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San Francisco Examiner
December 9, 1995, Saturday
Fourth Edition
STYLE; Pg. C-3
Steve Martin, playwright, comes of age; Seasoned comic and actor refuses to be
pigeonholed
MAL VINCENT
IS THERE any danger the wild
and crazy guy, an icon of the baby boom generation, might be going sane?
You have to wonder as Steve
Martin sits across from you, looking oh -so-serious. He has that "Oh no, not
another interview" look.
There's that same shock of
white hair covering the same head that once had an arrow through it, back when
he sold out concert halls doing inspired stand-up comedy. He was called the
first "rock star comedian."
The fact that he turned 50 last
August has nothing, really, to do with his newfound gravity. For one thing, he's
become a serious playwright.
Currently at the Promenade
Theater in New York is his hit play "Picasso at the Lapin Agile." It's all about
a make-believe meeting between Picasso and Albert Einstein at a Paris cafe
called the Lapin Agile ("nimble rabbit") in 1904.
"I have less of a compulsion to
make films right now," Martin was saying as we probed him about the new
profession. "Writing is so concise. Theater is so concise. In making movies, all
the effort is in getting there. You have so many takes to get into the
character."
He admits that it floors him to
see his name spread across the theater marquee, even though he doesn't have to
show up at all. "In movies, who ever asks who wrote it? In the theater, the
writer is a big star. It makes you wonder. Of course, it's scary too."
Martin's new movie, "Father of
the Bride Part II," is a far cry from the old wild-and-crazy guy, too. For the
second time, he's playing the epitome of upper-middle-class dad-dom, George
Banks who, in the runaway 1991 hit, was the father of the bride. In the movie
that opened Friday, the dad who didn't want his little girl to leave home is
even more disgruntled when he finds that she's, uh, pregnant.
He looks at his son-in-law with
the glare of an accuser who almost yells, "You did this to my daughter? I knew
it!"
The plot, which brings back the
entire cast of the first film, also has Martin and his movie-wife, Diane Keaton,
get a shock of their own: They are about to become parents again, too.
Martin said he didn't hesitate
to undertake the sequel. "After all, the first film had a sequel, too. It's kind
of like the fourth time around, a sequel to a remake that was also a sequel."
The original "Father of the
Bride" was a 1950 hit with Spencer Tracy getting an Oscar nomination for the
role. Joan Bennett played his wife and Elizabeth Taylor was the bride. The
sequel was "Father's Little Dividend," in which Tracy lost the baby at one
point.
The 1991 version of "Father of
the Bride" not only pulled in more than $ 100 million in the U.S., it was a
surprise hit overseas, where foreign audiences liked this version of an American
family.
"It's a slightly idealized
version of the 1990s family," admitted producer and writer Nancy Meyers. "The
house is a great house, upper-middle -class. We made the right decision in
judging that people wanted to see this kind of family. Our first draft had the
family as a kind of Archie Bunker group, lower income."
The filmmakers, though, aren't
the most likely to create Norman Rockwell Americana. Martin has just gone
through a stormy divorce from actress Victoria Tennant. He has never been a
father. Meyers and director Charles Shyer have two children and have long been
co-creators ("Baby Boom," "Private Benjamin"), but they've never bothered to
marry. Keaton, the irresistible Annie Hall of our movie-going past, is more
known for romances with people like Warren Beatty and Al Pacino than for
motherhood.
Still, audiences are likely to
go along with Martin's bewilderment at becoming both father and grandfather this
time around.
Martin says the secret is to
take the whole thing seriously. "This is light entertainment, but the cast isn't
supposed to know that anything is funny about it. The trick is to be light, but
appear to be heavy."
Keaton, who was his date at the
Academy Awards last year, is, according to him, "a brilliant comedian. Her
timing is a marvel. There's a sequence when I'm trying to be young, and I dye my
hair. Her reaction when I come in with the dyed hair is perfect. She does a
quick take and then kind of recovers to be kind and let me think it doesn't look
so bad."
He's amused that Broadway is
just discovering that he's a writer. After all, he won an Emmy in 1969 as a
staff writer on "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour." He also wrote for "The
Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour" and for Glen Campbell and John Denver specials.
He's taken comedic chances over
and over, often signaling that he can't be pegged as an ordinary comedian. He
had already won Grammy Awards for his comedy albums "Let's Get Small" and "A
Wild and Crazy Guy" before he went to movies. His comic song single, "King Tut,"
became a million-seller. His first film, a short called "The Absent-Minded
Waiter," got an Oscar nomination in the short subject category. The academy,
though, has ignored him ever since, in spite of the fact that the critics often
honor him.
His first film, "The Jerk," in
1979, was directed by Carl Reiner. "Pennies From Heaven," a bittersweet musical
comedy, signaled that he wasn't going for the usual.
"Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid"
remains a unique homage to film noir with Martin, in black and white,
co-starring with everyone from Ava Gardner to Barbara Stanwyck in a blending of
old and new film.
The New York film critics gave
him its best actor accolade for his half-woman, half-man portrayal in "All of
Me." In 1987, his adaptation of "Cyrano de Bergerac," which he called "Roxanne,"
was named by the Los Angeles Film Critics as the best performance of the year.
Still, no Oscar nomination.
He isn't bitter about it. "It
would be pretty wrong of me, wouldn't it, to say that I thought they should have
nominated me. When a comedy actor does comedy, it isn't regarded as something
special. People probably don't think Jim Carrey was acting in "The Mask.' But
the academy hasn't ignored comedy. It's just that serious actors who do comedy
are regarded as acting. Clowns are just clowns."
Clearly, he doesn't think of
himself as a clown. "What I do is more a matter of taste than talent. Taste
holds you back. On the set, there's only the crew there. You have to see if they
smile. I like smiles better than laughs, I think."
From the niceness of fatherhood
and the seriousness of Einstein and Picasso, he'll return to pure clown-time
next. He has the Phil Silvers role in the big-screen movie version of "Sergeant
Bilko," to be released in the spring.
Maybe, after all, that wild and
crazy guy was just acting all along.
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Boston Herald
December 3, 1995 Sunday
FIRST EDITION
FEATURES; Pg. 043
Steve Martin gets serious about his acting
career
IAIN BLAIR
Steve Martin is standing in the
middle of a hospital set in Studio City, Calif., wearing a big grin and a
newborn baby on each arm. With his well-deserved reputation for improvisation
and slapstick humor, you half expect Martin to start juggling them, or at least
pretend to bang their heads together and make some funny noises.
But a grin is silly as he gets
in this scene. The star of "Father of the Bride Part II," which opens Friday, is
getting serious. At least when compared to the absurdist routines of his
stand-up work and wild-and-crazy early '80s movies.
"This film is actually a good
example of what I like to do now," he says of "Father of the Bride Part II."
"And this movie has got it all. It's got very touching, emotional stuff; it's
got big broad comedy and it's got very small comedy."
A follow-up to the hugely
successful 1991 movie "Father of the Bride," the sequel reunites Martin, who
plays the long-suffering George Banks, with Diane Keaton as wife Nina, Kimberley
Williams as daughter Annie and George Newbern as son-in-law Bryan.
In it, his daughter and her
husband unexpectedly announce they're going to be parents. Then it's Nina's turn
to make the same shocking speech. And when mother and daughter then call again
on the services of flamboyant Franck Egglehoffer (reprised by Martin Short at
his vocally impaired best), the stage is set for another frantic comedy of
manners.
Martin's own life this year has
been a mix of emotions. The actor, who has no children of his own, is single
again after his divorce from Victoria Tennant.
Professionally, he is
increasingly moving toward theater. His play "Picasso at the Lapin Agile"
continues its fall run off-Broadway, and his set of four dark comedies, "WASP
and Other Stories," is in previews at the Papp Theater in New York.
When Martin was originally
offered the Spencer Tracy role in the remake of the classic '50s comedy "Father
of the Bride," he jumped at it - with some reservations. "For a start I wondered
how it would feel to play a dad," explains Martin. "I'd done it before, in
'Parenthood,' although with a much younger child. So then it was like, 'Can I
play the father of a 22-year-old?' Well once I started to count up how old I was
(the actor is now 50), I quickly realized that not only could I do it
believably, but I'm almost past it!"
So he wasted no time in
agreeing to do the sequel, which the directing-writing-producing team of Charles
Shyer and Nancy Meyers loosely based on the original's sequel, "Father's Little
Dividend."
"The idea of doing a sequel was
always hanging in the air when we made the first," he recalls. "Of course your
first reaction is always, 'No,' but then I read the script and it was really
funny and you want to work with all the same people again. And in fact, I had an
even better time on this film. The first one was really centered on me and my
character, but on this one everyone came to life a bit because the other
characters were expanded quite a lot. So the scenes were richer."
Martin goes on to note that
"everyone who's seen it is saying that this is better than the first. I'd just
hate to think it's because I'm not in it so much."
The star shouldn't worry. The
film contains some very funny slapstick scenes where Martin's flair for physical
comedy is beautifully served. But there are also a number of poignant, even sad
scenes.
Does this mean that the actor
who built his film career on such comically inspired movies as 'The Man With Two
Brains,' 'The Little Shop of Horrors,' 'Roxanne' and 'Dirty Rotten Scoundrels'
is moving away from comedy and toward heavier, more dramatic roles?
"I think of comedy as heavy
work, and I think I'll always do some comedy," says Martin. "But yes, I'd like
to do more dramatic roles and films, although I don't think you ever leave your
comedy behind you."
Martin adds: "It's so
ridiculous when people think that comedians can't be serious or dramatic. I
think all people are serious. Martin Short's probably the funniest guy I know
and he's serious. He's not morbid or depressed. I think that's the illusion most
people have, the cliche that comedians are depressed and sad people under that
comic exterior. That's not true. I don't feel depressed and sad. I feel as
serious as anyone else when it's appropriate. It's the same thing with comedy.
People want you to be funny all the time, but you say, 'Well I'm not funny all
the time, and I don't even know you.' I'm not going to ad-lib 10 jokes as I walk
down the street. I just don't do that. I'm not a performing monkey."
Given such sentiments, it's not
surprising that the actor has no intention of ever returning to stand-up comedy.
"That's over and past, and I don't really miss it," he says. "The truth is, in
order to be good at it you have to be doing it every night, and that's something
I'm not willing to do. It's a tough, crazy way to live, and I have a different
lifestyle now.
"In fact, I couldn't be happier
with the way my career's going," says Martin, who will next be seen in "Sergeant
Bilko" in the spring. "And I already have a great idea for 'Father of the Bride
Part III' - set it in the South of France. Who cares about the plot."
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