‘The King of Comedy’ is an extraordinary film and, in many respects, a companion piece to ‘Taxi Driver’. Martin Scorsese once again gives us Robert De Niro as an emotionally isolated New Yorker whose fantasy life has become almost indistinguishable from reality. But whereas Travis Bickle dreams of cleansing the streets through violence, Rupert Pupkin dreams of celebrity. He is a wannabe stand-up comedian who doesn’t merely hope that one day he might become famous: he behaves as though fame is something to which he is already entitled and the rest of the world simply hasn’t realized it yet.

Jerry Lewis is superb as Jerry Langford, a Johnny Carson-type figure who hosts a successful nightly television chat show. Rupert meets him after helping Langford escape from a crowd of fans and immediately interprets the encounter as the beginning of a relationship. Langford politely suggests that Rupert should contact his office, but Rupert hears something quite different. In his mind, he has effectively been invited into showbusiness.

This is where the film’s exploration of fantasy becomes so fascinating.

Rupert lives in the basement of his mother’s house, surrounded by cardboard cut-outs of celebrities and a mock television set on which he rehearses imaginary interviews with Langford. While Rupert is recording one of these fantasies, imagining himself appearing on television, his mother shouts down from upstairs asking him to keep the noise down. The mundane reality of his existence keeps intruding upon the glamorous alternative world he has constructed for himself.

There are shades of Peter Sellers in ‘Being There’. Sellers’ Chance has absorbed so much of his understanding of existence from television that he can barely distinguish between the medium and reality. Rupert similarly seems to have constructed the entire fabric of his life through television. If people can become celebrities simply by appearing on the screen, why shouldn’t he?

What Rupert doesn’t understand, or refuses to understand, is the long, unglamorous process involved in developing a talent. He is advised to perform in clubs and learn his craft, but he has no interest in that. He wants his appearance on national television now. The goal is not really comedy at all. The goal is fame.

And that makes ‘The King of Comedy’ astonishingly prophetic.

We now inhabit a culture in which celebrity can itself appear to be a profession, where people can become famous through reality television, YouTube, TikTok or social media without necessarily passing through traditional routes of apprenticeship. Scorsese’s film was made decades before this world emerged, yet Rupert’s mentality feels completely contemporary: why wait to be discovered when you can simply manufacture the circumstances in which everybody has to look at you?

When conventional methods fail, Rupert and fellow obsessive fan Masha (Sandra Bernhard) kidnap Langford. Their ransom demand is wonderfully absurd: Rupert wants a spot on Jerry’s television programme. And the disturbing thing is that he gets it.

This is where the parallels with ‘Taxi Driver’ become particularly interesting. Travis Bickle wants to assassinate presidential candidate Charles Palantine but ultimately redirects his violence towards rescuing Iris, the young prostitute. Society consequently misinterprets this deeply disturbed man as a hero. Rupert likewise commits an appalling act but ultimately obtains precisely the public recognition he craves.

Both men achieve a form of redemption through transgression.

Rupert sums up his entire philosophy in one wonderful line: ‘Better to be king for a night than a schmuck for a lifetime.’ That is not merely a joke or a punchline. It is his creed. One moment of national recognition is worth almost any price because anonymity, for Rupert, is a form of non-existence.

That makes this a film about rejection as much as stalking. Rupert simply cannot process the possibility that other people may not see him as he sees himself. Langford’s office rejects him. Langford himself tries to get rid of him. Yet every rejection is somehow incorporated into Rupert’s fantasy as merely another obstacle on the inevitable journey towards stardom.

There is even something admirable about his persistence until we remember what that persistence actually involves. The language we normally use approvingly – determination, self-belief, refusing to take no for an answer – becomes sinister when applied to somebody incapable of recognising other people’s boundaries.

Jerry Lewis’s performance is crucial here because Langford is no uncomplicated victim either. On television he is charming, amusing and completely at ease. Away from the cameras, he is prickly, guarded and understandably irritated by the endless attention of strangers who believe that because they watch him every night they somehow know him.

Celebrity has imprisoned him just as surely as obscurity has imprisoned Rupert.

That creates the film’s great irony. Rupert desperately wants the fame from which Jerry desperately wants some escape. One man cannot understand why the public doesn’t recognise him; the other cannot walk down the street without being recognized.

The film therefore deconstructs the parasocial relationship decades before that terminology became commonplace. Rupert believes that watching Jerry Langford on television every night constitutes a kind of friendship. Masha takes this considerably further, imagining a romantic relationship with him. The celebrity is no longer perceived as an autonomous human being but as something belonging to the audience.

This is one of the reasons Lewis is so effective. There is a marvellous sequence in which he is held captive by Masha, who has created an elaborate romantic dinner for the two of them. She believes she is finally achieving intimacy with the man she adores; Langford knows that he has effectively been imprisoned by a stranger. The gulf between those two perceptions is simultaneously hilarious and frightening.

And then Rupert finally gets his television appearance.

Remarkably, he is funny.

That complicates everything. If he were simply hopeless, the film would become a straightforward story about a deluded man discovering that he has no talent. Instead, Scorsese allows us to wonder whether Rupert might actually have had some ability all along. The problem isn’t necessarily that he lacks talent; it is that he believes talent entitles him to bypass every conventional route by which it might be developed or recognized.

Even then, though, we cannot be completely certain what we are watching.

As with the ending of ‘Taxi Driver’, fantasy and reality begin to blur. Rupert becomes famous after his crime. His story becomes a bestseller. He is apparently transformed into a major celebrity and is eventually introduced to ecstatic applause as the new king of comedy.

But is any of this actually happening?

Could we simply have entered another of Rupert’s basement fantasies?

Scorsese wisely refuses to tell us. ‘Taxi Driver’ ends with a similarly unsettling possibility: perhaps Travis really has become a hero, or perhaps what we’re seeing represents some final fantasy. In both films, the distinction almost ceases to matter because the protagonists have already constructed realities in which they occupy the starring role.

It is also fascinating to view ‘The King of Comedy’ alongside ‘Joker’. Todd Phillips’ 2019 film clearly draws upon both this and ‘Taxi Driver’, and De Niro’s presence creates a wonderful reversal. In Scorsese’s film he is the obsessive outsider desperate to get onto the chat show; in ‘Joker’, decades later, but set at the same time that ‘The King of Comedy’ was made, he becomes the famous television host confronted by precisely that kind of disturbed wannabe celebrity.

Yet ‘The King of Comedy’ is arguably more unsettling because it is so understated. There is comparatively little violence, and, through its PG rating, the film is accessible to a much younger audience than its subject matter might suggest. Scorsese doesn’t need the bloodbath of ‘Taxi Driver’. Rupert’s pathology manifests itself through politeness, persistence and an almost unshakeable cheerfulness.

He doesn’t look particularly dangerous.

That is precisely why he is.

The film’s understatement also makes its critique of celebrity considerably sharper. Rupert isn’t really interested in becoming a great comedian. He wants the validation that appearing on television supposedly confers. Once the screen recognizes him, he believes the world must recognize him too.

In this respect, the film recalls cultural critics such as Malcolm Muggeridge and Neil Postman’s ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death’: television doesn’t merely entertain us but begins to determine what counts as reality. Rupert has absorbed that lesson completely. If you appear on television, you exist. If millions of people know your name, your life has acquired meaning.

The extraordinary thing is that the culture ultimately seems to agree with him.

His criminality becomes part of his celebrity mythology. Kidnapping Jerry Langford doesn’t destroy Rupert’s career; it creates it. Infamy and fame become almost interchangeable commodities.

That makes the ending every bit as disturbing as ‘Taxi Driver’. Travis commits violence and is hailed as a hero because society misunderstands what motivated him. Rupert commits a crime in pursuit of fame and society rewards him with exactly what he wanted.

Perhaps neither man has been redeemed at all.

Perhaps the disturbing point is that the culture around them is every bit as confused as they are.

That is why ‘The King of Comedy’ feels more relevant now than it might have done in 1982. Rupert Pupkin lives in a world before social media, reality television and influencers, yet he already understands the currency on which much of contemporary celebrity culture operates: attention.

He wants to be seen.

He wants to be known.

And he doesn’t particularly care what he has to do to make that happen.

Scorsese turns that desperation into something simultaneously pathetic, funny and frightening. ‘The King of Comedy’ is ultimately about a man who believes fame will rescue him from insignificance, only for the film to suggest something much darker: in a culture obsessed with celebrity, Rupert Pupkin may not actually be as deluded as we would like to think.