Steve Martin: But Seriously Folks

LG: Is it married life or the professional respect you've received which has changed you?

SM: A little of both.

LG: Do you find you have a lot in common with Victoria?

SM: It's always amazing how much you have in common with the person you are going to spend the rest of your life with. It's like, I'm a vegetarian, but I eat fish, so I'm not a true vegetarian. And the same is true of her. It's like: why should she only eat fish too? It's just amazing.

LG: Your marriage aside, what do you feel has been your greatest accomplishment to date?

SM: The writing of Roxanne and L.A. Story. Because it makes me more than an actor in the movies. Although I'd written movies before, co-wrote maybe three or four films before Roxanne, it was that one which made me an actor/writer in my head. I don't get a big kick about being an actor. There are a lot of actors and a lot of good actors and to me, I want to do something more. Although sometimes in my head I just want to stop all this writing and worrying and sweating over getting it right. Actors get fabulous scripts and they go out and do them and they are lauded, but really, they just acted it. They didn't have to do the slaving part of writing it and worrying about it. When I got the Writers Guild Award I was really pleased. Really, really happy.

LG: What about directing? Do you see yourself as becoming a triple hyphenate?

SM: No, not for me. Even if I directed a movie it doesn't mean that it would come out the way I wanted it. I like being the writer and the actor. And I like the fact that someone's out there thinking about the directing independently. It brings something to your work, because film is collaborative. I like having another brain in there.

LG: Do you still get surrounded by crowds when you go out?

SM: It depends. If I'm walking down the street, no. But if you are at an event where there's a lot of photographers and people who came to see the celebrities, then it can be hairy.

LG: Do you get a lot of people who claim to know you?

SM: A lot of people will come on like they are your best friend and there is a moment where you think, ''Do I know this guy or not?'' And then nine times. .. no, ninety-nine times out of a hundred you don't know them.

LG: Do you ever blank out on somebody you do know in a public situation?

SM: A perfect example of that is when we went to that Warner Bros, celebration. We were milling around and ran into Kevin Costner, who lives up where we live in Santa Barbara. He said, ''Let's exchange numbers.'' So now the dinner's going on and I feel somebody come over and say, ''I've got to ask you to do this.'' And he puts a card and pen down in front of me. I write ''Steve Martin.'' Then I look up and it's Kevin Costner. He's waiting for my phone number and I've given him my autograph! Because part of it is not to make eye contact, because then you can get into a conversation.

LG: Do you watch much TV?

SM: No, I've kind of quit watching television. I might watch when I'm exercising but if it's the news, so much of it is fights and interviewing people whose sons have just been killed and people crying and people who don't know what the fuck is going on, that I hate it.

LG: What movies have you really liked?

SM: Casablanca was a perfect film. Killing Fields was a great movie, so powerful. Cinema Pamdiso was fantastic. So was Broadcast News. Carl Reiner's Enter Laughing, every time I see it I'm on the floor laughing, but it's not crafted like a great film. Still, it's a great comedy. A lot of the time comedies can be killed by fabulous values. Comedies seem to work really well when they are a little clunky, like Annie Hall, which is a great film. The movie opens in the middle, goes to the beginning, and then goes to the end. It wasn't crafted like a perfect film although it ended up one. It really has an energy that comes from spontaneity in the writing and editing stages. Then you go to Manhattan, where you can tell he's learned something from Annie Hall, and now he's crafted a great film. Crimes and Misdemeanors was fabulous. Underrated, too. If that movie had been released in December with a different name on it, then everybody would have been stunned. But we've come to expect such fabulous work from him that we take it for granted. Each of Woody's films has a radical idea which you'd think you can't make a movie about. In Manhattan he's sleeping with a 17-year-old. In Crimes and Misdemeanors one of his characters gets away with murder.

LG: David Lynch sometimes seems to get away with murder. Weren't you supposed to make a film with him, One Saliva Bubble?

SM: Oh, I want desperately to do it. It's just finding time in our schedules.

LG: What's it about?

SM: I don't know how to describe it. It's very different than anything he's done. It's a real comedy.

LG: What did you think of Wild at Heart?

SM: I really liked it. I wrote David a note saying, ''There must be some new kind of comedy out there, even smart comedy becomes formulaic, and there must be a way to think about comedy like I thought of it 15 years ago. There must be some kind of laugh that's not structured.'' And that's what I thought Wild at Heart delivered.

LG: How did your doing Waiting for Godot at Lincoln Center come about?

SM: Mike Nichols called me up two years before we did it and said, ''I have an idea of Waiting for Godot with you and Robin Williams.'' Then we all sat down and read it--Robin, F. Murray Abraham, Bill Irwin--and we felt really good about it. Beckett never saw it, but I have a feeling he would have liked it. What made me want to do it? Same reason I wanted to do Pennies From Heaven. The quality of the writing was so high, it's like doing Shakespeare.

LG: Was acting in a play a very different experience for you?

SM: When I was eighteen I worked at the Melodrama Theater in Knott's Berry Farm for three years. Did four shows a day, six or seven days a week. And the difference between that and doing Lincoln Center was only the words. When I walked out on stage it was like I was back.

LG: So what you're saying is there's no difference between performing at an amusement park theater and Lincoln Center?

SM: Yeah. It's all about having it ingrained in your head: your vocal level, how to face the audience and not make it look like you are facing the audience--obvious actor's stuff.

LG: I understand you have a great bit which you sometimes perform: The Great Flydini. How did that come about?

SM: Ever since I stopped doing stand-up I'd get requests to do things. I thought about it for years: If I just had a good five minutes. One day it struck me, the idea of Flydini. It's like a vaudeville or magic act where a guy comes out and unzips his pants and removes an enormous amount of things from his fly. I pull out eggs, a lit cigarette, a telephone, a puppet that looks like Pavarotti and sings ''Pagliacci.'' And bubbles come out. It's completely not dirty. I have a tape of it from Carnegie Hall.

LG: We haven't talked yet about politics and art--two subjects every comedian should have opinions about. Have you voted for any president since McGovern ran?

SM: Yeah, I voted for Dukakis. You know what I realized? That it doesn't matter with any president anymore. It's a job and it mattered when there'd only been 30 presidents. But now there's been 40 or 45 and it's like, ''Oh, I see, he's president this year.''

LG: You were recently in Saudi Arabia. What were your impressions?

SM: There were several reasons I went. I felt we'd ignored our troops in Vietnam. That was a mistake, blaming them for the political scene. I'm not a supporter of war, I've always been a peacenik. I felt it was a humanitarian visit. Secondly, it's hard to ignore something like this. After you've had a successful life, your country's given you all these possibilities, it's hard to say no when you're sitting in your air-conditioned house.

LG: Did you get a sense that our troops are antsy to fight?

SM: No, I got a sense of, they knew their presence there was important. They had a sense of mission. I asked one soldier, ''Would you rather fight now, or sit here for six months?'' He said, ''I'd sit here for three years if I didn't have to fight.''

LG: Was it more dismal than you expected?

SM: It would really be dismal if the troops weren't there. But I thought their morale was good, and they seemed extremely competent. The Air Force is really sharp, the equipment seemed incredible. Of course, I'm a buffoon, I don't know how to evaluate things like that.

LG: One thing you do know how to evaluate is modern art. You used to collect 19th-century American art. Why'd you switch?

SM: Frankly, a 19th-century American painting isn't that interesting. Except for a couple of great artists. So as you become more sophisticated you naturally move up.

LG: You've endowed a gallery at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. What does that mean?

SM: It means that when they were building this wing I gave them some money and as an honor they put my name in a room.

LG: How much have you given them?

SM: I'm not trying to go on record as a big philanthropist but I've probably given the County Museum $700,000, maybe a million in gifts and paintings. I paid for half of the Francis Bacon exhibit.

LG: What painter most defines L.A.?

SM: The obvious is [David] Hockney. But the director Mick Jackson feels that Rousseau is more like L.A., thick with foliage, hidden secrets, and hidden places. And through him I've seen a lot of things that I wasn't aware of. You go to houses and they are drenched with palms and there's the hlue sky or the full moon with the clouds moving across it. It's quite lush. But as my wife said, ''If you turn off the sprinklers it would die.''

LG: What do you think about artists like Andy Warhol?

SM: Warhol will last because his images are so powerful. Sometimes paintings are about paintings and sometimes they are about image. He's strictly about image. But, I mean, who cares about what people think? El Greco wasn't even famous until the 20th century. The cream definitely rises to the top.

LG: Guess that might be said about you one day.

SM: I don't know what to say about that.

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Lawrence Grobel is the author of The Hustons and Conversations with Capote, and a frequent contributor to these pages.

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