The King of Comedy and its prediction of the future

Spoilers

The king of comedy is a Scorsese/De Niro effort about the celebrity obsessed Rupert Pupkin, and his aspirations to become a talk show host. After forcing himself into a limo with a famous talk show host, he is “given the opportunity” to submit a demo of his work to the studio.

Basically what happens is that they reject him, and he and his disposable accomplice kidnap this talk show host, and hijack his show for one night. After this, Pupkin is sent to prison.

The end of the film shows that after his stint on the talk show, he gains a huge popular following. This leads him to write a memoir from prison, which has huge critical success, and when he’s done his time, he gets his own tv show. Now, it is debated that the ending was a fantasy rather than reality, but there’s no denying the reality of it in today’s society.

The film was not the greatest success on first release, and was criticised of the ending being too unbelievable. If you watch the film today, you believe it instantly. With TV shows exploiting celebrity like the Kardashians or shows based on people who gained their 15 minutes if fame like Corey Worthington entering the big brother house a few years back.

With the amount of sharing that occurs through networking, there are more ways for people to access content like the high school bullied rises up against bully video. It gained such a huge following in a small space of time that every today tonight and a current affair had their extended segment with the victim and the bully.

Anyway, I was going to say if you haven’t seen The King of Comedy then to watch it but if you’ve read this you basically know the entire plot now. If you’ve seen it, rewatch it. It’s great.