Steve Martin
Stephen Glenn Martin (born
August 14,
1945 in
Waco, Texas) is an
American comedian,
writer,
producer,
actor,
musician, and
composer.
Martin was born in
Waco, Texas to Glenn Vernon Martin, a real-estate salesman and aspiring actor, and Mary Lee Stewart, a housewife; the family was of
English,
Irish and
Scottish descent and Martin was raised in
Garden Grove, California.
[http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:7lTXLnml4IYJ:www.tiscali.co.uk/entertainment/film/biographies/steve_martin_biog.html+%22Steve+martin%22+tiscali+scottish&hl=en&gl=ca&ct=clnk&cd=1] As a teenager, Martin started out working at the Magic Shop at
Disneyland, where he developed his talents for
magic,
juggling, playing the
banjo, and creating balloon animals. He teamed up with friend and
Garden Grove High School classmate
Kathy Westmoreland to do a
musical comedy routine, performing at local
coffee houses and at the Bird Cage Theater in
Knott's Berry Farm. Martin attended
Santa Ana College at the same time as actress
Diane Keaton.
Martin majored in
philosophy at
California State University, Long Beach, but dropped out. Nevertheless, his time there changed his life::"It changed what I believe and what I think about everything. I majored in philosophy. Something about
non sequiturs appealed to me. In philosophy, I started studying
logic, and they were talking about
cause and effect, and you start to realize, 'Hey, there is no cause and effect! There is no logic! There is no anything!' Then it gets real easy to write this stuff, because all you have to do is twist everything hard—you twist the
punch line, you twist the
non sequitur so hard away from the things that set it up, that it's easy... and it's thrilling."[
1]
Martin's girlfriend in
1967 was a dancer on
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and helped Martin land a job as a writer for the program by submitting his work to the show's head writer
Mason Williams. Williams initially paid Martin out of his own pocket. Along with the other writers for that show, Martin won an
Emmy Award in
1969. Martin also wrote for
John Denver (a neighbor of his in
Aspen,
Colorado at one point),
The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, and
The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour. He also appeared on these shows, and numerous others, in numerous comedy skits.
Martin also performed his own material, sometimes as an opening act for groups such as
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and
The Carpenters. He appeared at
San Francisco's
The Boarding House among other locations. He continued to write, earning an Emmy nomination for his work on
Van Dyke and Company in
1976.
In the mid-
1970s he made frequent appearances as a
stand-up comedian on
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. That exposure, together with appearances on
HBO's
On Location and
NBC's
Saturday Night Live (SNL) (on which, despite a common misconception, he was never a cast member) led to his first of four comedy albums,
Let's Get Small. The album was a huge success; one of its tracks,
Excuse Me, helped establish a national
catch phrase.
His next album,
A Wild and Crazy Guy, was an even bigger success, reaching the #2 spot on the sales chart in the U.S., and featured another catch phrase (the album's title), this time based on an SNL skit in which Martin and
Dan Aykroyd played a couple of bumbling
Czechoslovakian playboys. The album ended with a song "King Tut", sung and written by Martin and released as a 45 RPM single; the single reached the top 40 in
1978. The song was backed by the "Toot Uncommons" (they were actually members of the
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band). The album was a million seller.
Both albums won
Grammys for
Best Comedy Recording in 1977 and 1978.
In these and his two other albums, Martin's stand-up comedy was
self-referential, sometimes self-mocking. It mixes philosophical
riffs with sudden spurts of "happy feet", deft banjo playing with balloon depictions of concepts like
venereal disease. His style is off-kilter and ironic and sometimes makes fun of stand-up comedy traditions. A typical gag might be interrupted for a sip from a glass of water, and just as he was about to speak again, he forcefully spits the water onto the floor.
By the end of the 1970s, Steve Martin had acquired the kind of following normally reserved for
rock stars, with his tour appearances typically occurring at sold-out
arenas filled with tens of thousands of screaming fans. But unknown to his audience, stand-up comedy was "just an accident" for him. His real goal was to get into film.
|
Steve Martin as Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther |
Martin's first film was a
short,
The Absent-Minded Waiter (
1977). The seven-minute long film, also featuring
Buck Henry and
Teri Garr, was written by and starred Martin. The film was nominated for an
Academy Award as
Best Short Film, Live Action. His first feature film appearance was in the musical
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, where he sang the
Beatles' "
Maxwell's Silver Hammer".
In
1979, Martin wrote and starred in his first full-length movie,
The Jerk, directed by
Carl Reiner. The movie was a huge success, grossing over $73 million on a budget of far less than that amount.
[http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=jerk.htm]Since then, Martin's film career could best be described as uneven. Though he has enjoyed a successful film career for longer than most other comic actors, his ouevre has not been consistently well received by critics.
But the success of
The Jerk opened more doors for Martin.
Stanley Kubrick met with him to discuss him starring in an early, screwball comedy version of
Traumnovelle (Kubrick later changed his approach to the material, the result of which was
1999's
Eyes Wide Shut). Martin was
executive producer for
Domestic Life, a prime-time
television series starring
Martin Mull, and a late-night series called
Twilight Theater. It emboldened Martin to try his hand at his first serious film,
Pennies From Heaven, a movie he was anxious to do because of the desire to avoid being
typecast. To prepare for that film, Martin took acting lessons from the director,
Herbert Ross and spent months learning how to
tap dance. The film was a financial failure; Martin's comment at the time was "I don't know what to blame, other than it's me and not a comedy."
Martin was in three more Reiner-directed comedies after
The Jerk:
Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid in
1982,
The Man with Two Brains in
1983 and
All of Me in
1984, which remains perhaps the most critically lauded performance of his career. In
1986, Martin joined fellow
Saturday Night Live veterans
Martin Short and
Chevy Chase in
¡Three Amigos!, which was directed by
John Landis, and written by Martin,
Lorne Michaels, and
Randy Newman. It was originally entitled
The Three Caballeros and Martin was to be teamed with
Dan Aykroyd and
John Belushi.
In
1986, Martin was in the musical
film version of the hit off-Broadway play
Little Shop of Horrors (based on a famous
B-movie), as a sadistic dentist, Orin Scrivello. The film also marked the first of three films which teamed Martin with actor
Rick MoranisIn
1987, Martin joined comedian
John Candy in the
John Hughes movie,
Planes, Trains & Automobiles. That same year, the
Cyrano de Bergerac adaptation
Roxanne, a film Martin co-wrote, won him a
Writers Guild of America award and more importantly, the recognition from
Hollywood and the public that he was more than a comedian.
Martin starred in the
Ron Howard film,
Parenthood, with
Rick Moranis in
1989. He later met with Moranis to make the mob comedy
My Blue Heaven in
1990 Two years later, in
1991, Martin starred in and wrote (
L.A. Story) and was a member of the ensemble
existentialist tragedy (
Grand Canyon) that were both about life in
Los Angeles.
In
David Mamet's
1997 thriller,
The Spanish Prisoner, Martin played a darker role as a wealthy stranger who takes a suspicious interest in the work of a young businessman (
Campbell Scott). In
1999, Martin and
Goldie Hawn starred in a remake of the
1970 Neil Simon comedy,
The Out-of-Towners.2003 made Steve Martin rank as 4th on the box office stars list, co-starring in
Bringing Down The House and starring in
Cheaper By The Dozen, each of which earned over $130 million at U.S. theaters. Both were family comedies.
In
2005, Martin wrote and starred in
Shopgirl, based on his own
novella. Martin played a wealthy businessman and longtime bachelor who strikes up a romance with a
Saks 5th Avenue counter girl (
Claire Danes). He also starred in
Cheaper by the Dozen 2 that year. Martin's latest work was in the
2006 installment of
The Pink Panther, starring as the bumbling
Inspector Clouseau.
He will be lending his voice for DreamWorks Animations upcoming film
Kung Fu Panda along with
Jack Black,
Ian McShane,
Dustin Hoffman,
Jackie Chan,
Daniel Craig and
Lucy Liu.
Throughout the 1990s, after
Tina Brown took over
The New Yorker, Martin wrote various pieces for the magazine. They later appeared in the collection
Pure Drivel. He appeared in a version of
Waiting for Godot as
Vladimir (with
Robin Williams as
Estragon).
In
1993, Martin wrote the play
Picasso at the Lapin Agile, which had a successful run in several
American cities. In
2001, Martin hosted the
73rd Annual Academy Awards. Also in 2001, he played
banjo on
Earl Scruggs' remake of "
Foggy Mountain Breakdown". The recording was the winner of the
Best Country Instrumental Performance category at
the following year's Grammys. In
2002, Martin adapted the
Carl Sternheim play
The Underpants, which ran
Off-Broadway at Classic Stage Company. In
2003, Martin hosted the
Academy Awards for the second time.
In
2005, Martin hosted a film along with
Donald Duck,
Disneyland: The First 50 Magical Years, which shows at Disneyland until the end of
Disneyland's 50th anniversary celebration in September
2006. Martin was also honoured in 2005 with a
Disney Legend award, acknowledging Martin's early career at Disneyland and connections with
The Walt Disney Company throughout his career.
Martin has guest-hosted
Saturday Night Live 14 times, more than any other person. Martin has also written two
novellas,
Shopgirl and
The Pleasure of My Company.
Shopgirl was later turned into a film (see above).
In a 2005 poll to find
The Comedian's Comedian, Martin was voted amongst the top 20 greatest comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders. On October 23, 2005, Martin was presented with the
Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
Martin is an avid art collector, particularly
modern American art, and a trustee of the
Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Martin's personal collection has at one time included the art of
Georgia O'Keeffe,
John Henry Twachtman,
Richard Diebenkorn,
Willem de Kooning,
Franz Kline,
Cy Twombly,
Helen Frankenthaler,
Edward Hopper,
David Hockney,
Roy Lichtenstein, and
Pablo Picasso.
In
2005, The
Huntington Library in
San Marino, California announced that Martin had pledged US$1 million over five years for the museum's American art collection.
[http://www.huntington.org/Information/news/SteveMartin.pdf] Three-quarters of the gift will be used for exhibitions, with the remainder being used for acquisitions. Before he made his pledge, Martin loaned paintings to the museum, helped it acquire a sculpture by
John Gregory, and sponsored an exhibition of "sugar paintings" by
19th century American artist
Eastman Johnson.
Jessica Todd Smith, the museum's American art curator, said Martin became an "enthusiastic" supporter of The Huntington after he visited the museum in 2002 while filming a movie nearby.
[http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050209/ap_en_mo/people_steve_martin]*
Cruel Shoes (1979)
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Picasso at the Lapin Agile and Other Plays: Picasso at the Lapin Agile, the Zig-Zag Woman, Patter for the Floating Lady, Wasp (
1996)
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L.A. Story and Roxanne: Two Screenplays (published together in
1997)
*
Pure Drivel (
1998)
*
Shopgirl (
2001)
*
The Underpants: A Play (2002)
*
The Pleasure of My Company (2003)
*
Let's Get Small (
1977)
*
King Tut (
1978, 45 RPM music single)
*
A Wild and Crazy Guy, (
1978)
*
Comedy is Not Pretty! (1979)
*
The Steve Martin Brothers (
1981)
The Absent-Minded Waiter (
1977) (short subject)
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (
1978)
The Muppet Movie (
1979)
The Kids Are Alright (
1979) (documentary)
The Jerk (film) (
1979) (also writer)
Pennies from Heaven (
1981)
Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (
1982) (also writer)
The Man with Two Brains (
1983) (also writer)
The Lonely Guy (
1984)
All of Me (
1984)
Movers & Shakers (
1985)
¡Three Amigos! (
1986) (also writer and executive producer)
Little Shop of Horrors (
1986)
Roxanne (
1987) (also writer and executive producer)
Planes, Trains & Automobiles (
1987)
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (
1988)
Parenthood (
1989)
My Blue Heaven (
1990)
L.A. Story (
1991) (also writer and executive producer)
Father of the Bride (
1991)
Grand Canyon (
1991)
HouseSitter (
1992)
Leap of Faith (
1992)
A Simple Twist of Fate (
1994) (also writer and executive producer)
Mixed Nuts (
1994)
Father of the Bride Part II (
1995)
Sgt. Bilko (
1996)
The Spanish Prisoner (
1997)
The Prince of Egypt (
1998) (voice)
The Out-of-Towners (
1999)
Bowfinger (
1999) (also writer)
The Venice Project (
1999) (Cameo)
Fantasia 2000 (
1999)
Thin Ice (
2000)
Joe Gould's Secret (
2000)
Novocaine (
2001)
Bringing Down the House (
2003)
Looney Tunes: Back in Action (
2003)
Cheaper by the Dozen (
2003)
Jiminy Glick in Lalawood (
2004) (Cameo)
Shopgirl (
2005) (also writer and producer)
Cheaper by the Dozen 2 (
2005)
The Pink Panther (
2006)
Picasso at the Lapin Agile (
2008)
The Pink Panther 2 (
2008) (officially announced by MGM and Sony)
Kneazles! (
2008) (announced)
Kung Fu Panda (
2008) (pre-production)
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Official site*
Esquire interview
