Lenny
by Bob Fosse
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DVD details
Actor: Dustin Hoffman, Frankie Man, Jan Miner, Stanley Beck, Valerie PerrineDirector: Bob Fosse
Cinematographer: Bruce Surtees
Editor: Alan Heim
Producer: David V. Picker
Producer: Marvin Worth
Producer: Robert Greenhut
Writer: Julian Barry
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Anamorphic, Black & White, Closed-captioned, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 111 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-04-16
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
DVD Reviews of Lenny
DVD Review: excellent
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a great film about a comic nammed Lenny Bruce, not the comic, Lenny Bruce.
Watch films of the real Lenny: he is a big framed man, a hipster with a streem of consiousness mind and a airplane gunners mouth. His humor is scattalogical and wonders through the complexities of his mind before subtley arriving on point.
Fossee and Hoffman distil the comady and make Lenny seem like a crusading intellectual. The humor here is tight and to the point--excellent stand up--just not Lenny.
Also, all accounts I read say by 1966, Lenny was broken by junk and waiting to die. True, he spent a lot of legal fights, but he spent more on heroin. Lenny, the film, makes it seem like he was broken more by his leagal battles than the drugs--that he was a crusading martyr ready to give all for the cause rather than a sad, broken victim of addiction.
Had Lenny lived into 1968 or 1969, he would have been in a whole new era, and a lot of his leagal issues would have taken care of themselves. Comics like Richard Pryor and George Carlin made Bruce seem tame by comparison, as did the counterculture about to explode when Lennt died.
DVD Review: Lenny
Summary: 3 Stars
If you want a bio, it's informative, and as I understand it, honest, as Lenny Bruce was not considered by many as great, but his passion for free speech is commendable, I think. As a movie, it focuses too much on the couple, and at times, I needed to step back and breath.DVD Review: Hot Honey Harlow
Summary: 5 Stars
I think this movie is great! I have purchased a Baker's dozen for my friends. I married Honey Bruce in 1984, here in Honolulu (husband number two). I first had the pleasure of meeting Honey in 1974 in San Anselmo, California. That summer, I was playing the bass guitar in a rock n' roll band for a fellow by the name of MiddleJohn. Middle and I were living in a ranch house directly across the street from where Honey was making her home. I was sleeping in my 1971 Dodge Sportsman camper Van which I parked at the end of the street.
One lazy afternoon, I had set up my amplifier on the front porch of the house. Plugged in my bass guitar and was playing bass riffs. Honey was across the street doing her gardening. She came over and introduced herself to me and showed me a photo of her daughter Kitty in TIME magazine. Honey invired me over her house and into her livingroom. We became very good friends. Honey kept trying to get me to play bass along with a record of her's on her stereo - Alice Stuart.
I dragged my amplifier into her livingroom and played the bass away. I was pretty good. That was thirty-five years ago. As you can imagine I have many stories to share but time is limited. Please visit my website at [...] - The music says it all! Peace & Love, Jeffrey W. Friedman (Honolulu)
DVD Review: Lenny on videotape
Summary: 5 Stars
Excellent condition, great price. Technology changes, great art doesn't. Bob Fosse and Dustin Hoffman for pennies -- videotape is better and cheaper than ever!DVD Review: Lenny Bruce was not only first, but he was different.
Summary: 4 Stars
For a film that's over 30 years old, this looks great. What helps matters is that it's black and white, which is easier to clean up in the post production process. Really though, it looks like it could have been filmed last year. Dustin Hoffman channels Lenny Bruce in a film directed by Bob Fosse. Yes it's a weird thing, there's no denying that. Bob Fosse, who was better known for his choreography (Chicago, Cabaret), turned to directing as another outlet of his creative forces. As for Hoffman, looking at his body of work makes this role in particular standout. I'm surprised that he chose to play Bruce, an outspoken, angry man. After all, Hoffman is usually more the weirdo or mealy-mouthed villain. Then again, what was Bruce if not a slightly weird guy, who ultimately was shy except when he inhabited the stage.
Lenny Bruce was the driving force behind making comedy into the socially challenging medium it is today. The structure is episodes of his life tied together with commentary from his agent, his wife (played by Valerie Perrine), and other important characters in his life. Lenny was one of the original dirty mouthed comedians, but with a point. He was taking on the establishment, and the hypocrisy of contemporary society. He was arrested and tried several times on obscenity charges, for things like using the word c**sucker during a public performance. He also had a problem with drug abuse, largely due to the influence of his addict wife. She was a headline stripper when they met, and he was a young comedian. Bruce died never really seeing the fruits of his passion.
Fosse was an accomplished director, managing to channel some mavericks of his own in the direction of this movie. With its loose cutting style and drifting camera, the film at points feels like a Cassavete's film and this style works perfectly with the subject matter. Because of this, Lenny has a pure authenticity that's impossible to shake. There never feels like a false moment and Hoffman is particularly great (he was nominated for this role.) All of Lenny's acts are performed nearly verbatim, and all the court and interview transcripts are pulled from his life. Given that Bruce was a man under constant surveillance while he performed, so that the recordings could be used against him in court, allowing these same words to redeem him is Lenny's greatest accomplishment. Even if he doesn't know it, Lenny was right all along. I honestly enjoyed this film and like to thank JoeyD. for recommend it to me.
Description of Lenny
Two-time Oscar?(r) winner* Dustin Hoffman brings controversial 60s comedian Lenny Bruce tolife in this landmark (Variety) film that earned six Oscar?(r) nominations,** including Best Picture. A jagged portrait of a man driven to mainlining honesty into the arteries of a hypocritical culture (Newsweek), Lenny is artful, imaginative (Los Angeles Times) and truly an extraordinary film (Saturday Review)! From his first gig as a nervous Catskillcomedian, it's obvious that Lenny Bruce is a force to be reckoned with. Armed with a shocking routine and a stripper as his muse (Valerie Perrine), Lenny turns comedyand Americaon its ear with his abrasive and often offensive humor. But life in the smoke-filled bars of the comedy circuit begins to take its toll. The drugs and arrests for his subject matter wear heavily on this maverick crusader but don't stop him from pushing the envelope right to his tragic and myth-making end. *1988: Actor, Rain Man; 1979: Actor, Kramer vs. Kramer **1974: Actor (Hoffman), Actress (Perrine), Director, Screenplay Adapted from Other Material, CinematographyBased loosely on the Broadway play, this film biography of late comedian Lenny Bruce captures his fiery brand of provocative humor while looking at his less-than-savory personal life. Dustin Hoffman earned an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Bruce, a seminal figure in stand-up comedy who broke boundaries of language and subject matter by questioning hypocrisy and telling it hilariously like he saw it. Director Bob Fosse, working with cinematographer Bruce Surtees, used black-and-white to capture the shadowy nightclub world in which Bruce rose and fell, bleakly depicting the eventual loss of his livelihood when he became a victim of governmental obscenity prosecution. Hoffman is ably supported by Valerie Perrine as Bruce's stripper wife, Honey, as much a victim as a lover for Bruce. --Marshall Fine
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