The Compleat Steve :: About Steve :: Person



				About Steve :: Person Profiles Everybody has an opinion after interviewing Steve or watching his work. Some are better at analysis than others. Some just parrot what they've gotten from other sources. A few really give a clear snapshot of the man in time. What follows is a bit of all of these. < 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 >
			Savoy Magazine Savoy on FILM: Born to Dance: The Brilliant Career of Steve Martin 2001 http://www.savoymag.net/onf/sm_dance.asp IN 1976, Steve Martin stood on top of the world with a plastic arrow through his head. He strapped on a banjo and began plucking out the folk traditional 'Sally Goodin''. Almost no one in the audience was familiar with the song or cared for the thin, metallic sound of the instrument. Martin looked out at the crowd and shouted, 'Hey everybody_let's get small!' The Hollywood Bowl roared to life. As a stand up comic, Martin rarely scripted his jokes. He got on stage and cut a wobbly jitterbug or make funny faces until he ran out ideas or time. He was equal parts charming whimsy and drooling idiot. He never pandered to his audience, in truth because he couldn't care less how they felt. Martin was so in love with his own jokes, he would have performed in front of anyone, or no one at all, as indeed he did in his youth as 'entertainer' at the cheesebag theme park Knott's Berry Farm. Martin transferred his 'idiot' persona seamlessly to film. His first picture, The Jerk (1979), was a box office hit about a white man raised as a black sharecropper. Martin plays wealthy hick Navin Johnson, a hybrid of Elvis and Gomer Pyle whose appalling taste fits snugly with his endearing naiveté. Martin is convincing as Navin; indeed, he acts the idiot so well, it's easy to believe the slender conceit that his family told him he was black. It is harder to swallow the film's other conceit that, being a white boy, Martin could not dance. If you've seen Martin's rubber legged stand up act, you know how precise his sense of rhythm is. Martin is a great dancer and is one of the most expressive, graceful physical comedians since Chaplin and Keaton. He used to do a charming little vignette: grinning obliviously, he'd hear some music and his legs would begin to wobble like twin sacs of gelatin. The rhythm would snake through his arms and torso, washing over his body in waves, tumbling over him while he shook his head from side to side, lost in delight like a toddler walking for the first time. If Martin was a 'jerk,' he was a jerk who conveyed the joy of performance. He was also a jerk gradually evolving into an artist. Following Martin's career has been like watching a tropical flower bloom. His talent unfolds slowly, uncovering new, brilliant wrinkles all the while. In 1987, Martin reworked Cyrano de Bergerac into the sweet natured modern fable Roxanne. In 1991, he wrote the beguiling, Woody Allenish romantic comedy L.A. Story. A few years later, Martin published his first play, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, which was a smash, winning the Outer Critic's Circle award and playing in revival worldwide. In the late '90s, Martin began writing witty, urbane short pieces for the New Yorker; and this year, he quietly turned out Shopgirl, a mature novella about a woman in a crisis of identity. THE JOURNEY from self absorbed moron to respected author filmmaker seems a long one, but the truth is, Martin was a bit of an artist all along. His book of short comic pieces, Cruel Shoes, came out in 1979 (it sank without a trace). He had majored in philosophy in college and briefly flirted with academia before joining the Smothers Brothers writing team in the '60s. In other words, Martin's 'jerk' phase was more like a detour. In the '70s, all the hot comics -- Ackroyd, Belushi, Chase -- were playing goofs or morons. Unlike most of his colleagues, though, Martin is still a creative force. His transformation began auspiciously in 1981, with the release of the musical Pennies from Heaven. Martin got the part with the blessing of scriptwriter Dennis Potter, the brilliant, excoriating writer who was adapting his own BBC teleplay for Hollywood. I can imagine Martin's screen test: acerbic, whiskey soaked Potter, surrounded by heavily tanned men in gray suits and ponytails. Martin strolls in, full of crazy confidence, putting on a show stopping song and dance. It would have been hard to say no. The writer picked Martin for the lead -- a mistake. Potter knew musicals but didn't know Hollywood. While his original, eight hour BBC film about the optimism Depression era songs expressed was not atypical of the television properties nurtured in Britain -- intelligent, sexually sophisticated and multi layered -- producer/director Herbert Ross wanted a spectacle. He gussied up the musical numbers, taking them out of their gritty setting and giving them old Hollywood dazzle. Rather than being rethought and condensed appropriately (the remake was a quarter the running time of the original), the story was crammed awkwardly into two and a half hours. Pennies was a commercial and artistic failure. And at the centre of the disaster was Steve Martin. Cast in the lead role as sheet music salesman Arthur, he is clearly out of his depth. Although Martin is at home in the dance sequences, his dramatic performance barely registers. He lacks the range as an actor to convey Arthur's anguish, greed and helplessness. Martin is an emotional vacuum around which the whole picture swirls aimlessly. 'Starting out in movies,' Martin said years later, 'I felt very confident that I could act, because I was too dumb to know better.' Pennies showed he had much to learn. MARTIN RETURNED TO COMEDY, striking out commercially with both Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid and The Man With Two Brains. When Plaid, a nifty homage to noir, failed, he returned to his 'jerk' persona with Two Brains, where he again played manic and blissfully dumb. His career turned around in 1984 with the brilliant romantic comedy All of Me. All of Me set the pattern for much of Martin's later work. Instead of leaping and tumbling to squeeze laughs out of the audience, he relaxed and used his exquisite timing to play straight man to the swirling chaos around him. This led to a new sophistication, even in his pratfalls. This best scene in the film is a classic bit of slapstick: The right side of Martin's body is inhabited by the spirit of Lily Tomlin. He tries to beat the spirit out of him, appearing to do war with himself on a city sidewalk, left arm beating against right shoulder, left leg sending him sailing ass backwards to the pavement. It was the funniest thing he'd in his film career, as kamikaze wacky as his 'jerk' material, with a richer context. What was funny was not just the fact that Martin was hitting himself but the reason he was hitting himself. Martin's high point as a straight man was probably Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987). For two days, uptight businessman Neal (Martin) struggles to return home to his family in Chicago while confronting flight delays, car fires and a glad handing shower ring salesman named Del (John Candy). He reaches his breaking point in an airport, screaming about a rental car that has been mislaid. He is lost in fury, eyes bulging and arms reaching to the heavens. Sweet faced rental agent Edie McClurg looks him brightly in the eye and says, 'Well, I guess you're fucked!' That was a big advance for Martin: his nifty timing was finally handing another comic the laugh. There haven't been many missteps since, although his film selection in the '90s was occasionally iffy. I am thinking particularly of his projects with Goldie Hawn, HouseSitter and The Out of Towners. Guess I find it hard to believe that Martin, a millionaire many times over, with a Grammy, Emmy and an Oscar nomination under his belt, would choose two films with..er..Goldie Hawn. But Martin has always taken his own path. THE MOST SATISFYING artistic success of Martin's film career is L.A. Story, which did for Los Angeles what Woody Allen's Annie Hall and Manhattan did for New York. Like those films, L.A. Story is about one of the most feared, loved and despised cities in the world, and like them, it bathes the urban grit in a fuzzy glow of enchantment. Some of the best gags in Story revolve around freeway shootings, traffic and street crime, but the film has such affection for the city, it never comes close to black comedy. L.A. Story was written by and stars Martin; and is informed by his understated whimsy. He has a running dialogue with a freeway sign that beams him advice on how to turn his dead end life around. He drives (by push pedaling with his foot) two houses over to his best friend's. And mimicking the savage L.A. scenes in Annie Hall, there are always snatches of inane L.A. conversation lingering in the background. The careers of Martin and Allen have many parallels. Like Allen, Martin started out writing for television. They both came to prominence as stand up comics and became movie actors. Both gradually asserted greater control over their films and began making personal, witty films about their home city. Both wrote fairly intellectual comedy pieces for the New Yorker. Both evolved from 'gag' comics to serious minded auteurs and both are said to be aloof and distant socially. But the differences between the two men are equally instructive. First, and most importantly, Martin hasn't had a sexual relationship with his adopted daughter. His story has been one of charm, lightness and grace, dancing easily between movie genres, sidestepping scandals, managing to be beloved and creative while radically reinventing himself in three consecutive decades. Meanwhile, Allen has been speaking to the same audience for about twenty five years. His movies usually make a light profit, are seen by about six million people and then peter out. He is increasingly perceived as a worn out, pretentious sexual deviant. (This despite Everyone Says I Love You, a cheery mid '90s Goldie Hawn project.) BY CONTRAST, Martin seems to be gaining strength with age. His shock white hair, which looked so striking and odd in his thirties, suits him at 55. His smooth featured, attractive face hasn't succumbed to the ravages of the California sun. Nor has his dancing or frantic banjo playing lost a step, though he is more likely to glide lightly through Disney fare like Father of the Bride II than to spin madly through a Jerk. The key to Martin's success is his easily punctured smugness. He plays the self absorbed heel so well, yet there is always sweetness, a benign playfulness underneath. Although his comedy shows were Martin ego fests, after the shows, he would take his whole audience (before crowds got too big) to McDonald's, ordering 300 hamburgers and one French fry. Endearing, no? Still, it's hard to overlook the smugness -- the dust jacket of his biography boasts the following quote: 'At last a book about me! I loved this book and fell deeply in love with the central character.' Steve Martin. His comic writing frequently plays with his image as self loving celebrity; for example his piece 'Third Millennium -- So Far, So Good' piece in the New York Times: I hesitate to point out that by the end of this, the second millennium, we will all be dead. This is especially sad to me, as my life seems to be much more valuable than other people's, what with my special love of flowers and poetry. Worse, it is discomforting to think that once I'm gone, all my things will be owned by someone else. It is significant that Martin has turned to writing, not film, to exploit his 'jerk' persona and not film. He is still handsome, but too old to be boyishly charming. His cheeks aren't the ruddy half moons they once were; his eyes don't sparkle as they did twenty years ago, when he was a 'wild and crazy guy.' The contrast between his physical features and his smoothly conceited words is narrower now: when a 55 year old says, 'Enough about you. Let's talk about me,' there is something depressing about it; I am reminded of people who got old without learning to connect with anyone. The 'jerk' was Martin's meal ticket, but it is also a limited character. One thing I didn't mention when comparing him with Woody Allen is that Allen's films have won about a dozen Oscars and countless critics' awards. His movies are capable of both whimsy and moral seriousness. Martin isn't there yet. He hasn't quite made his Crimes and Misdemeanors or even his Annie Hall. But with Picasso at the Lapin Agile, he began to reach toward the level of art that achieves permanence. Picasso is a surprisingly confident first play. The premise is that Picasso and Einstein met over drinks at a Paris bar in 1903. They discuss the vagaries of woman and infinity, time and fame. Picasso has Tom Stoppard's interest in the metaphysical and his sharp humour. Like the characters in Stoppard's Jumpers, the actors are at best two dimensional, ideas personified rather than individuals carefully crafted. That's always been an acceptable style in drama, used by Brecht and Tennessee Williams, to name a few. Martin says he was trying to make a statement that 'art and science, at their most creative levels, operate in the same way the thinkers of art and science have creative, mystical insights that are not a formula.' Picasso is a paean to that mystical moment of creativity. It is also a showcase for Martin's silky sense of timing. The dialogue is crackerjack; take, for example, the exchange between Einstein, Picasso, and their surprise 'visitor' from the future, Elvis Presley: PICASSO: Are you dead? VISITOR: Pretty much. EINSTEIN: How is it? VISITOR: Overrated. THOUGH STEVE MARTIN has accomplished much, he still moves with amazing energy and assurance. His dramatic film work is more skillful than it was in Pennies from Heaven. As Jimmy Dell, the mysterious, self confident millionaire in The Spanish Prisoner (1998), Martin created a compelling sense of mystery, even menace. The key is range. The part required him to play someone of his own approximate temperament and social status, much like his cameo turn in Joe Gould's Secret. He appears to be learning to adapt his off screen persona -- usually described as 'straight' and cerebral -- to the screen. Now, in his middle age, he's comfortable in his own skin, playing a dramatically heightened version of himself. Still, I think comedy is what he does best. Last year's Bowfinger, a gut busting Hollywood spoof, returned to the gloriously silly days of Man With Two Brains and The Jerk, though Martin played the straight man to Eddie Murphy's bumbling jerk. As a movie about a filmmakers (Martin) and an actor (Murphy) on the fringe of Hollywood, the film does harbour an obvious conceit. As Marrit Ingman (my colleague at Savoy magazine) pointed out, 'there's no escaping the fact that it's an underdog movie made by insiders, a story about wannabes written by players.' I agree with Marrit, yet there's no denying the sheer giddy fun of scenes like the film parody 'Fake Purse Ninjas,' where Murphy is assaulted by ninjas carrying, um, fake purses. Then there is the priceless scene where Martin convinces the myopic Murphy to run across the L.A. Freeway not once but twice. Without his glasses. IN LOS ANGELES, the landscape is lousy with hyphenates: singer actresses, painter poet directors (truth be told, it's usually singer actress waiter; painter poet gaffer). Among other things, Martin is the town's ultimate multi talent: musician dancer actor director producer scriptwriter playwright magician comic. (Substantial as his ego is, it's a wonder it isn't larger still.) Martin can do so many things well, the possibilities for his future are nearly endless. If he hasn't made his opus yet, there is a sense that at 55, he is just getting started. He's an accomplished writer, a great comedian. He can sing, dance and play the guitar. He has led what appears to be a charmed life, finding massive popularity with generations of fans. Martin steps lightly through decades of greed and excess, past his colleagues' wasted careers, picking out a merry tune called 'Banana Banjo.'
			http://www.salon.com/people/bc/2001/03/13/steve_martin/index.html Salon March 13, 2001 Steve Martin The one time madcap comic diety has become the distinguished elder statesman of humor. Hey, that's not funny! Stephen Lemons When I was in junior high, circa 1977, Steve Martin was God. All of my geeky buddies had a copy of Martin's LP "Let's Get Small." Later, we added "A Wild and Crazy Guy" and his book "Cruel Shoes" to our growing Martin shrines. We set his skits to memory as dutifully as we had the lyrics to Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" or Blue Öyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper." The really obsessed kids wore plastic arrows through their heads on the bus to school while mimicking the various catchphrases Martin had drummed into the collective consciousness of Carter era America, such as "We're havin' some fun," "I've got happy feet" and the ever popular "Well, excuuuuuse me!" We all wanted to be Steve Martin. It was that gilded era of comedy known as the '70s a decade when the "National Lampoon Comedy Hour" graced the FM airwaves, the Not Ready for Prime Time Players of "Saturday Night Live" smoked pot on TV and Martin, a 32 year old, banjo playing, balloon animal twisting, prematurely gray comic performed before hysterical, rock concert like crowds of 20,000 or more. Martin's early LPs and stage performances were genuinely hilarious, but even the funniest bits, like the one in which he describes giving his cat a bath (with his tongue) or in which he has an entire audience repeat the "Non Conformist Oath" ("I promise to be unique. I promise not to repeat things other people say!"), do not fully explain the late '70s Martin mania. He also had the good fortune to be in step with his times. Following Vietnam, Watergate and the racial and civil unrest of the '60s and early '70s, folks needed a break from all the drama and heartache, and Martin's goofy, apolitical humor was a perfect match. A lot of his comedy relied on irony and allowing his fans in on the fact that he was making fun of show business. He was like a magician revealing how certain standard, almost clichéd tricks are done, while parodying the idea that there is really any illusion involved. He just assumed you knew there was really no rabbit in the hat. When he put on that "Mr. Showbiz" demeanor along with the white suit and the bunny ears, it was as if he was saying, "See, I'm supposed to be funny." Martin's shtick was to take the oldest bits in the book and blow them up to outrageous proportions. You couldn't help laughing. "Martin was playing with the stand up format itself," writes Phil Berger in "The Last Laugh: The World of Stand up Comics." "He was lampooning the postures comics take to get in good with the crowd the stroking they do to loosen up an audience. 'How much did it cost to get in?' Martin would ask. 'Eight fifty? Ha ha ha. You idiots.'" There were some "blue" bits in Martin's material, but not as many as in the work of, say, Rodney Dangerfield or a later comic like Sam Kinison. This also helps to explain Martin's wide appeal. Not only did all of my pencil necked amigos in junior high dig him, so did high school and college students. And my parents adored him. As for Grandma, she thought he was cute, though she didn't get what all the fuss was about. Now that same guy is doing voice overs for Merrill Lynch commercials, a transformation that really struck me when I went to my local bookstore to get a copy of Martin's recent novella, the New York Times bestseller "Shopgirl." The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had recently announced that Martin will be the host of this year's Oscars, triumphing over gross out meister Jim Carrey. ("If you can't beat 'em, join 'em," quipped the as yet Oscar less Martin in a press release.) A young woman in her 20s rang up my purchase. "That's a great book," she offered. "Did you know he used to be on 'Saturday Night Live'?" I then realized how complete Martin's metamorphosis has been. He's gone from madcap comic deity, earning yuks by juggling cats and making fun of the French ("They have a different word for everything!") to distinguished elder statesman of humor, writing droll little shorts for the New Yorker. As the '70s came to an end, Martin left stand up for films. He knew instinctively that he was draining himself of all his psychic resources and had to get out. When Rolling Stone interviewed him in 1999, he compared performing before tens of thousands of screaming fans in the '70s to "conducting an orchestra" with "visual cues, verbal cues." Though he enjoyed a creative high during that period, he does nothing to hide his current distaste for that life. "I can't think of anything worse than being a stand up comedian," he confessed. "Traveling around constantly, having people be drunk and talk during the show." "The Jerk" was his farewell to all that. He wasn't giving up on comedy, just stand up. It was all an act anyway, and it had taken him as far as it could. He didn't want to end up like Jerry Lewis, a prisoner to that Frankenstein monster of personified idiocy. Directed by Carl Reiner and coming at the zenith of Martin's stand up success in 1979, "The Jerk" transformed a $4.5 million investment into $100 million gross and made Martin a bona fide movie star. The move to film was a shrewd, calculated gamble that paid off handsomely. Martin had taken the next logical step at the right moment in his career, and could now leave the road behind forever. "Stand up comedy was just an accident," he told Rolling Stone in 1982. "I was figuring out a way to get onstage. I made up a magic act and that led to nightclubs. As I got into movies, I was reminded that this is really why I got into show business. With movies you've constantly got new material, new challenges." Waco, Texas, is famous for three things: Dr Pepper, David Koresh and Steve Martin. Martin was born in Waco on Aug. 14, 1945, and he lived there until his family up and moved when he was 5, first to Inglewood, Calif., and, later, south to Garden Grove, a right wing burg nestled deep in Orange County, that nexus of arch conservatism known for nurturing a particularly nasty breed of Republicans. Martin's dad was a prosperous real estate broker who never quite understood his son's ambition to be an entertainer. As a teenager, Martin snagged a job hawking guidebooks at Disneyland in nearby Anaheim, and he found that he could sell more with a bit of shuck 'n' jive. A little banjo, a few jokes, some balloon animals and voilà, he had an act. At 18, he graduated to a gig as an entertainer at Knott's Berry Farm. There he honed the skills he'd later use to entertain millions. In the '60s, he studied philosophy at Long Beach State University, the same school Steven Spielberg and the Carpenters attended. "I was either going to become a professor of philosophy or a comedian," he told Newsweek in 1977. "Then I realized the only logical thing was comedy because you don't have to justify it." A girlfriend helped him land a job writing for "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour," and he soon dropped out of college to write for TV full time. In 1969 he shared an Emmy in outstanding writing achievement for his work on "The Smothers Brothers." Martin pursued stand up while writing for various outlets. By 1975 he was packing them in at San Francisco's Boarding House club, among other places. Just then, a new TV show called "Saturday Night Live" was keeping everyone at home on Saturday evenings, and Martin soon began a string of popular appearances on that show and on Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show." Martin became an unstoppable force of comedy, a silver haired zeitgeist wrapped in a double breasted white suit. He was comic gold. People laughed at every gesture, every utterance, no matter how mundane. In one skit from "SNL," he had the crowd in tears just from dancing around by himself onstage to some '40s big band tune. And when necessary, he could always brandish his secret weapon the banjo. Play a little "Foggy Mountain Breakdown," blurt out a few quips and the crowd was his. The awards piled up. "Let's Get Small" won a Grammy in 1977 for best comedy album. In 1978, he earned an Academy Award nomination for his short film "The Absent Minded Waiter." He garnered another Grammy in 1979 for "A Wild and Crazy Guy," his album with the hit single "King Tut." Both LPs eventually went platinum. There were more comedy records, more awards and nominations, but "The Jerk" cemented his status as a superstar. He could have easily dived into another comedic film right away, but Martin bucked the advice of his manager by pursuing the lead in Herbert Ross' 1981 film version of Dennis Potter's bleak BBC musical "Pennies From Heaven." The role of Arthur Parker, an ill fated sheet music salesman in the '30s, had already been turned down by numerous A list stars because it required so much work. Martin, however, relished the challenge of emulating the likes of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. Under Ross' intense tutelage, Martin became an expert hoofer, able to hold his own with Gregory Hines when they danced together on a comedy special after "Pennies" was released. In "Pennies," teamed again with his "Jerk" costar and then girlfriend Bernadette Peters, Martin and she lip sync and sway to Depression era tunes, such as "Let's Face the Music and Dance" and "Love Is Good for Anything That Ails You." Both stars shine like screen giants of yesteryear. The result is the one true work of art Martin has helped create the one film with the depth and originality to be pegged as a masterpiece. The critics were divided on it, and audiences, perhaps expecting the Martin of "The Jerk," generally didn't get it. In hindsight, with Lars von Trier's black musical "Dancer in the Dark" under our belts, "Pennies From Heaven" seems way ahead of its time. Martin was disappointed that "Pennies" was a commercial flop. "I loved that movie so much. The most heartfelt thing I've ever done was 'Pennies From Heaven,'" he told Penthouse in 1984. Still, Martin plowed ahead to make innovative flicks like the 1982 noir pastiche "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" and "The Man With Two Brains" (1983), wherein Martin's character attempts to implant the disembodied gray matter of a sweet, intelligent young woman into the skull of the brazen and bitchy Kathleen Turner. In 1984, Martin received high marks from critics for another mind body switcheroo flick, "All of Me," costarring Lily Tomlin. On the set, Martin met and became enamored of British actress Victoria Tennant. The pair wed at Rome's City Hall in 1986. Considering Martin's success, money and fame, he could pretty well have had his pick of Hollywood after he and Peters parted ways. But Martin longed for substance over eye candy and that's what he saw in Tennant. No doubt her brains, refined breeding and British accent appealed to him. Martin revealed as much in his 1991 romantic comedy "L.A. Story," his love letter to Los Angeles and Tennant after the manner of Woody Allen's Gotham based "Annie Hall." Martin plays a parody of himself, a wacky TV meteorologist named Harris Telemacher, dying of cerebral thirst in the arid intellectual climate of Los Angeles. Along comes Tennant as limey Sara McDowel, who sweeps him off his roller skates. The parallels to Martin's own life are too close to be coincidence. Tennant divorced Martin in 1994, and since then he's been paired with more than one Hollywood beauty, including Anne Heche and Helena Bonham Carter, but he hasn't remarried. Martin has remained enormously prolific, doing almost a film a year since 1981, and sometimes more. Of these, a good many have been tepid Middle American fare such as "Mixed Nuts" (1994), "Parenthood" (1989) and "Father of the Bride" (1991). But to Martin's credit, there have been some gems, like his cameo in Frank Oz's "Little Shop of Horrors" (1986) or his leads in "Roxanne" (1987), "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" (1988), "Planes, Trains & Automobiles" (1987) and "Bowfinger" (1999). Nor has Martin been wary of redefining himself and taking risks: for example, his venture into playwriting with the 1993 stage comedy "Picasso at the Lapin Agile," which New York magazine called a "very funny riff on the birth of the modern century." Other reviews were less kind to the production, which featured Einstein and Picasso meeting for a drink in 1904 at a Parisian cocktail bar. The New York Times said Martin's play "captures the inevitable way art and celebrity have merged," but chastened its shallowness. Still, "Picasso" had successful runs in Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and it enhanced Martin's image as a thoughtful manipulator of ideas. He is at heart an intellectual and an aesthete. He's a longtime trustee of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, with a gallery named after him. And he possesses a highly regarded art collection made up predominantly of 20th century American painters such as Edward Hopper, Willem de Kooning and Richard Diebenkorn. In addition, Martin has penned a number of short essays for the New Yorker and other publications. In 1998, he collected them all in a slim volume titled "Pure Drivel." The anorexic tome had critics gushing with superlatives. Now there's "Shopgirl," which novelist John Lanchester, writing for the New York Times Book Review, called an "elegant, bleak, desolatingly sad first novella." The plot deals with the oft visited theme of May December romances, and one suspects that Martin is drawing on life experience here. The affair in question is between a 28 year old clerk at Neiman Marcus in Beverly Hills and a 50 ish Seattle computer magnate. There's nothing terribly original about the people or the story, but Martin crafts a convincing portrait of loneliness in his protagonist Mirabelle. Even Martin, now a wry, wise 55, seems to realize that his literary debut may never have occurred were it not for his name. "There's nothing more embarrassing then being a celebrity novelist. You just don't want to hear that an actor has written a novel. It really smells," Martin admitted to the New York Times last October. Well, at least he's not coughing up "Steve Martin's Wild and Crazy Pasta Recipes," which probably would spend an equal amount of time on the bestseller list. With Martin's Academy Awards gig this month and a dark comedy titled "Novocaine" due out later this year, featuring Martin as a dentist opposite Helena Bonham Carter, we can look forward to seeing more of him more of the mature, urbane version, that is. As long as he continues to take risks, at least some of what he produces will be exceptional. No one's perfect. "I'll never run out of stuff," he told Penthouse in 1984. "Because there'll always be something to twist. As it's developed, my whole comedy personality is bent. It's tilted towards irony, like the bore at the party." About the writer Stephen Lemons is a freelance writer in Los Angeles. He contributes regularly to the New Times L.A., Art Connoisseur, SOMA magazine and GettingIt.com.
			1997 Steve Martin Interview by Kastle The once "wild and crazy guy" has now become known as an established comedic movie star as well as a playwright, painter and avid art collector. In 1991, Steve Martin appeared as the endearing father in the hit film, Father of the Bride. Now, he's back, to face not only fatherhood but also grandfather-hood in the sequel, Father of the Bride II. Martin, who started out as a magician in his teens and later shifted to making people laugh, had his comedic career take off in the 1960's when he won an Emmy as a television writer for the Smothers Brothers' Comedy Hour. As the first comedian who could fill rock-concert arenas, he went on to win Grammys for his comedy albums, Let's Get Small and A Wild and Crazy Guy. The next stop was moviemaking with such popular films as: The Jerk, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, Little Shop of Horrors, Parenthood, Roxanne and plenty more. Q: Do you think the sequel is better then the first Father of the Bride? A: I hate to say it's better because they link to each other, but I think one thing about the second movie is that everyone's part is expanded. Diane has a bigger role, so does Martin Short. Those are good actors and funny people so it just enriches everything. Q: Were you worried about the low success rate of sequels? A: I was always wary, but I knew I was going to do it and for one thing, the script was good. Before I got the script I knew I was going to do it because there was this engine driving this thing. It was a hit, the studio wanted it, I liked the people and you just feel it all going down. Q: What was the best part of making this movie? A: While I was shooting the movie, I got a grasp of how important it was and I really connected with the scenes and found the writing to be fluid. The writers [Nancy Meyers and Charles Shyer] say to me that I read their material like they thought it in their heads and I say it's so easy to read, it can only be read one way. Q: How was it working with Diane Keaton and Martin Short? A: I have a good rapport with all of them. There's some undefinable thing that happens in the timing world and you know when they're going to say something. What's so great about Diane is that she's totally unpredictable and unable to do the same thing twice. So it's like playing tennis, you always have to watch where she throws the ball. It makes you very alert and it make you better because you're off guard too, just like in life. Q: How did you prepare for this role? A: I think I have learned to do that over the years in being an actor. Plus, now I have more to draw on because I'm older and I like the material, I feel akin with it. But nothing is permanent. I look at movies I did recently and go, god, I was so bad, why am I bad in that movie and good in this one? I don't know. I can't define it and I'm afraid to start trying. Q: You wear a lot of different hats - painter, art collector, actor, playwright. What motivates you to do so many different things? A: Right now I'm in the playwriting arena and who knows where that will go next but that's what I really like doing right now. The great thing about, for example, painting is not just that you're painting but you're also waving your arms around in a big sunny room. The great thing about playwriting is you're going down and working with the actors and go to the theatre then have an audience come down and scare the wits out of you. So it's not all about writing, there's another life going on too. Q: Do you get more out of one area than another? A: In a way, because what comes out in acting is an essence, but what comes out in writing is something very specific and verbal and you can jump from place to place. Acting is just center. I know that sounds very California! Q: What is the key to comedy? A: Timing is what I liked about all my idols...Can it be learned? I think it can but I also see people with innate senses of timing. I've been auditioning a lot of people for my plays and some people have it and some people don't and they can't be taught it. Q: Do you believe in trying to study the art of comedy? A: Studying is such a horrible way to approach comedy. You either love it or you don't. If you love it, you watch it and absorb it. I think it comes from within. I believe everything about my life, everything I've been able to do, I've learned - except comedy. I learned to write comedy, how to perform comedy, but there's something inside you that makes you love comedy. Q: What is the biggest misconception about you? A: I'm always being called shy and quiet but I'm only shy and quiet in interviews. I know what I am in private and I love to laugh and have fun. But sometimes, it's 3 o'clock and I've been here since 10 doing interviews and I tend to get a little quiet. Plus, I just flew in from New York last night and I don't sell myself. So I always hear these things like I'm aloof and I think that's not really me! But I guess it is because so many people have said it!
			CNN Showbiz Today December 16, 1992 Steve Martin Far From Dissatisfied With Career DENNIS MICHAEL Steve Martin has turned to dramatic roles from comedy, such as in his new movie "Leap of Faith." He is presently dividing his time between acting and screenwriting. LAURIN SYDNEY, Anchor: Steve Martin says there is not much light comedy in his future, at least not for the time being, but his reasons aren't the ones that you might expect. Dennis Michael has part two of our profile on Steve Martin. DENNIS MICHAEL, Entertainment Correspondent: Steve Martin is getting good reviews for his dramatic work in Leap of Faith, and he does say he's looking for more challenging dramas for the future. But, when you ask if it's that old show biz cliche, an actor looking to stretch, you get a sharp denial. STEVE MARTIN: No one is interested in watching 'stretch.' They don't pay money to watch Steve stretch. They pay money to see a good movie, and that's the foremost concern that you have to have. You know, some interesting film that surprises people, that's challenging, or whatever, or strictly entertaining, or strictly funny. But, it's got nothing to do with stretching. MICHAEL: What currently interests Steve Martin is another film project similar to Roxanne, a script the actor co-wrote, based on the classic, Cyrano de Bergerac. Now he's writing another adaptation of another as-yet unnamed classic work. [interviewing] At the same time, if you're writing and you're acting, the logical extension is to direct. Have you given any thought to that? Mr. MARTIN: Yeah, I'm not interested in it. MICHAEL: [interviewing] Not at all? Mr. MARTIN: I'll tell you why, because if I was going- you know, as a writer, I want to have written four or five screenplays that I've done, because then it gives meaning to your writing. You're learning from your last project and moving on, but, as a director, I know if I directed, I want to direct one, just to show I could do it, and then stop. It's being a dilettante, and there's plenty of great directors. I like the- having the third eye who comes in and goes, 'Well, we can do it this way,' and they're always thinking about visual things, and I- you know, I could be off thinking of the words in my performance, and lunch. MICHAEL: So, forget any stories you hear about Steve Martin being dissatisfied with his career, or with comedy. Mr. MARTIN: In show business, you can't be 100 percent confident, especially comedy, because the audience is always an enigma, and you never know that what you're doing is going to work or not, and I've come through in this stage in my life to accept my talents and my shortcomings and be happier about it. And, I feel very good. I'm very happy with my success. I can't ask for anything more. I have great opportunities, and I want to, with no nonsense, use those opportunities to see what I can do. MICHAEL: Dennis Michael, CNN Entertainment News, Hollywood.
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