Annie Leibovitz Steve Martin on the awning of Rolling Stone. So I capital aggregate to cease, and I capital to bandy the dice." Steve Martin, overdosed on success, threw his dice and what a amount he rolled: the advance in 'Pennies from Heaven.' In this MGM tragi-musical, which zigzags from bedevilled atramentous to abstracted fantasies, Martin plays Arthur Parker, a song-sheet salesman, who lies and cheats, sings and dances – who does just about everything, in fact, but act funny. For a man who rose to distinction through comedy, he was acutely demography the bigger blow of his career.
It was a role Martin formed harder to get. He had to apprentice affecting acting – from the director, Herbert Ross – and yield tap-dancing acquaint for months, able-bodied into the assembly of the film. He had to acquire what amounted to a year's retirement from, to put it mildly, a berserk acknowledged ball career. And he even had to base up adjoin his own acquaintance and manager, Bill McEuen. "I just anticipate he shouldn't be accomplishing a affecting role at this point," McEuen said, a few weeks afore the cine opened. "I would've been happier if he'd done a brace added comedies first, afresh approved something different."
But Steve would not be stopped. Martin had apparent 'Pennies' in its aboriginal form, as a six-part, nine-hour television alternation produced by BBC in 1976 and apparent afterwards in the United States on assorted PBS stations. "I couldn't accept it," Martin said. "I'd sit there and go, 'This is the greatest affair I've anytime seen.' What the movie's about is so accepted to everything. Arthur's admiration to be like what the songs told him. I saw this abundant alongside to if I was growing up in the Fifties. The bedrock & cycle songs were so simple, aggregate was so simple. You admired her, you got her, you absent her. Pop music now, or in the Sixties, was complicated, but these songs were just, 'Here's what activity is gonna be.' And that affiance has been fabricated to humans of our bearing as able-bodied as to humans of Arthur's generation."
Ten canicule afterwards 'Pennies' opened, Martin's affection was a absorption of the film's business – a admixture of disappointment, optimism and caution. Backed by babble reviews, it did able-bodied in New York City, but elsewhere, reviews were alloyed and business was so-so. "I'm aghast that it didn't accessible as a blockbuster," said Martin, "and I don't apperceive what to blame, added than it's me and not a comedy." About the critics? "I accept to say that the humans who get the movie, in general, accept been astute and intelligent; the humans who don't get it are apprenticed scum."
When Martin got the role in 'Pennies,' he was thirty-six years old and the hottest amateur in the country. His concerts competed with ample bedrock shows, cartoon audiences of 25,000 people. Two albums awash added than a amateur copies each, and a third had the million-selling individual "King Tut." He played Vegas and appear a acknowledged book, 'Cruel Shoes.' All four of his NBC specials accept accustomed that abandoned arrangement something to smile about. And his aboriginal affection feature film, 'The Jerk,' grossed $100 amateur on an investment of some $4.5 million. Infact, it was on the backbone of 'The Jerk' that Martin was mentioned as a accessible Arthur Parker if Herbert Ross began casting 'Pennies.' Several added actors, a allotment of them Al Pacino and Richard Dreyfuss, were beatific scripts. But Rick McCallum, controlling ambassador of 'Pennies,' says a lot of of the actors were put off by the "unsympathetic" attributes of the Parker appearance and by the plan the allotment required.
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When Martin met with Ross and biographer Dennis Potter at Martin's home in Beverly Hills, Potter recalls: "Steve started talking about Arthur, what he acquainted about the part. As he talked – he in fact put on a hat and did a acting ball – be aimlessly accepted Arthur, and from that moment on, I had no doubt." Ross, who got into blur as a choreographer and has directed a few dancers ('The Turning Point' and 'Nijinsky' accepting a allotment of his credits), calls Martin "literally the abandoned amateur in Hollywood who is able to do a musical. There is not one amateur who has the abilities that be does."
We are at Martin's abode in Beverly Hills. From the outside, it looks like a abhorrent fortress. But inside, it's sunlit, wide-open spaces, all white walls (or, added often, bisected walls or columns with ellipsoidal cutouts) and gray carpeting, with careful, tasteful and acutely able decorating. Furnishings are mostly contemporary, in greens, roses and maroons. Bookshelves are abounding with a abundant library of histories and collections of American art (there are two dozen books on James McNeill Whistler alone), forth with leather-bound scripts from Martin's films and TV specials. It is a abode with no clutter, no magazines on the coffee table, no annal broadcast about (in a cabinet, though, one finds albums by Steely Dan, Kraftwerk, Devo, Mozart and tapes of Thirties music). On the walls adhere artwork, both avant-garde and nineteenth century, including a John Henry Twachtman. Martin has been a austere "looker" aback academy canicule and a beneficiary aback he could acquiesce to be one.
Offstage, with accompany or strangers, Steve is, simply, off. He's a accommodating interview, but he doesn't wish to allocution about adolescent comedians, he says, "because all I'm gonna do is say nice things, and it's gonna be so boring." He wants to accumulate his accord with Bernadette Peters (costar of 'Pennies') private. And the aforementioned goes for his art collection. Agonizing over whether to even allocution about it, he explains: "As a comedian, I'm accommodating to barter out my clandestine thoughts about things that are claimed to me for amplitude in the magazine, and I'm accommodating to say impaired things that, six months later, I go, 'Why did I say that?' But if it comes to art, which is so claimed – and I'm not aggravating to accomplish it allotment of my personality – I'm not accommodating to say impaired things about it. I wish the abandon to be brainless about it, to apprentice about it, to anticipate about something I still don't understand. It's like why I'm a vegetarian, I don't know. I can't avert myself, and I don't accept to avert myself. It's like the artisan doesn't accept to explain or absolve annihilation about it. And I anticipate it's important for me to accumulate that position, for my own claimed health."
But on occasion, Martin the amateur emerges. He notices my scribbling into a notebook. "What're you autograph down?" he asks.
I acquaint him, "Striped dress shirt, atramentous slacks . . . ."
"Well," he volunteers, "my shoes are mauve. They're dress shoes, but I wish to breach them in, so I'm cutting them two hours a day." He chuckles.
And the socks?
"Oh, I'm breaking in these socks, too."
Why did you adjudge to yield such a blow with your career? I was asked about that afore I went into the project, and there was no hesitation. If I aboriginal started accomplishing my act, it was not . . . normal. It was not what was expected. That's why the accessible bent assimilate it. And I said, "If I alpha accepting trapped by my own sameness, I'm not accomplishing what they secretly want, which is for me to do what I wish to do."
The endure time I saw you, you said this cine would be the bigger claiming of your life. Did your expectations appear true? Added than I thought, I was in such a state. I'd been on the alley – about seventeen years. But three years absolutely steady, and it was debilitating. You get physically tired, emotionally tired, and alpha apprehensive what you're doing.
It got to the point area if I'd do new material, it articulate like old actual even to me [puzzled laugh]. And one affair I didn't accept that balked me was, I was accomplishing comedy, and the admirers was accomplishing an event. They were at an event, and I was going, "Wait a minute. This is my little joke. Why are you bouncing balloons at me during my joke?"
I bare a break. I wasn't searching for a affecting role; I didn't apperceive what I was searching for. Afresh this affair came along, and it was like seeing the absolute circle. You knew you had to access it.
After the aboriginal weeks of shooting, did you feel assured about your acting, or was there fear? [Laughs] I would not acquiesce myself to be afraid. I anticipation that would absolutely aching me. I acquainted I had been through so much. I'd faced 20,000 humans in concert, and I banned to be intimidated. It was not easy.
What has it been like for you to see the film? There's something about the cine that overwhelms me, and it's affecting and it's altered and I adulation what it's saying, even admitting I can't accurate it. If I was in academy – one acumen I was in appearance business is I'd apprehend a composition and think, "God, that affair is beautiful." And I would get in my accent chic and apprehend the poem. I capital to canyon it along. The adventure for me is if a affectionate accepting watches this blur and gets the aforementioned activity I had if I saw the BBC version.
Was your ambition consistently to be in movies? Yeah, actor ball was absolutely just an accident. I was addition out a way to get onstage. I fabricated up a abracadabra act and, "Hey, I'm in appearance business," and that led to nightclubs. I acquainted like a comedian, that was my work. As I got into the movies, I was reminded, "Hey, this is absolutely why I got into appearance business." I do like the movies. It's so condensed. You get to try and accomplish it right.
But there's annihilation added abridged than a crack to an admirers that action appropriate back. But with movies you've got consistently new material, connected new challenges.
Wasn't it in academy (Long Beach State, 1964) that you hit on your accurate casting of comedy? Academy absolutely afflicted my life. It afflicted what I accept and what I anticipate about everything. I majored in philosophy. Something about non sequiturs appealed to me. In aesthetics I started belief logic, and they were talking about could could cause and effect, and you alpha to realize, "Hey, there is no could could cause and effect! There is no logic. There is no anything!" Afresh it gets absolute simple to address this stuff, because all you accept to do is aberration aggregate harder – you aberration the bite line, you aberration the non agreement so harder abroad from the affair that set it up, that it's simple . . . and it's thrilling.
For a while there, you anticipation about acceptable a teacher. But afresh I thought, "I can't accord up appearance business." I'd advised aesthetics and accomplished the abandoned accurate amount was accomplishment. So I afflicted my major, transferred [to UCLA] and went into theater.
You were already accomplishing some comedy. Area did you aboriginal accomplish onstage? At this club, the Prison of Socrates, on Balboa Island [near Newport Beach]. It was Hoot Night, and I got up and just threw aggregate in to try and get to fifteen minutes. So I had my magic, and I apprehend balladry and played the banjo, and I juggled. It's absolutely what I'm accomplishing now.
What affectionate of acknowledgment did you get? Gosh, I don't know. Allotment of the thing, if you're adolescent andnaive, is that you anticipate you went over if you didn't, and that's what keeps you going. Your desire's so abundant to do it, you don't just quit.
How did you accommodated your manager, Bill McEuen? Well, I acclimated to go to top academy with his brother, John, and we boring communicated. We didn't get together, though, till I started autograph for the Smothers Brothers. I was about twenty-two if we absitively to assurance a administration thing, and neither of us, I affirm to God, knew what we were doing. [Dumbstruck voice] "I got a administrator now...."
I can't accept the acuteness of his devotion. He tape-recorded aggregate you did aback in the aboriginal days. Sure. He acclimated to sit out there every night, watch every show, and laugh. And I'd apprehend his beam and it'd array of accumulate me going. It was like him and me, affectionate of auspicious anniversary added up. I apperceive I'm dying, he knows I'm dying, and we're bedlam about it.
For a while you slipped into a hippie look. How abundant did it reflect your life? Well, I was just traveling through a stage, like anybody. I was alert to bedrock music. I smoked some marijuana. That was if I was about twenty. Marijuana's so aberrant in that you can get a lot of altered things from it. If you aboriginal alpha smoker it, you absolutely get high, and afresh afterwards a while, you just get tired. If I started writing, I quit.
How did you get the job autograph for the Smothers Brothers? I had accounting a assemblage of things in college, in aesthetic autograph class. I had a adherent who was a ballerina on the show, and she showed Mason Williams [the show's arch writer] my stuff. Mason paid me out of his own abridged at first.
After your hippie phase, about 1971, you started cutting white suits. How apish was that? It seemed at the time like something absolutely far out. It was planned, and afresh the white clothing became gurulike if I started accomplishing success. But if I cut my hair, I didn't do it to think, "Well, this will advice me in appearance business." I just capital to overlook about the past.
Even afore the white suit, you were accomplishing some aberrant things, not abandoned in your act but abnormally afterwards the shows, arch crowds out into the streets and traveling to McDonald's and acclimation 300 hamburgers and one French fry. That's what I had to apprentice in acting, that it was the amount of your charge to an abstraction that fabricated it acknowledged or not. The abstraction could be wrong, but you accept to be committed, and that's what I was to the act at that time. All the way.
I bethink the aboriginal time I anytime absolved out of the anteroom at the end of the act, and the admirers came with me and I had them all get in a pond basin – which was empty& – and afresh I swam over top the of them, and they all put their accoutrements out, and I thought, "Gee, there's a breakthrough! I'm gonna do this every time now." It was that spirit, I think, that bent blaze to the blow of my act. I chock-full traveling alfresco because it got too dangerous. I accomplished if I go out and yield 3000 people, someone's gonna get run over.
That's if the concerts became "events." But even afterwards that, there were abundant shows, shows that captivated me. It was like arena an instrument. The admirers was an instrument. I can do this and they'll do this. There was a aeon of, like, a year and a bisected area I acquainted so good; my body, my fingers, aggregate was working. If it got above that . . . . I don't wish acerb grapes, like I was affairs out 20,000-seat concerts and was unhappy. I wasn't, on one hand. It was the traveling, the affairs – it just got me. I started accomplishing things like annoyed onstage. It was a signal.
What about the time you had to go to the hospital? It was a concert in Knoxville, Tennessee, with about 7000 humans in, like, a gymnasium. They were blind from the rafters. It was about 100 degrees alfresco and humid, so it must've been 125 degrees onstage. The aboriginal 5 account I could feel diaphoresis advancing from my hair and active down my face. And the clothing got blood-soaked through. And I was about a bisected hour into the act if I accomplished I couldn't go on. I had to leave. They alleged the medics and took me to the hospital. It was just exhaustion. I was a wreck.
How did it affect your performance? Did your act become rote? No, that wasn't the problem. My act was consistently formulated. It's not like you get depressed and go out and do a awful show. You could be exhausted, and something happens and you're on top of it. That's the bewilderment of performing. You can be actual down and go out there and al of a sudden feel it. Or be actual top and never affix with the audience. I started accepting annoyed if I was accepting into the nonconcert situations, like Atlantic City or Las Vegas. I acquainted something was missing.
When you began to get a lot of media attention, humans approved to explain why you hit if you did. Did you accede with their assessments? You know, in those online autograph I consistently looked for something larger. I consistently acquainted there was a added acceptation to what I was accomplishing than just accepting "wild and crazy," something added philosophical. I had a appearance that there was something funny about aggravating to be funny. I bare a approach abaft it in adjustment to absolve it at the time, but now I don't. I see it for what it was. It was just fun, and it was brainless and that's why it was successful.
But a lot of brainless comics accept failed. Why did you succeed? It was like anybody was ripe, and I was there and had the act I'd been accomplishing for ten years, and boom, you know? I just anticipate humans capital something new. I mean, I capital something new, so I array of became it.
You were one of the a lot of accepted bedfellow hosts of 'Saturday Night Live.' Was there an burning chemistry? It grew over the years. Afterwards a brace of times, it was a lot easier to address for me, and we had things to go to. I was not abundant of a contributor, except for my monologues.
When you were arrive assimilate 'SNL,' did you already apperceive the show? Sure, I saw the actual aboriginal show, and I admired it. Saturday Night Live was a huge force. It fabricated cine stars – John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray. They and Richard Pryor and Lily Tomlin and myself were the ball of the Seventies.
Do you accept affairs to plan with 'SNL' casting associates in movies? Oh, I'd adulation to. We had a activity at one point with me, Belushi and Aykroyd, alleged The Three Caballeros, but it went the way of a lot of projects. Belushi and Aykroyd and Murray and Laraine [Newman] came on my appropriate [November 25th, 1981, on NBC]. There's a nice camaraderie, but we're not the best friends. Belushi was over actuality the added night with Don Novello [Father Guido Sarducci], and we sat around, talked and bullshitted. That was fun. You don't get a adventitious to get absolute abutting because . . . "I'm off!" or they're gone. You know, you absolutely see anniversary added abandoned at rehearsals.
Do you plan to get aback to the date soon? I wish to breach in acquaintance with reside performing. Already you lose it, you've absent something absolute important. I wish to go aback with something absolutely fresh. I charge six months at the Ball Store to get aback into shape, and I attending advanced to traveling back. I'd like to alpha from the basal again. Plan up a accomplished added feeling. And to get that activity afresh of funny. Who even wants the big halls again? That's been done.
Can a acknowledged Steve Martin still play the jerk who thinks he's authoritative it if he's in fact authoritative a fool of himself? I'd still be that character. That's me. I can't airing out and be a black Lenny Bruce or change the focus of my material. Onstage, if I say I've fabricated it, it doesn't beggarly careerwise or celebritywise. It agency [smugly], "I'm good." You can consistently anticipate you're acceptable if you're absolutely not.
How are you advancing up with new actual now? My act was ad-libbed, really, for over ten years, and the acceptable ad-libs backward and that's how it evolved. I sat down and wrote some things, but appealing abundant aggregate was, "Hey, that'll work," laying at night in your bed and going, "Well, that's addition acceptable idea!" [Laughs.]
You met Bernadette Peters, the adventure goes, four years ago at a banquet in Las Vegas. What was it about her that admiring you? I admired her because she was independent. I admired her for it, and I knew it wasn't traveling to be, you know, "Oh, Steve, what are we traveling to do now? Where're you going?" She was in appearance business, we could talk.
Offstage, you're actual austere and affectionate of distant. That's what my abutting accompany say, too, you know.
Why is it that you appear off algid to people? You know, I can't acknowledgment that. That's for a compress to answer. I'm a lot bigger at it now than if I was touring. If you're touring and if you go to a party, there's automatically a celebrity-audience distance. It follows you around, abnormally if you're on the alley in baby towns. Any time there is awe, it gets actual difficult to be normal, to be yourself. But I'm not adage that that's what fabricated me the way I am. I've apparently consistently been distant.
As a kid, too? In top academy and college? Well, I had one actual abutting acquaintance in top academy and college, two altered people. Otherwise, it was harder to get to apperceive people. But I had absolute acceptable affinity with these specific friends. We had this communication, about through humor.
When you're at the Ball Store alive out bits, do you just do your atom and split? Do you adhere out with the added comics? [Dryly] No.
Do you acknowledge a banana like Andy Kaufman, who seems added absorbed in agitative the admirers than in accepting laughs? I've abandoned apparent Andy Kaufman be funny. I consistently acquainted like if what I was accomplishing afresh hadn't torn through, I would eventually accept gone on to something like that. I consistently acquainted like Andy Kaufman was the next step.
What about added comics? Do you accumulate tabs on them? Not much. I can attending at it about considerately because I don't feel like one anymore. I feel like I've confused . . . afflicted somehow, and it's so far abaft me in some airy way. I feel added absorbed against the movies now. I'm not searching for my next academy date. I wish to be a comedian-actor.
What about your next movie, 'Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid'? (Martin, through the abracadabra of blur archives, anxiously apish writing, accurate set designs and blur editing, plays scenes with Humphrey Bogart and Alan Ladd. The blur is due out in May.) Well, Carl Reiner and George Gipe and I were afterlight a Software I had written, alleged Depression. As we rewrote it, we accomplished we didn't like it, and we didn't apperceive how to fix it. We were accepting cafeteria one day and somebody said, "What if we cut to a arena from an old cine and accept our appearance placed into the movie, by analogous sets and stuff?" So it started out as one scene. Then, "What if we did a accomplished account like that?"
What is the adventure line? It's set in the 1940s. I'm a detective, and Humphrey Bogart accomplished me aggregate I know, and I'm so acceptable I've surpassed him. He starts to slip, and I accept to let him accept it and let him apperceive that all the things he accomplished me, rules like "Never abatement in love," that they're wrong. And he's got some absolutely abundant looks. He absolutely feels bad. There're like twenty or thirty stars in it, and it's blithely constructed. It's a abstruseness and it all comes to a conclusion. Using added movies' dialogue, that's amazing. It's one of those movies that's just fun; it takes you away. I accept a animosity with a lot of comedies, that they're so ailing fabricated and they attending crummy. This account looks good; it's funny and it's got character.
I heard you met afresh with Stanley Kubrick in London. It's not the affectionate of accepting you wish to put in the papers. That's the way deals are blown. But I met with him in London for about eight hours. He brand The Jerk, and we talked about accomplishing something together. He's alive on a script.
You're aswell the controlling ambassador of a late-night appearance on NBC alleged 'Twilight Theater' (a pilot will air in February). Well, that's carefully a title. I just go in and see how it's going. It's allotment of my television deal; we created a assembly aggregation that feeds account to NBC, and late-night absolutely appealed to me. We're accomplishing a prime-time bearings ball with Martin Mull – that's in development – and Twilight Theater, which is our adaptation of those Alcoa album shows from the backward Fifties. We've got Roddy McDowall as the host, and it looks like we present abundant drama. He sits by the abode and pulls books off the shelves and introduces the next, you know, section of art, and it's all array of pompous. Afresh we do New Wave, with a punk-expressionist set.
(Among planned segments: a soap-opera apology set in a top academy whose citizenry is three-quarters punks and one-quarter preppies; a New Wavey video blow of Rosemary Clooney accomplishing "Come on a My House," accompanied by Spazz Attack, the ballerina in Devo's video of "Satisfaction.")
Now that you're two films accomplished it, what do you anticipate of 'The Jerk'? I saw it recently; it came on cable TV. I sat there and . . . "You know, this is appealing funny." I admired it. There are things I would've done different, but I accustomed that was me then; that's the appearance of the film.
'The Jerk' got formed over by the critics, and that came about the time you were accepting airtight for the 'Cruel Shoes' book. Added writers said you were repeating too abounding $.25 and putting out too abounding albums. How did you acknowledge to all this? The affair that's amiss is that they [the critics] try to accomplish you abashed of your work. And cipher has the appropriate to do that. We do this out of – oh, I can't say why [laughs]. I was gonna say love, but that's not true. Love sounds like you're implying [in a aboveboard voice], "I wish to go out there and accomplish those humans happy." And I've never anticipation that. I capital to get onstage and exercise this craft. It's to amuse yourself.
. . . Or to accomplish the apple a bigger place? I'll acquaint you, I'm abiding musicians don't feel they're traveling out there authoritative humans happy. They're blessed with affective their fingers beyond the close of that guitar, and that's the way I felt. It just happens in ball that that's apparently what it looks like you're doing. I never anticipation I was authoritative them happy. I consistently ample they hated me. I acquainted blessed that the appearance went right, and if I had this adorning moment, I acquainted there was communication. That's why if the affair got out of ascendancy and assertive individuals in the audience& – you know, the rock-audience affection with some guy throwing a beer canteen at you and the humans active up onstage. That absolutely got to me because it threw aggregate out of sync. I abstruse how to handle it, but I didn't wish to have to handle it.
How accept you handled the money that's appear with success? Well, I don't wish to complete like I accept $ 100 million. I did well. I accept no complaints.
You accept what? About $50 million? That's about eighty amateur [laughs]. I accept no problems with money at all. I'm not depressed because of it. It's so relative. You can artifice over $100 but not over $100,000. But I alternate to altercate money because it's – I don't affliction who you are, there's a absolute abhorrence of affluent people, there's abhorrence – this absolute base attitude against the affluent as admitting you didn't acquire it and that it was easy, or that there's a abundant aberration amid the affluent and the not-rich. What's the difference? Now why is he an asshole? I mean, I didn't alpha it out as a business. There are two things – what you do and the business of what you do – and I don't feel like a businessman.
Bill McEuen told me that he capital to do able-bodied added to accept abandon than for the money. But he aswell said, "While we're hot, why not yield it? If we don't, we'll abhorrence ourselves in ten years." I accept to acquaint you something. Bill vacillates, and it depends on the affection he's in. Sometimes he'll say, "Fuck you, we're abandoned accomplishing this for the money, and if we don't get the money, we're not gonna do it." Added times he's the a lot of artistic, dedicated, devoted-to-art accepting I've anytime met. And I anticipate all of us are like that. You're authoritative so abundant on a concert tour, and it excites you a little and you go, "How much?" There's a assertive adventure to it. It's detached. I don't affliction if I'm accepting 5 cents for a appearance or $100,000, it's just as hard. The plan is the same, and you're not gonna let it die. I mean, you're out there sweating, alive for something else.
You know, talking about affairs – that's a accomplished style. You're on the road, you're affairs records, it's a aeon of your show-business activity that maybe happens once, or two or three times. Everything's advancing together. The alley was meant to advertise records, it was meant for you to be out there and be Amount One; it was to do everything, to backfire and ride that wave. But it abandoned comes every already in a while, and now I'm happy. I carefully abandoned to calm it down, to let it subside, because if you're on that wave, appealing anon it's gonna break, just by its own weight.
Is there that faculty of accepting retired a champ? You didn't quit, but you stepped aback by your own choice.
That's right. Pull it aback and just say, "I'm gonna get ailing of this, they're gonna get ailing of it," and you just go . . . [Martin leans back, allows himself one of his wide, eye-closing smiles, breathes out and sits up again] "That was wonderful."
This adventure is from the February 18th, 1982 affair of Rolling Stone.
From The Archives Affair 363: February 18, 1982
