The King of Comedy (film) character fails to differentiate between his fantasies and reality in much the same way. Scorsese sought to achieve the same with the film so that, in his words, the "fantasy is more real than reality". Rupert Pupkin has been compared to Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver": both characters have serious issues with reality testing, that is drawing the line between outer objective and inner subjective reality. In her review, entertainment columnist Marilyn Beck approved Johnny Carson's refusal to participate in "The King of Comedy", supposedly because he feared the film could inspire psychopaths like John Hinckley. Beck considered "The King
Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro every drug you've got". Made after "Taxi Driver", the film was a box-office failure. Its budget was $14 million, a large figure at the time, but it grossed only $13 million at the box-office and its disappointing reception and his breakup with Minnelli drove Scorsese into depression and further into drug abuse. In 1980, Scorsese made "Raging Bull", a film starring De Niro as an emotionally self-destructive boxer, the film following his journey through life, as the violence and temper that leads him to the top in the ring destroys his life outside it. De Niro won an Oscar for