Steve Martin: But Seriously Folks

LG: Does he have a legitimate beef? Why aren't his films taken as seriously as yours?

SM: Because what he's really great at is acting stupid. He plays Clark Griswold and it makes you laugh, so that automatically discounts any kind of critical success. Because nobody wants to be praising somebody who's acting stupid. And those kinds of films generally don't get Sydney Pollack or Mike Nichols to direct them. They just don't have the craft. A lot of comedies--not Chevy's comedies--aren't made with the craft that they should be to get recognition. Films have to look good before they can even enter the ring.

LG: You and Chevy both have had your ups and downs and yet I sense that Chevy doesn't feel he's appreciated in the same way you are. What's the biggest difference between success and failure to you?

SM: The one I've been experiencing in the last six years which was new to me is respect. When you start to get respect it's a whole different world than just how the picture did or how big you are or who's hot and who's not. Respect seems to cut through everything. The other kind of success is where you make shit and still make millions. Which is a very powerful [kind of success], by the way.

LG: Do you feel you're on a steady roll now?

SM: All of us go through cycles wondering: ''What am I supposed to be doing? What's a good script? What makes a good movie? What do I want to say?'' Three years ago a producer said to me, ''You know what you ought to do? Go back on the road again and do your [stand-up] act, it would be great.'' And I said, ''I don't have anything to say, I've said it. I wouldn't know where to begin.'' But I feel I have something to say with movies.

LG: Let's talk about some of your movies. Not counting your cameos in The Muppet Movie and Movers and Shakers, how many films have you done?

SM: This is my 14th. I would count them up but I don't want to look at the names. I'm very bad at going back over these things, giving comments, because I never look at them again. I only sort of hear what people say and it just doesn't count for anything for me

LG: So you ignore the Siskel & Eberts of this world?

SM: Well, they're mixed on me. But it drives me crazy when I hear them say that they long for something original and then Pennies From Heaven came out and I remember thinking, ''Just wait till you see this picture.'' And they killed it.

LG: Yet you consider that film one of the seminal ones of your career, don't you?

SM: When I think of my career I spotlight on three or four things. I think of The Jerk as something important; Pennies From Heaven is something important; and All of Me, Roxanne, and L.A. Story.

LG: You've left out Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

SM: I agree, I should include that because I really have to respect that film. It's one of the first films I did that was touching.

LG: And how about that crazy dentist you played in Little Shop of Horrors?

SM: That was a splashy role and I really enjoyed it. I can look at that film because it's not me up there, it's somebody else. While the other things are kind of close to me.

LG: Like the mob squealer you played in My Blue Heaven?

SM: That was very much character-oriented. I probably never played such a precise character in my life.

LG: The reaction to My Blue Heaven was mostly negative. What was your feeling about it?

SM: Ultimately, I feel as if everybody put out a lot of effort for nothing. It had everything going for it. Nora Ephron, Herb Ross, Rick Moranis, Joan Cusack. In a different world it would've been a hit.

LG: John Huston believed that you should only remake pictures that initially failed. That's what you did with Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which was a remake of Bedtime Story.

SM: I remember seeing Bedtime Story as a kid and saying, ''God, that's funny.'' And I see it now and it's sort of a mess, amateurishly made. But I didn't watch it again before we shot Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. When I did, I thought Brando was hilarious in a couple of things and I went, ''Why didn't I do that?''

LG: Brando told me that it was one of his favorite pictures to make, that he and David Niven giggled like girls throughout it.

SM: We laughed a lot too, because Michael Caine is hilariously funny.

LG: Weren't you originally to do Caine's role?

SM: Yeah, but we couldn't find anybody to play Freddy. So I thought, what if I moved over? Then it started to click in rehearsal. Actually, Kevin Kline and I were fooling around with doing it at first. It was easier to cast the Michael Caine part than it was to cast the Freddy part. I don't think I ever really quite got into Freddy's brash character, I never did it right. But I think I was pretty good in the Ruprecht stuff, which I really loved.

LG: When David Puttnam saw Roxanne he got nervous about it and decided to cut back on the number of screens it was released on. Was that a mistake?

SM: That was a major mistake. The movie was set to open on 1,200 screens and they cut back to 850. It did $4.5 million the opening weekend. If it had been 1,200 screens it would have done $6 million. So that was a mistake.

LG: There was a lot of talk that you would win an Oscar for your performance in Roxanne, yet when the nominations came in, you were ignored. Did you feel cheated?

SM: I'll be philosophical about it: it's their contest.

LG: Now be less philosophical. You must have been aware of the talk.

SM: You do get excited because you hear it so much. You think you are going to be nominated, that it's a fait accompli.Then when you're not, you realize, well, of course not. I just don't think the Academy is a comedy institution. Drama is really king and comedy is perceived as a step-child. If you have a choice of voting between a great comedy and Born on the Fourth of July, you'd vote for Born on the Fourth of July.

LG: Chevy Chase told us that Three Amigos! was hurt by director John Landis's ego. Did you feel that way too?

SM: It wasn't really what I wanted it to be, but I'm not going to put the blame anywhere because I was the executive producer and one of the co-writers. What Landis did deliver was a great look. Big. Movies are group efforts and. . .1 don't know what to say about it. Three Amigos! wasn't a flop. It did $40 million.

LG: And it gave you, Chase, and Martin Short a reason to have Three Amigos! dinners.

SM: Yes. With the wives. It's hilarious. They are both really funny, Marty and Chevy. And everybody gets along and everybody's mate gets along.

LG: Now that you brought her up, how did your ''mate'' feel when Time described her as a swan ''in the moat around the castle of her husband's privacy''?

SM: She hated it. Because she's not that at all. She is truly her own person.

LG: You met during All of Me. When did you marry?

SM: A couple of years after we met. We've been together since All of Me. But I'm not really comfortable talking about it. About my wife or my romantic affairs.

LG: You're also not comfortable appearing with Victoria on the cover of magazines. Why is that?

SM: Because we aren't trying to sell ourselves as a couple. Our careers are separate and neither one of us talks about our relationship or what goes on at home. It's some kind of an invasion of privacy to me. We have got to keep in our world something private. Otherwise you feel like you get up to go to the bathroom and it becomes a possible anecdote for an interview.

LG: What do the two of you like to do?

SM: We socialize, read, watch a film on laser discs, go for walks. During L.A. Story we hung out in the trailer and talked and played cards, chatted and laughed.

LG: Have you thought about having children?

SM: I'm really uncomfortable talking about things like that in a magazine. It's really between me and her.

LG: There's nothing that wrong about talking about children, is there?

SM: It's never come up, really. I've never really known kids until I did Parenthood and I like them. But it's not something I think about one way or another.

LG: You seem to be receding into those adjectives that have most described you over the years: that you're introspective, serious, worried, studious, shy, private, distant. Do those words seem to capture you?

SM: No, I think I've changed quite a bit. Obviously there's a little bit of that. I'm kind of uncomfortable around strangers. A lot of that came from touring and being a celebrity. If you talk to someone it's always about you. Pretty soon you just shut up, you just don't talk to anybody. That was then, now is now. If I'm with the right people, meaning people I'm comfortable with, I'm a different person than I used to be.

LG: In what ways?

SM: I'm much more capable of having fun. I enjoy going out. Though I still have a very strong private home life.

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