The King of Comedy is a 1982 American satirical black comedy film directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Robert De Niro, Jerry Lewis, and Sandra Bernhard.[3] Written by Paul D. Zimmerman, the film focuses on themes including celebrity worship and American media culture.
Our screening will be introduced by Dr Simon Williams who is a Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist in North London. He runs a similar film club within the forensic service which started in 2011 and also writes feature film scripts.
'King of Comedy' is a favourite of Simon's, both to watch and to use as a teaching template to explore mental illness themes within movies. He would like to encourage us to come to the film open-minded and unaware of its' contents but there are a number of areas that I would like you to think about whilst watching the film that we can cover in the discussion on the 4th June.
- Does the main character (Rupert) have a diagnosis? What about Masha?
- What does the film tell us about risk assessment?
- What does this film teach us about narcissism? Have you got any examples of where narcissism can be productive or destructive?
