IEven
before Steve Martin strode onto the stage at Nantucket
Film Festival 10’s In
Their Shoes, he was upstaged by Murphy, whose law
kicked in just as moderator James Lipton prepared to
introduce the actor, comedian, screenwriter,
playwright, essayist, novelist, and Hollywood
intellectual-in-residence, and the Festival’s
tribute honoree. When something could go wrong, it
did. The earnest Lipton, Bravo’s host of “Inside
the Actors Studio,” uneasily squirmed in the dead
air as a technician trouble-shooted the electronic
malfunction. What’s a host to do, especially one so
meticulously prepared with a stack of blue question
cards and reference books at the ready?
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| The Nantucket Film Festival’s Scriptwriters Tribute honoree, Steve Martin, is interviewed by James Lipton, emcee of
“The Actor’s Studio,” at the Nantucket Film Festival. These photos of Martin are on the high school auditorium stage
in front of a sold out audience and the next evening on the red carpet at the Sconset Casino where Martin received
his tribute and feting. James Lipton (at the high school) and “Saturday Night Live” Executive Producer Lorne Michaels
(on the red carpet) appear with Steve Martin in some of these Photos. All photos by Robert Pushkar. |
Not to worry with madcap Martin
in the wings. As if it had been scripted, the comedian
raced out, elbowed aside the red-faced techie, and
pretended to “fix” the glitch. Lipton winced at
all the unwanted attention, press photographers
snapped, and the patient audience roared with
laughter.
About ten minutes later after
the mike was restored, Lipton regained his composure
and soldiered
on, introducing Martin to hearty applause, and they
sat down to talk. Still, not to miss a comedic moment,
Martin, gussied up in a summery seersucker jacket,
light slacks, lime green socks, and tan sneakers,
pantomimed words and gesticulated body language as if
his own mike suffered a similar malfunction. Warily,
Lipton joined in the ruse and instantly struck a
rapport with the 800-plus fans at theNantucket High
School auditorium.
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Steve Martin is a product of
California, and Lipton followed a chronological
sequence of questions beginning with his childhood
there. Martin said, as a young lad he loved to watch
comedy in movies and on TV. He saw how much fun Red
Skelton had making people laugh. Later in high school,
he claims he “was the same as anyone” but he was
strongly swayed by his desire to make people laugh.
“I loved to laugh with my friends. Laughing was
number one.” After graduation, he enrolled at Long Beach State because
“It’s where I lived. I never thought about
anything like ‘good school, bad school.’ It was
nearby for $200 a year.”
Lipton asked why he had majored
in philosophy in college. “I was asked this last
night,” Martin answered mock seriously. “I like to
think about myself.” He continued, “I found it
romantic to believe that you were studying great
ideas. At that time philosophy was old school.
“At some point I was kidding
myself thinking that I was going to become a professor
of philosophy because I loved show business. I have to
make a choice here.
“I remember I had a revelation
on campus. I realized if I’m going to be a good
comedian, or an interesting comedian, I would have to
write everything myself. It would have to be
original.”
So Martin methodically developed
a plan. “Every time I laugh at something in real
life I’m going to note at what it was and see if
there’s some material there.”
Martin continued at UCLA where
he switched his focus to theater. He took a TV writing
course. But opportunity came knocking when a close
friend’s romance with the head writer of “The
Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” gained him an entrée
to the writing staff where he won an Emmy Award in
1969 for writing. However, CBS “released” the
brother-duo from their contract because of the
show’s political content, and Martin landed out of
work. He became a writer for “The Glen Campbell
Goodtime Hour, worked for “Sonny and Cher”, as
well as for other network shows. He continued writing
sketches he found funny.
Eventually he hit the road with
his own comedy routine as a stand-up comic performing
in clubs. He carried around little pieces of paper on
which he scribbled gags. Life was grist for his
creative mill. He remembered advice Bill Cosby gave
him: “I knew I was funny even when the audience
wasn’t laughing but the waitresses were. They’re
seeing me every night.”
Lipton lavishly praised Martin
for sparking a revolution in comedy. Humbly, Martin
said, “I think I pulled comedy back to its earlier
roots.” He remembers thinking that he “smelled the
end of an era.” During the 70s change was coming,
maybe not on little cat feet, rather by using scissors
and stashing the love beads. “People are going to
start cutting their hair,” he recalls, thinking
about that time. “They’re not going to go peace
and love anymore. I cut my hair and put myself in a
suit.” A white one at that a la Tom Wolfe, and he
wasn’t afraid to prance on stage with a crazy arrow
in his head or wearing bunny ears. “It’s time to
be stupid,” he recalled.
In his morphed vision of
himself, he created a persona. Lipton said, “This
was a guy who juggled, played a banjo badly then
blazingly well, performed magic tricks, and who left a
theater with an audience and went to a McDonald’s
and ordered 300 hamburgers and one French fry.”
Responding, Martin thinks the
persona he had created was blatantly egocentric and
completely self-involved who became indignant at
life’s pressures and foibles. Unwittingly, he turned
a simple apology uttered endlessly by everyone into a
lasting piece of unforgettable jargon. When Lipton
asked the audience what the phrase was,
members shouted in one voice, “Exc-u-u-use
me!” as
if they’d just heard it yesterday.
Lipton grilled his guest with
his eloquently phrased, though at times abstruse,
questions. Martin was nonplused by a few but wiggled
out through humor. At one point the comedian said,
“I tend to not look back.”
What he could remember he
elaborated on as best he could. On the genesis of
ROXANNE, his funny take on Rostand’s 19th
century verse drama, Cyrano
de Bergerac, Martin drew a clever metaphor about
literary adaptation. “Adapting someone’s material
takes the same form as a bad marriage. It starts with
fidelity, then there’s transgression, and then
there’s divorce.” Working through the 18-century
novel took a long time, he recalls. Why did he call it
Roxanne, Lipton asked. “I always thought it was
about her,” he said.
Even though he’s protective of
his work, in filmmaking, because it’s such a
collaborative effort of highly skilled people, Martin
doesn’t consider his screenplay “Holy Writ.”
Martin said, “No, it’s fair game. If somebody
comes up with something better, go with it. In a
screenplay, you expect change. It’s a collaborative
medium. You protect the scene, you protect a joke as
much as you can. The great thing I discovered in
theater was when I started writing plays. In the
theater, no one can change a word. What that made me
do is be extremely careful about what I wrote.”
More than once Lipton signaled
that he was approaching a wrap-up but he continued on
even after Martin gibed that maybe the audience was
tiring and their yawning was catchy
As the interview wound down, it
turned more serious in tone and response. At one point
responding to a J.P. Donleavy quote about how writing
offers a method of turning someone’s pain into
money, Martin said, “Pain produces much more art
than happiness.”
He spoke affectionately about
his boldly quirky satire Picasso at the Lapin Agile. The play was encouraged by Robert
Brustein of Harvard’s American Repertory Theater, who gave him important feedback while in the formative stages
of creation. In 1994 the play opened at the Hasty
Pudding Theater to critical acclaim.
Commenting on his efforts in his
first try-out in novel writing—Shopgirl whose screen version premieres in October—Martin said,
“Some of this book comes out of the fact that I’m
55 and still dating.” He said he knows a lot of men
in similar situations. Still, a glimpse of a poignant
side of Martin faded through. “Melancholy is so much
a part of life. It really provides a tone.”
Later, at the Sconset Casino,
Steve Martin was paid tribute for his contributions to
the art of filmmaking. This was time for honor and
praise to a genuinely outstanding artist of our time.
Writer-photographer
Robert Pushkar is a regular contributor to IMAGINE.
Currently, he is marketing his romantic comedy
screenplay. He can be reached at rgp@robertpushkar.com
