A review of Underpants with some new info on Steve


Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Wisconsin)
January 30, 2005 Sunday
Final Edition
Pg. 8
Rep's `Underpants' still fits Steve Martin
DAMIEN JAQUES, Journal Sentinel theater critic, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

On a rainy night in July in 1978, Steve Martin stood on the Alpine Valley Music Theatre stage in East Troy in his trademark white suit, with an arrow sticking through his head. He juggled three oranges, played the banjo and made a dime disappear for 15,000 people.

Martin finished his act by announcing he would show how a jailbird escapes from prison. With spotlights raking the stage in a crisscross pattern, the comedian ran back and forth across the width of the platform and then disappeared out the back door.

It was Steve Martin, 32 years old and at the height of his stand-up career. He had not previously performed for an audience that large.

Peering into the future, a film career for the native Texan was not an artistic stretch. But it's unlikely a single person in that Alpine Valley crowd guessed that the comic who recorded the novelty hit "King Tut" would become a playwright, novelist and regular essayist for The New Yorker magazine. That would have seemed as improbable as Sonny Bono becoming a congressman.

There was obviously a lot more to the silly Steve Martin of the '70s than met the eye. Milwaukee Repertory Theater artistic director Joseph Hanreddy, hardly an arrow-through-the-head guy, thinks so.

He chose to mount the comedian's "Picasso at the Lapin Agile" in 1999, and the show set a box office record for the Quadracci Powerhouse Theater that has since been broken. Hanreddy selected another Martin play for this season. "The Underpants" opens tonight in the Stiemke Theater.

The artistic director counts himself among the fans of Martin's work as a performer, filmmaker and writer. "I keep his quote, `I believe that entertainment can aspire to be art, and can become art, but if you set out to make art you're an idiot' on my desk," Hanreddy recently said.

"The Underpants" owes its existence to perhaps the smallest of theatrical genres, the German farce. Written as "Die Hosen" in 1911 by Carl Stern-heim, it was considered dangerous enough by imperial authorities and the Nazis to be banned during World War I and World War II.

Martin was invited by New York's Classic Stage Company in 2002 to adapt "Die Hosen" into an English language script. He shifted the emphasis from marital and political farce to more of a statement about the fleeting capriciousness of fame. But the basic facts of the story remain the same.

During a formal military parade in Dusseldorf, Germany, early in the the 20th century, the wife of a minor government bureaucrat drops her drawers as the kaiser passes by. Is it a political statement? Is it a signal of sexual availability from a bored and ignored spouse? Or is it an accident?

Whatever the truth, the woman briefly becomes the center of attention. Several men pursue her.

Hanreddy finds a parallel in a recent event that caused a cultural brouhaha -- Janet Jackson's momentary exposure of a breast during last year's Super Bowl.

"This is really Steve Martin's play," director Risa Brainin said during an interview. The theater artist based in Santa Barbara, Calif., is staging her first show for the Rep, but she has directed two shows, including a memorable production of "Uncle Vanya," for the American Players Theatre.

"The Sternheim version is much darker. Martin made the play his own; he softened the play. If you did the Sternheim now, I don't know if we would find it funny."

Brainin said she and her cast are not treating the piece as farce. "I think Martin has his own style. Imagine Steve Martin reading all of the lines. That is the style.

"He is not Jim Carrey. That is always way over the top. Steve Martin's humor always stays grounded."

The director said the piece includes Martin's comic comments on developing situations within the play. She described the rehearsal process as trying to get into the comedian's mind. "Let's make a choice Steve would enjoy," Brainin said is the prevailing principle in deciding how to play a moment.

"In any comedy, what's difficult is not to look for the joke but to find what is human," Brainin continued. "At the end of the day you want people to walk out of the theater with something a little richer than slipping on a banana peel. Steve Martin does not write cotton candy."

Brainin has a theory about Martin's success across such a broad range of media. "His writing has great skill. Maybe that is the key to his successes from the start, even as a stand-up.

"You get a warm feeling from Steve Martin, either watching or reading him. He is intellectually stimulating and emotionally stimulating.

"It all gets back to that human thing. No matter how outrageous his characters, they are always connected to the real."
- posted by sookeyjane 1/30/2005 10:17:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Johnny Carson, with a bit of Steve


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/29/arts/television/29cars.html?ex=1108011600&en=
7ed3ac5523dc1680&ei=5070
New York Times
Arts
Quiet Times, but Lots of Laughs, in the Years After 'Tonight'
By NICK MADIGAN
Published: January 29, 2005

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 28 - There were only a few places where Johnny Carson let his hair down. The poker table was one of them.

Mr. Carson's notorious off-screen reserve dissipated during the monthly poker games that the film producer Daniel Melnick held for years at his house in the Hollywood Hills. The regulars included a panoply of well-known names, like Steve Martin, Neil Simon, Chevy Chase, Carl Reiner and Barry Diller.

"In our game we all became adolescents," Mr. Melnick, who had known Mr. Carson since their early days in television in New York, said in an interview this week, after receiving news of the former "Tonight" show host's death on Sunday.

"There was a lot of kibitzing, a lot of laughing," Mr. Melnick said. "We were a little more raucous than we'd be under other conditions."

Still, Mr. Melnick said, he always had to warn Mr. Carson in advance if he planned to invite a new player to the game, usually to fill the chair of an absent regular. It was a long drive from Mr. Carson's home in Malibu, and he did not like surprises.

"John was not comfortable playing with someone he didn't know," Mr. Melnick said. "I'd have to brief him beforehand."

Mr. Melnick, a producer on two of Mr. Martin's movies, "Roxanne" (1987) and "L.A. Story" (1991), said the poker games were still being held, in Mr. Martin's house, and that Mr. Carson had played as recently as last month.

"He looked fine to me," Mr. Melnick said. "We knew about the emphysema, but he wasn't carrying oxygen. He looked tanned from spending all that time on the boat."

Johnny Carson's shyness, which he readily acknowledged, was one of the paradoxes of his character, and it became startlingly evident after his retirement from a 30-year run on NBC's "Tonight" show in 1992, when he disappeared from public view and refused virtually all requests for interviews and personal appearances. He focused on tennis, spent a lot of time on his yacht, immersed himself in books, and learned Russian and Swahili. And he played cards.

After his retirement, Mr. Carson also supervised the editing and marketing of the videotape and DVD compilations of his years on the "Tonight" show, working with his nephew, Jeff Sotzing, the president of Carson Entertainment.

"He and I put those together," Mr. Sotzing said. "We had to see which segments worked and which didn't work."

Mr. Carson continued to write after leaving the "Tonight" show. He occasionally sent jokes to David Letterman, host of CBS's "Late Show." Mr. Letterman used some of them in his monologues. Mr. Carson also wrote for The New Yorker after his retirement.

In November, Mr. Carson donated more than $5 million to the University of Nebraska, his alma mater, in Lincoln, and also made substantial donations to a number of institutions in Norfolk, Neb., the town in which he grew up. He gave more than $2 million to a cancer treatment center in the town, and $500,000 to the local library, among other gifts. A memorial to Mr. Carson is scheduled for Sunday afternoon at the Johnny Carson Theater at the high school in Norfolk.

After Mr. Carson retired from "Tonight," Ed McMahon, who sat next to him on the couch for three decades, saw considerably less of the host. "We'd meet for lunch maybe three or four times a year," he recalled. "But after a time I felt I was intruding. For the last year or so I only talked to him on the phone."

Ed Hookstratten, a Beverly Hills lawyer who represented Mr. Carson for 15 years, said his client "was very much a man of privacy."

"He would do the show, get in his car, go home, have dinner with his wife and relax," Mr. Hookstratten said. "He did not need people socially. He loved tennis, and he loved his yacht. After he retired, he moved his office onto his yacht, and he'd go there daily."

Mr. Carson spent a good deal of time traveling, often in the company of Bob Wright, the chairman and chief executive of NBC Universal, and Mr. Wright's wife, Suzanne. They went to Africa in 1994, England the following year and Scotland the year after that, among other places. They visited the San Juan Islands on Mr. Carson's yacht, the Serengeti.

Mr. Wright, who estimated that about 90 percent of his relationship with Mr. Carson was "outside the workplace," said the former "Tonight" host was "not reclusive at all."
- posted by sookeyjane 1/29/2005 07:28:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Wow! We're famous


This is just a personal note because occasionally doing this site blows me away.

I started this just because I had soooo much Stevestuff that it seemed a shame to hide it under a basket. I knew that I had access to some extraordinary sources that were unavailable to others, and it was a shame to have it and not share it. Hence the Compleat Steve.

The response has been interesting. I expected that fellow completists from the stevemartin.com messageboard would frequent the place, but beyond that I had no idea who would find it. It's been used by the Goethe Society of Australia to the producer of the recent Cinematheque Awards show. I answer lots of questions about Steve from the simple to the extremely obscure. Other people send me articles I missed, so this is not a solo operation -- and thanks to them.

Since I started watching statistics, I've had about a 100+ viewers a day -- sometimes more, sometimes less. However, I just checked the stats and found a 10-20fold jump in that. Turns out that Airbag Industries, a very interesting blog, BB Spot, another blog, and Yahoo Picks all linked to the site at about the same time. Yahoo did a nice review as well. Thanks to all.

So new visitors and returning ones as well, thanks for coming. I hope you find something of interest.

SJ
- posted by sookeyjane 1/28/2005 05:46:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Best Headline


City Theatre replaces 'Hearts Are Wild' with 'Underpants'

Pittsburgh Tribune Review
January 25, 2005

that is the usual progression
- posted by sookeyjane 1/26/2005 01:42:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

For you sticklers on attribution


the other day, i posted the article where Steve paid tribute Johnny Carson. i cited to the New York Times online. here is the actual cite:

The New York Times
January 25, 2005 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
Section A; Column 1; Editorial Desk; Pg. 19
The Man in Front of the Curtain
By Steve Martin.

- posted by sookeyjane 1/26/2005 01:35:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

An article on the Cinematheque Award Show


The Daily News of Los Angeles
January 22, 2005 Saturday
VALLEY EDITION, U18
STEVE MARTIN TRIBUTE AMID ALL THE JOKES
By Valerie Kuklenski Staff Writer

STARS PAYING tribute at this year's American Cinematheque Award ceremony left their usual superlatives at the door and came ready to have fun with - and poke fun at - the guest of honor, Steve Martin.

The Beverly Hills dinner, held Nov. 12 and finally ready for telecast Sunday, was closer to a Friars Club roast than a conventional presentation by the Hollywood film organization.

Martin, 59, was chosen for the midcareer honor for his acting and writing on the big screen, but he also was praised for work ranging from stand-up comedy to writing of TV, plays and novellas. And banjo picking and fake dancing.

"Tonight we honor a stand-up comedian, the first rock-star comedian who filled stadiums and arenas, sold records, won two Grammys"' Robin Williams said. "And you have to remember he had an arrow through his head at the time."

The presentation featured clips from several of Martin's movies, including "The Jerk," "All of Me," "Pennies From Heaven,'' ``Dirty Rotten Scoundrels," "L.A. Story'' and ``Parenthood."

"Steve's films will be studied long after we're gone, because two things are timeless: the comedy of Mr. Steve Martin and community college," his "Three Amigos" co-star Martin Short said.

Producer Brian Grazer and director Ron Howard said they were flattered to be asked to present the award, until it dawned on them that Martin was avoiding taking the stage directly after the funniest people in the room.

"Steve's thinking, who does he know who has some industry status but at the same time is really dull?" Grazer said.

"So it's with tremendous disgust and great scorn that we introduce Steve Martin," Howard said.

"This evening is especially meaningful to me because when I was a kid, my friends and I used to meet after school and get all dressed up and play American Cinematheque awards show," Martin said.

He thanked his first manager and agent with warm and amusing anecdotes, then lumped together all those currently guiding his career in one flurry of words, reasoning that it would make it easier for the editors to snip it out of the telecast.

Martin then turned serious as he talked about his work.

"Comedy can be predictable, surprising, simple or elaborate. But the one thing it can never be is finally and forever mastered," he said. "Just when you think you know it all, your joke is left reverberating in an unnerving silence.

"That quest, that feeling that there is still something left to understand, has kept me going all these years."

Then the dry wit resurfaced as he accepted the award "on behalf of all millionaire comedians everywhere."
- posted by sookeyjane 1/26/2005 01:25:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Steve's tribute to Johnny Carson


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/25/opinion/25martin.html?oref=login&hp
The Man in Front of the Curtain
By STEVE MARTIN
Published: January 25, 2005
Remembering Johnny Carson

Los Angeles

DEAR JOHNNY,

This letter comes a little late.

I remember seeing the tape of my first appearance on your show, on a home recording, a reel-to-reel Sony prototype video recorder, probably around 1972. What my friends and I ended up watching was not me, but you. It's almost impossible to look away from oneself onscreen, but you made it possible, because there were lessons in what you did. You and Jack Benny taught me about generosity toward other comedians, about the appreciation of the plight of the pro, as valuable as any lessons I ever learned.

Your gift - though I'm sure you wouldn't have called it a gift - was, as I see it, a blend of modesty and confidence. You wanted to do the job and do it well. You allowed the spirit of your idols, Stan Laurel and Jonathan Winters among them, to creep into you, and you found a way to twist their inspiration and make it new. In you I saw simplicity, joy, politeness, sympathy. Your death reminds me of the loss of America's innocence, the distance we have come from your sly, boyish leers to our flagrant, overstated embarrassments for parents and children.

If I could wake you up for a minute, I would ask you to tell me how good you thought you were. "Between you and me," I think you would whisper, "I know I was great in a subtle, secret way." I think you would also say: "I enjoyed and understood the delights of split-second timing, of watching a comedian squirm and then rescue himself, of the surprises that arise from the fractional seconds of desperation when the comedian senses that the end of his sentence might fall to silence."

Your Nebraskan pragmatism - and knowledge of the magician's tricks - tilted you toward the sciences, especially astronomy. (Maybe this is why the occultists, future predictors, spoon-benders or mind readers on your show never left without having been challenged.) You knew how to treat everyone, from the pompous actor to the nervous actress, and which to give the appropriate kindness. You enjoyed the unflappable grannies who knitted log-cabin quilts, as well as the Vegas pros who machine-gunned the audience into hysterical fits. You were host to writers, children, intellectuals and nitwits and served them all well, and served the audience by your curiosity and tolerance. You gave each guest the benefit of the doubt, and in this way you exemplified an American ideal: you're nuts but you're welcome here.

We loved watching baby tigers paw you and koalas relieve themselves on you and seeing you in your swami hat or Tarzan loincloth, and we loved hearing Ed's ripostes and watching you glare at him as though you were going to fire him, but we knew you weren't.

We, the millions whom you affected, will weep inside when we see the reruns, the clips of you walking out from behind the curtain, the moment in the monologue when a joke bombed; we'll recall your deep appreciation of both genuine and struggling talent.

Because you retreated into retirement so completely, let me thank you, in death, for the things I couldn't quite say to you in life. Thank you for the opportunity you gave me and others, and thank you - despite divisive wars and undulating political strife - for the one hour a night across 30 years of American life when we were entertained purely, delightfully and wisely.
- posted by sookeyjane 1/25/2005 01:35:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Okay, you Aussies, Get busy


Apparently there was a pic of steve strolling through St. Barts in the Sydney Sunday paper.

The Sunday Telegraph (Sydney, Australia)
January 16, 2005 Sunday
FEATURES; Star Watch / Social Pages; Pg. 128

****
He's so wacky: Actor Steve Martin's moustache (above) is the funniest thing he's done in years -- shame he chose a stroll through St Barth in the Carribean to unveil it;
****


Come on you Aussies, find that pic for us. It wasn't in the online version.
- posted by sookeyjane 1/18/2005 03:00:00 AM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

"Ma! I got a job sitting on Steve's face! And they paid me to do it!"


Sunday Times (London)
January 16, 2005, Sunday
Features; Culture; 6
Woman on the verge
By Fiona Morrow

Emily Mortimer has never been known to shrink from the edgy.
Little wonder then that she was prepared to risk it all in Hollywood - and now she's come out winning. By FIONA MORROW

****
She says she found The Pink Panther even more daunting. "There's something just so potentially mortifying about trying to be funny, and failing. I've got very little pride about a lot of things -taking my clothes off being one of them. But if you're meant to be funny and you're not, that is excruciatingly embarrassing."

Steve Martin (who plays Inspector Clouseau) went out of his way to make her feel comfortable. "He was so kind and gentle and appreciative," she recalls. "All my scenes are with Steve, and I was just praying it'd be like playing tennis with someone who's a million times better than you: somehow you lift your game because you can't not." She plays Nicole, Clouseau's secretary. "She's very perky and French and does a lot of filing. But she's also completely physically inept in the same way he is. So whenever they're in a room together, inevitably they end up in a terribly rude compromising position, although it's completely innocent."

The irony wasn't lost on Mortimer. "I made Steve laugh one day," she says, pleased with herself. "I said, 'This is meant to be my clever Hollywood move, my escaping all those risque films where I've taken off my clothes and had custard smeared all over me. I've been to the dark side, and this was supposed to be a safe Hollywood comedy to balance it all out -and all I do with you is sit on your face and simulate sex.'"
- posted by sookeyjane 1/18/2005 02:52:00 AM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Steve at Gallery Openings


thanks to the marvelous R.L.


Perry Rubenstein, Larry Gagosian, and Steve Martin

http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/contributors/artset/artset09_24_04.php
David Patrick Columbia's
New York Social Diary
September 24, 2004, Volume I, Number 2

The Art Set
Charlie Scheips

A Tale of Two Cities

The newest splash this season took place last Friday night at Perry Rubenstein’s new gallery on 23rd Street in Chelsea right off 10th Avenue. Perry has been on the scene for the past two decades starting first as a collector after earning a chunk of change modeling for the likes of the late fashion designer (and insatiable art collector) Gianni Versace. Male models made that kind of money then? Nevertheless, as a famous artist reminded me years ago — all collectors are potential dealers.

Perry opened his first gallery on Prince Street in 1990 when Soho was the contemporary art nexus of the city. He opened just as the booming late 1980’s art market explosion was rapidly about to bust. He closed the gallery three years later but never disappeared from the scene. Instead, as many other dealers did during those fragile years of the art economy, he chose to work privately — and it seems, lucratively — re-selling blue chip post-war art.

Rubenstein’s new gallery is actually two galleries designed by architect James Harb. The main gallery saw the debut of South African born artist Robin Rhode’s installation of photography, video and wall drawings; while around the corner on 24th Street Elaine Sturtevant’s 1990 homage to Andy Warhol’s flower paintings are on view.

Rubenstein is married to art world publicist Sara Fitzmaurice, whose Fitz & Co agency counts both the Art/Basel and Art/Basel/Miami art fairs as clients. Perry’s partner in the gallery is Sylvia Chivaratanond, a former curator at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art and a contributing curator for the Arsenale installation at the last Venice Biennale in 2003. See the big spread on the gallery by Judd Tully in this month's Art & Auction.

The opening was a mob scene both inside and on the street. I went over with Adrian Rosenfeld, formerly of Matthew Marks, who opened Grimm/Rosenfeld gallery in Münich last year. Adrian, and Andreas Grimm are currently showing Matt Saunders paintings inspired by film director Rainer Fassbinder's color-saturated banquet scene from Martha. After brief chats with Abigail Asher and the Judd Foundation’s Madeleine Hoffmann, we headed around the corner to take in the Sturtevant’s Warhol tribute, stopping by Barbara Gladstone’s opening for Miroslaw Balka. Warhol Foundation President Joel Wachs introduced me to Magnus von Plessen who will have a show at Gladstone's next spring. Also stopped by Oliver Kamm’s 5BE gallery for Cannon Hudson painting show before the rain started to pour and we jumped in a taxi headed downtown.

To celebrate the opening of his gallery, Perry invited a couple hundred friends, artists, curators, collectors, and colleagues to mark the occasion. The dinner was at the spanking new Lure Fishbar underneath the Prada’s Rem Koolhaus-designed store at the corner of Prince and Mercer. Although we thought we’d be the first one’s there, actor and collector Steve Martin and Larry Gagosian were already entertaining a table of friends in the dining room while the rest of us bellied-up to the bar.

After a heavy cocktail hour, we were treated to a delicious three courses that I am told is representative of chef Josh Capon’s cuisine. The location’s previous incarnation was Canteen, whose retro-mod décor did little to disguise the claustrophobia of that basement space. The new restaurant is a remarkable transformation. It is designed in the spirit of an ocean-going yacht with a handsome palette of navy blue, white and teak — and the faux skylights throughout do much to alleviate the sense of entrapment I felt in the room’s previous guise. It was designed by CAN Resource’s Derek Sanders and Serge Becker — and backed by the John McDonald and Josh Pickard — the same team that brought us Lever House last year.

Featured artist Robin Rhode and his wife Sabinah Odumosu were joined by other artists from the Rubenstein stable including Amir Zaki, Andrew Guenther, Piero Golia, Maike Abetz & Oliver Drescher, Jesper Just, Lina Bertucci, as well as Australian–born artist Tracey Moffatt. There were scores of collectors including and Chicago’s Lewis & Susan Manilow, Connie Caplan, Glenn Fuhrman, David and Danielle Ganek, Daniel and Margaret Loeb, Michael and Ninah Lynne, Joe and Arlene McHugh, Frank and Nina Moore, and Allison and Neil Rubler.

The curatorial set was represented by Dan Cameron, Thelma Golden, Douglas Fogle, Lisa Dennison Laura Hoptman, Yvonne Force Villareal, Mark Coetzee, Christian Rattemeyer, Lydia Yee, Sophie Perrier, Yukie Kamiya, Christine Kim, Clara Kim, Olukemi Ilesanmi, and Tumelo Mosaka. Art merchants of all stripes were a strong contingent as well including David Zwirner, Mary Boone, Kazuhito Yoshii, Darlene Lutz, Thea Westreich, Tony Shafrazi, Christophe Van de Weghe, Cristina Grajales, Adam Sheffer, Alberto Mugrabi, Andrew Fabricant and Laura Paulson.

But the word wouldn’t get out the same way without the press, so Perry had a speckling of that crowd around the room including Brook Mason, Josh Baer, Adrian Dannatt, Daniel Kunitz, Judd Tully, James Reginato, Mary Barone, Edward Leffingwell, Anne Stringfield, Phoebe Hoban, Tim Griffin, A.M. Homes, Andrea Scott, Amanda Sharp and Charles LaBelle. The party was a smash — and fun too.

Meanwhile, on the other coast, a celebration of a different sort is happening. Soon after Rubenstein closed his gallery in 1993, Blum & Poe gallery opened in a Santa Monica gallery complex on Broadway Boulevard. I first met Tim Blum in 1990 while I was still living in Los Angeles and organizing the Los Angeles Contemporary Art Fair that took place at the downtown LA Convention Center. Tim had heard that the London-based company I worked for, Andry Montgomery, was starting to entertain notions of a contemporary art fair in Tokyo and wanted to make our acquaintance before he moved to Japan.

A few month’s later, I flew over to Tokyo for two weeks to re-evaluate the logic of a Tokyo fair. The dealers there were not convinced they needed such an animal and I didn't want a disaster in Tokyo to affect the strong gains we had made with the LA fair.

As it happened, I ended up on the plane with an odd assortment of friends heading there for one reason or another. James Grauerholz, who worked closely with writer William Burroughs, was on the plane accompanied by Timothy and Barbara Leary on their way to open a temporary William Burroughs Nightclub. Also on the plane was Dale Chihuly on his way to install a group of his glass sculptures in a Buddhist temple. It was a quite a crew to travel around Tokyo with. Tim had mastered speaking Japanese and I soon enlisted him as my ad hoc translator in my meetings with the Tokyo art establishment.

The Tokyo art and club scene was expanding exponentially and Tim had arrived just at the right moment when the art scene and the Japanese economy were in overdrive. My headquarters for that visit was the glamorous Okura Hotel — designed by Yoshiro Taniguchi, father of MOMA architect Yoshio Taniguchi.

In the end, we decided to cancel the Tokyo art fair but Tim and I remained friends. For the next four years, he shuttled back and forth between Tokyo and Los Angeles and managed to meet and subsequently, champion a group of young Japanese artists, which included Murakami and Nara — two of the most collected contemporary artists today.

In 1994, Tim Blum opened a gallery with Jeff Poe in Santa Monica and it quickly became one of the most talked about galleries on the West Coast, and later, the world. Last year, they moved the gallery to more centrally located La Cienega Boulevard — heralding a new shift in the geography of the Los Angeles art scene. Actually that’s where the LA art scene began 40 years ago when Irving Blum (no relation) was showing Andy Warhol’s soup cans a few blocks up the street. The gallery, an existing industrial building, was re-imagined by Esher Gunwardena, best known for the restoration of John Lautner’s famous Chemosphere house in the Hollywood Hills now owned by Angelika Taschen.

The gallery had four artists in the most recent Whitney Biennial: Sam Durant (the gallery’s artist currently on view for their 10th anniversary exhibition), Sharon Lockhart, Slater Bradley, and Dave Muller. Dave is one of my favorite artists — his installation at the Whitney, “That Hollywood Adage: be nice to the people on the way up because they are the same people on the way down,” was one of the best pieces in the show. The middle section of Dave Muller's “That Hollywood Adage: be nice to the people on the way up because they are the same people on the way down.”
He’s also mined more out of his LP collection than one would think possible as a “platform for autobiographical introspection.” Muller is the next exhibition at Blum & Poe opening on October 23rd.

Two galleries in two very different cities: One with a history and another just beginning. The thing that binds them is their commitment to showing the art of today with all the risks and benefits that go with the territory. Great art dealers do more than simply transact sales. They help incubate, and then send into the world, the art of their time. When the late founder of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Joseph Shapiro was asked by his mother if you could make a living in the art world he replied, “no mother, from this I make a life.”



- posted by sookeyjane 1/10/2005 03:14:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Not venus rising from the sea


Apparently on Wednesday, Rush and Malloy's gossip column in the NY Daily News had a pic of Steve on St. Barth's. Unfortunately, it was only in the print edition, not online.

So be on the lookout for St. Barth's pics. Here is the only mention I have so far.

Daily News (New York)
January 5, 2005 Wednesday
SPORTS FINAL EDITION
GOSSIP; Pg. 26
TERI'S 'DESPERATE' FOR REAL-LIFE LOVE
BY GEORGE RUSH AND JOANNA MOLLOY With Jo Piazza and Chris Rovzar

Graphics: REFLEXNEWS HE CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA: Steve Martin emerges (or tries to) from the surf on the isle of St. Barth's. It looks like the star of the upcoming "Pink Panther" remake has taken Inspector Clouseau's bumbling ways to heart.
- posted by sookeyjane 1/09/2005 01:19:00 AM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

And the reference for the WaPo is...


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35008-2004Dec29.html
A Few Words on the Passing of Dave Barry's Column
(Or, one funny man with two first names takes on another)

By Steve Martin
Sunday, January 2, 2005; Page W12


how did i miss this? lexis-nexis let me down.sj
- posted by sookeyjane 1/04/2005 07:30:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Steve, you devil... it takes one to know one


thanks to an alert KMT, one hot mama

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opinion/10561380.htm?1c
Posted on Tue, Jan. 04, 2005
Great Satanist will be missed
DAVE BARRY, REALLY, IS DEVILISHLY FUNNY
By Steve Martin

Dave Barry is going on an ``indefinite hiatus'' only to attract attention to himself. Not famous enough, Dave? Why don't you go on hiatus! Oh, and make it indefinite. That'll grab some headlines.

Dave says he wants to spend more time with his family. But I hesitate to tell you that Dave's family is a hash pipe and some old Playboy magazines. Yes, Dave has written many funny essays that have appeared in our nation's newspapers. However, most of his material is plagiarized from his own mind. Often, a funny idea will come to Dave, and then he will use that idea in one of his columns. Also, he will sometimes have a perfectly legitimate sentence, and then twist that sentence all out of shape so it will read funny. Another device that he uses is the old trick of putting the punch line at the end of the sentence or paragraph. These tactics are abhorrent.

And by the way, you know how he often says, ``And I'm not making this up?'' Well, he made that up.

Dave Barry, and I am not making this up, loves Satan.

Yes, he's really going on hiatus to give himself more time to worship Satan. When you think of all the Daves in the Bible, most of them are Satan worshipers. The snake, if you recall, was named Dave. And who is it who often takes a hiatus? Satan. Remember the movie ``Satan Takes a Hiatus''?

Also, Dave Barry plays in a band with Stephen King. Stephen King does not play music with people unless they're able to shine beams of light from their eyes that can set fire to wastebaskets. And I've seen Dave at dinner parties light people's cigarettes just by glaring at them, or sometimes he'll just reheat fondue.

But I will miss Dave. I'm going to miss every Sunday morning when I would run outside and get the paper and read his column and laugh out loud and feel sick with envy because he's so funny. Now I'm just going to have to settle for knowing that he's still there, in Florida, being funnier than all of us put together, but that the rat is keeping it to himself.

STEVE MARTIN is exactly who you think he is. He wrote this article for the Washington Post.
- posted by sookeyjane 1/04/2005 07:26:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego, er, Steve Martin?


this is the last known (to me) sighting.
thanks to rl who is NOT a stalker

http://www.gawker.com/news/culture/stalker/gawker-stalker-chevy-chase-embraces-senility-026983.php
Gawker Stalker: Chevy Chase Embraces Senility

Sightings are sent in by readers; send yours to tips@gawker.com.
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saw steve martin at barney's this afternoon (12/3). appeared to be wandering alone through women's' clothes...
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- posted by sookeyjane 1/04/2005 05:53:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS