Lenny (1974)

Lenny
Directed by Bob Fosse
Written by Julian Barry from his play
1974/US
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime

Lenny Bruce: Please! Don’t take away my words! They’re just words! l’m not hurting anybody!

Bob Fosse’s biopic about the lives of controversial comic Lenny Bruce and his stripper wife Honey is dark but compelling.

The movie is told through a series of interviews interspersed with flashbacks.  Lenny Bruce (Dustin Hoffman) got into comedy via his mother Sally Marr (Jan Miner) and started out doing a standard stand-up routine in the Catskills and in small clubs.  His act wasn’t very funny and eventually he was reduced to quipping about the girls between numbers in strip clubs.  There he met gorgeous, erotic stripper Honey (Valerie Perrine) and they became an item.  They married within the year, and he tried to stop her stripping by including her in his act.  She was good at stripping but apparently terrible at whatever she did in the double act.

The couple then moved to California where Bruce developed the improvisational no-holds-barred style he became famous for.  Unfortunately, people that the couple hung out with introduced them to hard drugs which would plague both of them for the remainder of his life.  Honey spent years in prison on various drug charges.  Eventually Bruce kidnapped their daughter Kitty and raised her with support from his mother.  Honey and Lenny had an off-again on-again relationship and retained a bond that lasted well beyond their divorce.

While he was becoming an increasingly popular “hip” and counterculture comic, he was arrested several times for drug possession and a number of times for obscenity.  The arrests and convictions turned Bruce’s act into unfunny readings of his trial transcript and tirades against the system.  He died of an overdose in 1966 at the age of 40.

Since people have been talking and copulating, everybody has enjoyed a good dirty joke or two in private.  Lenny Bruce brought the jokes and naughty words on the stage.  He was made to suffer for it but made stand-up comedy what it is today.  Fosse creates a beautifully sleazy atmosphere in black and white and brought the best out of his actors.  I was especially impressed by Perrine’s tender, complex performance.  Worth seeing if the subject matter appeals.

Lenny was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Picture; Best Actor; Best Actress; Best Director; Best Writing, Screenplay Adapted From Other Material; and Best Cinematography.