Hacker Cinema
The Comedian
2016 · Film · 120 min
Directed by Taylor Hackford
An aging comic icon, Jackie Burke, has seen better days. Despite his efforts to reinvent himself and his comic genius, the audience only wants to know him as the former television character he once played. Already a strain on his younger brother and his wife, Jackie is forced to serve out a sentence doing community service for accosting an audience member. While there, he meets Harmony, the daughter of a sleazy Florida real estate mogul, and the two find inspiration in one another, resulting in surprising consequences.
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4 comments on Hacker News
There was an entire movie (Comedian) about him starting new material from the ground up in prep for a special.
It's been awhile since I've seen the movie, so maybe Ozymandius did show traits of Hare's definition of the psychopathy. However, the article seemed to imply that the only thing that separates a psychopath from a narcissist is empathy level:
>What makes Ozymandius the villain of the story is that, while many NPD sufferers have decreased empathy, Ozy's lack of empathy borders on full-blown psychopathy
In other words, a psychopath would just be a narcissist with even less empathy, which isn't really the case. In fact, aggressive narcissism is just one of two factors in Hare's checklist. On the second factor, socially deviant lifestyle (which includes traits like failure to plan ahead, poor self control, impulsiveness, etc.), he would probably score pretty low, and thus would be unlikely classified by Hare as a true psychopath.
The description of The Comedian as having ASPD was well-justified though, other than the term "sufferer". Most sociopaths actually consider themselves to be "free" of many of the emotional and social burdens that the people they prey on seem to carry (which ties in to their narcissism).
After "Seinfeld" ended: He famously threw away all his stand-up material after doing the very successful special "I'm Telling You For the Last Time", He was featured in a documentary called "Comedian" following his slow grind building up all new material, has continued touring with that new material, He immediately began touring with that new material (I saw a show and thought it was really good), He made "Bee Movie", He made "The Marriage Ref".
And other things too. Some of the stuff in that list was nearly as good as "Seinfeld", and some of it was terrible, but he's been around.
I've assumed that this was how all good stand-up comedians come up with quality new material since seeing Comedian, the documentary about Seinfeld.