Editing Lenny Bruce (section)

==Legacy==
{{quote box
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| quote = {{spaces|4}}Perhaps the most profound and cataclysmic change in our popular culture the last few years—matching the "new sound" in music—has been the kind of humor exemplified by the [[Smothers Brothers]], ''[[Laugh-In]]'', [[Woody Allen]], and that whole breed, whose secret source of strength was the late dark angel, Lenny Bruce.
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{{spaces|4}}Bruce was the [[Gertrude Stein]] of comedians. Never popular himself—because he was too cryptic and too scatological for popular taste—he nevertheless influenced a whole generation of comics, just as Stein influenced Hemingway and that generation of writers. Her own work was a dead end (so was Bruce's), but out of that compost grew the buds of a flourishing school.
| source = – Syndicated columnist [[Sydney J. Harris]], November 5, 1969.<ref>{{citation|author=[[Sydney J. Harris|Harris, Sydney J.]]|title=Rochester Democrat and Chronicle|date=November 5, 1969|page=36}}</ref>
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Bruce was the subject of the 1974 biographical drama ''[[Lenny (film)|Lenny]]'', directed by [[Bob Fosse]] and starring [[Dustin Hoffman]], who was nominated for a [[Academy Award for Best Actor|Best Actor Academy Award]] for the role. It was based on the [[Broadway theatre|Broadway]] stage play of the same name by [[Julian Barry]], which starred [[Cliff Gorman]] in his 1972 [[Tony Award]]-winning role. The main character's editing of a fictionalized film version of ''Lenny'' was also a major part of Fosse's own autobiopic, the 1979 Academy Award-nominated ''[[All That Jazz (film)|All That Jazz]]'', where Gorman again played Bruce.

The documentary film ''[[Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth]]'' (1998), directed by [[Robert B. Weide]] and narrated by [[Robert De Niro]], was nominated for the [[Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature]].

Episode 12 of season 1 of ''Liberty on Trial in America: Cases That Defined Freedom'', aired on January 3, 2020, explored the ways in which Bruce and the [[First Amendment to the United States Constitution|First Amendment]] affected each other.

In 2004, [[Comedy Central]] placed Bruce at number three on its list of the 100 greatest stand-ups of all time, above [[Woody Allen]] (4th) and below [[Richard Pryor]] (1st) and [[George Carlin]] (2nd).<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.imdb.com/list/ls509798303/ |title=List of Comedy Central's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All Time |publisher=IMDB.com |access-date=December 10, 2023}}</ref> Both comedians who ranked higher than Bruce considered him a major influence. Pryor said that hearing Bruce for the first time "changed my life";<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://www.contactmusic.com/richard-pryor/news/pryor.-i-owe-it-all-to-lenny-bruce|title=Pryor: I Owe It All To Lenny Bruce|date=May 21, 2004|work=Contactmusic.com|access-date=April 22, 2018|language=en-US}}</ref> while Carlin said that Bruce was a "brilliant comedian" who influenced him as much as a man in his moral thinking and attitudes as he did as a comedian.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://archive.org/details/thecharleton03carl/page/n245|title=His Humour On Our Hubris: George Carlin in Ottawa |date=November 9, 1973|publisher=[[The Charlatan (student newspaper)|The Charlatan]]|access-date=October 28, 2021}}</ref> Carlin was arrested along with Bruce after refusing to provide identification when police raided a Bruce performance.<ref>{{cite episode|title=Profanity|series=Penn & Teller: Bullshit!|network=[[Showtime (TV network)|Showtime]]|season=2|number=10|episode-link=List of Bullshit! episodes|series-link=Penn & Teller: Bullshit!|airdate=August 12, 2004}}</ref>