Movie Review: Lenny Bruce Without Tears (1972)

When you listen to Lenny Bruce today, most of his material doesn't make sense to the average person. It's not because the material is bad. Lenny was just topical, and daily life in the 1960s doesn't ring true to those of us born in the '70s or later. He mentions people in the news, films of the time and experiences that were common at that point in history. One thing that was always true about him was that even when he wasn't funny, he was interesting to listen to.

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Though this is billed as a documentary, Without Tears seems more like a compilation of performance clips and a long form interview with a few Behind the Music segments wedged in between. It's interesting to see the uncut segments from The Steve Allen Show, but it just seems like lazy filmmaking. The information about Lenny is interesting, but I could learn all of it in a ten minute conversation. It touches his legal troubles toward the end, but it relies again on a long segment from Lenny's performances. The bad part about it is that it's not in there to pad for time. The whole movie is just over an hour long.