About Steve :: Writer ::
Essays

Steve's earliest published essays were the short bits in Cruel Shoes.  Since then he has written for the New Yorker, The New York Times, and a number of other publications.  You can find the pieces themselves in By Steve :: Essays. 

The articles below are about his being an essayist.
 

    
     
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
SEPTEMBER 18, 1998
THE MARTIN CHRONICLES
A WILD AND CRAZY WORDSMITH
By Svetkey, Benjamin

Give me a second," Steve Martin requests as he slips into a chair at a Beverly Hills restaurant.
He flips open his laptop computer, taps away for a solid five minutes, then, finished, peers up
with that same big, loopy grin that melted Bernadette Peters' heart in The Jerk.

A rare glimpse of the writer at work.

The 53 year old comedian, it turns out, has spent much of the past three years typing into this
laptop, taking a break from the movie business to practice that most endearingly old fashioned
literary genre, the short humor piece. His elegant, S.J. Perelmanesque compositions --"after dinner mints to the big meal of literature," he calls them have appeared in the back pages of The New Yorker and The New York Times. And now about two dozen of them, including "Mars Probe Finds Kittens" and "The Sledgehammer: How It Works," have been collected in a giddy little volume titled Pure Drivel, published this month by Hyperion ($19.95).

"After I finished Sgt. Bilko, I just lost contact with making movies," he explains. "I couldn't read
a script anymore. I didn't want to. So I started writing plays and these little pieces. It's not like
I decided to take a three year break it just happened."

That break, by the way, looks to be over: Martin has already wrapped a remake of The Out of Towners with Goldie Hawn and is currently filming Bowfinger's Big Thing from his own
screenplay with Eddie Murphy. "It's a big comedy in the spirit of A Fish Called Wanda," Martin
says. "Eddie's playing a black action star who's out of his mind, and I play a loser producer
trying to get a movie made with him."

But Martin isn't entirely done with literature. That article he's been noodling with on his laptop at
the restaurant, for instance, is an op ed piece for The New York Times. "It's called 'News
Stories Besides Monica Lewinsky,'" he says, booting up his computer again after dinner ("The
city of Santa Monica is going to change its name to Santa Monica Lewinsky," reads one item). "I
have to finish it tonight. Usually, if the idea is solid, I can write it in an hour, but then I'll edit it
for a week.

"I have one rule: Never write until you're ready," the author continues, scrolling down his
computer screen. "I want to keep it fun. I find it's better when I just wait and wait and wait until
the idea is so crisp, so baked, it just comes out."

Hmmm. Sounds like a cookbook might be up next. Chicken a la King Tut, anyone?
 		    
 

New York Post
 October 1, 1999 

Martin writes off fried shrimp days 

Martin quit stand-up years ago, but the likes of Stanley Tucci, Richard Avedon and Don Hewitt were holding their sides Wednesday night at Michael's on West 55th as he read "Disgruntled Former Lexicographer," his latest piece for The New Yorker. Afterward, editor David Remnick led a rousing conversation with the actor/producer/comic and New Yorker contributor. Asked which writers have most influenced him, Martin confessed, "I'd love to say S.J. Perelman and Thurber, but really, it's Mason Williams and Woody Allen and Bruce J. Friedman. And Jack Handy." Handy, Martin explained, was a neighbor, who, after Martin introduced him to Lorne Michaels, landed a writing gig at "Saturday Night Live." "And I'm like, 'wait a minute! That's my neighbor!' It's those kind of things that really influence you - greed, jealousy." Martin calls his standup days "the most uncreative period" of his life. "At the end of the day you're eating fried shrimp in a Holiday Inn. It was a rock star's existence - without the girls." Writing has brought him "more respect in Hollywood." He doesn't even mind being edited, because he's lousy at grammar. "But I'm getting better. Or is it best?"

****
 

New York Daily News
 October 1, 1999
Still a Wild and Crazy Guy
Steve Martin can still pack the house.

The actor-writer drew an A-list crowd of showbiz and literary types to hear him banter about everything from standup comedy to the controversy surrounding the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

Martin, the star attraction at a New Yorker magazine event, said he went into movies because he thought his 10 years in standup comedy brought him to a dead end.

"It was very difficult to come up with new material," he said during the Q&A session led by editor David Remnick and attended by Stanley Tucci, Richard Avedon, Esther Newberg and Don Hewitt. "It was so defined, in a way so rigid. I thought, 'This isn't going to last.'"

As for his spin on the Brooklyn art show, he says: "It's hard to judge. It's ridiculous to even talk about it. You know this painting [of the Virgin Mary], no one's seen it, no one knows if it's even a great piece."

Martin says the whole mess reminds him of how people used to react to Richard Pryor's work.

"If you said to someone, 'There's a man performing standup and he says mother------- and [the c-word],' and then you go see it and it's Richard Pryor, you go, 'Oh, you didn't tell me that he was a genius that's doing it. I was thinking of someone else, who would be doing it badly,'" Martin riffed at Michael's on W. 55th St.

 
     
 
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