Steve Martin - Party Boy


This is just too too

http://www.excessdaily.com/schlebweb/profile/Steve_Martin

see the parties steve's attended!
find out his social quotient!
throw up!
- posted by sookeyjane 12/31/2006 10:49:00 PM PERMALINK 1 COMMENTS

 

A St. Barts retrospective


It's time for Steve's annual trek to St. Barts. Since there's no guarantee he'll make the papers this year, here's a view from a few years ago.

http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/01.30.03/biter-0305.html
Biter

One Wild & Crazy Vacation

By Loren Stein

WHAT CAN BITER say about the week we vacationed with Steve Martin? Well, not really vacationed with him, more like stalked him. OK, not technically legally stalked him, more like kept showing up. Actually, it could be said that Steve Martin stalked us. Mercifully, Biter's not sure he ever noticed, regardless of who stalked whom, but we sure did.

Steve Martin is a big-name guy; he's all over the place. Multitalented, a man of the arts, a Renaissance man. He's a gifted comedian and comedy writer. He's an accomplished banjo player. He stars in movies (comedies and dramas); he writes books and plays and New Yorker pieces; he's on Saturday Night Live reruns. He's recently onstage at San Francisco's Herbst Theatre conversing with a mathematician (then Robin Williams shows up and steals the show). He's a sophisticated art collector. And come March 23, he'll be in his black tux hosting the 75th Academy Awards, for the second time, spinning out his droll wit and crack comic timing for a worldwide audience.

"I'm pleased to be hosting the Oscars again," said Steve Martin, "because fear and nausea always make me lose weight."

We like Steve Martin. We respect him for surviving and, moreover, thriving in the cutthroat cultures of Hollywood and Broadway, not to mention the publishing business. He seems like a classy guy--smart, sensitive and thoughtful.

So there was Biter, on vacation in St. Bart's, the tiny 8-square-mile Caribbean island in the French West Indies. People speak French there; women in sarongs go happily, lazily topless on the white-sand beaches; residents zip around the narrow, winding streets on little scooters with dogs holding on for dear life on the back. Boats rock back and forth anchored in the lovely harbor, framed by brilliant red sunsets. Grand villas with spectacular views dot the hillsides. The air is soft and warm; the water dazzlingly blue and so clear that Biter can see straight through to the sand and to the fish swimming below.

But despite all this solitude, we could never shake Steve Martin. We'd go to a restaurant and, lo and behold, he'd be there at the next table, dining with his girlfriend (we're pretty sure) and another couple. We'd go to a secluded beach, and Steve Martin would show up and, stripping down to yellow and black striped trunks, energetically body surf 10 feet from us. We'd walk to a parking lot along a dirt road and turn around, and Steve Martin would be one step behind us.

One day, Biter was reading Elmore Leonard's Be Cool on the beach in front of our bungalow, after having once again had dinner, the night before, at a table next to Steve Martin. The book, amazingly it seemed, suddenly referenced Steve Martin. Biter exclaimed, "My book has Steve Martin in it!" Biter looked up, and there was Steve Martin striding down the beach directly in front of us, not more than 15 feet away. Was this fate or what? What did this cosmic collision course mean?

Biter doesn't really know, but we do know that it's hard to overlook Steve Martin. He has a shock of thick white hair. His face looks lived in, but he's in excellent shape for a 57-year-old. He looked serious and contemplative almost all of the time, at least when we saw him. People seemed to leave him alone, although they must have recognized him. He's undeniably a world-famous person, a fixture in our collective consciousness.

What does that feel like? Biter wondered, while watching him slyly from the corner of our eye after the fifth time we ran into him. Does it feel powerful and thrilling to know absolutely that you are known (and, hopefully, loved) by so many people? Or does it feel profoundly alienating, make you feel perpetually self-conscious and watchful, moving through the world in a brightly lit bubble of notoriety?

Biter sure noticed him. We felt giddy and star-struck when we were around him. Look, there he is! Steve Martin! A bona fide star! Then just as quickly, we felt dopey and immature. Can't we be more grown-up about this? We hemmed and hawed over whether we should say something to him; we rehearsed our opening lines. How would he react? "Boy, isn't it weird how we keep bumping into you?" "We'd just like to say we really admire your work. We loved you when you were the wild and crazy guy with Dan Aykroyd." Or maybe, "How does it feel to know that wherever you go, nearly everyone knows who you are, that you are an indelible part of so many people's lives?"

Biter elected not to say anything to Steve Martin. Why intrude on his privacy? We thought, he's due a vacation from it all, too.

So on Biter's last night on the island, eating at our new favorite restaurant right on the water overlooking the dreamy harbor, we said, "This won't be a fitting last night if we don't see Steve Martin." And wouldn't you know it, as we leave we walk right past Steve Martin eating dinner at his table, happily--we hope--oblivious.

From the January 30-February 5, 2003 issue of Metro, Silicon Valley's Weekly Newspaper.
- posted by sookeyjane 12/28/2006 12:08:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

More on Steve and banjo


This has some different info than the Trischka article published earlier

The New York Times
December 17, 2006 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Section 14NJ; Column 1; New Jersey Weekly Desk; Pg. 12
Five-String Sensation
By TAMMY LA GORCE

FAIR LAWN:
LEGENDARY musicians are supposed to make their pyrotechnics look easy: deftness and effortlessness, or at least the appearance of it, go hand in hand. But the banjo virtuoso Tony Trischka, who has lived on an unassuming street here since 1989, has a way of making his humble instrument seem a little too easy.

''I can teach anybody to play banjo in an hour. Anybody can do it,'' said Mr. Trischka, 57, who taught the jazz-leaning innovator Bela Fleck in the 1980s and finger-picks alongside modern masters including Earl Scruggs and Alison Brown on ''Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular'' (Rounder Records), his 16th album, to be released next month.

Seated in his living room this month, in front of several gleaming instruments and a psychedelic framed poster of Bill Monroe, the father of bluegrass, Mr. Trischka -- tall, kind-eyed and completely disarming -- seems as mismatched with his lofty reputation as bluegrass would be with hip-hop.

''I guess I'd call myself a guy who broke down some boundaries for the banjo,'' he said, shrugging.

That is an understatement; in fiddle- and fret-conscious circles from Nashville to Groton, Mass., where he still teaches sometimes at the annual Banjo Camp conference, he is known as the father of modern bluegrass.

''It's impossible to imagine what contemporary banjo music would be like today if Tony hadn't blazed a path for all of us,'' said Ms. Brown, who won a Grammy Award in 2000 for best instrumental country performance and operates the Nashville-based bluegrass label Compass Records.

Mr. Trischka's determined march away from traditional bluegrass started with his first solo album, ''Bluegrass Light'' (Rounder), in 1973. Most players ambitious enough to pick up a banjo in those days buried themselves in the finger work of back-country heroes like Mr. Monroe and Mr. Scruggs, now in his 80s. Mr. Trischka experimented, drawing on the music he listened to as a child in Syracuse. It included folk artists like Tom Paxton, jazz masters like Fats Waller and pop idols like the Beatles.

'' 'Strawberry Fields' is still probably my favorite tune,'' Mr. Trischka said. But he might never have found his calling if it weren't for the Kingston Trio's 1959 hit ''M.T.A.''

''There was a banjo break with just 16 notes in it in that song, a little part of it, but that was it for me,'' he said. ''It ruined me. I had to play just like that.''

As it turned out, he did not play just like that. After moving to Manhattan in the 1970s, he pioneered a plugged-in style of his own, one accomplished enough to earn him the respect of the old guard but hip enough to win him collaborations with partners including the novelist William Burroughs and the '80s punk band Violent Femmes.

''I'm an old hippie,'' Mr. Trischka explained. ''We're all sort of in the same crevasse.''

Still, even old hippies can't be expected to walk the cutting edge all the time.

That explains ''Double Banjo Bluegrass,'' the latest of a few returns to traditional bluegrass in Mr. Trischka's long career. Friends including Mr. Fleck and Mr. Scruggs visited studios in Nashville and Manhattan to record original and traditional songs for the CD. But it was Mr. Trischka's experience recording with the actor and comedian Steve Martin, also an accomplished picker, that sticks with him most.

''He wasn't funny at all,'' Mr. Trischka said. ''He was completely straight -- this great friendly guy.''

The session took place last year at Mr. Martin's apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and whatever it lacked in comedy, it made up for in celebrity shoulder-rubbing.

''Paul Simon came over, and he wanted to play some songs off his new record,'' Mr. Trischka said. ''At one point, Steve Martin left the room, and I was there with Paul Simon.''

At that moment, Mr. Trischka sensed Mr. Simon's interest in his banjo. He offered him the 45-second version of his hourlong tutorial.

''He picked it up and played an open chord. I told him, 'You look good in a banjo.'

''That was pretty cool,'' Mr. Trischka said.
- posted by sookeyjane 12/27/2006 05:30:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Martin Short spit on Johnny Carson in front of Steve


Memoirs are made of this...


WENN Entertainment News Wire Service
SHORT HORRIFIED BY DINNER TABLE SPITTING SHAME

Funnyman MARTIN SHORT was left red-faced when he spat potato at his hero, late chat show king JOHNNY CARSON, at a poker party.

Short was down almost $2,000 (GBP1,110) at the celebrity card game, which featured Carson, STEVE MARTIN and other celebrities when dinner was called.

Nervous and sweating, Short was trying to enjoy the meal when Carson cracked a joke.

He recalls, "There was a dinner break... and I was so nervous and Johnny said something funny and I went, 'Ha ha ha,' and I spit mashed potato out and I knew it had landed somewhere and I looked down and it was on Johnny's hand.

"No one saw it apart from Steve Martin. Steve kinda looked over and went, 'Are you gonna leave it there?'

"When I looked back it was gone, so I just assumed Johnny had eaten it."
- posted by sookeyjane 12/15/2006 09:17:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Pink Panther 2 to shoot in Montreal?


The Gazette (Montreal)
December 15, 2006 Friday
Final Edition
ARTS & LIFE: PREVIEW; Pg. D7
Pink Panther debate chases its tail: Possible local shoot. Conflicting accounts over impact of labour uncertainty
BRENDAN KELLY, The Gazette

The sequel to The Pink Panther might shoot in Montreal this spring. Or it might not.

John Barrack, chief negotiator for the Canadian Film and Television Production Association, said the Steve Martin comedy was set to shoot here but that the studio, Sony Pictures, has decided to bypass Montreal because of the possibility of an actors' strike. The Canadian producers' association is currently in negotiations with ACTRA (Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists), the country's main actors' union. If no deal is reached by Dec. 31, the actors could be on strike early next year.

But Montreal-born filmmaker Shawn Levy said the allegation from the producers' association is simply not true.

"That is totally groundless," said Levy, who directed The Pink Panther, the hit film that revived the comedy franchise this year. Levy is one of the producers on the sequel and may also direct the new instalment [sic].

"There is no script yet approved by Steve (Martin) or the studio or me," Levy said. "There have been no conversations about where it's going to shoot. I'm thrilled that The Pink Panther did well enough to merit a sequel, but the future of it as far as who's directing and where it's going to shoot, that's totally up in the air at least into January."

Jean Bonini, executive vice-president (labour relations) at Sony Pictures, said Montreal was high on the list of potential sites for the Pink Panther sequel's shoot, but the studio won't shoot the Paris-set film here if ACTRA does not have a deal in place with the producers.

"Montreal and Quebec for Pink Panther makes a lot of sense because of the whole look," Bonini said. "But you're not going to walk into spending millions of dollars to have your production interrupted. There's too much money at stake. It just doesn't make sense. (Montreal) is on the list for consideration, but the stumbling block is the insecurity in connection with the labour agreement, and unless that is removed, it's on the list but it's got negatives that would keep us out."

Brian Baker, business agent at the Directors Guild of Canada, said his contacts in the biz tell him The Pink Panther is coming to Montreal and that "this is just posturing from the producers' association." Baker's view is that the Americans will keep coming even if there is no agreement between ACTRA and the producers. The Hollywood producers could make deals on a film-by-film basis with ACTRA even if there is no signed collective agreement.

Raymond Guardia, regional director for ACTRA in Quebec, suggested the producers' association is simply trying to put pressure on the actors' union by announcing that Montreal has lost The Pink Panther shoot.

"I'm getting a little impatient with this stuff," said Guardia, who was in Toronto yesterday negotiating with the producers. "It's a tactic they always play. But why keep playing these games? It undermines the work we've done at the bargaining table. It's reckless."

The negotiations are set to continue today and resume Monday through Wednesday in Toronto. Both ACTRA and the producers' association say they are making progress, after a slow start, but the two sides have yet to move beyond non-monetary concerns to the tougher issues dealing with actors' salaries.
- posted by sookeyjane 12/15/2006 09:13:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Gossip


Miami Herald

At the Dennis Hopper dinner at Delano's Agua Spa on Friday night: Steve Martin; Martha Stewart, and David Byrne. Martin was also seen at The Setai on Saturday.


Posted by KMT
- posted by sookeyjane 12/13/2006 07:40:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Art


Bloomberg.com

Prices Soar at Art Basel Miami, With Sales Up to $400 Million

By Lindsay Pollock

Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Almost everything, from a teeny gray Jasper Johns to a poorly painted orange-and-purple 1987 Willem de Kooning, was offered as top of the line at the fifth annual Art Basel Miami Beach. Sticker prices were higher than even an auction-besotted art world anticipated.

Four days into the fair, the $2 million Johns was unsold at Matthew Marks Gallery, while the $3 million de Kooning at Gagosian Gallery -- pegged to the artist's stellar prices at New York's fall auctions -- had found no buyers.

Still, by the time the fair closed on Dec. 10, three top sellers estimated that sales totaled between $200 million and $400 million, and dealers of both young and established artists reported turnover as strong or even stronger than that of a year ago. (Fair organizers don't disclose sales figures.)

``In the first two days, people were jumping on anything, and certainly everything that was fresh,'' said private New York dealer Nicholas Maclean, who attended the fair with clients.

About 40,000 people attended Art Basel's five-day run, including 8,500 VIPs the first day, according to organizers. This is up from 35,000 last year. About 200 international sellers participated.

As usual, the Miami Beach extravaganza attracted a heady mix of collectors. Blue-chip dealer Larry Gagosian and Sandy Heller, an art adviser to Steve Cohen and other hedge-funders, hosted a dinner for 40 at Casa Tua, a Miami Beach restaurant described in Zagat's special Art Basel edition as having ``outrageous tabs'' and ``pretentious airs.''

Steve and Martha

Other buyers and browsers included actor Steve Martin and media maven Martha Stewart as well as veteran Boston-area collector Barbara Lloyd, who picked up an editioned $2,500 sculpture by Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto to hang with her Calders at home.

Lloyd attended the fair with a group from the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. ``I just go by the seat of my pants,'' Lloyd said. ``I buy what I like and no worrying about if this will become more valuable.''

By Saturday afternoon, power dealers such as White Cube's Jay Jopling had already left Miami. As a more local crowd pushed strollers down fair aisles, one dealer muttered about ``tire- kickers,'' while another said the real collectors had gone home.

Only a month ago, New York auction totals for modern and contemporary art surpassed $1 billion for the first time, and Art Basel dealers ``were adjusting to the prices that had been paid at auction,'' Maclean said.

High-Price Context

The billion-dollar auction season came on the heels of several big-money private sales, with prices from $60 million to $140 million for artists from de Kooning to Klimt.

``If a de Kooning is $60 million,'' said John Cheim of Chelsea's Cheim & Read gallery, ``it lifts up the whole market.''

Part of the reason for Art Basel Miami price increases is that more than three-quarters of the works on offer at many major galleries are consigned -- by collectors, artists and other dealers.

``When things sell for wild prices at auction, it does pump up enthusiasm,'' said Paul Gray, of Chicago and New York's Richard Gray Gallery. ``But it also pumps up the expectations of sellers.''

Many consigning sellers insisted on auction-inflated prices. Gray's asking price for two small, 1964 Warhol ``Flowers'' paintings was a brash $1.5 million for both, obviously pegged to Warhol's outstanding fall performance at auction: A larger flower painting fetched $6.8 million at Sotheby's.

`Flowers' Unsold

Five years ago, a small Warhol ``Flower'' sold for $60,000 at auction. Gray's ``Flowers'' went unsold, despite an admiring glance from hip-hop star Kanye West.

Much of the fair's buying was focused on contemporary artists whose works were priced in the $10,000-to-$30,000 range. The more than 100 museum groups who attended the fair tended to purchase at this level. Cheim & Read sold six paintings of Hispanic immigrants by Los Angeles artist John Sonsini, priced $25,000 to $75,000; one was bought as a gift for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Marie-Josee Kravis, president of the board of New York's Museum of Modern Art, toured the fair with MoMA curator Joachim Pissarro. She scooped up artworks likely destined for that museum, including a large mauve, yellow and green abstract painting by Los Angeles artist Chris Vasell from Blum & Poe gallery. (Vasell's work costs $24,000 to $30,000, the gallery said.)

About a dozen satellite art fairs took advantage of the confluence of collectors. The Aqua Art Miami fair included artworks from a few hundred dollars to just under $10,000. Brooklyn Museum of Art Director Arnold Lehman and his wife, Pamela, bought paintings by Los Angeles Chicano artists for their own collection, while notable Miami collector Dennis Scholl made his way in and out of the small white rooms of the Aqua Hotel, where art was tacked to every flat surface -- bathrooms included.

Casual Displays

Down the deco strip on Collins Avenue, at the not-so-chic Cavalier Hotel, the first-time Pool fair set up shop on two floors. Artists hoping to find gallery representation placed their wares in rooms and hallways.

This united front of artists seeking dealers was the first link in last week's art-market food chain.

One room was ringed with striking photos by 27-year-old, Brooklyn-based photographer Sarah Small. But Small was nowhere to be found during the fair's Friday night opening. A scruffy young man lounging on a red-velvet bedcover said he didn't know how much Small wanted for her photos.

It was a refreshing break from the hustle and commerce at the Art Basel Miami Beach's main convention hall.

UBS AG is the fair's main sponsor. The next Art Basel fair takes place June 13-17, 2007, in Basel, Switzerland.

(Lindsay Pollock writes on the art market for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)


Posted by KMT
- posted by sookeyjane 12/13/2006 07:33:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Wow


Bloomberg.com

Steve Martin Hopper, Wistful Rockwell Break Auction Records

By Lindsay Pollock

Nov. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Actor Steve Martin's somber 1955 Edward Hopper painting of a pensive woman looking out a dark window sold for $26.89 million this morning at Sotheby's New York, an auction record for the artist.

``Hotel Window,'' estimated to bring more than $10 million, was purchased anonymously by phone.

The previous Hopper record, $2.42 million for the 1930 ``South Truro Church,'' had stood for 16 years.

Just a few minutes earlier, ``Breaking Home Ties,'' a 1954 Norman Rockwell painting of a father sending his son off to college (and made to be a cover of the Saturday Evening Post), sold for $15.42 million, also an artist record.

The work was sold by the children of a neighbor of the artist. Its anonymous buyer bid by phone as well.

The previous Rockwell top price was $9.2 million, set in May at Sotheby's New York.

New York art dealer Howard Godel said that the sale shows ``there's a ton of money chasing the iconic pictures -- and these were iconic pictures.''

The Hopper and Rockwell were part of Sotheby's American painting auction, studded with important 19th- and 20th- century artworks by Mary Cassatt, John Marin and Georgia O'Keeffe. Christie's American painting sale takes place tomorrow.

Few for Sale

Hoppers rarely appear on the market. The artist was not prolific, painting just 366 canvases; he died in 1967. During the 1950s, when he was in his 70s, he produced about five paintings a year. Hopper's longtime dealer, Frank Rehn, who gave the artist his first solo show in 1924, sold ``Hotel Window'' to collector Olga Knoepke for $7,000 ($50,270 in 2006 currency) in 1957.

It was later owned at various times by Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman, Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza and dealer Andrew Crispo. Publisher Malcolm Forbes paid $1.32 million for it in 1987.

The painting was exhibited in 2001 at a show of Steve Martin's collection at the Bellagio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas along with a more spectacular Hopper: the 1927 ``Captain Upton's House.''

``Hotel Window'' had been part of the Whitney Museum's Hopper exhibition currently on view in New York.

Hopper ``evokes a certain period and style that other artists don't,'' said American painting dealer Debra Force. ``It's very classic American, but in a modernist context.''

Cinematic Scene

``Hotel Window'' looks something like a film still. It is nighttime, and a seated older woman, wearing a burgundy hat and dress, is waiting for someone who seems unlikely to arrive.

``It's no particular hotel lobby,'' Hopper said of the work (as quoted in Sotheby's catalog). ``I guess it's lonelier than I planned it.''

Artist Donald Trachte, a Vermont neighbor, bought ``Breaking Home Ties'' from Rockwell in 1960 for $900. Because of a divorce in the 1970s, Trachte made a copy of the work and hid the original behind a wall in his studio. His children discovered the original earlier this year.

(Lindsay Pollock writes on the art market for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)

Posted by kmt
- posted by sookeyjane 11/29/2006 07:14:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Bluegrass in January


From the Bluegrass Blog

Tony Trischka talks about his new CD
posted by John on 11.27.06 @ 7:12 am
Tags: Earl Scruggs, Noam Pikelny, Scott Vestal, Steve Martin, Tony Trischka
We posted last week about the upcoming project from Tony Trischka, Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular, which will feature Tony in duets with Earl Scruggs, Béla Fleck, Steve Martin, Alison Brown, Tom Adams, Bill Emerson, Kenny Ingram, Scott Vestal and Noam Pikelny. It is due for a January 23, 2007 release on Rounder.

At the time, we noted that no audio samples were available online, but Rounder now has snippets from all 14 tracks on their site, in both RealAudio and Windows Media formats.

I had a chance to discuss this new CD recently with Tony, and was especially interested in how he decided on a twin banjo project.

“After doing two electric band albums, I’d approached Rounder about doing a bluegrass album, a la my Hill Country record from the early ’80s. Ken Irwin thought it might be more fun, and have more of a commercial hook if I turned it into a double banjo album. And that’s what it became.

All the duets were recorded live except for the one with Scott Vestal. I was going to have JD on one cut and at the last minute something came up and he wasn’t able to make it, so I cut the track by myself as part of the Sam Bush sessions. After a week or so I decided to have Scott add the double part. He did it at his home studio and when he emailed it back to me, I flipped. His playing is ridiculously amazing.”

Tony told me that the project was exciting, both putting it together, and recording with so many of his favorite players, but that it took a long time to complete, given the difficulty of scheduling nine different banjo players. Still, he says the whole thing was a thrill, and well worth the trouble in the end.

“The biggest treat was getting to record with Earl. It was a huge honor and more than that, a gift. Sitting across from him while running it down I was impressed with the power of his right hand. I’ve heard him live on various occasions, but hearing him from three feet away is another story.”

Another highlight for Tony was working with Steve Martin.

“Getting to rehearse with Steve Martin was also a treat. He’s a great guy and really serious about the banjo. He has a lot of banjo music in his laptop and was sharing some of his favorite tunes with me. At one point he clicked on something and I could hear someone speaking French. I said ‘Clouseau?’ and he said,’Yep.’

While most folks these days have their banjos set up with the tailpiece all the way up, Steve’s is way down, so he gets a crisper, more high end sound. It made for a nice contrast in the double banjo format.”

Tony also recorded with his protege, Béla Fleck, who had studied with Trischka when still a student in New York in the early 1980s. They recorded three songs together for Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular.

“Need I say more about Bela? His playing is completely inspiring and technically ferocious when needed, but sweet and mellifluously tasty when that’s called for. And, as I remember it, it was his idea to speed up the tune “Twilight Kingdom” in the middle. That makes the whole tune. Not only is he a great guy and stupendous banjo player, but a great producer as well.”

Trischka will be touring in the northeast with a band to support the new project in January. He’ll have Noam Pikelny on second banjo, along with Michael Davies on guitar and vocals, Brittany Haas on fiddle and Skip Ward on bass. Plans are in the works now for west coast and southern tours in the spring.

Posted by KMT
- posted by sookeyjane 11/28/2006 05:33:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 



Steve is shutting down his official site as of January, 2007. He has just made the announcement there. I am repeating it here for posterity primarily because is answers some rumors and because when his site goes down, this will be lost. Vive la documentation!

Steve's site has been up (with a few hiatuses) since about 1995 or so when it was started by Ken Dickson as a fan site. Eventually, Steve entered the picture and made it official. It has been through several stylistic variations. Hopefully Steve will eventually reopen for his loyal messageboarders.

We will continue here since we are totally unofficial.

Pertinent news
Dear fans, posters, friends,

I’m sorry to say that the website is going to go on a lengthy hiatus beginning January 1st. It’s been a great experience for me to eavesdrop on all your interesting and provocative posts. I don’t feel like I’ve been a good WebDaddy. I’ve been, and still am, working very hard on a memoir of my stand-up years and it has occupied my mind for quite some time. On this hiatus, I will rethink my contributions to the site and perhaps it will arise from its cyber-ashes; I do have a few ideas that might be thrilling. Semidivine has done an outstanding job with the site and if it resurrects I would hope that she would be involved.

I’ll take this opportunity to settle a few rumors: I never posted anonymously on the site; there is no movie of Picasso at the Lapin Agile in the works; and I did not submit a script for Pink II (just a few pages), even though there is one in the works.

Regards to you all,

Steve
November 27, 2006

- posted by sookeyjane 11/27/2006 03:08:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Fun with Fossils


Page Six - New York Post

SKELETAL CHIC

November 23, 2006 -- WHILE Paul Simon and Brian Williams partied with Lorne Michaels and his "Saturday Night Live" crew under the towering tyrannosaurus and brontosaurus skeletons at the American Museum of Natural History's glamorous gala the other night, Steve Martin and Conan O'Brien evaluated the bone structure of all the pretty girls slinking around, none of whom dared touch an hors d'oeuvre. Quipped Martin to writer Gregory Speck as they strolled by the fearsome fossils, "The dinosaurs took the concept of losing weight too far, and look what happened to them."

ny post

posted by kmt
- posted by sookeyjane 11/23/2006 05:00:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Steve wrote Pink?


From Rotten Tomatoes;

MGM Promises More Panther, Bond, Crown, Rocky & Hobbit
Posted by Scott Weinberg on Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2006, 01:49 AM

Scott Weinberg writes: "It looks like the cash-strapped MGM is about to seriously scale back on its productions, but they still have five strapping franchises on which they'll bet the ranch...

From Variety: "Steve Martin recently delivered a script for the latest "Pink Panther," where his Inspector Clouseau teams up with equally bumbling detectives from other European countries to defeat a continent-wide crime wave. Shooting is expected to start in February.

Rotten Tomatoes

Variety
- posted by sookeyjane 11/17/2006 04:59:00 AM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Westward Ho


Quad City Times

Mull gets a warm welcome
By David Burke | Saturday, November 11, 2006

IF you were one of the thousand-plus people who were impressed by Martin Mull at the Figge Art Museum two weeks ago, here’s a message for you.
The feeling was mutual.

Kim Montgomery, a Quad-City native who has known Mull for many years and helped engineer his visit to Davenport, sent a lengthy e-mail here after recording some of the observations by the artist and former comedic actor.

Mull apparently received quite a welcome at several restaurants, including the Duck City Bistro in Davenport and the Bass Street Chophouse in Moline — including plates with names of his movies and TV shows spelled out in red bell pepper puree at the former, and watching the St. Louis Cardinals win the World Series in the latter.

And he was apparently like a kid in a candy store at The Source bookshop in downtown Davenport, where he walked out with a thick stack of 1950s-era Life and Look magazines. It cost him $25 to ship them to his home in Los Angeles, but he told Montgomery that a single magazine in his new collection had a $50 pricetag at a collectible shop in New York.

Most of all, Mull told Montgomery he was impressed by the friendliness of people on the street — those who stopped to say hi as they passed by. In New York, Mull and his agent said, such a greeting would brand that person as a weirdo, or a setup for a robbery.

I talked to Mull twice, once briefly before he talked to college and high school art students and teachers (an interesting and humorous talk, even for art neophytes) and once before we taped a video for our Web site. (It’s still available at www.qctimes.com/multimedia.)

Before we started the video, I sheepishly mentioned that I had a well-worn copy of “Sex and Violins,” his 1978 album. (The whole point of his visit, of course, was to distance himself from his recording, movie and television past, and here I bring up a 28-year-old album.)

One of my favorite songs on the album was called “Westward Ho!” a PG-13 accounting of the pioneers. Mull said he co-wrote the song with friend Steve Martin, as part of a film project. Mull, Martin, Albert Brooks, Penny Marshall and several other comedic minds were brought together by filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola to write a satire on American history.

“Then, he decided to move on to a little thing called ‘Apocalypse Now,’” Mull said.

He probably wasn’t ready to tell that story, but between that and his unique pieces of art, he made an impression with me as well.

Quad City Times
- posted by sookeyjane 11/13/2006 07:25:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Steve Played Banjo


"The" banjo picker champ calls

By David Williams
Independent-Mail
November 6, 2006

SENECA, S.C. - Some might call him a banjo player, but those who know Charles Wood and his ability to play the instrument say he is "the" banjo player.

After picking up his second national banjo championship in Winfield, Kan., Mr. Wood is back home spending time in Oconee County giving banjo lessons, playing with local bands and enjoying the life of a musician.

"Most of what I do is give lessons to students in North Carolina and South Carolina and play about 130 to 150 gigs a year," said Mr. Wood, 40. "I don’t spend many nights on the road. Most gigs are close by."

Mr. Wood has no shortage of area bands that welcome him to the stage. He plays with Curtis Blackwell — a former musician with country legend Bill Monroe — and his band the Dixie Bluegrass Boys, The Wild Hog Band, The Lonesome Road Band and Doug McCormick and Southern State of Mind.

Mr. Wood has also spent time in the national entertainment spotlight. Last year, he joined actor-comedian Steve Martin, also an accomplished banjo player, along with Earl Scruggs, Pete Wenick and Tony Ellis at the New Yorker Festival in New York City. The group made an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman.

Mr. Wood and Mr. Martin become fast friends after that meeting and when Mr. Martin recently spent some vacation time at Caesar’s Head in Pickens County, Mr. Wood was invited over for a Sunday dinner.

"I joined him for supper and we played for about three hours," Mr. Wood said.

Mr. Wood started in music when he was 5 years old and sat down at the piano. Ten years later he heard Lester Flatt and Mr. Scruggs’ classic recording "Foggy Mountain Banjo." Mr. Wood has not been able to put the banjo down since turning 15.

He says he practices or plays about six hours a day.

Other titles he has won along the way include the Rockygrass and Merlefest Banjo championships.

The national banjo championship is highly regarded because first-place winners can not compete again for five years. Mr. Wood won the title in 1999, placed third in 2005 and won it again in 2006.

Mr. Wood said the All-American banjo instrument was designed as a five-string music maker in the mid-1800s. In the early 1940s, it was Mr. Scruggs who developed the three-finger picking style.

"The banjo was strummed before Earl Scruggs came along," Mr. Wood said.

In competitions, Mr. Wood said he plays four tunes in the early rounds and two tunes in the semifinals and finals. His fingers on his left hand can step quickly along the banjo’s neck while his right hand picks out music that covers a lot ground.

"Foggy Mountain Breakdown" might be the one tune familiar to most people when it comes to banjo music, but Mr. Wood can just as easily play "What a Wonderful World" and the William Tell Overture. Many would recognize the overture as the theme song to the classic black-and-white television Western, "The Lone Ranger."

Mr. Wood said he likes to keep his appearances close to home — he’s scheduled to be at Just More Barbecue in Pendleton Friday.

Mr. Wood has three CDs, including "Somewhere Over The Banjo," "Banjo Noel" and "Tour de Banjo." Visit www.charleswoodbanjo.com for more information on Mr. Wood.

David Williams can be reached at (864) 882-0522 or by e-mail at williamsde@IndependentMail.com.

Link to article

- posted by sookeyjane 11/11/2006 02:19:00 AM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

New info on an old play - The Underpants


The Underpants has been staged around the world and now is in Britain. This article has some info that I haven't seen anywhere else.

The Times (London)
October 21, 2006, Saturday
FEATURES; The Knowledge; Pg. 20
Hmm, smells like a hit to me
Dominic Maxwell

As the comedy The Underpants opens, Dominic Maxwell has a brief encounter

Steve Martin's Underpants went down well in New York and Los Angeles. Down Under, though, it has become one of the highest-grossing plays in Australian history, even if the people in New Zealand angered him by messing around with the contents.

And now The Underpants -Martin's adaptation of a 1911 play by Carl Sternheim, which in previous translations has traded under names such as Knickers, The Trousers and The Giant, although Germans are most likely to know it as Die Hose - has finally made it to Britain. As befits the Off-Off-Broadway beginnings of a play commissioned in 2001 by the Classic Stage Company in East Village, New York, this satirical farce is about to open in a 60-seat pub theatre, the Old Red Lion.

Well, at least the adapter doesn't need the cash.

"I like the theatre because of the writing," Martin told The New York Times while promoting the first production in 2002. "There's a certain freedom as a writer to be tangential. A great passage in a play can be literate, can be beautiful, can be off-topic, can be so many things. A great line in a movie is usually 'Come on, let's go'."

Martin has written for the theatre before -he's currently working on a film of his 1993 play Picasso at the Lapin Agile, as well as several shorter pieces. He also has some previous as an adapter -rejigging Cyrano de Bergerac for his film Roxanne, Silas Marner for A Simple Twist of Fate. And while his recent big screen run suggests a desire to top up that modern art collection more than to tap in to the comic genius that gave us The Man With Two Brains and Bowfinger, the collected writing in his book Pure Drivel is a reminder of his peerless comic mind.

For Richard Braine, the new production's director, though, it was Sternheim first, Martin second. In Britain, Braine is best known for playing Gussie Fink Nottle opposite Fry and Laurie in Jeeves and Wooster, or as one of the nation's foremost sitcom vicars. In Germany he's the face of Dinkel-Mini, a snack that attained a profitable notoriety after, on take 49 of Braine's first TV commercial for the product, his female co-star bit into her 49th Dinkel-Mini of the day and projectile vomited 6ft across the room. The outtake was a hit on the German version of It'll Be Alright on the Night and Braine found himself making regular trips to Germany to film follow-up ads.

He'd seen some Sternheim plays out there and liked them enormously. But when he came home and read the existing English translations, he saw why a man who was one of the most performed playwrights in the world early last century was rarely staged in Britain. He mentioned this to Stephen Fry, who told him that Steve Martin had just done a translation. He saw his chance. And although at first the National Theatre beat him to acquiring the rights, earlier this year they decided not to stage the play. Braine could take Steve Martin -or is it Carl Sternheim? - to the Fringe.

"There are so many wonderful instances of Steve's wit alongside Sternheim," he says. "But I had a conversation with Steve about it, and although he spent about three months on his version, he insists that most of the good gags are already there in the original."

The play is set in 1910 Dusseldorf. Louise, the attractive but sexually starved young wife of a petty bureaucrat, drops her knickers as the Kaiser passes by one day. This is enough to win the affection of three passing men who become the couple's dodgy lodgers. But while in a saucy French farce nookie might abound, here the repressive husband ends up the champion.

The original was widely taken as a satire on the bourgeoisie. In adapting the show, though, Martin not only addressed the questionable depiction of the Jewish lodger Cohen, he also made it less a satire on bourgeois morality, more a dig at gender politics and a culture fixated on fame. "I don't see the bourgeoisie as a threat," Martin explained, "that's like something we did in the Sixties to be critical of 'the squares'. The bourgeoisie is us, it's both left and right."

For all of Martin's silver-haired seriousness -Braine confirms that, like many comic greats, Martin doesn't try to be funny in conversation -his name has led some casts to overdo it. "It is a romp, it is non-stop," says Braine, "but Steve said of one of the American productions that it was like watching six Steve Martins on stage."

Two of the Old Red Lion's shows this year have already transferred to the West End (Rabbit and The Vegemite Tales). If Braine's production moves on, he admits it will be his only chance of making any money from the show. It could also be the only chance of our seeing Steve Martin in the West End. But only if he sticks to the script: Braine says that when a New Zealand production did well and wanted to transfer to a bigger theatre, Martin refused them permission because they'd changed his ending. "He went absolutely bonkers about it." When the Sydney production was a success, though, Martin flew down to see the show, and apparently spent the next week riding around the city on a bicycle. Whatever debt he owes to Sternheim, he clearly feels as if he wears the underpants in this relationship.

"I did a bit of work on this play, so I'm proud to have my name on it," he told the New York Post on opening night in 2002. "Let's put it this way: I don't feel like I'm robbing the playwright."

The Underpants at the Old Red Lion, London EC1 (www. theunderpants.co.uk 020 7837 7816), from Tuesday
- posted by sookeyjane 10/30/2006 11:50:00 AM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

View Steve video at newyorker.com


Steve recently hosted a chat with Chast at the New Yorker festival. you can see the video at http://www.newyorker.com/festival/videos/fevi_video2a.

This is a nice new feature since no one can ever seem to get tickets without inside connections.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/12/2006 01:39:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Steve and girfriend at Opera and art


Steve and his girlfriend Anne Stringfield can be seen in a picture at the top of the page -- go check it out.


http://www.artforum.com/diary/id=11787
ArtForum Diary
09.26.06
A Night at the Opera
New York

Left: Dealer Larry Gagosian, artist Rachel Feinstein, curator Dodie Kazanjian, the New Yorker's Anne Stringfield, and Steve Martin, with artist John Currin in front. Right: Studio Museum director and chief curator Thelma Golden with artist Richard Prince. (All photos: Julie Skarratt)

On Thursday, I attended a cocktail party and dinner inaugurating a new contemporary-art gallery within the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center. The gallery is the felicitous brainchild of Peter Gelb, the new general manager of the Met. Gelb asked Dodie Kazanjian, editor at large for Vogue, to act as the Met’s curator at large for the gallery. She invited ten artists—Cecily Brown, George Condo, John Currin, Verne Dawson, Barnaby Furnas, Makiko Kudo, Wangechi Mutu, Richard Prince, David Salle, and Sophie von Hellermann—to submit artworks inspired by heroines from the six new productions that the Met is mounting this season. Christoph Willibald von Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice was the choice of Dawson, Furnas, and Mutu. I spent some time contemplating Dawson’s picture: Euridice beckons—more accurately, she points at—Orfeo from her netherworld domain on the sad side of an oddly sunlit River Styx, garbed in what looks like a customized version of the Scream costume. As she seems here rather like a flesh-eating zombie, I took her gesture to mean, “No! Go back. It’s just not going to work out,” which, in fact, it doesn’t, in both Gluck’s opera and the Greek myth on which it is based.

I quite liked Prince’s “Joke” painting apropos Madama Butterfly. The joke reads: “I went to the opera. It was Madame Butterfly. I fell asleep. When I woke up the music was by Klaus Nomi and Cio Cio San had turned into a lesbian and refused to commit suicide. It was a German ending.” Above and below the painted text, Prince has collaged hundreds of pornographic pictures of girl-on-girl hanky-panky. If only there were a contemporary composer as passionately vulgar as Puccini who could carry off the artist’s inspired revision of the all-too-well-known story. Richard Strauss, no stranger to operatic perviness, could have done so with élan. Die Äegyptische Helena, a lesser-known work by one of my favorite composers, was the choice of Currin and Salle. Currin represents a somewhat chunky Helena, her head thrown back in (orgasmic?) ecstasy. Salle’s large-scale painting, a good example of his recent “vortical” style, is also porn-oriented, featuring at its center, as far as I could ascertain, a ménage à trois between a man and two women. Queer theorists–cum–opera buffs beware: Salle and Prince's representations of sapphism are unmistakably heterosexist!

The event was exceedingly well attended: All of the artists save for Mutu, Kudo, and Hellerman were there, as well as numerous dealers, curators, and artists. The list is long, but I spotted Maurizio Cattelan—a close friend of Kazanjian’s who apparently acted as an unofficial advisor to the project—Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Jeff and Justine Koons, Chuck Close, Clarissa Dalrymple, Barbara Gladstone, Carol Greene, Neville Wakefield, Yvonne Force Villareal, Thelma Golden, Roland Augustine, and Larry Gagosian. I chatted with Rachel Feinstein, who was wearing an extremely pretty dress that she described as “vaginal japonisme,” I suppose referring to the large “pubic” pleat that ran down its center. An homage to Madama Butterfly, which opened the Met season the following Monday, I wondered? Many of these eminences were also at the dinner, held in the Met’s Opera Club. I was fortunate in my placement: Steve Martin was at my table. Surprise, surprise—Martin said many exceedingly witty things, but a rudimentary, one might say medullary sense of etiquette prevented me from pulling out a pad and writing them all down. Speeches by Kazanjian and Gelb were easier to listen to than speeches at events such as this usually are; for one, both erred on the side of relative brevity. Gelb gave Deitch an especially enthusiastic shout-out—“I would like to thank Jeffery Deitch and all the other dealers,” etc. Perhaps this comment did not sit too well with “all the others”; I did notice at least one prominent dealer shift uncomfortably in her seat, but possibly she was adjusting her hemline. Deitch later explained to me that Kazanjian is an old friend, and that she had asked him to be on the advisory committee for the gallery. He also recommended the fashionable South African architect Lindy Roy, who designed the modest but attractive and attractively understated (rather than annoyingly architectish) gallery, the entry to which is conveniently located on Lincoln Center Plaza.

It is perhaps churlish to find fault in any aspect of this otherwise charming and well-intentioned endeavor. Nonetheless, one wonders how much actual progress is to be made in bringing together contemporary art and fustian opera. Is opera somehow to ride the coattails of “wild” art and glamorous, or at least fashionable, artists? Simply hanging opera-inspired paintings in the gallery doesn’t go very far in bridging any sort of gap. Apparently, it is being considered that artworks exhibited in the gallery might be reproduced in the Opera's playbills, but beyond this modest proposal is the notion that in the future artists might design curtains and even stage sets. I’m certainly not an expert in operatic scenic design, but offhand I can’t think of many notable modern/contemporary art–opera synergisms. David Hockney’s sets for Ravel’s Les Enfants et les Sortilèges (a Met production, 1981) is the only one I can recall—very pretty. At best, perhaps the new gallery at the opera heralds future collaborations of similar brilliance.

—David Rimanelli

Thanks to RL
- posted by sookeyjane 10/08/2006 08:33:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

2 Articles: Steve sells one of his Hoppers


http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=auybIB.0IkF8

Steve Martin's Moody Hopper to Be Offered by Sotheby's N.Y.
By Lindsay Pollock

Oct. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Comedian and noted art collector Steve Martin is parting with a moody Edward Hopper painting that is likely to break auction records at Sotheby's Holdings in New York.

``Hotel Window,'' a 1955 painting of an elderly woman seated on a couch in a hotel lobby, is estimated to fetch up to $15 million. It will be sold as part of a Nov. 29 American painting sale.

``These pictures just don't change hands,'' said Seattle-based American art collector Barney Ebsworth, who owns Hopper's famous ``Chop Suey'' and said he is friendly with Martin. Ebsworth said that only 32 Hopper oils are in private hands, ``and the best ones haven't moved in 25 years. If anyone wants to own a great Hopper and they don't move on this, they might have to wait forever.''

The current Hopper record was set 16 years ago for the 1930 painting ``South Truro Church,'' sold at Sotheby's in New York for $2.42 million. In 2005, Christie's New York offered a large, awkward 1965 Hopper called ``Chair Car,'' which was bought by Berry-Hill Galleries for a record $14 million. The sale was later canceled.

Hoppers have sold privately in the $10 million to $15 million range, according to Dara Mitchell, Sotheby's director of American Paintings.

A 2001 exhibition of Martin's collection at the Bellagio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas included ``Hotel Window'' as well as Hopper's ``Captain Upton's House,'' a 1927 landscape with a lighthouse. Sotheby's did not disclose the seller's name.

Owned by Forbes

``Hotel Window'' claims a distinguished roster of previous owners. It was part of the famous Thyssen- Bornemisza collection and later sold to Malcolm Forbes, according to Sotheby's, for $1.32 million in 1987.

The painting was recently featured at the Whitney Museum of American Art's Edward Hopper exhibition.

``Hopper was concerned he was being left behind by the abstract artists of the 1950s and 1960s in New York,'' said Mitchell. ``What he didn't realize is how revered he was, and how influential he was.''

(Lindsay Pollock is author of ``The Girl with the Gallery,'' a history of the first modern art gallery in Greenwich Village to be published in November by PublicAffairs. She writes on the art market for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this story: Lindsay Pollock at lindsaypollock@yahoo.com
Last Updated: October 6, 2006 01:19 EDT

==========================================

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/arts/design/06voge.html

Inside Art
Edward Hopper Paintings Change at Whitney Show
By CAROL VOGEL
Published: October 6, 2006

HOPPERS COME AND GO IN A WHITNEY SHOW

Until recently Edward Hopper’s “Hotel Window” (1955), a stark canvas showing a woman of a certain age sitting in an empty hotel lobby staring out the window, hung at the Whitney Museum of American Art as part of its Edward Hopper exhibition, on view until Dec. 3. “Hotel Window” was on loan from the actor Steve Martin.

On Monday the painting was replaced by “Nighthawks” (1942), Hopper’s well-known image of a diner at night, from the Art Institute of Chicago. It is shown alongside preliminary drawings for that painting from the Whitney’s permanent collection.

“We’d always planned this replacement,” said Barbara Haskell, a Whitney curator, who had also intended to make several other switches.

“The show has had an unusually long run,” she added. “And in many cases museums were unwilling to part with these key works for such a long period of time.” (The show opened on June 7.)

As a result three other works left the Whitney recently: “Morning in a City” (1944), from the Williams College Museum of Art in Williamstown, Mass.; “Office at Night” (1940), from the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; and “Hotel Lobby” (1943), from the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Along with “Nighthawks,” the museum added “Cape Cod Evening” (1939), on loan from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and “Cobb’s Barns and Distant Houses” (1930-33), a large painting from the Whitney’s collection. It has also hung a group of works on paper related to the show’s additions.

Meanwhile Mr. Martin’s “Hotel Window” will soon be on public view elsewhere in Manhattan, this time at Sotheby’s York Avenue headquarters, where it is to be auctioned at a sale of American paintings on Nov. 29.

Experts consider “Hotel Window,” one of Hopper’s late paintings, to be a prime example of his vision of solitude and human resilience. It is expected to sell for $10 million to $15 million.

While Sotheby’s lists many museums where the painting has been exhibited, it neglects to include the Bellagio Art Gallery in Las Vegas. “Hotel Window” and “Captain Upton’s House” — Hopper’s 1927 view of a white Victorian house perched on the rocky Maine coast with a lighthouse looming behind it — were part of a 2001 show there featuring 28 works by various artists in Mr. Martin’s collection The exhibition was accompanied by an audio tour narrated by Mr. Martin.

At the time Mr. Martin wrote that he was showing his art in Las Vegas because “it sounds like fun.” When asked this week why he was selling “Hotel Window” next month, his response was simply, “I needed the excitement.” He declined to be more specific.

The painting, which has been promised to a traveling Hopper exhibition next year at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the National Gallery of Art; and the Art Institute of Chicago, has an illustrious list of previous owners. In addition to having been in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, then in Lugano, Switzerland, it was owned by Andrew Crispo, the Manhattan dealer jailed in the 1980’s for tax evasion and, in a separate case, acquitted of charges that he had kidnapped and tortured a Norwegian art student.

Mr. Crispo sold the painting at Sotheby’s in 1987; Malcolm Forbes, the publishing magnate, bought it for $1.3 million. In 1999 the Forbes Collection sold it to Mr. Martin privately for around $10 million.

A GALLERY CLEANS HOUSE

Steve Martin isn’t the only person with an itch to sell in today’s strong market. Visitors to Otto Naumann’s Manhattan gallery who are used to seeing not just old master paintings but also many of the actual objects found in 17th-century still lifes — silver-gilt cups, Chinese ceramics, Dutch earthenware, painted cabinets — will discover a far emptier environment. Mr. Naumann has decided to sell these objects along with paintings and drawings in a single-owner sale at Sotheby’s on Jan. 25. The sale is expected to total $2 million to $3 million.

Known primarily as a dealer in Dutch and Flemish canvases, Mr. Naumann said he had decided to branch out. “My new objective is to sell European old master paintings that include Italian, German, Spanish, French in addition to Dutch and Flemish,” he said.

Mr. Naumann, who is moving his home to Manhattan from Irvington, N.Y., has organized the sale catalog in different sections to appeal to young buyers who could acquire instant collections. One section is devoted to small cabinet paintings and a large group of drawings.

“To get the biggest bang for your buck it may be wise to consider drawings with questions of attribution,” he wrote in a catalog essay. “Included in this sale are several puzzles that I have been unable to solve, but that does not mean the new owner might not be more successful.”

The best mystery, he said, is who made the study of a woman that Mr. Naumann said he thought was done by the 17th-century Dutch artist Leendert van der Cooghen. It is estimated at $5,000 to $7,000.

Portions of the sale proceeds will go to the American Friends of the MauritsHuis, which supports that Dutch museum; the Committee of Friends of the Rembrandt Corpus; and the European paintings department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

ART IN THE COMMONS

Since 1993 the Public Art Fund, the nonprofit organization that presents art around the city, has been creating exhibitions for MetroTech Center, the corporate complex in Downtown Brooklyn. Its latest installation, to be completed on Oct. 26, is called “The World Is Round.” It consists of new works by six young artists linked “by a common language, a universal message,” said Rochelle Steiner, director of the fund.

The artist Jacob Dyrenforth, from Brooklyn, created a sculpture depicting a rock concert moments before the show; Diana Guerrero-Maciá, from Chicago, made an installation spanning more than 70 feet that shows a flattened, giant soccer ball; Chris Hanson and Hendrika Sonnenberg, a Canadian-born team, sculptured three cast-aluminum soapboxes; Matt Johnson, from Los Angeles, carved a three-ton boulder of Precambrian granite flecked with quartz veins that spell out “4eva”; and Ryan McGinness, from Manhattan, produced a set of signs that will be installed throughout the MetroTech commons.

“None of these artists are household names,” Ms. Steiner said. “We wanted to give young artists a platform to show their work in New York for an extended period of time.”
- posted by sookeyjane 10/07/2006 02:12:00 AM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Webcast of Steve's New Yorker appearance


http://www.nypost.com/seven/10052006/entertainment/movies/
new_yorker_fest__wit__lit_and_spit_movies_kyle_smith.htm

NEW YORKER FEST: WIT, LIT AND SPIT
By KYLE SMITH
Jon Stewart's back at this weekend's New Yorker Festival.

October 5, 2006 -- THE New Yorker Festival offers an opportunity to sidle up to today's leading writers, editors and humorists - and see what they look like when they get spit on.

The seventh annual weekend festival, which opens tomorrow night and comprises more than 50 events, will include an encore interview of Jon Stewart by New Yorker Editor David Remnick to benefit the U.S.O.

When he signed up for last year's chat with Stewart, Remnick says, "I didn't know people still did a spit take. But I asked him some idiotic questions, and I ended up with water all over my shirt." Which sounds less disturbing than another event, in which food writer Bill Buford "practically burned down a kitchen."

If only Stewart could have his spit takes ready for Buford's flames. Stewart and Buford, who will make lunch with Babbo chef Mario Batali, sold out their events quickly - the former in three minutes. A few events still have tickets available through newyorker.com, including best-selling writer Lawrence Wright's talk on al Qaeda, film critic Anthony Lane's take on Ava Gardner, several readings and the seemingly oxymoronic New Yorker dance party. (Are they doing the robot or just not used to exercise?)

Other talent on hand includes Pedro Almodovar, Nora Ephron, Zadie Smith, Tom Stoppard and cartoonist Roz Chast, who will field questions from part-time New Yorker writer Steve Martin. Chast and Martin are pals, says Remnick. "I think they met through The New Yorker." Now they're working together on a children's book about the alphabet.

Remnick says the festival (which is "much better," he says, than the similar program offered by The New York Times next weekend - your turn to throw down, Pinch!) is profitable and will be around at least as long as he is. "These things sell out at a rate that continues to astonish us," Remnick adds.

To deal with that, the magazine will for the first time present Webcasts on newyorker.com, though they won't be posted until next week. The Chast-Martin discussion will be streamed along with four other events, including Malcolm Gladwell's talk on secrets.

The festival extends the magazine's carefully nurtured brand, which is venturing in directions that might have disgruntled the editors Tom Wolfe dubbed "tiny mummies" in 1965. There's a new board game, for instance. Can a John Updike action figure be far behind?

"It's not a religion here," says Remnick, who personally approves every coaster and shower curtain. "It's meant to be fun as well as serious. So if there's a great cover and somebody makes a poster of it and it's done well, I don't see how that stuff stops us from breaking the Abu Ghraib story." The board game is based on a new feature that's already become an institution: the back-page cartoon caption contest, whose fans are delirious bordering on psychotic. Just ask Mike Bloomberg.

"Mayor Bloomberg came up to me once," Remnick recalls, "and he had a slightly accusatory look on his face, and I thought, 'Uh-oh.' He said, 'I keep sending in these cartoon captions and I never get in, and it's starting to p - - - me off.' "
- posted by sookeyjane 10/05/2006 03:36:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

He's made it there...


http://gawker.com/stalker/?date=2006-10-01
Steve Martin
E 72ND ST AT 5TH AVE

Oct 1st, 2006 @ 11am

Steve Martin in dark sunglasses & baseball cap walking alone on 72nd Street Transverse looking dapper and happy in a natty suit and nearly translucent yellow rain coat that flapped behind him. He strode confidently down the center of the road.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/04/2006 09:10:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Let them eat truffles


http://www.nypost.com/gossip/pagesix/pagesix_u.htm

Page Six
New York Post
Sept. 21, 2006

****
FUNGI FEVER

TRUFFLE season is here, and celebs are pouring back into Tony May's San Domenico. Steve Martin, Kevin Kline and Martin Short were there celebrating Short's Broadway smash, "Fame Becomes Me."
- posted by sookeyjane 9/21/2006 03:46:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Steve in NYC


yes, steve seems to have abandoned s. cal and gone for the big apple.

from gawker.com/stalker


Steve Martin
530 W 24TH ST
Sep 8th, 2006 @ 1pm

saw steve martin at zach feuer gallery today watching the stuart hawkins video, never taking off his purple bike helmet and neon green bike gloves, big smile on his face.


thanks, rl
- posted by sookeyjane 9/09/2006 08:40:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

More on Steve at the New Yorker Festival


http://festival.newyorker.com/schedule_1007.cfm
October 7, 2006 Saturday
Roz Chast interviewed
by Steve Martin

Comic turns.
Roz Chast published her first drawing in The New Yorker in 1978 and joined the magazine as a staff artist the same year. Her art work has been collected in nine books, including “Mondo Boxo,” “The Four Elements,” “Proof of Life on Earth,” and “Childproof.” A tenth book, “Theories of Everything: Selected, Collected, and Health-Inspected Cartoons by Roz Chast, 1978-2006,” will be published in November.

Steve Martin has been a contributor to The New Yorker since 1996. He is the author of the novels “The Pleasure of My Company” and “Shopgirl,” which was made into a feature film, and a collection, “Pure Drivel,” which includes many of his humor pieces from The New Yorker. He is collaborating on a children’s alphabet book with Roz Chast.

10 A.m. Supper Club
240 West 47th Street

(Note: All programming is subject to change. Tickets available at 12 noon E.S.T. on September 7th, at ticketmaster.com, at all ticketmaster outlets, or by calling 1.877.391.0545. All ticket orders are subject to service charges.)

Thanks KMT
- posted by sookeyjane 9/05/2006 01:12:00 AM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Steve at the New Yorker Festival in October


http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117948770?categoryid=2062&cs=1
Variety.com
Posted: Mon., Aug. 21, 2006, 4:52pm PT
Hulaween in full swing
By LIZ SMITH

****
NORA EPHRON and Ken Auletta will cook and chat at the Culinary Loft as part of the 7th Annual New Yorker Festival (Oct. 6, 7 and 8.) Nora has been writing about cooking for The New Yorker and will serve up three of her favorite dishes -- meals that bring back special memories. Auletta will grill Nora as she stirs. Other festival happenings include Steve Martin interviewing cartoonist Roz Chast, and John Lahr talking to Liev Schreiber. A complete schedule will be online Sept. 4 at festival.newyorker.com
****

Roz Chast is a longtime cartoonist for The New Yorker and other magazines.


Thanks to KMT, who found this.
- posted by sookeyjane 8/23/2006 12:00:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Steve on 60 Minutes


Once again fivealex at youtube.com has come up with an old gem. In approximately 1988, Steve was interviewed on 60 Minutes by Dianne Sawyer, along with his then wife Victoria Tennant. It included clips, David Hockney, and more.

I recommend going to youtube.com and entering in the search line "steve martin fivealex". You'll find this two part entry and lots of others.
- posted by sookeyjane 8/17/2006 12:08:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Happy Birthday, Steve


Today is Steve's birthday.

In anticipation of his birth, Japan surrendered. As a result, Steve was born on the first day of the postwar baby boom.

Happy 61st, Steve.
- posted by sookeyjane 8/14/2006 01:30:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Steve Attended Red Buttons Tribute


Steve isn't mentioned in this article, although he was there. You can find pics at wireimage.com and elsewhere.

City News Service
August 7, 2006 Monday 9:16 AM PST
CENTURY CITY, California

Red Buttons, the carrot-topped comedian who conquered stages from Broadway to Hollywood, will be remembered tonight in a star- studded tribute.

Sylvester Stallone, Mickey Rooney, Connie Stevens and Robert Forster are a few of the stars set to honor Buttons tonight. The comedian died on July 12 of vascular disease. He was 87.

Buttons was known for a razor-sharp wit and surprising depth as an actor. He won an Oscar in 1957 with a dramatic turn in "Sayonara" after battling to convince the filmmakers that a comedian could play a dramatic role.

Tonight's invitation-only tribute is being hosted and produced by Arthur Kassel, a friend. He plans to show clips from Buttons' performances.

"Red Buttons was a special and loyal friend of mine for many decades," Kassel said. "This celebration of his life is necessary for those of us who have lost such an important part of our lives. Many of us need to say goodbye to Red in the environment of laughter and good causes that he lived for."

Kassel also said it would be "an evening of closure" and "a send-off he more than deserves."

Also scheduled to attend the event, among others, are Larry King, Martin Landau, Rob Reiner, Joe Montegna, Bill Maher, Loni Anderson, Sheriff Lee Baca, former Gov. Gray Davis, Paula Prentiss, Richard Benjamin, Charles Durning, Kevin Nealon, Doris Roberts, Pia Zadora, Elliot Gould, Ed Asner, Barbara Eden and Valerie Harper.
- posted by sookeyjane 8/13/2006 03:13:00 AM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Now you can see Steve's old tv specials


There is a guy on youtube, fivealex, who has uploaded "Steve's Best Show Ever" (1981) and "Comedy is Not Pretty" (1980).

These have skits that people have asked for for years -- the death of Socrates, El Paso with the chimps, the Elephant Man and much more.

You can find the links here. There are lots of other goodies here, too. Check it out before they disappear.
- posted by sookeyjane 8/11/2006 01:27:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Steve not writing the Pink Panther sequel


http://www.movieweb.com/news/01/13901.php
Source: Hollywood Reporter
Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006
Sony Pictures and MGM have hired Scott Neustadter and Michael M. Weber to write the sequel of The Pink Panther.

The plot for the sequel is being kept under wraps, however The Hollywood Reporter says it has been described as high concept. Steve Martin is on board to reprise his role as Inspector Jacques Clouseau.

It's been good for the newcomers, Neustadter and Weber - along side The Pink Panther, the pair sold their romantic comedy script, (500) Days of Summer to Fox Searchlight.

Look for The Pink Panther sequel in theaters late next year.
- posted by sookeyjane 8/03/2006 11:40:00 AM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Seems Steve's back in NYC


http://www.nydailynews.com/news/gossip/story/439956p-370620c.html
Rush and Malloy
Daily Dish
New York Daily News online

****
Surveillance ...
Celebrities scrambling to see Rita Wilson before she ends her run in "Chicago" at the Ambassador Theatre Sunday, including Maria Bello, Bette Midler and Steve Martin, will get another chance to see her Nov. 14, when she'll join Huey Lewis, Melanie Griffith, Brooke Shields, Ann Reinking, Bebe Neuwirth, Joel Grey, Patrick Swayze, Chita Rivera, Marilu Henner, Alan Thicke and other alumni to celebrate the revival's 10th anniversary in a benefit for Safe Horizon, the victims' aid group.
****
- posted by sookeyjane 8/02/2006 04:24:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Steve nominated for 2006 Emmy - sorta


Los Angeles Times
July 7, 2006 Friday
Home Edition
CALENDAR; Calendar Desk; Part E; Pg. 22
THE EMMY NOMINATIONS

And the nominees are ...

****
Variety, music or comedy program

Louis J. Horvitz, "78th Annual Academy Awards," ABC; Bruce Gowers, "American Idol (Finale)," Fox; Jim Hoskinson, "The Colbert Report (Episode 110)," Comedy Central; Chuck O'Neil, "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart (Episode 10140)," Comedy Central; Beth McCarthy Miller, "Saturday Night Live (Host: Steve Martin)," NBC.

****
- posted by sookeyjane 7/14/2006 04:09:00 PM PERMALINK 1 COMMENTS

 

A REAL blast from the past


In the early 80s, Lorn Michaels ditched Saturday Night Live to try some other things. One was a short lived sketch comedy series called "The New Show". Steve did a few bits on various episodes. Except for the few times when people videotaped it from home, you can't find these anywhere.

But recently someone put up Steve's parody of Michael Jackson doing Billie Jean on YouTube.

You can see it here. See Steve give himself a wedgie :)
- posted by sookeyjane 7/12/2006 06:42:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Getting addicted to gawker stalker


Steve is back in NYC ...

http://gawker.com/stalker/
Macbeth in Central Park
E 69TH ST AT 5TH AVE
Jun 28th, 2006 @ 9pm

The Mayor with Diana Taylor, both looked chic and tan. Tom Hanks, looking taller and bigger than i expected, but unaffected and nice-seeming. Steve Martin, dapper in a white linen suit and sunglasses, chatting a lot with Tom Hanks.

UPDATE: Gawker added some on their July 3 edition:

gawker.com
July 3, 2006 Monday 1:05 PM EST
Classic Gawker Stalker: Bill Clinton is still the BMOC

The opening of Macbeth last night in the park was undoubtedly the most star-studded NYC opening I've been to in a while. So many stars my poor little brain almost could not compute!! First and foremost--the great one--President Clinton himself came for the show (not the benefit beforehand). He was wearing a tan summer suit (jacket off, it was sweltering) with white shirt and BRIGHT orange solid color tie. Very red-faced but totally magnetic, as always, eating up the enormous amount of attention he was getting from fellow spectators. He was there with Chelsea (who looked thin) and her boyfriend (couldn't stop looking at bill long enough to notice what he looked like). The mayor was also there with his girlfriend Diana Taylor--both looked chic, tan, and happy. They left at intermission, though, while the president stayed for the whole thing. So many other celebs there. Tom Hanks in black baseball cap, black polo shirt, and black jeans, looking taller and bigger than i expected, but totally unaffected and nice-seeming. Steve Martin, dapper in a white-ish linen suit and sunglasses, came alone, was chatting a lot with Tom Hanks. Meryl Streep & Kevin Kline were the honorees at the benefit--Streep was beautiful and friendly with no makeup and glasses, and Kline was extremely handsome in a light blue suit. They gave a very funny joint speech. Naomi Watts was there to support her boyfriend Liev Schreiber (who plays Macbeth)--she is TINY, a total slip of a woman. Would not take off her sweater despite the sweltering heat. Juliana Margulies was there looking stylish but overly made up in a black top and white pinstripe pants, hair pulled back, with a good looking model-y type guy. Marisa Tomei in a cute bohemian type dress with bubble hem and sky high Christian Louboutin heels. Candace Bergen and Ali Macgraw came together--Bergen looked radiant all in white, Macgraw came with her daughter. Philip Seymour Hoffman was there, looking unaffected and just like a regular guy. Diane Sawyer and Mike Nichols made an appearance--she was extremely tall and her skin had none of the smooth natural sheen it does on television, I guess makeup really does wonders for her.
- posted by sookeyjane 6/29/2006 05:27:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Why celebrities love being seen by their fans ...


This is why celebrities love being seen in public by fans, love even more the internet rags that publish said sightings, and absolutely adore the blogs the republish them.

http://www.defamer.com/hollywood/luke-wilson/hollywood-privacywatch-luke-wilson-four-
bud-lights-short-of-a-sixpack-182963.php
June 23, 2006
Hollywood PrivacyWatch: Luke Wilson Four Bud Lights Short Of A Six-Pack

· Was at Franklin Canyon reservoir and who should drive up but Steve Martin! He looked plain as can be in a white Lexus. I must have looked ridiculous openly staring at him but what can you do, it's STEVE MARTIN! He was ready to go mountain biking apparently. Looked good for his age. He smiled nicely at my irritating stare -- and as I walked away I could hear people shouting "Steve Martin! We love you!" His small car was quite different from the usual big black shiny Merc. His head is really big.
- posted by sookeyjane 6/27/2006 02:30:00 AM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Steve hiding out writing Pink Panther sequels?


http://www.darkhorizons.com/news06/060620g.php

Martin Plans More "Panther" Sequels
Posted: Tuesday June 20th, 2006 6:47am
Source: Assorted Sources
Author: Garth Franklin

Steve Martin is rumoured to be doing not one, but two sequels to his god
awful "Pink Panther" redux for MGM and Sony.

There is one good bit of news, the people behind the camera seem to be
improving. Martin is apparently now polishing a script by "Dodgeball"
writer/director Rawson Marshall Thurber and Mike Saltzman that sees
Inspector Clouseau placed on special assignment with Scotland Yard.

Former S Club 7 singer Rachel Stevens is one of the names rumoured for the
female lead. Kevin Kline, Jean Reno, and Emily Mortimer are not expected to
return for the sequel. Thurber is also expected to fill the director chair
instead of Shawn Levy ("Cheaper by the Dozen") this time.
- posted by sookeyjane 6/21/2006 10:52:00 AM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Another retro article -- for Richard Grant's WahWah


The New York Times
June 4, 2006 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Section 9; Column 1; Style Desk; A NIGHT OUT WITH: Richard E. Grant; Pg. 4
Prey for a Saturnine Shark
PAULINE O'CONNOR

HOLLYWOOD:
HE has appeared in about 60 movie and television roles since his debut as a dissolute, down-on-his-luck actor in the 1987 cult favorite ''Withnail and I.'' But a few weeks ago, Richard E. Grant was pacing outside the ArcLight Cinemas on Sunset Boulevard, muttering, ''My stomach's doing figure eights.''

The attack of butterflies was understandable. Mr. Grant was about to screen the first movie he has directed and written, in front of an audience of Hollywood power brokers. Six years in the making, the movie, ''Wah-Wah,'' is an autobiographical portrayal of Mr. Grant's tumultuous upbringing in Swaziland in the waning days of the British Empire. (''Wah-wah" is how Mr. Grant's American stepmother referred to the snobby slang bandied about by class-obsessed colonials.)

Casually elegant in a rumpled linen ecru suit and deeply tanned, Mr. Grant had the British colonial look down pat this evening in Hollywood. He had a watch on each wrist: the watch on the left, given to him by his father on his deathbed, was set to Swaziland time; the right watch to Los Angeles time. According to the Los Angeles watch, it was showtime.

In the theater, Steve Martin bounded over. ''We've been friends for 16 years, since 'L.A. Story,' '' Mr. Grant said. ''In Hollywood, that's like dog years.'' Mr. Martin asked after Mr. Grant's wife, Joan, a dialect coach. ''We were together in New York last week, but she had to go back to London for work,'' Mr. Grant said. ''Plus she was all shopped out.''

After the screening and Q. and A. session with the audience, moderated by Mr. Martin, Mr. Grant was greeted by another old friend, the comedian Tracey Ullman, who had her teenage son in tow. The three entered an elevator heading down; as its doors started to close, Eugene Levy, another comic actor, popped into view, hurling his compliments about the movie through the crack. Before time ran out, Mr. Levy raised his hand to his ear in the universal ''telephone'' gesture and said rapidly, ''I'vegotsomethoughtsI'llcallyou.''

Ms. Ullman took a step back to admire Mr. Grant's ensemble. ''Ooh, such a clotheshorse, this one, for as long as I've known him,'' Ms. Ullman said. ''We met filming 'Pret-a-Porter' in Paris.''

The group headed across the street to the Sterling Steak House for the post-screening party. Mr. Grant was waylaid at the front door by a burly autograph hound brandishing a random assortment of memorabilia from his movies: a ''Hudson Hawk'' poster, a ''Spice World'' calendar, a promotional photo from ''The Player.''

Waiting in the cavernous restaurant were members of what one might call Hollywood's British colony, including Eric Idle, Michael York and Julian Sands, the guest of honor's co-star in the horror movie ''Warlock.''

Scanning the crowded bar, Mr. Grant's eyes lit up when he saw another former cast mate, Winona Ryder. Her companion, the documentary filmmaker Henry-Alex Rubin, said, ''I've been waiting a decade to meet that man.''

Ms. Ryder said, ''We quote lines from his book 'With Nails' to each other all the time.'' (Mr. Grant has published three books.) ''Like, we'll call someone a 'saturnine predator.' ''

Mr. Rubin added, ''Or a 'rotund apotheosis of harassment.' ''

As if conjured by Ms. Ryder and Mr. Rubin, a saturnine predator suddenly appeared in the form of the autograph collector who had accosted Mr. Grant outside. Having evaded the sentries at the door, he was now circling like a shark. But the staff yanked him like a weed.

Around midnight (or 9 a.m. in Swaziland), a visibly tired Mr. Grant announced he was going to collapse into a bath. The man of the hour was all out of time.
- posted by sookeyjane 6/18/2006 09:57:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

New place for Steve pics


For a new place to look at Steve pics, try this: superiorpics
- posted by sookeyjane 6/18/2006 12:38:00 AM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Some interesting insights


This article is a few months old, but I missed it when it came out. Now that Steve is successfully hiding out, I thought it might be of interest.

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/film/features/article348630.ece
The Independent (London) Online Edition

Steve Martin resurrects Clouseau
The comedian who brought Sergeant Bilko back to life has recreated Peter Sellers's most famous role. Steve Martin tells Gill Pringle about why he does so many remakes, and what he brings to them
Published: 03 March 2006

Steve Martin isn't slow to acknowledge the connection between comic genius and instability. He'll even admit that there's a certain irony to one neurotic funny man following another neurotic funny man into the well-worn shoes of Inspector Clouseau, Peter Sellers's most-loved celluloid creation.

"But I think there's a difference between having a darker side and being crazy," concludes Martin, 60, who stars in The Pink Panther 43 years after Sellers's fumbling French detective debuted on the big screen. "I think Peter Sellers was slightly, at least from what I've read and heard, tortured. I think we all have our darker side, and I'm sort of in the middle there. I'm in neutral," says the actor, who has gone to great lengths, via therapy and self-help books, to ensure his own sanity.

For a time in the mid-Seventies, he drank too much. Today he mainly has his demons in check, observing a healthy lifestyle and avoiding meat and alcohol. "I think when you're a performer, and anytime you're in the arts, there's certainly high and low days because you're so vulnerable all the time to the slightest criticism - from your physicality to your anatomy to your ideas. There's always a criticism coming from somewhere, and I find that most artists can't discern between valid criticism and insane internet criticism. It's all the same," he says, shifting positions uncomfortably.

Initially, Martin refused to take on Inspector Clouseau, a project previously considered by Mike Myers, Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker, all of whom eventually passed. However, a chance meeting in a car park with the Pink Panther director Shawn Levy persuaded him to take on the untouchable.

"You have to forget about the great. You can't live with a legend in your head. You just burrow down and start working. I had the honour of meeting Peter Sellers once, about 25 years ago, and he was very friendly with me. It was at a junket in Hawaii, he was promoting something and I was promoting The Jerk. And he was very complimentary and so I felt there was a little bit of, certainly mutual respect. I mean, my respect for him was great. And I really like our movie. In my opinion I think we have honoured the film well, and his legacy and Blake Edwards's legacy," he says.

Martin bristles at the suggestion that The Pink Panther is the latest effort in a once-brilliant career that has recently dissipated into a string of remakes: "Do I like remakes? Every one I've done has been a hit, starting with Dirty Rotten Scoundrels which was a remake of Bedtime Story, and Father of The Bride and Cheaper By The Dozen. But I know what you're saying. First of all, this is not a remake. It's a completely different script. I think there's maybe one gag from the original movie, so I don't call it a remake, but I know what you mean.

"Movies have been remade since the Twenties. Look at the number of times they've re-made King Kong, and A Star is Born. All these stories keep coming back. I've sort of justified it by saying, well its like a play. Nobody says, 'Oooh, I can't do Hamlet because Richard Burton did it'. So, to me, Inspector Clouseau is the Hamlet for comedians."

Like Sellers, Martin is not immune to beautiful women. Romances with Linda Ronstadt and Bernadette Peters were replaced by a seven-year marriage to the British actress Victoria Tennant, who broke his heart some 12 years ago when she left him for another man. For a while he sought solace with best friend and co-star Diane Keaton, followed by a rather public love affair with the actress Anne Heche, who left him for Ellen DeGeneres after coming out as a lesbian. Today he has abandoned his image as Hollywood's most famous "lonely guy", presently enjoying a relationship with the New Yorker writer Anne Stringfield, 33, who, intriguingly, is often wrongly identified as the Sex and the City actress Kristin Davis, owing to their physical resemblance.

So is Martin happy now? "All these things, I feel, are so genetic. Like some people are just happy. I have a close friend who is usually happy." He demonstrates, grinning insanely. "And when he's sad, he's like this," he says turning down the grin a slightest notch. "I'm not always on the light side but I am a happy person. You go through periods of your life where you're skewed more dark and you're skewed more light. Right now, I'm sort of dead in the middle."

Perhaps Martin's past romantic failures owe something to dreadful pick-up lines such as "A woman is like an artichoke..." a line he both wrote and delivers as Inspector Clouseau. "But I think that is true," he argues. "The line is that a woman is like an artichoke and you have to do a lot of work before you get to her heart. I think that's a very romantic sentiment and a lot of people would like to think that that's true. "I don't think any relationship is perfect and although I do have friends who seem to have thriving relationships and you always hope for the perfect one, you really have to forgive and get along and make allowances for people and your partner. I guess if you keep striving for perfection, it probably won't happen. I was married for 10 years and single for 10 years so I can see it from both sides," says Martin.

If therapy has ironed out some of the wrinkles in his somewhat introspective personality, then Martin owns up to one Sellers-worthy obsession: "I'll actually - I hate to confess - record the audience. I'll listen to how big the laughs are. I've written - or at least had my name on - at least a dozen screenplays, and the thrilling part for me is to be able to write a scene or a joke and then hear that laugh when you're now so far removed from it.

"If I'm performing live, they might laugh because its me, but when they're in a theatre and I'm not there physically, there's no obligation for them to fake a laugh or do anything - so that is the greatest feeling to be standing in the back, with your pants off - I'm kidding! - and hear that kind of laughter."

The Pink Panther features Beyoncé Knowles, Jean Reno and Kevin Kline along with uncredited cameos by Jason Statham and Clive Owen. Plans for David Beckham to make a brief cameo were ditched early on. The producer Robert Simonds says: "It was a great idea, but when you actually try to make it happen this man is booked in 15-minute increments, seven days a week. We could never access his schedule in a way where we could get him to do what we needed to do."







Though undaunted at taking on Sellers's Panther legacy, Martin confesses to certain pressures when it comes to being funny: "If you're doing a comedy and it's not funny, then it's not funny. So you have the responsibility of not only delivering the character but also making sure that there's a laugh, whereas in drama, if you just wanted silence, you'd be fine: 'That was totally silent. Fantastic!' But in a comedy, that's the last thing you want. Doing comedy has this, 'yes, there's a man jumping up and down!' factor," says the banjo-playing psychology graduate whose career has also seen him tackle drama, including LA Story, Leap of Faith, Grand Canyon and Pennies from Heaven as well as the recent Shopgirl, which is based on his own novella.

Turning 60 last year proved not as traumatic as he'd once envisioned: "The reflection actually took place five years ago, so I was exhausted before I actually reached that milestone. You get to a place where you tell yourself: 'I'm 60: I don't have to do the things I don't want to anymore'," says Martin who confesses to having the same vanities as the next actor, daily spreading generous quantities of skin-cream on his face: "Men want wrinkles as much as women do. I use an alpha-hydroxy cream every night and my skin has never looked better.

"Fortunately for me, ageing can be a gift for male actors. Look at Walter Matthau. He just became funnier and funnier the older he got, the more his face became saggy and old and craggy. I think it all depends on what the actor's doing. You don't care if Robert de Niro looks old but you do care if Tom Cruise looks old. Like many men my age, I wish I could turn the clock back, yet I'm content to have accomplished some things in my life and no longer feel I must prove myself."

While Martin's Clouseau is firmly rooted in Sellers and Edwards, he says: "I bent it a little bit because I am different. When I looked at those movies, I understood that Peter Sellers could ad-lib all day within the context of the character. He understood Clouseau so well and I could tell he felt funny. I was a long way from that when I first started thinking abut the part, but I knew it had to feel funny to me and the only way that would come out is through my own comic sense. I can't tell you exactly what it is, because it's a little mysterious, which I think is a good thing.

"It's funny because, when I first got offered the part, I said 'no'. I didn't think it was right for me. But I thought about it and thought about it and I tried writing a few scenes to see if I could get my head around it, and they seemed funny," says Martin, who is presently writing a follow-up to his novella Shopgirl. "Except it won't be anything like Shopgirl!" says the actor. He has an infuriating habit of attempting to change the topic by fiddling with your tape-recorder or randomly discussing his reading glasses and begging you not to disclose the fact he is very short-sighted. "I've been writing a few memoir-ish type things. I'm not sure why. Its not my history of show business. Its just my history in life really," says Martin. His early effort in this genre produced a most candid story in The New Yorker outlining how he'd attempted therapy with his father, in an effort to understand him, before his death a few years ago.

If The Pink Panther has received poor reviews in the US, at least Martin can console himself with the fact he thoroughly enjoyed making the film, whatever critics felt after watching it.

"What's not to like about filming in Paris?" asks this ardent art collector and gourmet. "Can you imagine waking up and walking out in the morning? Its warm, its summer and you're going to work. You walk out on the Place Vendôme, and then you're picked up and driven to a beautiful place where you work a little bit and then there's lunchtime and there's 50 fantastic restaurants within walking distance, plus the art, and the city's beautiful. It was just a dream. I loved it. Even though I speak very limited, restaurant, French."

If Sellers's private life was an open book, then Martin's, to a certain extent, is a closed one. The actor explains why: "I think that many celebrities give away their private lives quite easily, and I don't. The reason I don't is that it's like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle - when somebody's looking at something, it changes. So I don't think you can conduct a private life when everybody's looking at it. I have a lot of celebrity friends and I also have a lot of friends who aren't celebrities, and it's unfair to drag them into the celebrity world. So I like to keep that separate. They're not there to be focused on and have attention paid to them; my best friends are people who are not interested in celebrity at all.

"I enjoy wit in my relationships, and I think my favourite thing to do is to have dinner with friends, outside, talking. I'm very French in that way," says Martin, dissolving into a Clouseau-style French accent. "Talking, talking, talking, and fun and laughter and kidding around. I like to kid. And to have friends you can joke with and nobody's offended. People who are self-deprecating instead of the opposite - some kind of ego thing. And whether we do actually have big egos or not, at least we hide it."

Whether he's talking about himself or Clouseau is anyone's guess.

'The Pink Panther' opens on 17 March
- posted by sookeyjane 6/18/2006 12:29:00 AM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Living in NYC


Guess Steve has pretty much moved to NYC.

http://cityguideny.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=7645
NYC Official City Guide
June Broadway Banter: News from Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Beyond
Griffin Miller

****

Celebrity Watch
On the Great White Way, recent celebs seen in the audience of the hit Four Seasons musical Jersey Boys include Liam Neeson, Robin Williams, Meredith Vieira (Katie Couric’s soon-to-be successor on “Today”), and Doris Roberts. Meanwhile, spotted at performances of Red Light Winter, one of Off-Broadway’s hottest tickets, were Steve Martin, Kathy Bates, Edward Norton, and David Schwimmer. And caught banging the drum slowly — and not so slowly — along with other theatergoers and the amazing percussionists who make up the cast of Off-Broadway’s extremely interactive Drumstruck: Kevin Bacon.

****
- posted by sookeyjane 5/23/2006 10:22:00 AM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

People say Steve has a big head


I don't know what ballpark this is, but apparently Steve made a special appearance

http://www.flickr.com/photos/73857192@N00/136871547


- posted by sookeyjane 5/22/2006 08:18:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Steve as Arthur -Conan Doyle?


I don't know if this is a joke or not, but I can see Steve playing the part.

http://www.jossip.com/gossip/google/playing-sherlock-holmes-
with-google-20060522.php?rss
Jossip
Playing Sherlock Holmes With Google
— Mon, May 22, 2006 —

If you're like us, you use Google at least 100 times a day. So when the Google sign pays tribute to Arthur Conan Doyle we take notice. Especially because we didn't see anything about it in the New York Times.

If you're under the age of 25, you may or may not have ever heard of this guy ... but you surely know his characters by heart. And in the attempt to save you the three seconds it would take to do this yourself, we clicked on the Google sign, and pulled up some info on the author in celebration of his birthday.

And in homage to average Googler, we pulled up the first entry that came up instead of searching for the most reliable.

Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Scotland and studied medicine there, eventually serving as a physician in the Boer War (1899-1902). But his fame rests on his creation of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. Doyle published his first Holmes tale, A Study in Scarlet, in 1887. Over the following 40 years he published 56 short stories and four novels featuring Holmes and his sidekick, Dr. Watson. Late in life Doyle became closely interested in mysticism and wrote the 1926 book A History of Spiritualism.

And Steve Martin will be playing him in the on screen biography.
- posted by sookeyjane 5/22/2006 08:16:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Under the radar


Where is he going? Where will he be? Who knows.

Here's where he's been.

On May 9, 2006, Steve was in California for an American Film Institute showing of Wah Wah, a movie by his friend and cohort Richard E. Grant (of the chiming balls in L.A. Story).

Q&A followed the screening of the movie with writer/director Richard E. Grant and guest moderator writer/director/actor/author Steve Martin, followed by a hosted reception.

"Acclaimed actor Richard E. Grant’s WAH-WAH is a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story, told through the eyes of young Ralph Compton (Nicholas Hoult). Set during the last gasp of the British Empire in Swaziland, South East Africa, in 1969, the plot focuses on the dysfunctional Compton family whose gradual disintegration mirrors the end of British rule.

As an 11 year-old, Ralph witnesses his mother's (Miranda Richardson) adultery with his father's (Gabriel Byrne) best friend.They divorce and send Ralph to boarding school. Returning home, at 14, Ralph discovers that his father has re-married Ruby (Emily Watson), an American ex-flight attendant. As round a peg as you could find in this square-holed society, Ruby ridicules the petty snobbery of the restless colonials. The chaos of Ralph’s home life combined with the confusion of adolescence and the pending independence of his “homeland” stokes Ralph’s inner turmoil, eventually forging his creative mind."

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Now he could be anywhere.
- posted by sookeyjane 5/15/2006 03:45:00 AM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Steve as George Jetson?


Redcliffe and Bayside Herald (Australia)
May 10, 2006 Wednesday
Pg. 38
Grant gets call-up

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SPACE AGE: Warner Bros. has apparently fast-tracked a live-action Jetsons film. Rumour is producers want Steve Martin to play George Jetson and Danny De Vito to play Mr Spacely. Apparently, it has been suggested Britney Spears plays Judy Jetson.

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- posted by sookeyjane 5/12/2006 11:41:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Steve's still in NYC


Daily News (New York)
May 3, 2006 Wednesday
SPORTS FINAL EDITION
GOSSIP; LOWDOWN; Pg. 23
CELEB FLACKS WATCHING THEIR BACKS
LLOYD GROVE WITH KATHERINE THOMSON

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'Housewife' is the roast of the town.

Felicity Huffman seems far too nice to roast - but roast her they did Monday night at the Rainbow Room, while raising $350,000 for her Atlantic Theater Company in Chelsea.

"By the end of the night I'll be on a fire escape, smoking and crying 'Everyone hates me!'" the Oscar nominee and "Desperate Housewives" star told Lowdown before her husband, William H. Macy, helped turn her on the spit, with Steve Martin among the celebs in the audience. "I actually am nervous. I was so out-of-body, I walked out of the hotel tonight and the gentleman said, 'Good evening' and I said, 'Good morning!' "

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- posted by sookeyjane 5/04/2006 06:46:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS