Lenny Bruce Everywhere

Chic Eder, a source for Albert Goldman’s book on Lenny and a high level DEA informant once told me, “My best friend sold Lenny the dope he OD’d on.” Was his friend also an informant. Did the LAPD have this guy sell Lenny a bag of dope that was too strong?

I can’t tell if the author liked or disliked my movie, but I very much enjoyed this article!

-Elan Gale

“Next up, in 1969: A relatively tame novelist named Philip Roth unleashed Portnoy’s Complaint, a wild monologue by a young Jewish man in search of sexual satisfaction. Asked by the New York Times Book Review about the similarity to Lenny, Roth laughed it off. They’d met, he said. He’d heard the records, read his skits, seen the movie, but his book was inspired by “a sit-down comic named Franz Kafka.” He made no mention of what Albert Goldman recorded in his 1974 biography: Roth was covering Lenny’s 1964 obscenity trial for the New York Review of Books, and at lunch “struggled to outdo Lenny Bruce in humor and verbal brilliance,” “hotly competitive” with the man he’d dismiss in the next breath.”

Philip Roth’s “Portnoy’s Complaint” is not a libertarian novel. The book if read critically reveals itself to offer a profound critic of sexual libertinism.

In a sense, yes Roth was touched by Lenny Bruce but he rejected Bruce’s view of life.

`You have a demented notion of manliness if you think the subjects of the piece embody it.

I thought the Russians invented everything first. Turns out it was Lenny Bruce. Who knew?

Growing up in the Bronx of the 40′s and 50′s I knew a bunch of Jewish guys who shared Lenny’s taste for Heroin and ‘Commentary.’ Nothing unique about Bruce except he was the one who grabbed the spotlight. As for Lenny, not a very nice guy when he was off the stage. But then again, he was a junkie.

“Lenny is everywhere, like a trail dropped out of a fertilizer truck”.

Beautiful simile, and an apt one for the comedian in question.

Your Lenny Bruce (and many others’) comes off as some sort of foul-mouthed evangelist. The Lenny Bruce I saw at the Troubadour was a comic; so the next day your ribs and belly were so sore from laughing you felt like you’d been beat up. I’ll take your word for all that other stuff.

I’d like to see this documentary here in the US, I have
not seen it advertised here yet. Lenny Bruce was quite
controversial in his day, now, nothing is ‘out of bounds’.

Lenny had an influence on Zappa, but to say it was that strong is rather pushing things.

O.k. bottom line, and I am certain that all of the intellectual afficianados would prefer this aspect of his life to be closeted but it is the single most important feature of Lenny, his life and his influence. It also is another reason for the authorities coming down on him. His mind was fueled by chemicals. His choice of chemicals was intimately connected to the production of outrageous comedy. His perception of the world around him was massively heightened by the use of amphetamine to the point that he was not just thinking outside the box he was living there.

To say that he did not have an altruistic bone in his body is harsh and not true. Most drug addicts and alcaholics get that way because they see a different world to the rest who stand in line. They have a great sensitivity to the things that are quite blatantly obviously wrong in society. I definitely agree that some of Lenny’s motivating forces could be described as dark but he was a warrior and he died fighting.

The reason for his persecution was a whole combination of things and not just obscenity. Obscenity was the only thing that the authorities could latch on to to try and shut him down. Lenny was perceived as a threat to societal equilibrium. He inhabited the fringes of the underworld where he was neither one thing or the other. He was unique and travelled his own road according to his own agenda, trying to create and manipulate the surroundings that best suited HIS purpose. Getting to know Lenny was an impossible job because he was still always trying to get to know himself. He was the kind of guy that TPTB just do no like. Out of control, free thinking, free speaking, reality changing and a renegade. Satire is about targeting the people who set themselves up as righteous to the point that they feel the need to set standards for all to follow. When they started coming down on him he was propelled into targeting the hypocrisy that was driving the persecution and the whole thing began to snowball because Lenny would not let go of his belief that his way was right and refused to bow under the pressure. He knew that he was smart enough to beat the system in a fair fight but it was not a fair fight. I do not believe that his death was an accident or deliberate on his part. The analogy with the life of Jesus is unavoidable. Lenny died so that TPTB could continue the program of enslaving the masses within a societal infrastructure that gives the people a feeling of security and thus enables their manipulation and control.

Lenny Bruce was a wild child who was lucky enough to find a niche that suited him for a short while. If he had been satisfied with the world he would never have been such a heavily dependant drug user. We needed Lenny and others like him to shake us out of the hypnotic trance like state that has been applied without consent. His job, and mine, is to agitate and stimulate an awakening consciousness and break the fucking mold that has been designed by some extremely clever but pschologically deranged people. Why are drugs illegal? Because their use leads people to wake up to the falsehood of modern existance. Lenny was what he was because of the drugs he used to make his world an acceptable place to live in. He was a great man but just like Jesus, much of that greatness was stimulated by an idiotic society that was following a bunch of rules made by a bunch of vested interest. Irrespective of his real motivations he created a buzz that is still going today and it is an absolute fact that there are many, me included, who are being forced into assuming his mantle because, as will probably be going on forever, society hates anyone who happens to be different and non-conformist. targeted Individuals exist in order to keep the general population in order and shut down. Someone has to get hit in order that the rest are grateful that it is not them. That is why the people allowed Jesus to get crucified and same with Lenny. I am happy to carry on the fight and I do so with an extremely close affinity to the man’s spirit. It is not with any disrespect that I use Lenny’s name as my alias. I am close to Lenny in so many ways that it is spooky and uncanny but having said that, I would never presume to get even close to his greatness. He lives on.