No less an authority than Jerry Seinfeld recently opined to me that standup comics are the opposite of actors. That is to say, one is judged on his portrayal of other people, while the other is judged on his portrayal of himself.
By this criterion, Steve Martin should never have become a comedian. I’ve had the chance to question the man in one-on-one situations, round-table interviews and at press conferences. And I assess him to be intelligent, almost-surgically analytical when you could get him to open up about nearly any subject except himself - when he turns cold-fishy. (He also doesn’t care to be funny when he doesn’t have to be but this is true of most comedians).
And yet, this painfully shy man managed to become the comedy sensation of the ‘70s, the first standup comic to fill 20,000-seat arenas (a feat sporadically accomplished since, by the likes of Dice Clay and, lately all at once, Larry The Cable Guy, Russell Peters and Dane Cook.)
It shook the comedy world when Martin walked away from the stage - at the height of what turned out to be, for him, hellish success - to devote himself entirely to film.
In his partial autobiography Born Standing Up, a book limited to his early life and standup career, we get a look at the strange dichotomy that created Steve Martin. From his days as a teenage Disneyland carny and rookie magician at Knotts Berry Farm, we get every “Eureka” moment that still lives in his memory of the mechanics of making people laugh. Example: he discovers that a crowd reacts much more favourably to a trick that screws up than to one that works (pulling a dead rabbit out of a hat, for example).
It was a realization that began the left turn from magic to comedy, and lived on in classic sketches, like the one that gave birth to his catchphrase “Well, excuuuuuse me!” (one of the bits included in his platinum-selling album of the era Let’s Get Small). In it, he demands a “blue spot” from the techs at the Boarding House in San Francisco, doesn’t get it and begins a hilarious and increasingly furious rant about “giving and giving and giving” and getting nothing back. The whole thing was a set-up, yet some techs tried to give him the spot anyway, he was that convincing.
Clearly he had a mind that was created to dissect how comedy works - even before he enrolled in logic classes in college and became enamored of Lewis Carroll’s silly syllogisms.
And yet, almost from the first, Martin began to suffer panic attacks - the first of which occurred at the theatre while watching Mel Brooks’ The Producers, high from a joint, “I sat in stoic silence as my heart began to race above 200 beats a minute and the saliva disappeared from my mouth so completely I could not move my tongue. I thought it was the heart attack I had been waiting for, but I wasn’t feeling pain. I was, however, experiencing extreme fear. Fame, for someone like that was a curse.
“I was unsuited for fame’s destruction of privacy, Martin writes. “I had never been outgoing, and when strangers approached me with the familiarity of old friends, I felt dishonest returning it in kind.
And as in an aside to the likes of me,” he adds “I admit I’m a lousy interview. My magicians’ instincts make me reluctant to tell Œm how it’s done, whether it’s a book, play, movie or aspects of my personal life.”
It’s actually brave for a person like Steve Martin to write an autobiography considering how uncomfortable the most personal stuff clearly makes him. His explanation is that he and his family had kept all kinds of archival material from his (‘60s and ‘70s standup days, and it was a period of his life that would likely be forgotten otherwise (it’s not as if he’s likely to tell it all on Inside The Actors’ Studio). To fans of comedy, this seems reasonable and not at all egotistical.
So here he is, spilling on his emotionally abusive father, a failed showman who developed a seething anger toward his attention-getting teenage son. (Though there’s a detachment to his self-analysis that suggests he regurgitates the thoughts of his actual analyst).
The psychological journey is interesting, as is the history (he dated the daughter of blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo, got his job on The Smothers Brothers show with a joke he borrowed, with permission, from comedian Gary Muledeer (though he lied about writing it). The line: “It has been proven that more Americans watch television than any other appliance.” There’s plenty of name-dropping, fly-bys with the likes of Johnny and Merv, Linda Ronstadt (who ostensibly was flummoxed by the fact that they “dated” platonically), arguing with Glenn Frey over whether the band should be called Eagles or The Eagles (as Martin insisted).
And of course, his entry into Saturday Night Live is de rigueur (biggest admission: he and fellow “wild and crazy guy” Dan Aykroyd never really “got” each other).
But it’s how Steve Martin ventured in small steps to smash convention that should appeal to fans of standup comedy. His absurdities - saying “It’s great to be here,” then moving 10 feet and saying “No, it’s great to be here,” - influenced two generations of comics, from Steven Wright to Mitch Hedberg. And years before Andy Kaufman, he was indulging in acts of anarchy, like taking an audience of 300 to McDonald’s, ordering 300 hamburgers and then suddenly changing the order to one small fries.
And I’m happy to say the book has a happy ending (though rather melancholy as those things go). That is to say, he walked away from standup comedy for all time after filming The Jerk with Carl Reiner.
“The world of moviemaking had changed me,” Martin writes. “Movies were social; standup was anti-social. I was not judged every day by a changing audience.” Just by critics and audiences he would never have to see.
