About Steve :: Actor :: Movies :: Parenthood

The story of the Buckman family and friends, attempting to bring up their children. They deal with estranged relatives, the black sheep of the family, the eccentrics, the skeletons in the closet, and the rebellious teenagers.

1989

Steve played Gil Buckman

    
    The Record (Bergen, New Jersey)
July 28, 1989; FRIDAY;
LIFESTYLE / PREVIEWS; Pg. 005
STEVE MARTIN GIVES UP PRATFALLS TO PLAY HOUSE
Stephen Schaefer, Special to The Record

What is Steve Martin doing in "Parenthood," a decidedly un-hip, unabashedly heartwarming Ron Howard comedy about you-know-what?

Martin may no longer be a wild and crazy guy but, despite marriage to  actress Victoria Tennant, he definitely isn't what you'd call a family man. And from his fairly emphatic attitude, he has no plans to become one in the future.

"Fatherhood and parenting in general seems to be a very difficult job," Martin, 43, observed with a laugh while in New York to promote the film, which opens Wednesday. "But so many people do it."

"What was really fascinating was the day I met him in New York," his "Parenthood" spouse Mary Steenburgen said. "Steve said, I'm nervous. I don't know children, and children think they're going to like me. But they really don't.'. "When we arrived on the set in Florida," she added, "he didn't have time to think. The kids rushed up! He fell in love with them and they
loved him. You should have seen the tears the day they left."

Director Howard recalled how before filming began, the anxious Martin announced he was visiting his friends Martin Short and Chevy Chase, "so that he could do research' with their kids." The result?

"I don't know, it's subconscious I think," said a somber Martin. "You just get the atmosphere. You don't look at someone and say, I'll copy that.'" But according to Howard, that's exactly what Martin did do. "Steve would see how I was holding my kid", Howard mimed lugging a 4-year-old on his hip, gunnysack-style, "and put that in the movie." Martin, in fact, grew quite adept at handling 3-year-old Zachary Lavoy, who plays the youngest of his scene-stealing tots. "At that age, they're just maniacs," said Martin. "I don't blame the kid at all. He doesn't know what's going on. You turn the camera on , and try to get their attention. I had to promise him I would hold him upside down to get him to do a scene."

Still, the specter of the brilliant clown of "All of Me" and "Roxanne" leapfrogging from the sacrosanct text of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" and the black-hearted antics of "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" to the unadulterated poignance and pressures of fatherhood give a critic pause.

"Careers in movies aren't really planned," Martin explained. "They occur according to what scripts come up and what scripts you write. I think people think an actor gets an idea in their head of what they want to do, and then they go find something that has that in it." Of course, it doesn't work that way. "Because a script always comes first, and because there are so few good ones , you have to find the thing in the script that makes you interested in it. 

"Things that appeal to me are always a little quirky. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels' I saw as real funny. That's like the best reason I could think of to do it. This movie on some level I think is real important. It's dealing with an issue that is only Eighties, or now Nineties."

Why is parenting particularly relevant now? "Because I think the 20th century is the first century that has child-raising theories that are secular," Martin said. "Post-Dr. Spock there are thousands of ideas and theories that are not rooted in religion.

"Here's a person," Martin continued, referring to his screen character, "who wonders if he's raising kids the right way. It's sort of a baby boom question, now that we're all adults."  

Martin, who has deliberately segued from that "Jerk" image of his first screen hit to drama, feels justifiably pleased with his avoidance of typecasting. "The stepping out' part is the most fun," he commented about his choices. "Whether you feel it's going to be a success or not, you always feel it's the right thing to do." Martin credits his early television writing experience in the 1960s with making him the inventive comic he is now. "You learned to write
it the rote way, then you'd say, What's the next version of this joke?' It's always to think, This is the expected way. Now what's the obvious unexpected way? Now what's the next way?'. "Even this movie has territory unmined in there for me. I've never played this level of reality before, he's the most real character I've ever played. With drama, if you have any sense at all, you know how to stay in the boundaries of reality. With comedy, you go, Is this funny?

Too broad? Too big? Too small?' Those are trials for me.

"In Dirty' we worried about the Ruprecht scene where he impersonates, Jerry Lewis-style, an idiot for weeks." In "Parenthood" he worried about impersonating Cowboy Buck, the balloon man who has failed to show for his son's ninth birthday party. Martin's goofy cowboy comes complete with silly balloon tricks ("like I used to do in my act"), silly improvised cowboy duds (a bathroom rug halved and used as chaps), and silly spills off a real horse.

"At first, I was a little reluctant because I thought it was easy, dressing up like a cowboy; I was trying to get that next variation on it." But then Martin realized "the character wouldn't come up with anything that was weirdly comic, he'd go for the most basic things lying around the house." 
 		    
           
   
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