Steve edges toward being more political


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-martin/leap-second-lovers-are-tr_b_13068.html
HuffingtonPost.com
December 30, 2005
Leap Second Lovers are Traitors Says Bill O’Reilly

"This year’s leap second is an assault on the American public," says commentator Bill O’Reilly. "The reason the leap second is even being proposed is because of America Haters, because of Iraqi hate mongers, and let’s be honest, Shiites. Why would you add a second to the year unless you’re an anti-American hate monger?
I remember liberals at a party saying, ‘let’s add a second to the year’ and I was the only one who spoke up against it. Why would they want to add a second to the year? Because it gives them a second longer to hate Bush.

“Look, look, look, look. A leap second is a denial of everything American, of everything good, of everything moral. They’re saying we need this seconds because the earth rotates on its axis and revolves around the earth, well this is the no spin zone. So we don’t need a leap second. Though I would rather have a leap second than some of these hate-mongers who go around hating even their own ideas! They need to hate their own ideas so much that you have many liberals proposing the leap second, which is an idea that they hate, yet, they propose.

“I am so so so so upset with these people, who actually believe their ideas, yet, I have no hate in my heart. I am a simple guy, who only has my own true beliefs and a few products that are my cornerstone to fight against the leap second poobah. Let me say it aloud: Leap Second, leap second, leap second. Doesn’t it sound ugly?

“Please, don’t let these Darwinian leap-seconders, who believe that the planets revolve around the sun, who believe that rocks are sedimentary, igneous and stalactites, who are innocent dim-wit believers in a faith bordering on hating everything religious like trees and fruitcake, yet, who don’t believe in John 7:12:45:67:89, have their say.

“But you know what I love? Dialogue. Rational dialogue which allows me to say that aliens from a Iraqi loving planet want to abolish Christmas by adding a leap second to the Darwinian anti-God year. Dialogue is what keeps the American system God-loving and anti non-God. It also keeps the anti-God loving non-Iraqi loving insurgent deniers able to voice their hideous so-called opinions over the American loving tolerant airways. And now let’s take some calls.”

found by the very up to the minute KMT. You can read comments to the article at the Huffington site.
- posted by sookeyjane 12/30/2005 04:43:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

What did you buy, Steve?


http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=1305010

Greed on Wall Street
The Rise and Fall of Tyco's Dennis Kozlowski
Former Tyco International CEO L. Dennis Kozlowski
By BRIAN ROSS, ABC News
Program: 20/20

Nov. 11, 2005 — This fall's art season brought a gathering of multimillionaires to New York's famed auction houses, where connoisseurs competed for the latest must-have works of art.

"It's a big night for money," the actor Steve Martin said as he mixed into the crowd heading into Christie's at Rockefeller Center for the evening's auction of postwar and contemporary art.

The bidding was fast and furious, with works by Warhol, DeKooning and Lichtenstein changing hands for tens of millions of dollars.

"It's amazing. It's like grand opera. You have egos fighting other egos," said Brett Gorvy, international co-head of the Post-War and Contemporary Art Collection for Christie's in New York.

The night's star was Homage to Matisse by Mark Rothko, which set a new record when it sold for $22.4 million.

****
- posted by sookeyjane 12/22/2005 05:45:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Six reviews of Cheaper By the Dozen 2


Times Colonist (Victoria, British Columbia)
December 21, 2005 Wednesday
Final Edition
ARTS; Pg. C9
Cheap gags wear thin
Vanessa Farquharson, CanWest News Service

Rating: 2 1/2

- - -

Cheaper by the Dozen 2 begins with a pair of legs -- belonging to Steve Martin, it turns out -- stepping out of a station wagon in a pair of pants that are clearly too short, as though his tailor simply ran out of material.

It's a fitting metaphor for this sequel, which runs out of material in the first few minutes but keeps going anyway. Identical to its predecessor, but with the pleasant addition of Eugene Levy along with arguably even cheaper gags, the film follows the Brady Bunch -- or at least its contemporary incarnation, the Baker family -- as a family trip to the cottage spirals into comic disaster.

Much of the zany antics result from the competitive streaks of Tom (Martin) and his arch rival Jimmy Murtaugh (Levy), who owns the sprawling estate across the lake, which includes a dining table courtesy of the King of Thailand and a trophy room bursting with awards won by his kids who are over-achievers and therefore sad inside.

Jimmy and Tom spend the entire film trying to one-up the other, whether it's who sings a better campfire song or whose children are better behaved. Of course the Bakers, who specialize in cartoonish heights of wackiness, have some catching up to do when it comes to clam-bake etiquette and book smarts.

Director Adam Shankman, of The Pacifier and Bringing Down the House fame, has until recently specialized in choreography. If he'd thrown in a dance number here, other than a schmaltzy slow dance on the dock, it might have been improved.

But unfortunately all the other dancing is around issues of self-esteem and parental anxiety. In the end, we don't get much of a lesson about either, other than the old we-have-to-let-go-of-the-kids-at-some-point one, footnoted with a Kodak moment roasting marshmallows at dusk.

There is some good humour in the dialogue, at least, especially between the two wives. During one scene, Jimmy's fourth wife -- whose ambiguous trophy status is played to a tee by Carmen Electra -- exclaims to Mrs. Baker (Bonnie Hunt), "Kudos! That's my word of the day," to which she deadpans, "Oh ... fun ... it's fun to have a word."

Levy also brings a nice, vague sobriety to his role as the grooming dad who'd probably kill for one of those "My kid and my money go to Harvard" T-shirts. This, coupled with the cottage jokes, that will surely get a chortle or two from most Canadian audiences (also, note the Hudson's Bay blanket in one scene), give the film some charm.

But don't think Cheaper doesn't resort to the crassness of having elderly people in wheelchairs get inadvertently pushed into the lake -- twice -- or slapstick that's clinically dead (ie. malfunctioning plumbing, overturned dinner tables, watersports gone wrong, dogs attacking crotches, etc). And then there's the over-protective but loving dad character, who may be a bumbling fool but, when push comes to shove, proves he can be responsible.

Such is the stereotype played by Steve Martin, who's laid claim to it since Parenthood and both Father of the Brides. After seeing him take such a challenging, personal turn in Shopgirl, it's all the more depressing watching this veteran actor schlep through yet another dad role. Even his trademark wistful grin seems to have become more of a grimace, his enthusiasm as unbridled as a work horse.

The kids, at least, seem to be enjoying themselves, and Sarah (Alyson Stoner), who's at the centre of all the action, provides the most realistic depiction of early adolescence, from stealing makeup to the forced nonchalance of a first date.

But Hilary Duff, back as Lorraine, looks a little hungry around the eyes; she just doesn't seem comfortable in a supporting role where her only lines revolve around her not-yet-dad-approved internship at Allure magazine and the benefits of lip gloss.

What this film needs is a hint of the unexpected -- every ounce of humour has been coloured so far within the lines, it doesn't approach even the remotest edge of spontaneity.

The few gems it has drown in a sea of '50s-era slapstick, where the idealism is so pervasive that a lower-back tattoo, of a butterfly at that, leads a parent to contemplate disowning his child. Those who are truly jonesing for A Very Brady Christmas or who savour that syrupy sweet aftertaste of eggnog in the morning may derive some satisfaction from Cheaper 2.

But for the discerning filmgoer, it might cause a slight, family-friendly hangover.

-------------------------------------------------
The Toronto Sun
December 21, 2005 Wednesday
FINAL EDITION
ENTERTAINMENT; Pg. 85
A HALF-DOZEN LAUGHS
JANE STEVENSON

By all accounts, it wasn't that funny the first time.

But Hollywood loves a moneymaker, and the first Cheaper By The Dozen in 2003 -- actually an updated remake of the 1970 film starring Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy parently raked in about $190 million at the box office.

So Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt are back, reviving their roles as superbreeders Tom and Kate Baker in Cheaper By The Dozen 2, shot in and around Toronto earlier this summer.

This time, however, the couple's 12 children are either growing up too fast or leaving home. The oldest pregnant daughter Nora (Piper Perabo) is moving to Houston with her annoying husband (Jonathan Bennett), who is prone to feeding her organic food or reading to their unborn child when he isn't on his cellphone, while humourless second-eldest daughter Lorraine (Hilary Duff) is going to study fashion in New York City.

The Bakers' empty nest syndrome leads them to organize one last family summer vacation trip together at a beloved cabin on Lake Winnetka, Wisconsin.

But once the brood arrives, reality sets in as their rustic, paint-peeling cabin with a falling-apart dock clearly isn't what it once was. Its dilapidated state is only reinforced by the palatial estate across the lake called The Boulders.

Living inside the ridiculously large compound are obnoxious developer Jimmy Murtaugh (Eugene Levy), his much-younger fourth wife Sarina (Carmen Electra) and his well-educated, over-achieving eight children, who he forces to read and write for two hours every day.

The well-organized Murtaugh clan is in stark contrast to the Baker's dozen, who spend their first minutes inside their cabin chasing a rat they've nicknamed The Chiseler.

Turns out too, that Martin and Levy are childhood rivals, which only fuels the long-standing family competition on the lake known as the Labour Day Cup.

Unfortunately, this family comedy doesn't live up to its promising premise due to an unfunny script by Sam Harper, whose credits include the first Cheaper movie and Just Married, and sloppy direction from Adam Shankman, who helmed the Martin/Levy comedy Bringing Down The House.

It seems like Shankman lost control of Martin and Levy, who are normally two of the most consistently funny men on screen.

Only Hunt manages to keep her dignity intact, and some of the younger children provide much needed comic relief, whether they're setting off fireworks at the Murtaugh's stuffy private club, or following a trail of animal droppings.

"Cool, we get to follow the poo!" exclaims one of the Baker's mischievous twin boys (played by Shane and Brent Kinsman).

That sounds more exciting than this movie.

BOTTOM LINE

Kids in the 8-12 range will probably enjoy the slapstick comedy but Steve Martin and Eugene Levy's pratfalls grow tiresome pretty quickly for the teenaged set and older. However, Bonnie Hunt is good in every scene she's in.

CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN 2

1 hour, 34 minutes

Starring: Steve Martin, Bonnie Hunt, Eugene Levy

Director: Adam Shankman

Rated: PG

PLOT: Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt return as the parents of a dozen children in this sequel to their 2003 box office hit. This time the couple take their brood for one last summer vacation at a lakeside cabin where Martin attempts to compete with Eugene Levy and his over-achieving, well-heeled clan.

----------------------------------------------------------------

THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE (California)
December 21, 2005 Wednesday
FINAL Edition
DAILY DATEBOOK; Pg. E1
Dad is wild and crazy and the kids are cute. Sound familiar? It's Part Deux of 'Dozen.'
Peter Hartlaub, Chronicle Pop Culture Critic


RATING: (SNOOZING VIEWER)

Cheaper by the Dozen 2: Comedy. Starring Steve Martin, Bonnie Hunt, Eugene Levy and Tom Welling. Directed by Adam Shankman. (PG. 100 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)

Steve Martin is kind of like your uncle who still gets to play quarterback during the holiday family football game, even though he hasn't thrown a touchdown since 1992. His attempts at broad physical comedy have become so weak and predictable in recent years that it's getting harder to remember how funny he was in "The Jerk" and on "Saturday Night Live."

"Cheaper by the Dozen 2" follows a similar path as the first movie, with 12 kids committing a series of criminal misdemeanors right up until the touching everyone-learns-a-big-lesson ending. Martin is the main foil for the brood's precocious violence, but there are some completely innocent victims as well. Rush out and see this film if you think the only thing funnier than a guy in a wheelchair getting knocked into a lake is a guy in a wheelchair getting knocked into a lake twice.

Martin and Bonnie Hunt are Tom and Kate Baker, whose superhuman fertility has strapped them with a dozen unruly kids, each with a distinct stereotype that roughly mirrors one of the youngsters in the original "Bad News Bears" --

the smart kid with glasses, the tomboy, the fat funny kid ...

A series of forgettable events sends everyone to a creaky cabin by a lake, where Tom becomes crazy with competitive spirit after running into a now-successful high school rival whose kids appear to be perfect. Eugene Levy shows up in this role, if for no other reason than he was about to lose the lead in his competition with Ben Affleck to see who can appear in more bad movies in the 21st century. ("Cheaper 2" makes the score Levy 15, Affleck 14.)

"Cheaper by the Dozen 2" is less a movie than random scenes from "The Brady Bunch" re-created by better actors and strung together to feature-film length. First dates are planned and then ruined, cherished possessions are lost and then found, and a dog knocks over a table filled with food. Davy Jones doesn't show up to take one of the kids to the prom, but it will almost certainly be a deleted scene on the DVD.

There are a few amusing moments mixed in with the painful ones, and Carmen Electra of all people, adds some needed originality by playing a brain-dead trophy wife who has a pretty good heart. But the addition of nearly a dozen new characters -- Levy's movie family is huge as well -- only makes the plots and subplots and sub-subplots that much harder to cram into the 100-minute movie.

Hunt once again tries her hardest in a losing cinematic cause, maintaining her dignity even though she's the voice of reason and thus has all the worst lines -- most of which are sapped up even further in a sea of string instruments from the manipulative musical score. "The tighter you hang on," Kate tells Tom, right before the violas kick into overdrive, "the more they're going to pull away."

The movie ends as you'd expect -- with two events that are foreshadowed in the first scene. (Spoiler in the next sentence!) Come to think of it, the idea to wrap everything up with a sappy final birthing scene was foreshadowed more than a decade ago in "Parenthood," "Father of the Bride II" and one or two other Martin movies I'm probably forgetting.

It's likely Martin suffers through the indignities of "Cheaper by the Dozen" films so he can more easily afford smaller, more personal projects such as "Shopgirl" and the forthcoming "Picasso at the Lapin Agile," where, if I remember Martin's theater production correctly, nobody's kids set off a backpack full of fireworks in a country club the way they do in "Cheaper 2."

But it seems like a big risk. Buddy Ebsen did some smaller films, too, and everyone still remembers him as Jed Clampett.

-- Advisory: This film contains comic violence and criminal mischief. Hilary Duff and Piper "Coyote Ugly" Perabo both appear in this movie -- normally a sign of the apocalypse, but not too horrible here, since they barely have any lines and neither one sings.

------------------------------------------------------------

The Boston Globe
December 21, 2005 Wednesday
THIRD EDITION
ARTS / ENTERTAINMENT; Pg. D4
SEQUEL IS A CHEAPER IMITATION
BY TY BURR, GLOBE STAFF

Noisy, silly, gratingly upbeat, and piously sentimental, "Cheaper by the Dozen 2" is what passes for wholesome family entertainment these days. It's the sort of movie to send small children and grandparents out of the theater hugging each other and strong men in search of bourbon.

Any resemblance to the original 1948 bestseller "Cheaper by the Dozen" and the ensuing 1950 movie has long been obliterated by the needs of the marketplace: The DVD player in your den is hungry, and this movie means to feed it. So we get more of what made 2003's "Cheaper" remake an across-the-board hit: Steve Martin with his frontal lobes removed as football coach Tom Baker, Bonnie Hunt as his loving, no-nonsense wife Kate, and a sprawling brood of kids with varying degrees of attitude.

They're beginning to grow up and pull away, though, a natural process that fills Tom with panic. Oldest daughter Nora (Piper Perabo) and her husband (Jonathan Bennett) are expecting their first child, while son Charlie (Tom Welling) yearns to strike out on his own and graduating daughter Lorraine (Hilary Duff) is off to New York for a magazine internship.

In a last-ditch effort to keep the clan together, Tom rents the Wisconsin lakefront cabin at which the family once spent their summers. Nostalgia isn't what it used to be: The place is a dump, the local pack rat is more brazen than ever, and Tom's high school rival now lives across the lake with his eight children in a McMansion the size of a retirement complex.

Said rival, Jimmy Murtaugh, is played by Eugene Levy as a gloating nudnick whose tan appears to have been applied with a putty knife. Jimmy's on his third wife (Carmen Electra; the script can't decide whether she's a sensitive soul or a jiggly bimbo) and he's a taskmaster with his kids, making them spend two hours a day reading and writing.

One of Tom's brood dismisses this as "lame," but it doesn't sound that terrible to me it's a lot closer, ironically, to how efficiency expert Frank Bunker Gilbreth treated his children in the original "Cheaper by the Dozen." Kate delivers the movie's countervailing philosophy when she tells her husband, "We give our kids love and guidance. What else is there?" Those who might offer suggestions "culture," "individual attention," "tax-free municipal bonds" are obviously subversives.

Still, "Cheaper" rolls along on well-greased wheels. The burden of the plot's little dramas falls on the younger kids, in particular Alyson Stoner as tomboy tweener Sarah. Conceiving a crush on daredevil Eliot Murtaugh (Taylor Lautner from "The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3D"), Sarah gets mopey and starts fiddling with make-up. Mom tells her "when you like a boy, don't be anything but yourself," but then the family offers her up on a first date with a full makeover, another of the movie's weird mixed messages. Elsewhere, there's a rote romance between Charlie and the oldest Murtaugh girl (Jaime King), while Duff just looks like she'd rather be in a different movie she's angry and haggard here, not at all pleasant company.

The burden of slapstick falls on Martin, of course, and those of us who treasure the goofball intellectual wit of the comedian's early career may watch in dismay as Tom takes water-ski pratfalls and suffers random crotch injuries, never ceasing to grin a well-paid, defanged grin.

Your kids will laugh hell, my kids will laugh but speaking as a father, I have to say Tom Baker is one idiot patriarch too many. We're saddled with the cliche dumb daddy in ads, TV sitcoms, comic strips, but a neutered Steve Martin is the last straw. I therefore announce the founding of a new anti-defamation organization, Fathers United against Dopey Dads or F.U.D.D. and call for volunteers and greater media awareness of this slanderous stereotype. A dad is a terrible thing to waste, and "Cheaper by the Dozen 2" is one vast, cheery wasteland.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Los Angeles Times
December 21, 2005 Wednesday
Home Edition
CALENDAR; Calendar Desk; Part E; Pg. 3
REVIEW; There's no need to settle for the 'Cheaper' laughs;
Sympathetic characters and deft acting give this comedy sequel about a large family appeal.
Kevin Thomas, Times Staff Writer

"Cheaper by the Dozen 2" proves that less is more -- in comparison to the dismal "Yours, Mine & Ours" remake -- that the occasional comic calamity works better than nonstop chaos and allows for a family comedy that is actually involving, even believable, and manages to be pretty funny too.

Directed perceptively and energetically by Adam Shankman, this sequel to the 2003 hit is as shiny as a Christmas tree ornament yet gives full rein to Steve Martin's warm but sophisticated, richly nuanced talent and shows to advantage a large cast featuring Bonnie Hunt, Eugene Levy and Carmen Electra.

Sam Harper's clever script turns upon a universal tug, which is the reluctance of parents to let their kids go. Faced with the news that pregnant daughter Nora (Piper Perabo) and her husband (Jonathan Bennett) will be moving to Houston and that daughter Lorraine (Hilary Duff) is off to New York, Martin's Tom Baker decides the family should have one last vacation together, at their beloved Lake Winnetka, Wis.

The Bakers' 12 kids are reluctant, but Dad, with a nudge from Mom (Hunt), persuades them to agree to the plan. Clearly, the Bakers, based in the Chicago area, haven't vacationed there for some years, and the remorseless course of change that gives this comedy its shading hits home when they're faced with the ramshackle condition of the place they so enjoyed in the past. Tom rallies the troops, but a more daunting prospect looms across the lake: a lavish log palace, only slightly smaller than Old Faithful Inn, constructed by Tom's lifelong rival, Jimmy Murtaugh (Levy), who has but eight children, about a zillion bucks, a gorgeous third wife (Electra) and who now owns almost the entire resort community.

Murtaugh's strict discipline has resulted in offspring who excel at everything but experience feelings of mounting rebellion toward their obnoxious martinet father. Since childhood Jimmy has been jealous of Tom for his popularity, especially with girls, and, to be sure, this ancient rivalry will flare up, but not before the Baker and Murtaugh children get to know and like each other.

To his credit, Shankman smoothly forges a cast of some 25 principals to form an engaging ensemble with the focus on Martin and Levy's deft sparring. Hunt is graciously understated as a wise wife and mother, but what helps lift the film above the usual is the way in which Electra's Sarina is written and played. Despite her spectacular looks, Sarina refuses to be a mere trophy wife, wishes her husband would grow up, wants genuinely to be a good stepmother and asks Hunt's Kate for advice. Electra is delightful: She helps humanize Levy's overbearing Jimmy and thereby gives the film an unexpected dimension.

Many families are likely to find "Cheaper by the Dozen 2" a holiday treat.

--------------------------------------------------

The Vancouver Province (British Columbia)
December 21, 2005 Wednesday
Final Edition
E-TODAZ; Pg. B2
Cheaper 2 cheap on laughs: He's selling out to half-hearted comedy remakes
Roger Moore, The Orlando Sentinel

CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN 2
Warning: G. 94 minutes.
Grade: C-

Cheaper by the Dozen 2 is perfectly acceptable shmaltz, another movie ode to permissive parenting and inadequate birth control. So, if you didn't get your "the more the merrier" jollies with the remake of Yours, Mine & Ours, here's a sequel to the last Dozen.

But two Dozens and Ours together don't have a dozen laughs between them.

Shopgirl proved that Steve Martin doesn't want to spend his dotage remaking the John Candy-movie catalogue. But that's pretty much what comedy's reigning sellout is doing. He's Father of the Bride to Father of the Brood.

That's what Cheaper by the Dozen 2 is, another half-hearted ka-ching family "comedy" about the dozen-kid Baker family of upstate Illinois. Martin reunites with his first Dozen and Bringing Down the House director, ex-choreographer Adam Shankman, and a teeming mass of kids for a Labour Day trip to the old family vacation rental. That's where Tom (Martin) can renew his rivalry with Jimmy Murtaugh, played by Eugene Levy, who at least gives Martin somebody with comic weight to battle.

The frugal Bakers and the wealthy Murtaughs mix it up. Mom (the ever-game Bonnie Hunt) tries to keep the peace. But she and the latest Mrs. Murtaugh (Carmen Electra, meeeeooow) are having no luck.

At least the kids are getting along -- almost too well. The oldest, Charlie Baker (Tom Welling of Smallville) and Anne Murtaugh (Jaime King), are batting eyes at one another. The Baker's tomboyish prankster, Sarah, played by the very winning Alyson Stoner, is discovering boys, a Murtaugh boy to be precise.

Yes, the Dozen are growing up. Nora (Piper Perabo) and her new hubby are expecting. As Tom puts it, "Life's blazing by." He's just an observer. Jimmy Murtaugh is his opposite, a control freak.

"Parenting comes down to one word, Tom. Push. You don't push, they don't amount to anything." His kids are over-achievers. The Bakers have other priorities.

Martin recycles all his Parenthood/Father of the Bride shtick, the funny dance, the goofy efforts to be "cool with the kids." His idea of daddyhood seems to be that clueless bachelor camp counsellor whose car we would stuff with pine needles every summer.

Teen idol Hilary Duff, back as the high-maintenance Baker girl, has moved into a particularly awkward-looking age. When she's old enough, she should sue her hairdresser on this one. She looks like a horse, a scary horse. With cleavage.

But she's still wearing less makeup than Martin.

Martin's longtime fans can only cling to the odd moment -- a hip-hop turn in Bringing Down the House, or the planned film of his funny play, Picasso at the Lapin Agile.

But there is further news to make us abandon all hope for him and the joker he once was. His Pink Panther remake is due in February.
- posted by sookeyjane 12/21/2005 06:16:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Steve offers some new words on Shopgirl


Daily Variety
December 16, 2005 Friday
SPECIAL REPORT 1: SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT: EYE ON THE OSCARS: BEST PICTURE; Pg. 5
EYE ON THE OSCARS: BEST PICTURE: Love's slings and arrows
HENRY SHEEHAN

Don't jump off that cliff, stop guzzling the Absinthe, and for heaven's sake, cut it out with that vituperative blogging. If you're suffering the aftereffects of a romance that, in rueful hindsight, seemed doomed from the start, do what the Elizabethans did: Go to your local theater.
For just as 16th-century brooders checked out William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" for a dose of shock empathy, so this year's moviegoers could discover their own romantic plights writ large on the silver screen. Two thousand-five was indeed Hollywood's year of the doomed romance.
Even summer behemoths like "The Interpreter" (he's an FBI agent; she's a guerrilla) and "Star Wars III" (she's the good queen, he's bad to the bone) didn't escape the specter of star-crossed attraction. By the time fall rolled around the theme pretty much took root with "The Constant Gardener," which centered around a withdrawn British diplomat, Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes), and his wife Tessa (Rachel Weisz), a firebrand muckraker.
In "Gardener's" wake, love in the time of melancholia would surface again in "Shopgirl" and "Walk the Line," as well as the upcoming "Brokeback Mountain," "Match Point," "Memoirs of a Geisha" and "The New World," in which a high-born Indian princess and a renegade English adventurer flirt with the notion of a harmonic convergence despite two cultures at cross purposes.
But love conquers all, at least when movie magic is cooking.
****
Blind leading the blind
The romantic comedy, "Shopgirl," written by Steve Martin from his own short novel, adopts a different stance. In place of thrills, we get a tonally minor-key realism, in which an affair between a middle-aged, wealthy entrepreneur, Ray Porter (Martin) and a young department-store clerk, Mirabelle (Claire Danes) stays casual for the guy, but gets serious for the girl. Again, sex opens the show.
"I often wonder about men or women who are searching for somebody," Martin says, "but until they meet that person what do they do in the meantime?"
In "Shopgirl," men, at least, go for what's out there.
"That was very important part of the story," the writer-star asserts. "He was on the prowl in a nice, gentle way. He set out to meet a girl that he fancies."
Ah, fancy. For years Hollywood has staged battles on the line between fancy and love. Ernst Lubitsch picnicked out in that dreamy "No Man's Land," even directing a masterpiece, "Heaven Can Wait" (1943), that plunged into the morality of each (as usual with Lubitsch's plunging, he --- and Don Ameche and Gene Tierney --- came back up smiling).
But however things may end, the course of a star-crossed love affair progresses with the blind leading the blind. Who is honest about their motives --- who even knows their motives? Interestingly, Martin leaves the door ajar when it comes to Porter's own attitudes. For a character he created and plays, he is only willing to hazard a guess --- a good guess, no doubt --- as to motives:
"I think that he always knew it was temporary and never went back on that belief."
Hence the melancholy that permeates "Shopgirl."
"The entire purpose of the story is to tell a romance that is doomed," Martin says coolly. "In many romantic comedies --- it's a solid tradition --- the couple falls in love, but you really don't know what happens next. 'Shopgirl' deals with what happens."
****
- posted by sookeyjane 12/20/2005 06:41:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Steve Sponsors Corcoran Gallery show on Banjo


Los Angeles Times
December 11, 2005 Sunday
Home Edition
SUNDAY CALENDAR; Calendar Desk; Part E; Pg. 38
ARTS NOTES; He also plays sponsor
Christopher Reynolds

GATHER round, aspiring arts fundraisers, and test your mettle. On Saturday, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., unveiled "Picturing the Banjo," an exhibition running through early March that examines one

stringed instrument's role in culture and social history since enslaved West Africans brought the first banjo to North America.

The exhibition, which includes 72 artworks made over four centuries by artists including Thomas Hart Benton, Norman Rockwell and Betye Saar, was first organized by the Palmer Museum of Art at Pennsylvania State University.

So: If you were the Corcoran and looking for a banjo-loving, museum-friendly sponsor to help pay for the show's appearance in Washington, whom would you approach?

Exactly. The Corcoran won't say how much he gave, but the principal sponsor is the Steve Martin Charitable Foundation, founded by the actor-writer-

comedian who first hit it big 30 years ago with a stand-up act that included his picking a five-string banjo.
- posted by sookeyjane 12/19/2005 12:48:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Steve on CBTD2


Steve doesn't seem to be doing much to promote the new movie. Here's some.

Daily Post (Liverpool)
December 16, 2005, Friday
NW Merseyside Edition
FEATURES; Pg. 7
If the jokes are fresh, everything will be fine;
Robin Walker talks to comedian Steve Martin about his upcoming films
Robin Walker

STEVE MARTIN was once one of the most acclaimed comedians in America. A former stand-up comic, he managed to transfer his odd mix of dryness and zany humour to the big screen in classics like The Jerk and Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid.

But aside from the odd creative burst, like the wonderfully satirical Bowfinger six years ago, 60-year-old Steve seems to be sliding into a comfortable Hollywood late middle age.

Most of his more recent films have been commercial studio fare like Bringing Down The House and Cheaper By The Dozen. Now with Cheaper By The Dozen 2 he treads familiar territory on another easy sequel.

The first film, in which he and Bonnie Hunt played the parents of a brood of 12 kids, was a moderate box office hit in 2003.

This time when the Baker family go on holiday they find themselves in competition with a smaller family of a mere eight children.

Acting with kids is fun he says, but with no children of his own, Steve admits he doesn't have any experience of parenting 24 hours a day.

"The kids really want to do it, they're very normal and excited about everything," he enthuses.

While he doesn't think the films will influence parents to want a dozen kids he believes "it will remind parents and children of the value of their families".

He adds: "No matter what the joy is, families also are a lot of work. You see a movie like this and it gives you that little boost of love and confidence."

The whole comedy - the remake of a 40-year-old classic - revolves around the free-spirited chaos that a dozen modern kids would cause, despite the best efforts to rein them in.

As he says: "Chaos in the midst of chaos isn't funny. But chaos in the midst of order is."

"I always try to take it easy and just kind of kid with them a little," he says of his young co-stars. "I don't spend too much time with them."

Steve admits he's not one of those workaholic actors and when he's not acting he "loves to read or write and in the evening, have dinner with friends".

The upcoming film version of his novella Shopgirl sees the articulate and thoughtful comedian in a more substantive role, even though he didn't plan to star in it.

Shopgirl is a comedy-drama about a young woman, played by Claire Danes, who drifts into unlikely relationships. Steve initially wanted Tom Hanks toplay his character, a middle-aged man who buys his young lover gifts to make up for the fact he's kind of a jerk.

While he took ideas for the story from his own life, he says people shouldn't look for too many clues about what makes him tick.

"Everything is culled from every source, my life, other people's lives. I'm 60 and I've been having sex since I was 18 so there's a lot of stuff going on.

Steve, who has been romantically linked to a number of actresses since his divorce including Bernadette Peters, Helena Bonham Carter and Anne Heche, says we can all relate to his Shopgirl character, a man who is having trouble loving someone.

"Who knows why someone is some way," he says. "We all know there are people like that. We meet them and are them."

The former 'wild and crazy guy' defends his more mainstream films. "I believe entertainment can aspire to be art, and can become art. But if you set out to make art, you are an idiot."

He certainly has clout in Hollywood, which is why he's playing Inspector Jacques Clouseau in the remake of The Pink Panther, due out next year. His failed attempt at reprising another comedy classic, Phil Silver's Sgt Bilko in 1996 means he's on dangerous ground, but Steve is upbeat.

"I turned it down a couple of times," he says about resurrecting the role that Peter Sellers made his own.

"What changed my mind is I began working on the script and began coming up with jokes and gags that I liked. I think if the gags are fresh everything will be fine." p CHEAPER By The Dozen 2 opens on Boxing Day. Shopgirl opens on Friday, January 20
- posted by sookeyjane 12/19/2005 12:46:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Steve interview for Australian opening of Shopgirl


GEELONG ADVERTISER (REGIONAL DAILY)
December 10, 2005 Saturday
BIG WEEKEND; Pg. 51
Mr Versatile
GUY DAVIS

WHEN not in front of the camera, Steve Martin is at the typewriter coming up with film scripts, humourous essays published in prestigious magazines like The New Yorker, stage plays and books.

His latest film Shopgirl, the story of Mirabelle, a smart but emotionally fragile shop assistant (Claire Danes) romantically divided between Ray, a wealthy older man (played by Martin), and a sweet but unfocused slacker named Jeremy (Rushmore's Jason Schwartzman), is based on his first novel.

And even though Martin's skill as a writer was undisputed long before the book was published in 2001 he was still plagued with doubt during the process of putting it all down on paper.

"I started it and stopped in disappointment," Martin said about the creation of Shopgirl. "And then I picked it up again and liked it and kept going. I had gotten some negative feedback from someone I shouldn't have allowed to read it, because I was very nervous, you know. It was essentially my first prose work, and I was afraid of making a fool of myself."

Seems odd that someone of Martin's stature should be concerned about such things, especially given the course of his development as an artist over the years. "I always thought that writing for my comedy act was writing," he said.

"When I was in high school and college, I loved poetry. And I was very moved by certain poems and certain sentences. And then I became a comedian and a comedy writer and that was a whole other form. After I'd done my comedy act during the late Seventies, I started writing a screenplay for The Jerk. And that went on and I started writing more screenplays."

Martin's writing progressed to include his stage play Picasso at the Lapin Agile. "The play had more, let's say, thoughtful passages," he said. "And those thoughtful passages encouraged me to be able to write. For example, in [his short-story collection] Pure Drivel there are a few stories that are more thoughtful, and I have these thoughtful sentences. And those few sentences encouraged me to be able to write Shopgirl."

There's been much speculation about an autobiographical aspect to Shopgirl, with many reviewers striving to draw parallels between the charming but remote Ray Porter and Martin himself (who is known for shunning the spotlight). Martin sidesteps such claims.

"Everything is culled from every source: my life, other people's lives. There's a lot of stuff going on. So there's a lot of experience, whether it's my own or somebody else's," Martin said.

"I wanted this story to be about three people who are actually quite nice. In spite of that, they're still paying, even though everyone's trying to do their best in a way. The way it's written, first you explore Mirabelle and then you explore Jeremy and then you explore Ray Porter. They start interacting but there are chapters dedicated to who they are, especially Ray Porter.

"Now I absolutely knew what to say about Mirabelle. But when I got to Ray Porter, it was much harder. Being a man myself, I didn't know what was interesting. I knew what was interesting about being a woman. But being a man, I was like, 'Is that common knowledge?'"

When it came to bringing Shopgirl to the screen, Martin had another actor in mind for Ray - "The first person I asked was Tom Hanks," he said. "I thought he was really the perfect guy to play it" - before taking on the role himself. However, selecting Danes for the central role of Mirabelle was an easy decision.

"As soon as we had lunch, Claire didn't have to speak before we knew she was exactly right for it," Martin said. "Claire is naturally beautiful as opposed to unnaturally beautiful in Hollywood. She had a quiet solitude. There was something about the simplicity of Claire's performance that was amazing."

Simplicity would appear to be the key to telling the story of Shopgirl. "Basically, the book is about small moments and the movie is about small moments, which are the biggest," Martin said.

There's also a sweetly melancholy feel to the story, which leads one to wonder about Martin - whether he's the kind of funny person who's really crying on the inside.

He admits that he's 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."
- posted by sookeyjane 12/12/2005 10:16:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Jason Schwartzman on Steve


This is not the whole interview.

http://www.moviehole.net/interviews/20051130_exclusive_interview_jason_schw.html
Posted by Clint Morris on November 30, 2005 (Australia)

He’s one of todays most gifted and applauded actors; his ma is cinema’s Adrian Balboa, and in his relatively short acting career he’s has shared scenes with such luminaries as Shirley MacLaine, Dustin Hoffman, Bill Murray and Al Pacino. It’s quite a surprise then to hear Jason Schwartzman was awe-struck when he first met Steve Martin, penner and co-star of his latest film "Shopgirl" says, CLINT MORRIS.

From the moment the 25-year-old actor was told he had to meet Steve Martin if he wanted in on the film version of the comic great’s book – about a young retail clerk named Mirabelle who has to decide between two men in her life, a rich older suitor (played by Martin) and a young dimish scruffier (Schwartzman) - Schwartzman said he was as panicky as a virgin on their wedding night. “There’s no way I’m going to meet Steve Martin and it’s going to go well”, he recollects. “Not because of him, because of me”.

Schwartzman, having grown up in the eighties, spent most of his weekends at the cinema watching movies, movies that usually always featured Steve Martin. He was the guy. “Because I was just a kid back then, I was only allowed to see comedies – he was in nearly all of them! He’s very much engrained in my human fabric. I just knew it was going to be hard for me to meet him. I get star struck normally, but this was Steve Martin! This was a whole other level of star struck.”

Schwartzman was hired for "Shopgirl" at the 11th hour, only after comedian Jimmy Fallon dropped out. “I had heard that, but I don’t know the truth about that”, Schwartzman, whose mother is Rocky and Godfather star Talia Shire, uncle is Francis Ford Coppola and cousin is Nicolas Cage, explains. “They probably all said ‘Don’t tell Jason about that’. All I know is that I was the last that was cast. Obviously Steve was onboard first, and I know Claire (Danes) had been involved it in for a long time too –and then I, somehow, got in there”.

The perceptibly modest actor says he was far from simply ‘offered’ the role though, he had test like everyone else did. “No, I’ve yet to really reach that stage yet”, he laughs. “I was shooting this movie called I Heart Huckabees and I got a call to say Steve Martin had adapted his novella Shopgirl into a film and that Claire Danes was in it and that Anand Tucker was directing it. They said they were going to send me the script. I freaked out because I had read the book and I’d loved it. So I said ‘What can I do to throw my name on the pile?’”

Schwartzman said Martin magnificently adapted the book into screenplay form, and he knew he wanted to be a part of it – regardless of how nervous he’d be meeting the silver-haired legend. “It was the truest way to adapt that book. Steve adapted the essence of it, not the plot. I don’t think he sat there with the book on his left and his computer on the right. He didn’t just copy the words from the book over to the computer screen, like ‘Now, I’ve got to write in the scene where they’re having coffee’, I think he just understood what the book was about and that’s how he did the movie. I so wanted in.”.

That meeting with Steve Martin went well, but the actor says it’s not because he still didn’t “go to shit” - He did. “I just sat down on the couch and was like ‘Three Amigos’ is just perfectly incredible!” he laughs. “For like half-an-hour I was gushing. I was confident that I had lost any chance I might have ever had of being in the movie. Somehow – I got it”.

Martin, says Schwartzman, isn’t the ‘wild and crazy’ guy we all know him best for either. “He’s not like a wild and crazy guy. He’s a man on a quest for art and beauty and information. Every conversation I have ever had with him has been about music or movies or about books. I have to have my Franklin word speller in my pocket when I talk to him though – because he uses words that I have never even heard before. But every time I leave him, I feel totally inspired. He’s an inspiring man. He’s one of the few people around that have an undying love for art”.

****

KMT
- posted by sookeyjane 12/02/2005 05:48:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

On the occupants of the family section at the Mark Twain Awards


Omaha World-Herald (Nebraska)
November 19, 2005 Saturday
NEWS; Michael Kelly; Pg. 01B
Honored funnyman has friend in Kerrey

From the notebook:

Steve Martin received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and seated close by was his pal Bob Kerrey.

A number of viewers spotted Kerrey, the former Nebraska governor and U.S. senator, on the telecast last week. Now president of the New School University in New York, Kerrey has been friends with the actor-writer-comedian for several years.

A New York magazine article two years ago said Kerrey "dines frequently with his wife's circle of artists and writer friends," including Martin.

The comic's stage antics once included, "Well, excuuuuse me!" Hence the Washington Post headline on the story of his big honor: "Well, Incluuuude Him: Martin Joins Twain Pantheon."

****
- posted by sookeyjane 11/21/2005 12:57:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

On Writing


National Post (f/k/a The Financial Post) (Canada)
November 21, 2005 Monday
National Edition
ARTS & LIFE; Out & About; Pg. AL2
The Jerk no more
Chris Knight, National Post

Triple-threat Steve Martin (actor, writer, comedian) recently starred in the film version of his novella Shopgirl, which he also adapted for the screen. He speaks about the writing process in the latest issue of Creative Screenwriting magazine, but it's not the first time he's opened up about his craft; Martin also wrote "Writing Is Easy!" in The New Yorker's 1996 fiction issue. (It's reprinted in his collection of essays titled Pure Drivel.) Here's how nine years have changed him.

ON INSPIRATION:

1996: As I write this, for example, I am sitting comfortably in my rose garden and typing on my new computer. Each rose represents a story, so I'm never at a loss for what to type. I just look deep into the heart of the rose, read its story, and then write it down.

2005: Sometimes you just sit down and start, as I did with L.A. Story. I like the idea of just sitting down and having vague ideas. Sometimes vague ideas create very original, surprising ideas.

ON THE JOY OF WRITING:

1996: Writing is the most easy, pain-free and happy way to pass the time of all the arts ... I could be typing "kjfiu joew.mv jiw," and enjoy it as much as typing words that actually make sense, because I simply relish the movement of my fingers on the keys.

2005: I try to write out of excitement -- when it's time, I can't keep myself from the typewriter anymore.

ON FEEDBACK:

1996: Sure, a writer can get stuck for a while, but when that happens to a real author -- say, a Socrates or a Rodman -- he goes out and gets an "as told to." The alternative is to hire yourself out as an "as heard from," thus taking all the credit.

2005: My take on Roxanne came from talking to a friend of mine. I told him I had an idea to update Cyrano de Bergerac but I couldn't think of what would make it different enough to do it. He said, "Well, he gets the girl." And I said, "Oh, that's a good reason."

ON WRITING AND EATING:

1996: It is true that sometimes agony visits the head of a writer. At those moments, I stop writing and relax with a coffee at my favourite restaurant.

2005: I ran [the idea for Shopgirl] by a couple of people at a dinner table to ask them if it sounded interesting and they said it did.

ON WRITER'S BLOCK:

1996: Writer's block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcohol.

2005: Whenever I'm stuck I just do not write. I believe in a subconscious process, that on a subconscious level your mind is still working on it.

ON WRITING FOR THE SCREEN:

1996: "Pure" writing ... occurs when there is no possibility of its becoming a screenplay.

2005: Writing a screenplay is work that's inspired, and writing a novel is inspired work.

ON EDITING:

1996: Sometimes the delete key is your best friend.

2005: You'll see more clearly what needs to be cut if you just lose that emotional connection to the moment of creativity.

ON BORROWING:

1996: Go to an already published novel and find a sentence that you absolutely adore. Copy it down in your manuscript. Usually, that sentence will lead you to another sentence, and pretty soon your own ideas will start to flow.

2005: Years ago I copied down a quote that came from a studio script reader who was analyzing a script. She wrote this line -- "by leaving out the occasional narrative step, the authors hook your interest and avoid the kind of point-blank exposition that so easily deadens interest." I thought that line was great.
- posted by sookeyjane 11/21/2005 12:52:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

About a banjo performance


Financial Times (London, England)
November 19, 2005 Saturday
FT WEEKEND MAGAZINE - The Performance; Pg. 6
Pick and mix Comedian Steve Martin joins his musical heroes on stage for an evening of bluegrass - and proves he's finger-pickin' good
By PAIGE WILLIAMS

The lights die in the Directors Guild of America Theatre and a shadowy figure takes the stage, sidestepping the set-up of folding chairs and microphone stands. "Uh, it's a little dark up here," he says. The audience laughs.

From the darkened stage comes the twang of a single banjo, a tight little number flowing sweet as a creek. This continues for a minute, and then the stage lights come up to reveal the musician: Steve Martin. There he stands in a dark suit and tie, not just playing around with the banjo but rather pickin' it like a pro. The New York audience gives him a big, wild cheer. It is startling to see him on stage not as a wild and crazy comic actor but as a man willing to reveal his musical dimension. Perhaps it isn't widely known that his banjo obsession predates pretty much everything he's known for - from Saturday Night Live to Father of the Bride to Shopgirl (Martin's latest film, based on his own novella) to his novels and essays, which run regularly in The New Yorker, the magazine hosting the banjo event at its sixth annual festival of arts.

As the applause dies, this might be a good place for a wisecrack but instead Martin brings out his stage companions, starting with Pete Wernick, a Brooklyn native and Colorado banjoist. Together they play a little something. "That only has two chords," Wernick says. "Well then I can play it," says Martin. (Big laugh.) He introduces Charles Wood, a prodigious South Carolinian whom Martin discovered while trolling the internet for banjo Christmas songs; Tony Ellis, a lionised Ohio banjo master; Wernick's wife, Joan, a guitarist/vocalist; guitarist Gary Scruggs, son of the legendary Earl Scruggs; and then daddy Scruggs himself, who at the age of 10 invented the three-finger playing style that revolutionised the five-string banjo and forever linked it to bluegrass music. Every banjo man and woman picking today, including the self-taught Martin, was influenced one way or another by Earl Scruggs, now 81, who enters to a standing ovation.

It's difficult enough to MC a panel of this many performers but trickier still to do it in front of 500 people who have each paid Dollars 35 to see you be funny and play banjo and choreograph a meaningful performance by a stage full of virtuosos. It requires an instinctive calibration of deference, tact, agenda and grace.

Martin puts Scruggs in the centre seat and they all play "Doin' My Time" and then "Step it Up and Go", threaded with Martin one-liners - "What are we playing?" "What about 'Step it Up and Go'?" "Lemme go learn it, then." (Big laugh.)

Martin moves on to "what the banjo sounded like before Earl" and Ellis plays "Stand Boys Stand", which he learned from his grandmother, who learned it from a Virginia state senator when she was nine. Martin does "Quaker Girl" in the frailing method - a slappy, fluttery sort of style - as the old-timers watch with quiet, nodding approval. Next, Martin asks Scruggs about the famous syncopated three-finger style.

Scruggs: "Well, I was 10 years old and sitting around one day idling in the front room, playing a song called 'Ruben', and realised I had this three-finger roll going."

Martin: "And? Did the heavens open up?"

Scruggs: "My brother Horace said I ran through the house saying, 'I got it! I got it!' They didn't know what I had but... " (Big laugh.)

Martin says he wants to demonstrate the haunting Appalachian sound that is so particular to the banjo. "Pete, you got something? Tony, you got something?" he says. "I got something but it's not a banjo." (Big laugh.)

Ellis plays a lullaby. Wood gives his moving rendition of "What a Wonderful World". As the final bittersweet note fades, Martin waits one perfect beat and says, "Charles, that's gonna get a lot better once you master it." (Big laugh.)

He asks Scruggs about "Scruggs' pegs", another Scruggs invention where a banjoist can tune while playing. This draws from the reticent Scruggs an anecdote about a cheap guitar, a pocket knife and his wife's waxing mop.

For more than an hour, Martin nudges the programme along not with the hubris of a Hollywood star but with the deftness of a maestro. The evening coalesces as a showcase of music, jokes and stories about hunted foxes, broken banjos, riverboats, grannies and mamas. All along, Martin keeps this pleased, awed little smile. His left loafer taps perfect time. He does have rhythm and, better yet, soul.

You may think, "Steve Martin and banjo?" But there is actually something fitting about Steve Martin playing the instrument. For all its entertaining sprightliness the banjo is also capable of great melancholy and depth. It's the sad clown of string instruments. Not that Martin appears sad, but you don't play the way he plays with a hard, unbroken heart.

LOAD-DATE: November 18, 2005
- posted by sookeyjane 11/21/2005 12:50:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Bits and Pieces from each of the Shopgirl actors


Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania)
November 4, 2005 Friday
Pg. C-1
BOY MEETS 'SHOPGIRL';
BOY MEETS MARTIN AND DANES TAKE TIME TO TALK ABOUT THE 'SMALL MOMENTS' FROM FILM
Barbara Vancheri Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

TORONTO: Claire Danes, it turned out, was the woman of his dreams. Or, at least, his dreamy novella.

Steve Martin, after all, had created Mirabelle Buttersfield in his slender book "Shopgirl" and now was ushering her to the big screen. "We had lunch -- I think it was, right? -- and Claire didn't even have to speak before we knew that she was exactly right for it," Martin said to the actress seated to his left. "Because Claire is naturally beautiful, as opposed to unnaturally beautiful in Hollywood."

And then the 60-year-old actor segued into a sly sidebar about aging in Hollywood. Or, more commonly, not aging.

"I always think, in 20 years, where are the old actors going to come from, because they're all going to look like this," he said, yanking the skin back from his own cheeks and looking like the victim of an extreme makeover. "They need someone who looks 80, there isn't anyone ... and doing a period film and there's people with fake breasts."

Dane turns that into a straight line for a joke at her own expense before Martin compliments the quiet solitude of her shopgirl. "There's something about the simplicity of Claire's performance, which was quite stunning, actually. I'm always amazed, how does she know this emotion? How does she know it?"

On this day, Danes was clad in pale yellow and sported long, streaked blond hair instead of the shoulder-length red tresses of the movie. Martin, of course, looked exactly like the wealthy logician he plays on screen.

In Toronto for a gala showing of "Shopgirl" during the Toronto International Film Festival and Disney-organized interviews, the leads were fielding inquiries together while co-star Jason Schwartzman and director Anand Tucker took questions alone.

If "Shopgirl" doesn't seem like your standard girl-meets-boy romance (TV ads aside), there's a reason.

Martin says, "I always feel like there's the person with the inspiration and then there's the person who's going, 'No, no, no, this other movie had this and we got to have this' and 'This other movie had this and we've got to have this' ... and it just starts getting wrenched out of its own heart, and our movie didn't get wrenched because basically, the book is about small moments and the movie is about small moments, which are obviously the biggest."

People who invest a lot of money in movies fear that they're going to repel moviegoers if they challenge them, Danes chimed in. "I think the opposite is really true; it takes confidence to know that and then commit to it."

Danes, who was still in her teens when nominated for an Emmy for "My So-Called Life," had read Martin's novella about a transplanted Vermonter who works the glove counter at the Beverly Hills Neiman-Marcus (Saks in the movie) and is an aspiring artist. Martin is Ray Porter, a millionaire suitor generous with everything but his deepest emotions.

This is not the physical funnyman of "Bringing Down the House" or "Cheaper by the Dozen" or next year's "The Pink Panther." This is the cerebral Martin who wrote the play "Picasso at the Lapin Agile," who has an extensive modern art collection and whose work frequently appears in The New Yorker. It's the other half of his brain and acting persona.

The natural question is directed Martin's way in the course of a press conference: Is "Shopgirl" autobiographical, since writers typically draw on their own experiences? He lobs the inquiry back, suggesting, "Your argument then applies to what is the autobiographical side to Mirabelle, because I wrote her, too." Not to mention the hapless Jeremy, played by Schwartzman.

Danes had been deeply affected by the book long before the fateful lunch with Martin.

"I knew a lot of people who were, so I'm not very special for having been moved by it, but I was, and I couldn't have been in more exquisite company. I loved 'Hilary and Jackie,' so I felt confident that Anand would render the story with subtlety and depth and smarts. Steve had really been a hero of mine forever."

Tucker, whose "Hilary and Jackie" featured virtuoso performances from Emily Watson and Rachel Griffiths, asked for less, not more, from Danes in the early scenes.

"In the beginning, he really wanted to emphasize my stillness, which was scary because it's hard to trust that that's going to be enough, that the audience is going to remain engaged with her when she seems to be giving very little. I always want to tap dance in some way." But it's only once Mirabelle finds joy that she physically conveys that.

Schwartzman, who plays a goofball font designer for an amplifier company, was put in a potentially awkward position. "You're going to, hopefully, be the funny person in a Steve Martin movie," in which you will never actually swap dialogue with Martin.

"I never knew him as an actor, I only knew him in this context as a writer, but he does bring with him that precision and that eloquence. ... I don't know how he does it. We just did this interview and I watched him speak and I was like, 'Did he memorize all this stuff?' "

By comparison, Schwarztman was so nervous during the first table read -- when everyone reads the script aloud -- that he mumbled. "He said all that mumbling's really great. Really play that up."

Unlike Schwartzman's smitten 10th-grader in "Rushmore" or his unhappy environmentalist in "I Heart Huckabees," Jeremy isn't immobilized by worry or doubt or overthinking things.

"He's like super in the moment, maybe like the most Zen of them all. ... He just knows what's in front of him, he just feels things, says how he feels, doesn't think about things," much like a child blurting out unedited comments. By the end of the movie, Jeremy isn't so much changed (although there are some obvious, welcome differences) as open to change.

As for dating, Schwartzman sounds a bit like Jeremy when he says, "I don't know the first thing about the dating game or how to talk to anyone and how to connect. I think you just gotta go person by person and do the best you can. ... I don't think anyone really knows. We're all just trying to figure it out."

One relationship with a shopgirl at a time. "Shopgirl"
- posted by sookeyjane 11/12/2005 11:19:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

A review


The Ottawa Sun
November 4, 2005 Friday
FINAL EDITION
SHOWBIZ; Pg. 50
CUT-RATE PHILOSOPHY LESSON
BY JIM SLOTEK

Forgive me, but I wouldn't go to Star Jones for diet tips. Similarly, I suspect Steve Martin is not as good a person to go to for insights on the ways of the heart as he might be on subjects like comic timing and Einstein.

Which isn't to say the pieces aren't sufficent to appreciate in Shopgirl, the movie based on Martin's quasi-autobiographical novella about a rich, emotionally closed older man who can't commit and the naive young woman who suffers for it.

BESOTTED?

The movie, directed by Anand Tucker, is putatively the story of its title character, a demure, fresh-off-the-turnip-truck wannabe artist named Mirabelle (Claire Danes), spinning her wheels in Los Angeles while working as a salesgirl in the glove department of Saks.

There she is approached in a circumspect fashion by Ray, a fiftysomething older man who is um... what's the word I'm looking for here? Besotted? No, that's not right.

Let's say interested and precise in his intentions.

Armed with expensive wines, nice suits and sad, laconic conversation, he sweeps this girl off her feet and into bed, forcing her to forget all about Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman), an adoring puppy boy whose attentions she'd also been fielding.

MEANDERS ALONG

Her relationship with Ray meanders along as Jeremy takes off to be a band's roadie. Ray helps Mirabelle when she stops taking anti-depressants and freaks out, and Ray sleeps around.

This is only putatively Mirabelle's story because the movie is also narrated by Martin, who offers up her thoughts, as well as Ray's on a platter.

It's an essential conceit, because it serves to offer up abstract rationalizations for Ray's cold-fishery and sometimes callous disregard for Mirabelle's feelings, and ascribes great emotionalism to him under that immobile mug (at times there's something that could be sadness on Martin's face, but the deadpan that is his moneymaker as a comedian is his Achilles heel as an actor).

Martin has much in common with Bill Murray on that score, just as Shopgirl is much like Lost in Translation -- minus the appealing quirks and Murray's superior ability to use his deadpan to convey turmoil.

The movie is impeccably shot.

Director Anand Tucker shoots with warmth and with a loving eye for the Los Angeles skyline, reminiscent of Martin's L.A. Story.

Meanwhile, such comedy as there is in this rom-com comes mainly from Schwartzman, who is, admittedly, an acquired taste. But things definitely could have been worse (Jimmy Fallon was originally cast as Jeremy).

ROMANTIC PAYOFF

At that, they lose him early and only reintroduce him at what amounts to the romantic payoff.

Even that is rationalized in a jaundiced manner by Mr. Narrator.

In Steve Martin's view, nobody is right for anybody -- just less wrong.
- posted by sookeyjane 11/12/2005 11:12:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Good Morning America Transcript of Steve Interview


Good Morning America 07:00 AM ET)
ABC
November 8, 2005 Tuesday
STEVE MARTIN "SHOPGIRL"

ROBIN ROBERTS (ABC NEWS)
...good. You look good. Looking good. Oh, yeah, thank you very much. My first time down here in the new studio as well. Always great to welcome Steve Martin. And he has been visiting us since, well, nearly the beginning of his career. Don't remember if you remember this, 1977?

STEVE MARTIN
I don't remember 1977 at all.

ROBIN ROBERTS Well, he was here with our host David Hartman and Sandy Hill. Maybe this will - refresh your memory.

STEVE MARTIN
Oh.

CLIP FROM "GMA"

STEVE MARTIN (COMEDIAN)
(inaudible).

DAVID HARTMAN ("GOOD MORNING AMERICA")
He is quickly becoming one of the most popular young comedians in the business. Good morning.

STEVE MARTIN (COMEDIAN)
Good morning, David, Sandy.

DAVID HARTMAN ("GOOD MORNING AMERICA")
Good morning, Steve.

SANDY HILL ("GOOD MORNING AMERICA")
Are you always so rambunctious at this hour of the day?

STEVE MARTIN (COMEDIAN)
Will this bother you?

DAVID HARTMAN ("GOOD MORNING AMERICA")
No. Not at, not at all.

ROBIN ROBERTS
All right. In the years since then, Steve...

STEVE MARTIN
Oh, boy. That was a bad cut to go from that...

ROBIN ROBERTS
No - did you like, oh, coming back to you like that?

STEVE MARTIN
It's a little shocking.

ROBIN ROBERTS
Well, since then, you've put down the banjo...

STEVE MARTIN
No, I've - never put it down, the banjo.

ROBIN ROBERTS
Well, I mean, you've picked up the pen, I should say, to do a little...

STEVE MARTIN
Yes. I have now picked up the pen.

ROBIN ROBERTS
...to do a little, a little more writing.

STEVE MARTIN
It's hard to write with the banjo.

ROBIN ROBERTS
That would be a, a little bit difficult to do. But you're here and he has turned his best-selling novella, a novella, a little...

STEVE MARTIN
Novella.

ROBIN ROBERTS
...novella.

STEVE MARTIN
But it's a novel, really.

ROBIN ROBERTS
Yeah. "Shopgirl." And a funny and endearing movie that 'The New York Times" says puts most modern comedies to shame.

ROBIN ROBERTS
(Voice Over) And Steve, we have a little morning meeting and we have, a lot of us, have seen the movie and we were trying to put into words what exactly, and romantic comedy, we're like, no, no, no, it's too, that's not the right, the right phrase for this movie.

STEVE MARTIN
Term for this? Romantic comedy?

ROBIN ROBERTS
Yeah.

STEVE MARTIN
No, I don't think so.

ROBIN ROBERTS
No.

STEVE MARTIN
No. I think it's much more, romantic comedy implies a very light-hearted happy ending. This movie is very, very dense and very realistic about how a relationship goes wrong.

ROBIN ROBERTS
It's very thoughtful.

STEVE MARTIN
A misguided relationship but, but by people who care about each other.

ROBIN ROBERTS
And you said when you take your work, something that you've written, and put it to the screen, it's, goes through like stages. You said it's kind of like a bad marriage. What did you mean by that?

STEVE MARTIN
Well, actually, I said that about adopting a work. Adapting a work. Sorry.

ROBIN ROBERTS
Adopt...

STEVE MARTIN
Adopting a work is very different because of the care and feeding. But adapting a work, I've, I've done that with - Cyrano de Bergerac for 'Roxanne," and 'Silas Marner" to 'A Simple Twist of Fate," and I did it with a play. So, I was, here I was adapting my own work and I, I said the process of adapting is like a failed marriage. You start with fidelity, and then you transgress, meaning you change a little bit, maybe, that wasn't in the original, and then there's a divorce from the original material and you have to make it your own.

ROBIN ROBERTS
Because you, you just have to, at the end, you have to release it and let it, let it go, don't you?

STEVE MARTIN
Right. Right.

ROBIN ROBERTS
Yeah.

STEVE MARTIN
But you also have to take it over, in a sense, the original material.

ROBIN ROBERTS
I love this movie. It's so thoughtful and has all these, and I think as you've said also about life, these small moments. These, these little moments that you see between you and Claire.

STEVE MARTIN
Well, that's what the book, the book was about with the very tiny moments in a relationship that are so powerful. And that's what we tried to preserve in the movie, the small moments that mean so, so much to people. Like in the book it says that it's sometimes, you know, the horrible things that happen to us aren't as tragic as the tiny upturned phrase at the end of a word.

ROBIN ROBERTS
Mm.

STEVE MARTIN
You know.

ROBIN ROBERTS
Mm. Well, I love how you work with, with Claire Danes. And we, we want to show...

STEVE MARTIN
She's brilliant in the movie.

ROBIN ROBERTS
You guys work so, so well together. I want to set it up here because, let's just say, it's, this is a he said/she said moment.

STEVE MARTIN
Right. I don't know where the clip starts, but I can set up a little bit.

ROBIN ROBERTS
Okay. Good.

STEVE MARTIN
It's - it's, I think it's the night after they first make love and Ray Porter, the character I play, makes a little speech that says, you know, we're just, we're just kind of seeing each other...

ROBIN ROBERTS
Right.

STEVE MARTIN
...right now. And he says I've been traveling a little bit too much. And in his head he's saying, I'm still traveling. And in her head she's hearing, he wants to stop traveling.

ROBIN ROBERTS
Absolutely.

STEVE MARTIN
But that's only an example of this, of what goes on in the scene.

ROBIN ROBERTS
That was a perfect setup for this clip.

STEVE MARTIN
Okay.

ROBIN ROBERTS
Perfect. Let's take a look.

CLIP FROM "SHOPGIRL"

STEVE MARTIN
I told her there was no possibility that this was a long-term relationship. She's just, you know, she's really too young for me.

CLAIRE DANES
He said he wants to give it a try.

STEVE MARTIN
And I said that even though this is not long-term, I still want to see her.

ACTOR ('SHOPGIRL")
And she understood?

STEVE MARTIN
Oh, yeah.

ACTRESS
So, he was really taken with you?

CLAIRE DANES
Yeah, it seemed like it.

ACTOR ('SHOPGIRL")
So you were really clear with her that this relationship has no future?

STEVE MARTIN
Absolutely.

ROBIN ROBERTS
Oh, we've all been there.

STEVE MARTIN
It's cruel, isn't it?

ROBIN ROBERTS
Yeah, it is cruel.

STEVE MARTIN
Yeah.

ROBIN ROBERTS
But you've said that this story is, is about the successes and failures that you've had in your own life when it comes to relationships.

STEVE MARTIN
And other people. Not just mine...

ROBIN ROBERTS
And other - but not...

STEVE MARTIN
...but, yeah.

ROBIN ROBERTS
Right.

STEVE MARTIN
Yeah.

ROBIN ROBERTS

Is there anything that you know for sure now in your life about relationships? Is there any certainty that you know?

STEVE MARTIN
Well, I think none is perfect. So, although I do have friends who seem to have thriving, thriving relationships and you always hope for, for the perfect one, but you really have to, I think, forgive and get along and make allowances for people and your partner.

ROBIN ROBERTS
That's wonderful. And...

STEVE MARTIN
If you keep striving for perfection, it probably won't happen.

ROBIN ROBERTS
It just, it just, it just is frustrating.

STEVE MARTIN
Yeah.

ROBIN ROBERTS
But congratulations. Mark Twain, the award...

STEVE MARTIN
Ah, thanks.

ROBIN ROBERTS
...that you received, is going to air later this week. I think tomorrow on PBS.

STEVE MARTIN
I think tomorrow night. The Mark Twain.

ROBIN ROBERTS
That's just terrific.

STEVE MARTIN
I was a little disappointed to find out it was a look-alike contest. But, yeah.

ROBIN ROBERTS
But I don't think Mark Twain ever had socks like that.

STEVE MARTIN
He might have.

ROBIN ROBERTS
I mean, those are, those are great, great socks - you're known for.

STEVE MARTIN
Well, these are actually pretty, I'm not really known for them. I'd hate to think that I'm known for socks, but...

ROBIN ROBERTS
They match our carpet very well. So, we...

STEVE MARTIN
Well, well, that's, that was why I wore them.

ROBIN ROBERTS
We appreciate that.

STEVE MARTIN
Yeah. I actually got them, I got them from a piece of the carpet.

ROBIN ROBERTS
Yeah. Well, thank you. You, you are our first interview here in our new downstairs studio. Steve Martin.

STEVE MARTIN
(inaudible). Thank you.

ROBIN ROBERTS
(inaudible). Congratulations and...

STEVE MARTIN
Thank you very much.

ROBIN ROBERTS
...continued success to you.

STEVE MARTIN
Thank you.

ROBIN ROBERTS
Thank you very much. "Shopgirl" in theaters now. Coming up next, our special series, a new series on prodigies. How did this six year-old get the dance moves of someone three times his age? Gee. We'll meet him when we come back. So, come on back to 'Good Morning America."

STEVE MARTIN
That's good.
- posted by sookeyjane 11/12/2005 10:53:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

An interesting new interview


Orlando Sentinel (Orlando, Florida)
November 11, 2005, Friday
ENTERTAINMENT NEWS
Is his 'Shopgirl' character the real Steve Martin? (He says no)
By Roger Moore

Steve Martin is in a relationship now, thank you.

Not saying with whom, but that should shut down nagging questions about his actually being the character he plays so close to the vest in his new book-turned-movie "Shopgirl."

The character in question? A wealthy, aloof and lonely art lover who dates a much younger woman.

The film isn't autobiographical, though it gives those who follow showbiz gossip room to whisper.

"Shopgirl" is a dry, occasionally funny, mostly bittersweet tale of a love triangle, putting Martin and Jason Schwartzman, 25, in competition for Claire Danes, a sad, lonely glove clerk.

Danes, 26, accidentally gets at that "big question" _ older man, much younger woman _ when she talks about worshipping Martin, 60, "for as long as I've been conscious. He's been an icon since before I was born."

And now he's your love interest in a movie.

Martin professes no concern for that, or for the movie's box-office chances in the face of reviews that are calling it "melancholy" (The Hollywood Reporter) and "glum" (Toronto Globe & Mail).

It is Martin's picture, and his is the performance being compared to Bill Murray's Oscar-nominated turn in "Lost in Translation." He spoke from his home in Los Angeles.

Question: Where did this story come from?

Steve Martin: (Chuckling.) I was married for 10 years, and then I was single for 10 years. Big-time single guy. I just became interested in this subject, who knows why?

What I was really interested in was writing something. Once I had the idea of the gloves, which is the first big event in the book, where he buys gloves from a shopgirl and then sends them to her, I tested it on a few writers who said, 'That's an interesting start to a relationship.' I knew I could get a book out of it.

Q: So it wasn't just you, seeing some beautiful young woman standing at a counter at Saks and wondering where she came from, what she wanted out of this lonely city where you live?

Martin: There are a lot of girls in L.A., pretty girls who have descended on this city for show-business or whatever dreams. There are gathering centers of such women; malls and department stores like Fred Segal's in L.A. ("Where the stars shop," its ads say) are filled with young women like this who have migrated here.

In L.A., there's a promise, a hope that they'll be noticed. Maybe in the small town where they're from, there's no hope.

Q: What would Mirabelle, the shopgirl, see in these two men who end up competing for her affections? One's old enough to be her father, the other's an uncouth child.

Martin: That's very simple. When someone pays attention to you, there's almost always a response, especially if lonely. You could be just flattered, or in certain cases you might be disgusted. But generally, if somebody pays serious attention to you, there's something compelling about it, whether you're male or female, if you're thinking it's more than just a 'pick-up' or something.

Mirabelle meets an older man who takes her to a nice restaurant, flatters her and treats her well, with dignity, and she's just come off a relationship where she wasn't treated with dignity. She understood that Jeremy (Schwartzman) was young, but she was really lonely when she met him. But she has no abiding interest in him until he comes back changed.

Q: That's an interesting dilemma that you set up for Mirabelle, a young man who has no means and no class but who's willing to change to impress her, versus the older, more fully formed richer man who says upfront, 'This is me. Take it or leave it.'

Martin: Whose relationship is so perfect that there isn't somebody going, 'Why's she with him?' Ray is what he is.

Jeremy, all he changes is his etiquette, not his inner soul. That's what romantic self-help books teach you, how to behave properly, things not to say.

When Ray Porter tells her things such as 'I'm not looking for a permanent relationship,' these conversations don't mean anything. Because the subconscious says, 'Yeah, but you're here with me. You seem interested.' Men, and maybe women too, think that all you have to do is say something like 'not looking for a permanent relationship' once, and that's the way it is. That's not it at all. If someone says, 'I never want to be in love,' and you sense that they're falling for you, you don't believe what they said.

And many relationships start with 'No, I'm not interested in seeing you.' People can grow on you.

Q: Why play Ray yourself?

Martin: Well, I wrote the book. I wrote the screenplay. And I'm an actor. I need the work.

I knew I was going to be on the set every day anyway. We went to Tom Hanks early on but he was busy. And once he turned it down, I'm the right age, and I understand the character because I wrote the book.

Q: You've been one of the sharper observers of Los Angeles over the years. What did you discover about the city, the people there and your feelings about them in writing this?

Martin: I've lived in L.A. almost my whole life. I find the city can be very poetic, and I don't even know what that means. There are some days when you're on the freeway, and you're up 30 feet on an overpass, and you look out, it's dusk and the stars are twinkling and the houses are twinkling and the sunset is glowing and there's an airplane or two coming in, lined up for LAX, and it's just magic.

I grew up here. It's the briar patch to me.

Q: How important is it for you to be taken seriously?

Martin: There's a little semantic slip there. Does doing a serious movie mean that you want to be taken seriously? But I want to be taken seriously as a comedian!

I have no interest in that whole 'Drama is serious, comedy is silly' thing. One's not higher or lower than the other. I just do comedies and dramas, movies and books and plays just for variety.

Q: Ever any worry that, because of the void in what we really know about you, a very private person, that we would all jump to conclusions, seeing this wealthy, artistically tuned-in millionaire as being you by another name?

Martin: That's unimportant to me. They look at "Father of the Bride" and go, 'How can you not have children?' All performance comes from somewhere within, unless you're playing Hannibal Lecter.

Q: And yet having written this yourself, from a particular place in your life ...

Martin: Yeah, but I've written many things. I wrote "Bowfinger," but that doesn't make me a loser-producer. Hahaha!
- posted by sookeyjane 11/12/2005 10:52:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Steve in Premiere Magazine


The Premiere Interview
The Good Humor Man
Oct. 2005
Sure, he was once a wild and crazy guy. But now Steve Martin--comedian, actor, and writer—is happier talking ‘Shopgirl’ and starring in family-friendly fare.
By Fred Schruers

Some years ago, Steve Martin praised comedian Jack Benny in an interview: “He had the courage to wait,” Martin said. Over the years, it’s become more and more evident just how important creative patience has been for Martin. His upcoming film ‘Shopgirl’—adapted from his best-selling novella of the same title—rigorously keeps to its own stately but fascinating beat.

Martin will insist the story and the film belong to Clare Dane’s titular Mirabelle. But next to her in many frames is Martin’s Ray Porter, a wealthy businessman with an almost arctic reserve that clearly masks much deeper feelings.

Steve Martin, of course, can be described in the same terms. Though we met him as the manic stand-up comic, time has shown that persona to be a canny fabrication. His first blip in cinema was the 1977 short, The Absent-Minded Waiter, and when he starred in The Jerk two years later, he won instant acceptance that has persisted. Early next year, Martin will take a turn as Inspector Clouseau in an update of Peter Seller’s legendary Pink Panther series. He seems hopeful it will launch him, at 60, into a new and revivifying franchise.

Not that Martin necessarily needs the help—his sunshiny family comedies like Parenthood, Father of the Bride and its sequel, followed by Cheaper by the Dozen and its sequel, have positioned him as an indispensable éminence blanc atop a kinder, gentler genre Hollywood desperately needs in its current slump. We spoke withy Martin in a quiet Manhattan hotel, during a break from shooting the Cheaper sequel in Toronto, and he lived up to his billing as a polite, even courtly lunch companion—and also as a hard man, despite what’s perhaps his best performance to date, in Shopgirl, to compliment.

Claire Danes has said she was playing out a love story in Shopgirl that she felt was quite autobiographical for you. That’s not something you’re emphasizing?

I definitely downplay it, because it is largely fiction. There are almost no incidents in the book that occurred in life. Certainly [I’m] represented by several relationships, different passages, times in my life, people I’ve talked to, stories I’ve heard.

I think men who recognize themselves in your character, Ray Porter, may be your most fascinated—not to say guilt-ridden—audience. For instance, Ray wants to have sex, even as Mirabelle’s having a meltdown about their relationship.

He decides against it, but—yeah, it’s interesting. I think men think it’s a cure-all. [laughs]

At one stage in the film, things that in the book were interior monologues become confessions to a psychiatrist.

I hate to use a shrink in a movie. It’s kind of an easy way out. But there had to be a moment in the film, just for good storytelling, where it’s fully explained that he has no intention of carrying [the relationship] further. Usually those kind of conversations are done with confidants in the movie, but he had no confidants. And it’s certainly legitimate for a guy like him at his age to have a shrink. But also I think the director did a brilliant thing: He never cut to the shrink.

The critics remarked when the book came out that it was the work of a man striving to become thoroughly immersed in female psychology.

It’s hard to say why I became interested in the psychology of women. I didn’t do it voluntarily—it just occurred. When I was writing the book, writing the women parts was much easier than writing the men parts. Because writing about a woman, I know what’s interesting to me to show or reveal or describe. But when I’m writing about a man, I don’t know. Because I am one, I didn’t know what was interesting about us.

I have a friend who’s a scientist working with, I think it was hedgehogs—and she is on the way to discovering the differences in orientation—how men and women find things and locate themselves. Men see big landmarks, women see particular details that they remember. Hence, they’re always in conflict bout how to get there in the car.

Around 1980, there was a stage where you felt a malaise about your career. Pennies From Heaven seemed to pull you out of that, creatively.

That just had to do with being tired, I think. I was doing my stand-up career and doing a movie, and it had all been very, very successful. And you just take a deep breath and go, “So, what? I keep doing the same thing? Or do something different?” It was a creative standstill in a way.

So you took on a dark Dennis Potter piece that required heaps of dancing. The challenge seemed to reinvigorate you.

I read a book in college called Psychology in Art, and it said Picasso continually shifted, [but] Chagall pained the same thing his whole life. It’s just two different ways of operating. And both successful, just a different mind-set. I guess I have the shifting, shifting or learning something new. I’ve always found I do better as a beginning than I do as an experienced worker.

You said to a caller on a radio show who asked when you’d do a stand-up tour again, “Never. You can mark that on your calendar.” Why such a permanent repudiation of the gift that made your name?

One, you have to do it all the time in order to be good at it—I’m not prepared to go on the road. And by the time I quit, I found the audience just…I like precision of comedy, and the audience just wouldn’t allow that anymore. Years later, I thought, “Oh, I realize what happened. They thought it was a party.” I was doing something else. I thought I was doing my comedy act that they would appreciate. But it had turned into a party.

There was a degree of anger and alienation embodied by that guy in the white suit with the balloon animals, and by the Wild and Crazy Guys as well.

I don’t think it’s alienation; I think it was the silliness of arrogance. It’s like when people become so self-important, I always find that really, really funny.

You hosted the Oscar telecast when the relatively new Iraq war was boiling over nastily.

Oh, it was the worst. That day, there was a story—that they were executing army personnel, you know—whoa. I just resolved, I have to put that in another room.

You opened with a gag about how they’d turned down the glitz factor, getting a big laugh because they so clearly hadn’t. But you avoided anything portentous.

My philosophy came from a couple occasions in my life. In 1963, I was working at the Birdcage Theater at Knott’s Berry Farm. We had a show that night, a comedy show. And Kennedy was shot. Everyone was just stunned. We were debating whether to do a show or not. It was decided by others, yes, we’re going to do the show. And we thought, this is going to be horrible. We went out, it was the biggest laughs that we had had in a long, long time. Almost a contrary response. And I always remembered that.

I thought something has to be acknowledged, and then we’re going to move on. And the other reason I wanted to do that was that they told me ahead of time that the show was going to be broadcast to wherever the troops were. And so I thought, if I’m a soldier sitting there, do I want look at a somber ceremony? No, I want a big show.

I have a theory that certain comics—notably you and Bill Murray—find much of their humor in twisting things that are commonplace in an inspired but familiar, smart-aleck way.

I feel differently from Bill Murray. He’s got a real gift of a special kind. He’s just the coolest. I play a different thing. But he’s just got a great, I-don’t-care attitude. Jack Nicholson has it. Actually, it’s something I used in my early stand-up days, which was, I’m going to make them think I don’t care. If you’ve got that going, the audience is very relaxed. They go with you; you don’t look like you’re trying to please them or that it’s their job to like you.

Maybe part of that approach is the portrayal of sheerly insincere stage personas?

Well, I was a witness to ‘50s show business, which was built on insincerity. Lounge singers and Vegas acts and kind of super-polished. So it was the first thing a would-be iconoclast would puncture, go after.

By the time you had a few pictures under your belt, you gave in more to the underbelly of all that—your inner Jerry Lewis. At one stage in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Michael Caine is laughing in the take. Do you remember that day?

I pulled him down on a bed, I know that.

And you’re throwing your leg over him. That kind of stuff’s got to be pretty much an homage to Jerry Lewis.

Well, I’m always “homaging” Jerry Lewis, you know—[he] affected so much comedy, and especially me and my friends. I’m not saying it’s one hundred percent; it might be ten percent or twenty percent, but it made you love comedy. You kind of grew up with Jerry Lewis. There are things that are just brilliant in his movies. It didn’t always work as a whole, but neither do mine or anybody else’s, you know. So I can see sources of bits in my own work that…There’s an echo in your head of where things come from.

The Jerk still gets laughs on repeated viewings—that was your film breakthrough.

I didn’t know how it was going to work but everything [up until then] had worked. So I had no reason to think it wouldn’t. I wrote the script with Carl Gottlieb and Michael Elias, and some of it was from my act, like the “I was born a poor black child” and that bit—“I don’t need anything, just this.” I knew the kind of story I wanted to tell.

It’s like everybody came on for their cameos and seemed to be comically inspired—like, today’s my day. Was it like a movie circus?

The movie is a circus anyway. The tents and trucks…Everybody got—caught the spirit. Carl Reiner was just great. He contributed a lot to the script, too, uncredited of course, ‘cause directors don’t get credit. But it was just nothing but fun. I was in love with Bernadette Peters, and everybody was happy and pleasant; nobody was difficult.

Victoria Tennant [Martin’s ex-wife] was the perfect person for L.A. Story. Was she he inspiration?

I wouldn’t call her the inspiration. People think that, but I was just interested in a love story set in L.A. And I waned to use her as an actress. So I kind of had to have an English story. But really the premise of L.A. Story was its surrealism.

I think one thing people remember is our hero just popping caps out of the car window—

That is a very elaborate thing to shoot, too. You have to shut down a freeway. We did it in Bowfinger but only on a Sunday morning, a little tiny stretch of highway.

It’s been rumored that you find your renewed vigor as a box office draw somehow aggravating.

I phrase it like this—my career was nicely closing up, then a terrible thing happened: I had a hit. [laughs] I had to get back in show business.

Apparently you didn’t rush right to the starting gate for the first, latter-day Cheaper by the Dozen?

My instinct was no, no. Remake that? No. By the way, these aren’t remakes; it’s like a new script, just the same premise, is all. And I turned it down. But the ending did get me. Then I talked to the director, Shawn Levy, and I really, really liked him. And then, I was saying, okay, all right. And I had no idea it was going to turn out to be so popular.

I do appreciate that it’s a wholesome film. Of course, I have no problems with violence, crudity, sex, language, anything—except when it’s done wrong. And I’ve felt a lot of movies were just grotesque, and kind of disgusting, because they’re done wrong. I mean they’re not from the heart, they’re just sort of, I don’t know the right word, it’s like research-driven.

A lot of that research seems to be backfiring lately. The studios have made some wrong guesses—as an actor you hope not to get swept up in a mistake.

If [the script] doesn’t feel good, you have to feel like it’s going to become good. And then you have to say, well, who’s in it? I’m not looking to make just a studio comedy for no reason right now. I mean, Cheaper by the Dozen 2 had a reason—the first one was a bit hit. And I was in it, and the studio wanted to make it again. So in a way you have a business obligation to the people who financed the first movie to do it again. And it was a good script, so…

You’ve said of Queen Latifah, with whom you also had a hit, that what’s good for the Queen is good for Steve. She’s become one of your key onscreen partners along with Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton, and Bonnie Hunt.

Those women are delightful. Each has a different personality. Diane is coming from a very instinctive place, to the point that she never does a bad take. It might be different. It’s never bad or untrue. And Goldie, her own personality is so lively and so infectiously fun. She’s very smart, and works from her own personality and her intellect at the same time, working out bits and contributing. Bonnie is a director-writer, and she’s coming from that a lot. She’s also incredibly quick, so she’s got that improve thing going with her director sense.

All of these women have shorthand. Meaning that we can communicate, we get it, you’ve got timing together. We understand what the other is doing. You don’t have to go, “oh, yeah, I think I got it.” It’s like Eugene Levy and I have shorthand.

You got a really nice payday out of The Pink Panther. Were you simply the right guy at the right time to take on a classic that Peter Sellers had such a good run with?

There’s two things you risk. One is a gigantic failure, and the other is a gigantic success. If it’s a gigantic success you become completely identified with that character. So I looked at it and I thought, well, you know what, I like that character. And especially now having made one, I’m hoping it’s a giant hit so we can make another one, ‘cause I love dressing up like him and talking like him, and I love everything about it. I like the people I’m working with and I wouldn’t mind—you know, I’m going to be 60—so not a bad way to end up…

You talked about directing in an interview many years ago, and I haven’t seen it mentioned since.

I have no interest. That’s like taking on a war. You really have no life for awhile, even for a year and a half. And I like my life, lying around, going home, having dinners with friends. That’s too much to give up.

As a producer of Shopgirl, you were on the set enough to make your opinions felt—a very collaborative process with the director. The next best thing to directing it.

I put myself in because I because I thought, well, I went to the trouble of writing it, I might as well be in it. But no, my interest really is in continuing Pink Panther, working with people I have good rapport with, working with directors I like. That’s really the fun of it now. Because the outcome of something is unpredictable.

Finally, is there an artistic byword that you remind yourself of as you embark on projects, whether writing or acting?

Well, David Mamet said it: “No art comes from the conscious mind.” I like that.


R.L.
- posted by sookeyjane 11/10/2005 03:32:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS