Even Diane Venora, a veteran of the Public Theatre and several Shakespeare films, is doing such an extreme Buster Keaton-esque series of mugging and pratfalls as Lear's Fool that her truth-speaking jester is less at risk of getting hanged than of getting gonged.

Three other early multifanged actions were similarly crucial: his gonged appearance (with Bruce Pollack) on The Gong Show in 1978; his drive-by kidnapping of artist-turned-politician Lowell Darling (Kidnap Attempt, 1978); and his own little bravura ring cycle, a critique, in part, of purist art sensibilities for which Labat turned his studio into a training facility (Terminal Gym, 1980-81).

The only transformation in the software industry is the ever-changing collection of ways it disguises that you'll be gonged if you get a long division problem incorrect.