A Comedian’s Weighty Legacy

“Come What May,” a documentary by David Gantz and Lahna Turner, is a sad and often excruciating venture, not least because it began as something hopeful. The stand-up comedian Ralphie May died in 2017 at the age of forty-five from cardiac arrest, a fate that was, if not foretold, then unsurprising. A Clark County coroner identified hypertensive cardiovascular disease as the cause and he also suffered from pneumonia.May’s girth was, as the ad copy has it, “larger than life.” At his heaviest, he weighed more than 800 pounds. Ms. Turner is not a disinterested party in the making of “Come What May”: She married May in 2005 after a courtship whose byways and hesitations are laid out in the film. Their relationship raised eyebrows given the radical discrepancy in sizes. A fellow stand-up and slim in physique, Ms. Turner worried about potential health problems that were likely to arise from her paramour’s obesity. Still, May was persistent and Ms. Turner smitten. After pledging their troth in an Elvis-themed chapel at Las Vegas, the couple went on to have a son and a daughter. Family life agreed with May, at least initially, and filming began as an attempt to document his attempting to get fit. May underwent gastric bypass surgery in 2004 and the results were, by any measure, impressive: He slimmed down to little over three hundred pounds. There was a way to go, of course. We see footage of May admonishing a crowd for clapping at the news of his weight loss: “You lost a fat man, and you’re still fat as hell.” As a contestant on the television series, VH1’s “Celebrity Fit Club,” he managed to shed additional poundage. But May never stopped being a big man.Obesity did play a role in May becoming successful. A rise to fame coincided with his appearing on an NBC talent competition, “Last Comic Standing.” As related by the host of the program, Jay Mohr, the network executives wanted to “cut [May] loose because he was so enormous . . . it was an issue for them.” When May made it to the final round, ultimately coming in at second place, there was a corresponding groundswell of support from audiences who felt that he had been cheated. Cut to a crowd at a theater welcoming May with a standing ovation. An inveterate work-horse, May traveled the country in a personalized tour bus often with wife, children and dog in tow. When the family wasn’t along for the ride, May, along with a management team out to keep its client in the black, indulged in junk food and prescription drugs. Among the most painful moments in the film is watching a near comatose May sitting backstage waiting for an opening act to finish up. His inability to perform caused something close to a riot. Police were called. The media had a field day.It’s to the probity of Mr. Gantz and Ms. Turner, who was estranged from her husband towards the end of his life, that May, though lovingly considered in many respects, is not aggrandized. The comedian is, for long stretches of “Come What May,” an unsympathetic figure, addled and exacerbated by childhood abuse, various addictions, enablers on the payroll, and his own clouded judgment. Fellow comics like Jeff Ross, Tiffany Haddish, and Jay Leno testify to May’s kindness and humor, but these can be difficult to parse given the subject’s duplicities and bad habits. “Come What May” is, then, a valentine riven by contradictions. Would that there was a tighter hand at the editing board: Two hours and ten minutes is too much of a sad thing; repetitive, too. A more economical approach would suit a figure whose rise and fall offers an object lesson in the pitfalls of fame and how good people can make bad choices.Ms. Turner will be appearing with the comedian Rich Vos for a Q&A at the Quad Cinema on Wednesday, August 26th.

A Comedian’s Weighty Legacy

A Comedian’s Weighty Legacy

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