Dustin Hoffman plays Lenny Bruce, the controversial stand-up comic who views comedy as a form of debate...I am going to take a stab at why this film is in black & white...The vast majority of this film takes place in the late fifties and early sixties..The black and white presentation exudes the era in which Lenny Bruce's popularity prevailed!! Black and White captures the three packs of cigarettes an evening per deviate nightclub era of the Lenny Bruce days so so so cogently!!... Interesting concept.. How many men get their blank blanked.. How many men have blanked a blank.. None?..They aren't telling the truth...especially those in lower middle management!! How about the fact that your wife is not a lesbian, but for purposes of a voyeuristic thrill...Why not?..Kind of degrading!! but for Lenny Bruce, that's the best part... SORT OF!!!...KIND OF!!... How can you curb obscenity when obscenity is the truth?...How does an overzealous, intellectual, New York Jewish comic ignore his upbringing? ..HE DOESN'T!! And finally, Why is this such a terrific movie!!...Because it is so much of a story about the sixties revolution...Here is one of the most poignant phrases I have ever heard, "Telling a person he is obnoxious is often times tantamount to telling them they they are telling the truth!! The fact is, nobody particularly cares to hear the truth 99.999% of the times anyway!!" I once rented "Lenny" with "Bonnie and Clyde" together. What could these two movies have in common? Both sixty's era in one way or another, but, more importantly, how people in the wrong can be recipients of a sort of convoluted injustice!!You are no more immoral than anybody else, you are just better at it!! Lenny's comedy routines transcended innuendos concerning vulgarities, his obscenities were neon accented!! It is for this reason that police were always carting him away!! Suffice it to say, "Lenny" is one of my favorite movies.. Often times, it seemed like even when Lenny Bruce lost, he won!! Normal? different? respectable? pornographic? What is the difference? So often, there is just a paper thin line between the two!! Trust me!! not everybody is just like the Waltons!!!