About Steve :: Writer :: Profile :: Comedians

Arthur Grace wrote a book about comedians, which is a collection of interviews. One section is devoted to Steve.

This is it. If you can find the book, I recommend it. Not only is it interesting, but it's got great pictures.

 

    
   
Grace, Arthur. "Steve Martin." Comedians. (Eastman Kodak and Thomasson-Grant, 1991), 116-117.

I was introduced to Steve Martin on a chilly June night in Burbank, California, during an outdoor location shoot for his film L.A. Story. Since it was a closed set, I was grateful to be there and thanked Steve for having me. He in turn told me much he liked my previous book, which impressed the hell out of me because: (a) he'd actually looked through it, and b) he remembered it.

All through the long night, between takes, Steve would pedal his bike through the darkness back to his trailer about a quarter of a mile away. Since the ratio of time stars spend in their trailer versus the time they're on the set seems to be about 100 to 1, I had a lot of time to kill. But when Steve was on the set, all sorts of things happened. At one point a freeway sign lit up and was flashing messages on and off, a wind machine was blowing, and a beautiful full moon was hanging from a crane. They were doing a closeup telephoto shot of Steve and Victoria Tennant kissing, and the moon was supposed to be in the background right behind their heads. So, via the crane, they simply positioned a backlit model of a bright harvest moon (hanging from two wires) right where they wanted it and rolled the cameras for the perfect shot.

A few days later the filming moved to an indoor set in the Valley to shoot interiors. The day was blazing hot (116 degrees), and I was happy to spend time talking to Steve in his trailer. It was a regular oasis of air conditioning, soothing music, and refreshments (fruit, bottled water, and rice cakes). I was curious how, in his early days of doing stand up, he (or any young comedian, for that matter) could really gauge how well he was doing. "When you see people who are watching you night after night, like the waiters and waitresses and the bank, and they're laughing harder and harder, that's some kind of good sign," he explained.


A couple of weeks later, I photographed him on the set of My Blue Heaven, which was filming that day on a baseball field at Loyola Marymount University. Steve thought it would be interesting for me to see him looking completely different, this time as a slick mobster with black hair standing straight up in a whiffle cut. He was right, especially in one scene where he launched into one of his patented "wild and crazy" dance numbers that broke up the cast, the crew, and the extras. Watching him do a number of takes of the dancing scene reminded me of something he told me about the effects of doing stand up when he used to tour the country performing.

"I'd be on the road, and I'd do a show. Some nights I'd go home and feel great. And some nights I'd go home and really feel down. It took me years to figure out that it was exactly related to how the show went."


"Bad painting is still called art, but only great comedy is called art. Bad comedy is just terrible."

"Stand up has a certain kind of anxiety connected with it, because the thing that makes it thrilling, the thing that eventually kills you, is that you are completely, 100 percent, entirely responsible. When I was doing my act and was hot, no one could ever tell me anything. They couldn't say, 'Don't do that joke tonight.' They couldn't say, 'I think you ought to start with this; our audience won't like that.' It was completely and always your decision."

"[In stand up] you have to have visible confidence, authority, and the audience has to trust you. I think if they think you're worried, you're dead."

"In general, I think every comedian knows that you're only one inch away from disaster all the time."

"[Ten seconds before walking out on stage] I have a feeling that's identical to the feeling an athlete feels, say a football player at the kickoff, or when they announce his name, and he runs onto the field. It's a train leaving a station and you're on it."

"Playing for a large house was like doing a ballet, because every movement was I'm not saying it's choreographed it's made perfect. You're working from your fingernails to your toes for that kind of house. And eventually that's what made it for me. That was the joy of it. It was almost like you could be doing it alone, because it was something about your body, for me. The laughter was almost like it was part of the act. It was like, what do you do while they're laughing"

"[After coming off stage] you were mostly exhausted, drenched. It was a very good feeling, because it was like having exercised, which I did. It was such a physical act. And on a good night, it felt like Stravinsky."
 		    
 
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