Lewis). From Masha’s quip about Shavuos to Yiddish vocabulary, writer Paul D. Zimmerman infuses his script with rhythms familiar to that particularly American brand of Jewish humor.

DIRECTED BY: Martin Scorsese. WRITTEN BY: Paul D. Zimmerman. WITH: Robert De Niro, Jerry Lewis, Diahnne Abbott, Sandra Bernhard. 1982. 109 min. USA. Color. English. Rated PG. DCP.