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
Robert De Niro Sr. this period was lost in a studio fire in 1949. De Niro had a series of solo exhibitions in the 1950s at the Charles Egan Gallery in New York, which exhibited the work of Willem de Kooning and other early abstract expressionist artists. Critics praised DeNiro’s compositions filled with improvised areas of vibrant color that gave way to loosely painted still lifes and curvaceous nudes. By the mid-1950s, De Niro was regularly included in important group exhibitions such as the Whitney Annual, the Stable Annual, and the Jewish Museum. He was awarded a Longview Foundation award in 1958. From 1961