Latest / Revisionist History / Introducing: So Many Steves, A New Audiobook from Steve Martin and Pushkin

Transcript

Introducing: So Many Steves, A New Audiobook from Steve Martin and Pushkin · Revisionist History

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Malcolm Gladwell, just kidding. It's Steve Martin. But
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: like Malcolm, I love audiobook so much so that I
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: wanted to make one myself. My audio original, recorded with
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: New Yorker writer and my longtime friend Adam Gotnik. In it,
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: you'll hear a series of conversations about my career and
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: creative life, starting with magic. Get your copy of So
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Many Steve's Afternoons with Steve Martin at Audible. By the way,
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: it's a new law now I have to do this.
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: I don't like to, but it is my law.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: All comedians must make a financial disclosure.
• 1:00
  Speaker 4: This is a clip from Steve's second album, which was
• 1:04
  Speaker 4: released in nineteen seventy eight and was called A Wild
• 1:07
  Speaker 4: and Crazy Guy.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: Then I figured out a potential concert income.
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: If you fill a three thousand seat hall at three
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: dollars per ticket, the grosses nine thousand dollars. If you
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: fill a three thousand seat hall at seven to fifty
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: per ticket, the gross is twenty two thousand, five hundred dollars.
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: And just for fun, I figure out if you fill
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: a three thousand seat haul at eight hundred dollars a ticket,
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: gross's two million, four hundred thousand dollars and this is
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: what I'm shooting for.
• 1:38
  Speaker 5: One show.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Goodbye what you've just heard, see Jess.
• 1:52
  Speaker 5: What was happening to Steve?
• 1:53
  Speaker 4: He went from working in small clubs where he could
• 1:56
  Speaker 4: achieve a happy fulfillment of his absurdist manifesto with its
• 2:01
  Speaker 4: roots in Vichtenstein's particularism, in Lewis Carroll's logic and all
• 2:05
  Speaker 4: the rest, to becoming a kind of rock star of
• 2:07
  Speaker 4: comedy in many ways, the first rock star of comedy.
• 2:12
  Speaker 4: That was a doubly uncomfortable position for him to find
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: himself in, first, because that kind of fame is always
• 2:19
  Speaker 4: alienating whomever it falls on, and because Steve's natural insularity
• 2:25
  Speaker 4: and somewhat stifled emotions left him doubly alone at a
• 2:29
  Speaker 4: time when his fame was peaking.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: The strangest thing for me was in my latter days
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: of stand up. It was the least creative I have
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: ever been.
• 2:40
  Speaker 5: At the same time you were playing stadium.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah right, to come up with something new and try
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: to work it in. There was no vehicle for it
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: to get it in, to try it, to try a
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: little thing. When you're in a club, you could try
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: something to move on and going and change the subody.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: But there every word was amplified on a mic. It
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: had to be solid, had to be heard, had to
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: be delivered.
• 3:03
  Speaker 5: You were really at the end. They're doing rock concerts.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. Yeah. If I had under stood that,
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: I would have been better off, because I kept thinking,
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: I'm doing a comedy show, you know, I want them
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: to laugh, not cheer. Right, I was just completely at
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: a dead end.
• 3:26
  Speaker 5: Chapter three movie star.
• 3:30
  Speaker 4: Steve's career as an actor in the movies took three
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: very distinct and different paths. I guess I'd been aware
• 3:37
  Speaker 4: of them over the years, but becoming closer to Steve
• 3:40
  Speaker 4: in the course of these conversations gave me a different
• 3:43
  Speaker 4: kind of insight into them. The first path involved the
• 3:46
  Speaker 4: movies he made while he was still a working comedian,
• 3:50
  Speaker 4: where he took that absurdist data persona, the one that
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: had made him famous on stage, and he took it
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: to the screen in The Jerk, his first film, It's
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: all about the rise of a naive idiot to wealth
• 4:03
  Speaker 4: and fame.
• 4:04
  Speaker 5: The new phone look.
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: There, the new phone bok there.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: I wish I could get that excited about fucking are
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: you kidding?
• 4:10
  Speaker 4: Billions of people look at this book every day.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: This is the kind of spontaneous.
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: Publicity, your name in print that makes.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: People I'm in print.
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: That movie set the tone for wonderfully funny and I
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: think original films like Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid and
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: The Man with Two Brains. In the late eighties, Steve
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: worked with one of the most successful directors of the
• 4:34
  Speaker 4: entire late twentieth century, John Hughes. Their collaboration, the movie Planes,
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: Trains and Automobiles still delights families year in and out,
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: and it stands as one of the few Thanksgiving movies.
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: In the Cannon, Steve plays a wonderful grump trying to
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: get home for the holiday. His unwanted companion in this
• 4:53
  Speaker 4: adventure is played by the late and incomparable John Candy.
• 4:57
  Speaker 5: You're not a very tolerant person.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: Held you like a mouthful of teeth.
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: But to me, this middle period of Steve's film career
• 5:06
  Speaker 4: is best defined by his attempts to create person comedies,
• 5:10
  Speaker 4: and that effort produced what, to my mind, were by
• 5:13
  Speaker 4: far the two best films he ever made, Roxanne and
• 5:17
  Speaker 4: La Story, both of them not coincidentally with scripts written
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: by Steve.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: You heard me, big nose, flat faced, flat nosed, flat.
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: Food, the wacky Weekend Winner. And then finally, the third
• 5:34
  Speaker 4: act or path of his movie career involved some giant,
• 5:38
  Speaker 4: obviously commercial and blockbuster films, The Father of the Bride
• 5:42
  Speaker 4: series and then the Cheaper by the Dozen series.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: Do You Night, mister Banks.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: Oh, you can call him George or Dad. George will
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: defind me.
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: I should add at once that I do not mean
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: to condescend to those films. They gave my kids a
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: huge delight when they were younger, but they were clearly
• 5:59
  Speaker 4: not the works of art that Roxanne and La Story
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: aspired to be. And I've always been puzzled, intrigued by
• 6:06
  Speaker 4: Steve's reluctance or inability to go forward in the movies
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: in that very personal and poetic direction. It's one of
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: the things I most want to talk.
• 6:16
  Speaker 5: To him about today.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: Well, when I first started in movies, I had one vision, which.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Was the jerk.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: Let's you another bottle of yes, but no more nineteen
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: sixty six.
• 6:29
  Speaker 5: Let's blurge.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: Bring us some fresh wine, the freshest you've got this
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: Year's no more.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: Of this old stuff.
• 6:37
  Speaker 5: Wait, monsieur.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: He doesn't realize he's dealing with sophisticated people.
• 6:42
  Speaker 5: Here.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: Its vision was last Jokes, and the subsequent movies were
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: last jokes. That's what I wanted to last joke. But
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: it wasn't the vision of a movie. It's a vision
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: of something else, of just putting comedy on screen. And
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: I'm you know, I'm learning how to act. And I
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: remember saying, you know, I think, oh, this is gonna
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: be an easy transition. I've done a million things on stage,
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: you know, I've done sketches, I've done Saturday Night Live,
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: I've done. This is going to be a natural. And
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: then the first thing he has to do is sit
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: down with a glass in your hand and put it
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: on a table.
• 7:15
  Speaker 5: That's the shot.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, so do I sit first and then
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: put the glass over it? Or do I put it
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: down as I'm putting the day? And really you realize,
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: oh my god, this is this is more complex than
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: I thought.
• 7:32
  Speaker 5: And it doesn't have a lot to do with being
• 7:34
  Speaker 5: a performer on stage.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: Right, No, it's just something else. And there's all the mechanics,
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: which I love, mechanics of not putting the glass down
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: while someone else is talking because you hear a clunk
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: on their line and then they have to loop it.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: But my goal make a lot of movies. And here's
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: the reason. In order to get five good movies, you
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: have to make forty because they're just unwieldy. You can't perfect.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: I couldn't perfect a movie from the get go. You
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: can't say this is going to be wonderful. I thought
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: every movie was going to be wonderful.
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: Are you awake.
• 8:10
  Speaker 5: Good?
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: It's something I want to say that's always been very
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: difficult for me to say.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: I slid the sheet, the sheet, I slid, and on
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: the slitted sheet, I said now.
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: Steve's first movie, The Jerk, was directed by Carl Reiner,
• 8:26
  Speaker 4: an American comic master of a significantly older generation than Steve's.
• 8:33
  Speaker 4: Carl Reiner had first become famous in the nineteen fifties
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: as a kind of all purpose straight man on the
• 8:38
  Speaker 4: legendary Sid Caesar Your Show of Shows. He could be
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: seen interrogating Sid's mad German professors, and then he became
• 8:46
  Speaker 4: even more famous in the nineteen sixties as mel Brooks
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: straight man on those beautiful, astounding two thousand year old
• 8:53
  Speaker 4: Man records.
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: In two thousand years, the greatest thing mankind ever devised
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: that I think, in my humble opinion, it's Sarahan rap.
• 9:02
  Speaker 5: You equate this with Man's discovery of space. That was good,
• 9:07
  Speaker 5: that was good.
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: But Carl Reiner was far more comic mench and master
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: than just a straight man. He had everyone agreed an
• 9:15
  Speaker 4: absolute knowledge of how to set off a comic riff.
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: He was universally respected for his unique mix of comedy,
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: savvy and personal generosity, all unwrapped in a deep well
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: of show business knowledge.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: Carl Reiner he told me this. He said, I think
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: it's important to have refrigerator laughs. And I said, what's
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: a refrigerator laugh? He says, well, you see the movie,
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: and now you're home and you're getting something out of
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: your refrigerator.
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: And that's when you laughed at it when you remember it,
• 9:46
  Speaker 4: when you remember it.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: And I've always found that, you know, Mike told me once,
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: he said, I always think we should have one thing
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: in our movies where we say, can we do that?
• 9:56
  Speaker 4: Mike is Mike Nichols, the immensely accomplished director behind The
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: Graduate and Carnal Knowledge and many other classics.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: I have found over time that those little moments when
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: you're thinking should be this is not very clear that
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: those are the ones that people pick out and remember.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: Like in Rock Sane, it wasn't scripted, but it was
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: starting to be dusk, and I asked the director. I said, uh,
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: I said, I have an idea. There was a newspaper wreck,
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: and so I went over to it was just one shot.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: I went over to it, put the quarter in, pulled
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: out the newspaper, started to walk away, read the headline,
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: started screaming, went back to the thing, put another quarter
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: in and through the newspaper.
• 10:44
  Speaker 5: And closed it. And that was improvised. On the it
• 10:49
  Speaker 5: was improvised.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't evenell him what I was gonna do.