The Compleat Steve :: About Steve :: Actor :: Movies



		About Steve :: Actor :: Movies Bowfinger 1999 Bobby Bowfinger wants to make a movie, and he succeeds through guile. Involving a cast of borderline actors, borrowed equipment, and the unwilling cooperation of his star, Bowfinger manages to make the ultimate indy movie. Steve wrote and starred in this one. It was his return to slapstick of a sort, a wacky character with a dark side.
< 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 >
	http://www.eonline.com/Hot/Qa/Martin/interview4.html backtalk 1999 E!Online Q & A with Steve Martin The original wild 'n crazy guy is back: Is a Martin Murphy pairing just the ticket? Q: In your spoof on Hollywood, you satirize everything from stars to Scientology. Weren't you afraid of stepping on a few toes? A: I don't think I'm being vicious. I just think it's fun. Anyway, the Hollywood stereotypes are so well known you don't even have to set them up like the lustful actress sleeping her way to the top or the fading star actress. The kid, played by Jamie Kennedy, who can slip in and out of studios I was him at Disneyland when I worked there. I could just go anywhere. I remember going on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride before it even opened to the public. Q: What about offending Scientologists? A: It's hard to do a comedy without insulting somebody. Anyway, I didn't view it as really sending up Scientology. I've seen a lot of fads and cults in Hollywood. It started with EST, then there were crystals, then pyramids you wore on your head. There were all kinds of things. I just used the Scientology name because it's very popular and trendy right now among stars. Q: Did you write the script with Eddie in mind as your costar? A: You know, the part was actually written for a white actor. I wrote it for, like, a white, low key Brad Pitt type or a Keanu Reeves. Then Brian Grazer, the producer, said, "What about Eddie Murphy?" I thought it was a fantastic idea, because I knew Eddie would make the character so energetic. So, Kit Ramsey became a black action star. Q: You and Eddie had never worked together before, right? A: I think we were briefly in the same music video together years ago, but we hadn't really acted together. Eddie is fantastic. Who else could play two characters like that? He's so talented, he could be writing and directing if he wanted to. We're completely different, and something happened between us on camera that was really good. He is incredibly real, and it makes me more real. When that happens, that's when really funny things come out. Q: Was the idea of Bowfinger's struggle to get a movie financed based on personal experience? A: No. Actually, I remembered hearing stories in the '80s about people making movies on credit cards. Now, I'm sure that's a common thing. Then, it was like, what?! Making a movie with no money? It was so daring. It just really showed me how clever desperate people can be in finding ways to reach their goals. I don't think I would've stuck it out if I hadn't been successful. I would've seen the handwriting on the wall. Q: Do you share Bowfinger's determination to get what he wants? A: I love to wake up in the morning and have something to live for. And that's what Bowfinger has. A lot of people in Hollywood have strong dreams--they're very driven. The great thing about Hollywood is there's no degree you can get that qualifies you to succeed. There's no test you can pass. It's just about your will and your talent. Q: Bowfinger is willing to try anything to get his script in the hands of agents and stars. Have you ever been approached by people trying to give you scripts in unlikely places? A: Yes, absolutely. I've been eating at a restaurant and had a script dropped on the table. And you want to treat it with respect because you think, What if that was me? Q: You've spoofed Los Angeles and now Hollywood. How do you really feel about L.A.? A: I love Los Angeles. I hated it 20 years ago. It was filled with smog, but now it's changed. There's no smog--that's one of the biggest things. Another thing is no smoking. I used to go into a restaurant or work in a nightclub and come home, and everything would stink. I had long hair, and I would think, What is that smell? It took me a long time to figure out it was the odor of cigarette smoke in my hair. Q: Do you ever watch reruns of your old movies? A: I'm very critical of my own work. I rarely see them again, except sometimes on cable when I'm flipping channels. I'll watch something for 10 minutes or so. The other day, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels was on. I thought it was really funny. And then Housesitter was on, and Three Amigos. I got a kick out of them. I know it's beginning to sound like I see all my movies again, but it was just a coincidence. Fortunately, I haven't seen any that I think really stink. Q: You've acted and written scripts. What about directing? A: No, I like being the writer. I like being the actor, but I like having an objective eye around, a director who's looking at my work. I don't know how Woody Allen does it--I mean, to write, direct and act in the same movie. I like writing. I get to be home. If the phone rings, I can go, "Oh, what's going on?" Directing, it's like, "Sorry, I can't talk. Don't bother me." Q: Would you like to act onstage again? A: What really prevents me, and it's, like, a stupid thing to say, but I don't want to do eight shows a week. When I was doing Waiting for Godot, it was so much fun, except for those matinees when you did two shows in one day. You know, I'm at a point in my life where it's really about fun, and working that hard all week is not fun. Q: Will you ever do stand up again? A: No, never. First of all, you have to really dedicate yourself to it. You just can't go onstage for a couple of nights. You have to be on the road for a year. And who wants to go on the road for a year? I've got a dog! Q: Are people still surprised you're much more quiet and reserved in person than you are onscreen? A: Being a "wild and crazy" guy was my comedy act years ago. I love to laugh, and I laugh a lot in my life, but I don't feel I have to turn it on to live up to any reputation. If I'm called shy and quiet, that's often the way I am with strangers. When I hear somebody call me aloof, all I can say is that's not really me. Q: Ever give any thought to just kicking back and enjoying life? A: I kept thinking about retiring. Then it dawned on me that I'm not going to retire. I might retire from acting in movies, but I'll always be in the business. You know, it's been 35 years. I remember thinking, After 35 years, you're not going to stop. Q: You did take a rather long vacation, didn't you? A: After Sgt. Bilko, I just hated myself and by the way, I'm not criticizing the movie. I just thought, What am I doing? I took two, maybe three, years off and didn't do anything. And then one day, sitting in my backyard, I thought, Now's the time to write something funny, and I wrote Bowfinger. Q: What did you do during your hiatus from acting? A: Well, you know, whatever reading, thinking, experiencing life, having your heart broken, observing. Q: Did you discover anything about yourself? A: You never really find yourself, but I came out of it with something. I really can't quite describe it just a richer awareness of people and myself and how my mind works. You have to be older to do it because you have to have enough experience to collect all this information and come up with answers or near answers. Q: Are you happy now? A: Yeah, I'm pretty happy. I think it's the artist's job to be unhappy. I mean, not to be unhappy in life but to be dissatisfied with what you've done because you always keep going forward. There are just too many variables in show business to walk around with a big head, because you can just be knocked down. I've been knocked down, and I've come back, you know?
	LA Weekly August 13, 1999, Friday Film; Pg. 33 THE TOTAL FILMMAKER MANOHLA DARGIS In Bowfinger, the moonstruck new comedy about the movie business, even the losers are beautiful. "New" in this instance is used advisedly, even ironically, because the film, directed by Frank Oz and written by Steve Martin, who also stars, is nothing if not self-consciously, waggishly familiar: A handful of hapless nobodies join together in struggle to realize that most unnecessary of dreams -- a somewhat less than major motion picture. Working in the perpetual shadow of Hollywood, in the poverty row of make-believe where no deal is consummated, no spotlight shone, no star born, the group is led by the titular Bobby Bowfinger, a producer stuck in terminal development. Situated legions below Roger Corman on the power list, and just barely north of Ed Wood Jr., Bowfinger is everybody in Hollywood who's ever yearned for success and failed to find it, over and over again. His is the other, gently melancholic, sweet and sour L.A. story, without the Malibu sunsets and Beverly Hills lunches -- it's life played out like a no-budget movie. Bowfinger lives in a dark, peeling bungalow on a dusty, anonymous street. Above the Selznick-style portico that hangs off the house like a barnacle reads the legend: Bowfinger International Pictures. (Pointedly, the Hollywood sign that loomed above Martin's house in his last valentine to this city, L.A. Story, is nowhere to be seen.) The producer seems to have produced before -- a framed poster for The Yugo Story looms indiscreetly on one wall -- but he's running out of time. (A "Learn How To Act" brochure with his photo and a promise of four lessons for $25, is stuck on a bulletin board.) He doesn't have a deal, but as the film opens he's reading a script with the impossible title of Chubby Rain, by an accountant turned screenwriter, Afrim (Adam Alexi-Malle). Convinced that Afrim has contrived a science-fiction bonanza, Bowfinger gathers the faithful band of would-be movie folk who wistfully cling to him: a drama queen named Carol (Christine Baranski), a preening young stud called Slater (Kohl Sudduth) and a studio gofer cum aspiring cameraman, Dave (Jamie Kennedy). For his lead, Bowfinger decides to cast the world's biggest star, the trick being that the guy doesn't know he's been selected. All he needs to do, reasons Bowfinger, is to surreptitiously catch Kit Ramsey on the run; he won't even have to write him a check. This is one of the stories Hollywood best loves to tell about itself -- the dream of its own creation. Most of these fantasies are deliriously self-serving, filled with mad men and women who, in the clinch, are invariably more committed to art and the audience than to self-interest. (Which is one reason no one has yet bankrolled a screen version of What Makes Sammy Run?) In this respect, Bowfinger follows the standard script: It's unabashedly sentimental about the people who make the movies, even Daisy (Heather Graham), the farm-fresh opportunist who steps off a Greyhound bus and starts sleeping her way up through the production's ranks. Intentionally or not, a shadow of feeling clouds over even a power producer played by Robert Downey Jr. The only character allowed no sympathy is Terry Stricter (Terence Stamp), the leader of an entertainment-world cult called MindHead, whose faithful wear pointy white hats (like the ones you fold out of newspaper) and whose sepulchral facilities reverberate with the greeting "Welcome to MindHead. Welcome to MindHead. Welcome to MindHead." Stricter is the personal guru to Bowfinger's inadvertent star, Kit Ramsey, played with dazzling levity by Eddie Murphy, giving the most liberated, joyfully self-effacing performance of his career. "Keep It Together" is Kit's MindHead mnemonic, and part of the pleasure of the film is just how untogether he turns out to be. Shielded by money and flunkies, Kit is a paranoiac with a secret that keeps him in thrall, or maybe hostage, to MindHead. ("Happy Premise Number One: There are no aliens. Happy Premise Number Two: There is no giant foot trying to squash me.") He sees conspiracies everywhere: He counts the number of k's in an action-adventure script, then divides by three to prove the influence of the Ku Klux Klan. ("Get my door as fast as you get Tom Hanks'," he barks at one of his jumpy aides.) Murphy looks movie-star burnished as Kit, sleek as an otter and nattily dressed, which only amps the comedy when he also turns up as Jiff, a gibbering geek Bowfinger hires because of his resemblance to Ramsey. Squinting through heavy-framed glasses, his gums flashing wetly above his prosthetic silver braces, Murphy seems to inhabit a wholly different body when he becomes Jiff, but without the aid of the computer-generated effects that worked wonders in The Nutty Professor. It's a bravura double turn, confirming that while Jim Carrey remains the most ingenious comic in movies, Murphy is the most accomplished comic actor -- even here, his gifts seem barely tapped. Martin, in contrast, gives a neatly tamped-down performance. Wisely opting not to compete with Murphy, who gives his scenes energy not always felt in Oz's direction, the writer leaves his showboating to his very funny script, whose gentle humor is distinctly out of sync with comedy's vogue for scatology. (The gags, as could be expected, careen from goofy to conceptual.) This is Martin's best work since L.A. Story, his ersatz Woody Allen romance from 1991. In that film, Martin played a TV weatherman who not only loves his city in all its ridiculousness, but loves it exactly because of its ridiculousness. It's a wispy, amiable entertainment, but as with Martin's earlier script for Roxanne, it betrays a sentimental streak as perilous as the San Andreas Fault. The best comedy tests the limits of sentimentalism and cynicism without succumbing to either. Martin has always been brilliant at walking that particular line, but as his work has grown more high-brow the heartfelt nods to Shakespeare, the madcap romps through museums he's gotten softer, going limp where he should get tough, especially when it comes to romance. The greeting-card finales of Roxanne and L.A. Story are strikingly devoid of irony. It's too bad, because one of the things that's so great about Martin's absurdist persona is the gleam of menace (or maybe it's just intelligence) in his Everyman's rubber face. He's an immensely likable performer, but his eyes can go suddenly, even scarily, beady, which is why he was so effective in Pennies From Heaven and perhaps why Stanley Kubrick once thought of him for the lead of Eyes Wide Shut. Unlike a lot of comics, Martin doesn't seem to hate himself or the world, but neither is he particularly self-enamored. Unlike, say, Woody Allen or Albert Brooks, he has never seemed interested in plumbing the depths of his own menace, shedding light on the darkness he just sticks an arrow through his head, grows a banana nose or makes like the white Al Roker. Even when he dates a girl less than half his age, as he does in L.A. Story, he doesn't build an entire movie around his neurosis, he just shrugs his shoulders and gets on with it, with no apologies and no excuses. That's why he's so perfectly placed here. Bowfinger loves his cast and crew, and at one point even grandly claims to have a conscience, but his self-interest is always stronger than any of his altruistic urges, which of course makes him an ideal director. The only sentimental thing about him is his knee-jerk cynicism. In this inventive inversion of Allen's Zelig, in which a nobody insinuates himself into history, a star is appropriated by a group of innocents whose intentions are blissfully pure. Bowfinger, a terrifically clever film, has a soft-boiled heart, but it also turns on a smart metaphor for the ways in which the unfamous sometimes lay claim to the famous. Bowfinger doesn't feel all that bad about invading Kit's life, because he already feels as if part of Kit belongs to him. If Martin doesn't see anything wrong or terribly ominous about that, it's because in his Hollywood, siphoning off fame is just another way of saying I love you.
	The Daily News of Los Angeles September 21, 1999, Tuesday, VALLEY EDITION L.A. LIFE, Pg. L2 STEVE MARTIN PUTTING MOST OF HIS ENERGY INTO WRITING Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith Steve Martin is taking a hiatus from acting. Again. The comic - who's become a top literary figure with eight screenplays, four plays and a book comprised of his New Yorker essays among his credits - does hope to make the film ''High and Low'' for David Mamet. But he says that there's no telling when that project will come together, and that for now, he will focus on his latest writing projects. Those include a novella, slated for publication next year, and a novel about the relationship of a young woman with an older man. Martin, who's had such relationships (with former wife Victoria Tennant and ex-girlfriend Anne Heche) assures that the novel is ''not autobiographical.'' Martin took a three-year break from acting not that long ago, when he decided ''show business is like a train that keeps going without your being in control. I wanted to collect myself, to figure out where I was going - and during that period, wrote 'Bowfinger.' '' He is justifiably proud of the Imagine Entertainment comedy in which he co-stars with Eddie Murphy. He's already being talked up for an Oscar nomination for his screenwriting of the film that provides such a hysterical, on-target study of Hollywood and its characters. And though ''Bowfinger'' hasn't hit the $ 100 million-plus blockbuster range he - and this column - thought it would achieve, he is pleased with its box-office score of some $ 60 million domestically. As he noted prior to its release, it's funny, but not vulgar and not dirty - in competition with intensely vulgar films. Martin, incidentally, says he loves writing more with each passing year but cannot see ever giving up acting. ''I'd like to continue to do both.'' He is, in fact, in early discussions with Imagine Entertainment co-chairman Brian Grazer about writing another starring vehicle for himself.
	Rebecca Ascher-Walsh, Kristen Baldwin, Steve Daly, Andrew Essex, Daniel , Summer Movie Preview: July, Entertainment Weekly, 30 Apr 1999. BOWFINGER STARRING Steve MARTIN, Eddie MURPHY, Heather GRAHAM, Christine BARANSKI DIRECTED BY Frank Oz WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? Martin and Murphy. Sounds funny, no? "Eddie's audition was very good," says Martin. Happily, the humor in Bowfinger isn't nearly as dry as that. Martin, who also wrote the script, plays Bobby Bowfinger, a loser movie producer who realizes that the only way Hollywood's hottest actor, Kit Ramsey, will ever appear in his alien flick, Chubby Rain, is if he stalks the guy and surreptitiously shoots around him. Producer Brian Grazer (Life) suggested Murphy to play the star; the only problem was that Martin wrote him white. "I was seeing it as a wimpy, white, spiritual actor," says Martin, who then enlisted Murphy to help revise the script. Soon Ramsey became a paranoid black fellow whose condition worsens as strangers from Rain keep accosting him. ("Eddie could write screenplays and direct them," Martin raves. "I mean, I know he did, but he could.") To feel better, Ramsey makes regular visits to a spiritual-healing "celebrity center" called Mind Head; despite obvious echoes of a certain Travoltarian denomination, the S-word was strictly verboten around Martin and Oz. "I'd go, 'Oh, the Scientology thing is really funny!'" says Graham, who plays Bowfinger's right-off-the-bus leading lady. "They'd be like, 'It's not Scientology. It's just a cult group.'" Let's ask Martin himself. "I viewed it as a pastiche of many things I've seen in Hollywood," he insists. "They're the biggest, so they'll probably be named, but it's not really...you know, it's just many things." He pauses a moment. "How was that answer?"
	< 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 > Back to the Top