home/movie/2023/dead neon the many faces of lenny bruce on film
Dead Neon: The Many Faces of Lenny Bruce on Film
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Documentary
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Lenny Bruce's depiction on film did not start or end with Bob Fosse's Lenny (1974). Through these other often offbeat cinematic incarnations, this essay piece considers how Lenny Bruce was the perfect Bob Fosse subject, and how Fosse's focus on the lives of performers invigorated his portrait of the controversial, trail-blazing comic.
12-27-2023
29 min
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Main Cast
Movie Details
Production Info
Director:
Daniel Kremer
Writer:
Daniel Kremer
Locations and Languages
Country:
US
Languages:
en
Main Cast
Lenny Bruce
Leonard Alfred Schneider, better known by his stage name Lenny Bruce, was an American stand-up comedian, social critic, and satirist. He was renowned for his open, free-style and critical form of comedy which integrated satire, politics, religion, sex, and vulgarity. Branded a "sick comic", Bruce was essentially blacklisted from television, and when he did appear these performances was facilitated by fans like Hugh Hefner and Steve Allen. In 1951, Bruce met Honey Harlow, a stripper from Manila, Arkansas. They were married that same year, and Bruce was determined she would end her work as a stripper. Throughout the final decade of his life, Bruce was beset by severe drug addiction.
Robert Louis “Bob” Fosse (June 23, 1927 – September 23, 1987) was an American actor, dancer, musical theater choreographer, director, screenwriter, film editor and film director. He won an unprecedented eight Tony Awards for choreography, as well as one for direction. He was nominated for an Academy Award four times, winning for his direction of Cabaret (beating Francis Ford Coppola for The Godfather). He was closely identified with his third wife, Broadway dancing star Gwen Verdon. She was both the dancer/collaborator/muse upon whom he choreographed much of his work and, together with dancer/choreographer Ann Reinking, a significant guardian of the Fosse legacy after his death.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Bob Fosse, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Filmmaker, film historian, biographer, and professional film archivist Daniel Kremer grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He graduated Temple University's film program and now lives in San Francisco. In 2007, while living in Philadelphia, he directed his first feature Sophisticated Acquaintance (2007). His second feature A Trip to Swadades (2008), which was shot on black-and-white super-16mm film, won three Best Feature Film awards. Following that film's international festival tour (which included Rotterdam), he moved to New York City, where he lived for nearly seven years. At one point, he studied to be an Orthodox rabbi, but gave it up to continue pursuing film.
In 2011, he completed his acclaimed follow-up feature, The Idiotmaker's Gravity Tour (2011). The film was lensed predominantly in India. Subsequent to that, he directed Raise Your Kids on Seltzer (2015), Ezer Kenegdo (2017), Overwhelm the Sky (2019), and Even Just (2020) in the San Francisco Bay Area, using independent filmmaking icon Rob Nilsson's regular cast and crew. The critically lauded Overwhelm the Sky was given special coverage for having been released in the classic epic "roadshow" format, and was picked up for distribution by Kino Lorber. His partly autobiographical cinema-themed essay documentary It's a Zabriskie, Zabriskie, Zabriskie, Zabriskie Point (2023) garnered raves from the British Film Institute, veteran critic Gerald Peary (For the Love of Movies), and many others.
Kremer has screened work at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), the Joseph Conrad Festival in Krakow, Poland, Maryland International Film Festival, San Francisco Independent Film Festival, Brussels International Film Festival, Glasgow Film Festival, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Fantasporto Film Festival in Porto, Portugal, Rivers Edge International Film Festival, Mill Valley Film Festival, and many other international venues.
His second book, currently in editing at Oxford University Press, is the first to cover filmmaker Joan Micklin Silver (Hester Street, Chilly Scenes of Winter, Crossing Delancey). His first book, about the life and career of filmmaker Sidney J. Furie (The Ipcress File, Lady Sings the Blues, The Boys in Company C, The Entity), was published by University Press of Kentucky's Screen Classics Series in November 2015. His third book, now being researched, will be the first to cover the life and career of classic Hollywood director Irving Rapper (Now Voyager, The Corn is Green, The Brave One, Marjorie Morningstar). As a film scholar, he has provided DVD/Blu-Ray commentary tracks for sixteen companies. As a Trailers from Hell guru, he is listed alongside other gurus like Guillermo del Toro, Luca Guadagnino, Eli Roth, Joe Dante, Edgar Wright, John Landis, Roger Corman, John Sayles, and many others.
