Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey everyone, this is Justin Richmond, host of Broken
Speaker 1: Record and started from the bottom as a Pushkin listener.
Speaker 1: You know, you get to hear from some of the
Speaker 1: most talented and creative people around, but I have to
Speaker 1: say there are some creative minds who feel a cut
Speaker 1: above the rest, who are particularly fascinating. I'd put Steve
Speaker 1: Martin in that category. He's an incredible actor, writer, comedic, performer, musician,
Speaker 1: and it turns out even has an eye for art.
Speaker 1: Steve Martin is a pure creative force. And now through Pushkin,
Speaker 1: Steve has his own original audiobook that I'm excited to
Speaker 1: share an excerpt of with you today. It's called So
Speaker 1: Many Steves, and it's an exploration of Steve Martin's many
Speaker 1: creative lives and conversation with his friend and New Yorker
Speaker 1: writer Adam Gottnik. In this preview, you'll hear Steve Martin
Speaker 1: and Adam talk about Steve's film career. Check out the
Speaker 1: audiobook on Pushkin dot fm for the complete conversations, and
Speaker 1: in the meantime, enjoy this excerpt of So Many Steves.
Speaker 2: By the way, it's a new law and now I
Speaker 2: have to do this. I don't like to, but it
Speaker 2: is by law all comedians must make a financial disclosure.
Speaker 3: This is a clip from Steve's second album, which was
Speaker 3: released in nineteen seventy eight and was called A Wild
Speaker 3: and Crazy Guy.
Speaker 2: Then I figured out a potential concert income. If you
Speaker 2: fill a three thousand seat haul at three dollars per ticket,
Speaker 2: the grosses nine thousand dollars. If you fill a three
Speaker 2: thousand seat hall at seven to fifty per ticket, the
Speaker 2: gross is a twenty two thousand, five hundred dollars. And
Speaker 2: just for fun, I figure out if you fill a
Speaker 2: three thousand seat haul at eight hundred dollars a ticket,
Speaker 2: gross's two million, four hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 4: And this is what I'm shooting for.
Speaker 2: One show.
Speaker 5: Goodbye what you've just heard, suit Jess.
Speaker 3: What was happening to Steve? He went from working in
Speaker 3: small clubs where he could achieve a happy fulfillment of
Speaker 3: his absurdist manifesto with its roots in Vittenstein's particularism, in
Speaker 3: Lewis Carroll's logic and all the rest, to becoming a
Speaker 3: kind of rock star of comedy in many ways, the
Speaker 3: first rock star of comedy that was a doubly uncomfortable
Speaker 3: position for him to find himself in, first, because that
Speaker 3: kind of fame is always alienating whomever it falls on,
Speaker 3: and because Steve's natural insularity and somewhat stifled emotions left
Speaker 3: him doubly alone at a time when his fame was peaking.
Speaker 4: The strangest thing for me was in my latter days
Speaker 4: of stand up. It was the least creative I have
Speaker 4: ever been.
Speaker 3: At the same time, you were playing stadium.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, to come up with something new and try
Speaker 4: to work it in. There was no vehicle for it
Speaker 4: to get it in, to try it, to try a
Speaker 4: little thing. When you're in a club, you could try
Speaker 4: something to move on and going and change the somebody.
Speaker 4: But there every word was amplified on a mic. It
Speaker 4: had to be solid, had to be heard, had to
Speaker 4: be delivered.
Speaker 3: You were really at the end. They're doing rock concerts.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was. Yeah. If I had understood that, I
Speaker 4: would have been better off, because I kept thinking, I'm
Speaker 4: doing a comedy show, you know, I want them to laugh,
Speaker 4: not cheer.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 4: I was just completely at a dead end.
Speaker 3: Chapter three Movie Star. Steve's career as an actor in
Speaker 3: the movies took three very distinct and different paths. I
Speaker 3: guess I'd been aware of them over the years, but
Speaker 3: coming closer to Steve in the course of these conversations
Speaker 3: gave me a different kind of insight into them. The
Speaker 3: first path involved the movies he made while he was
Speaker 3: still a working comedian, where he took that absurdist data persona,
Speaker 3: the one that had made him famous on stage, and
Speaker 3: he took it to the screen in The Jerk, his
Speaker 3: first film, It's all about the rise of a naive
Speaker 3: idiot to wealth and fame. The new phone Bok there,
Speaker 3: the new phone book here. I wish I could get
Speaker 3: that excited about.
Speaker 4: Fucknatly, are you kidding?
Speaker 2: Hellions up?
Speaker 3: People look at this book every day. This is the
Speaker 3: kind of spontaneous publicity, your name in print that makes people.
Speaker 1: I'm in print.
Speaker 3: That movie set the tone for wonderfully funny and I
Speaker 3: think original films like Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid and
Speaker 3: The Man with Two Brains. In the late eighties, Steve
Speaker 3: worked with one of the most successful directors of the
Speaker 3: entire late twentieth century, John Hughes. Their collaboration, the movie Planes,
Speaker 3: Trains and Automobiles still Delight's families year in and out,
Speaker 3: and it stands as one of the few Thanksgiving movies.
Speaker 3: In the Cannon, Steve plays a wonderful grump trying to
Speaker 3: get home for the holiday. His unwanted companion in this
Speaker 3: adventure is played by the late and incomparable John Candy.
Speaker 4: You're not a very tolerant person. Held you like a
Speaker 4: mouthful of teeth.
Speaker 3: But to me, this middle period of Steve's film career
Speaker 3: is best defined by his attempts to create personal comedies,
Speaker 3: and that effort produced what, to my mind were by
Speaker 3: far the two best films he ever made, Roxanne and
Speaker 3: La Story, both of them not coincidentally with scripts written
Speaker 3: by Steve.
Speaker 6: You heard Me, Big Nose, flat Faced, Flat nosed, Flat Food.
Speaker 3: Time, The Wacky Weekend Winner, And then, finally, the third
Speaker 3: actdoor path of his movie career involves some giant, obviously
Speaker 3: commercial and blockbuster films, The Father of the Bride series
Speaker 3: and then the Cheaper by the Dozen series.
Speaker 6: Do you know mister Banks.
Speaker 5: Oh, you can call him George or Dad.
Speaker 2: George will find it.
Speaker 3: I should add at once that I do not mean
Speaker 3: to condescend to those films. They gave my kids huge
Speaker 3: delight when they were younger, but they were clearly not
Speaker 3: the works of art that Roxanne and La Story aspired
Speaker 3: to be. And I've always been puzzled, intrigued by Steve's
Speaker 3: reluctance or inability to go forward in the movies in
Speaker 3: that very personal and poetic direction. It's one of the
Speaker 3: things I most want to talk to him about today.
Speaker 4: Well, when I first started in movies, I had one vision,
Speaker 4: which was the jerk.
Speaker 6: You a bottle of yes, but no more nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 6: Let's blurge, bring us some fresh wine, the freshest you've
Speaker 6: got this year's no more of this old stuff way, monsieur.
Speaker 6: He doesn't realize he's dealing with sophisticated people here.
Speaker 4: Its vision was laughs, jokes, and the subsequent movies were
Speaker 4: last jokes. That's what I wanted to laughs jokes. But
Speaker 4: it wasn't the vision of a movie. It's a vision
Speaker 4: of something else, of just putting comedy on screen. And
Speaker 4: I'm you know, I'm learning how to act. And I
Speaker 4: remember saying, you know, I think, oh, this is gonna
Speaker 4: be an easy transition. I've done a million things on stage,
Speaker 4: you know, I've done sketches, I've done Saturday Night Live,
Speaker 4: I've done this is going to be a natural. And
Speaker 4: then the first thing you're asked to do is sit
Speaker 4: down with a glass in your hand and put it
Speaker 4: on a table.
Speaker 1: That's the shot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think, so do I sit first and
Speaker 4: then put the glass over it? Or do I put
Speaker 4: it down as I'm putting the day? And really you realize,
Speaker 4: oh my god, this is this is more complex than
Speaker 4: I thought.
Speaker 3: And it doesn't have a lot to do with being
Speaker 3: a performer on stage right.
Speaker 4: No, it's just something else. And there's all the mechanics,
Speaker 4: which I love so not putting the glass down while
Speaker 4: someone else is talking because you hear a clunk on
Speaker 4: their line and then they have to loop it. But
Speaker 4: my goal make a lot of movies. And here's the reason.
Speaker 4: In order to get five good movies, you have to
Speaker 4: make forty because they're just unwieldy. You can't perfect. I
Speaker 4: couldn't perfect a movie from the get go. You can't
Speaker 4: say this is going to be wonderful. I thought every
Speaker 4: movie was going to be wonderful. Are you awake.
Speaker 6: Good?
Speaker 2: It's something I want to say that's always been very
Speaker 2: difficult for me to say.
Speaker 4: I slid the sheet, the sheet, I slid and on
Speaker 4: the Slitted Sheet I Sit now.
Speaker 3: Steve's first movie, The Jerk, was directed by Carl Reiner,
Speaker 3: an American comic master of a significantly older generation than Steve's.
Speaker 3: Carl Reiner had first become famous in the nineteen fifties
Speaker 3: as a kind of all purpose straight man on the
Speaker 3: legendary Marry Sid Caesar Your Show of Shows. He could
Speaker 3: be seen interrogating Sid's mad German professors. And then he
Speaker 3: became even more famous in the nineteen sixties as mel
Speaker 3: Brooks straight man on those beautiful, astounding two thousand year
Speaker 3: old Man records in two thousand years the greatest thing
Speaker 3: mankind ever devised that I think, in my humble opinion,
Speaker 3: it's Sarahan wrap. You equate this with Man's discovery of space.
Speaker 2: That was good, That was good.
Speaker 3: But Carl Reiner was far more comic mench and master
Speaker 3: than just a straight man. He had everyone agreed an
Speaker 3: absolute knowledge of how to set off a comic riff.
Speaker 3: He was universally respected for his unique mix of comedy,
Speaker 3: savvy and personal generosity, all unwrapped in a deep well
Speaker 3: of show business knowledge.
Speaker 4: Carl Reiner he told me this, he said, I think
Speaker 4: it's important to have refrigerator laughs, And I said, what's
Speaker 4: a refrigerator laugh? He says, well, you see the movie.
Speaker 4: Now you're home and you're getting something out of your refrigerator,
Speaker 4: and that's when.
Speaker 3: You laugh at it when you remember it, when.
Speaker 4: You remember it. And I've always found that, you know,
Speaker 4: Mike told me once, he said, I always think we
Speaker 4: should have one thing in our movies where we say
Speaker 4: can we do that?
Speaker 3: Mike is Mike Nichols, the immensely accomplished director behind The
Speaker 3: Graduate and Carnal Knowledge and many other classics.
Speaker 4: I have found over time that those little moments when
Speaker 4: you're thinking should be this is not very clear, that
Speaker 4: those are the ones that people pick out and remember.
Speaker 4: Like in Rock Sanne, it wasn't scripted, but it was
Speaker 4: starting to be dusk, and I asked the director. I said, uh,
Speaker 4: I said, I have an idea. There was a newspaper wreck,
Speaker 4: and so I went over to it was just one shot.
Speaker 4: I went over to it, put the quarter in, pulled
Speaker 4: out the newspaper, started to walk away, read the headline,
Speaker 4: started screaming. Went back to the thing, put another quarter in,
Speaker 4: and threw the newspaper, getting.
Speaker 3: Closed to it, and that was improvised.
Speaker 1: On the it was improvised.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I didn't even te him what I was going
Speaker 4: to do.