Steve Martin: C or D?

"Our finest vintage from Idaho! Would you like to sniff the cap?"

Okay, folks! I, uh, think that about does it. [checks his wristwatch] We've had a good time tonight, uh, considering we're all going to die. And, uh, we gonna go to commercial now or uh ...? We'll go to commercial and we'll come right back. Thanks a lot. [smiles, waves]

I was resisting quoting that -- even though it is, as you say, brilliant.

But I LOVED Steve Martin movies growing up. Man With Two Brains, the Jerk(i still have the Novelization!), Three Amigos!("Oh GREAT! You've just killed the Invisible Swordsman!"), Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, etc.

But the last classic thing he did was "L.A. Story," since after that was "Father of the Bride" and a complete descent into some sorta sentimental mediocrity. Hell, i went to see all the early 90's comedies/dramas at the movie theaters, and i still don't know why. So much forgettable shit like "father of the bride," "Housesitter", or "Leap of Faith"(w/ Liam Neeson!)...

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000188/

xpost - oh, fuck you. :)

09/24/05

"A Conversation With Music" featuring Steve Martin, Tony Ellis, Earl Scruggs, Pete Wernick and Charles Wood, held at The Director's Guild of America

Goodnight, Ned.

Steve Martin's Comedy is Not Pretty and Let's Get Small are awesome. Actually all 3 comedy albums are funny and as much a part of my youth as Flintstones and Little Rascals.

Have you seen the film version of Little Shop of Horrors? There's a pretty classic scene with both of them there.

oh shit! i forgot about the tv specials! some of his best work! i once made my nana cry by reciting steve martin's thanksgiving speech at our family t-day.

"and also, i'm thankful that my private parts are in my pants, and not on display at the museum of modern art."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12f7PdLJKtE

want the tv stuff dvd so bad

Oscarecipient

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=381aYexNTuc

"It's said that the art of filmmaking is collaborative, so for me to be singled out and honored tonight means that that is not true."

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

Good stuff.

So, there's this:

http://www.avclub.com/article/father-bride-sequel-about-gay-marriage-reportedly--205875

https://twitter.com/SteveMartinToGo/status/478647002994327552

I guess that's already in there.

He's back!

http://www.vulture.com/2016/02/steve-martin-performed-stand-up-last-night.html

holy zimolians

daaaaaaamn i woulda lost my mind

Amazing one-two from Martin himself:

https://twitter.com/SteveMartinToGo/status/700775059770765313

https://twitter.com/SteveMartinToGo/status/700775348997332992

Super exciting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2qeZcHcSGQ

that's part one of a two-part 50-minute show from Let's Get Small era. it's includes most of that record's setlist (incl my favorites "cat handcuffs" and "king tut") but has some cool extra stuff too. some incredible banjo playing in there too!

I rewatched The Jerk for the first time since '79/80. Maybe the most uneven of the Reiner films, bcz it's basically a version of his standup act onscreen + a Jerry Lewis movie that went to college.

The really dumb stuff works best, like "The Thermos Song."

and I'm guessing the only film ever to feature Jackie Mason and Maurice Evans

Dave Kehr:

Some of the physical comedy seems to rely on Jerry Lewis, and it's worth noting that when Lewis's Hardly Working was subsequently released, Lewis was pointedly billed as “the original jerk.”

Somehow I missed My Blue Heaven at the time in spite of it being exactly the kind of thing that I would have watched on cable in the early 90s. It's wildly uneven, to the extent that it took me quite a while in to figure out the tone that they were going for, but I quite liked the relationship between Martin and Rick Moranis--kind of a grown-up Ferris Bueller's Year in the Witness Relocation Program, I guess. It kind of blows my mind that this comes from the same source that produced Goodfellas and that the same studio released both films a month or so apart from each other. I wonder if Warner Bros thought they had a hit on their hands with MBH (Martin's films consistently did well around this time, iirc) and that maybe this film would generate interest in Scorsese's, a tactic they dropped when this movie bombed.

My Blue Heaven was written by Nora Ephron, who was married to Wiseguy/Goodfellas writer Nicholas Pileggi, apparently she used his contact with Henry Hill to do research of her own:

There was a funny sideline to my work with Nick. At night, I’d get half-gassed and call Nick in New York just to bullshit. It was like therapy for me. Sometimes Nick’s wife, Nora, would answer the phone and tell me, “Hey, Nick is sleeping. What’s the matter, Henry? This is Aunt Nora.” Meanwhile, she was picking my brain for a script she was writing. I had no idea. She was on the other end taking notes. She was a piece of work… In 1990, the same year my movie Goodfellas came out, she had a little movie released called My Blue Heaven, starring Steve Martin, about a New Yorker in Witness Protection out west — just like I had been in Omaha. When I saw it I flipped because she used some of the stuff I had told her on the phone for her movie scenes. She took a combination of me and Michael Franceze, another rat she had read about in the papers. I never got a penny for it, but Nick had been so generous with me that I just let it slide. Had it been anyone else’s wife…

I never watched this bcz as we know, Nora Ephron went on to a prominent role in the murder of American film comedy. If Henry Hill sorta ghostwrote it, I might give it a shot.

Stick with your original instincts

It sucks

Arising from his comedians in cars having coffee with seinfeld- who is better than tolerable in it, surprisingly- Steve Martin comes across as a thoughtful and intelligent guy but not any funnier than let's say you had a shy uncle who wasn't funny but was pleasant he's that funny.

But, as part of the show they show clips from his live comedy shows in the seventies.

And that

That is genuinely the least funny shit that has ever claimed to be funny

Let alone "thousands of people came to see this and paid money to see this, *knowing what it was*" funny

The fuck, now i mean what the fuck is wrong with americans

In a letter: D

I have never remotely understood what's supposed to be funny about him. I like him because he's thoughtful and intelligent and musical.

Charming, affable, sharp, quick wit. Goes a ways.

I don’t think he’s ever killed me comedically (outside of seeing The Jerk as a kid) but always enjoyed/was amused by his presence.

I like him. B+.

the seventies.

― things you looked shockingly old when you wore (darraghmac),

this is basically the issue

he is charming

i saw this recently and he comes off as a very nice normal person

but the song where he sings kind of threw me off, his whole singing style and his jokes just seem way too disconnected from everything

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyHipL45pwM

LA Story forever!

His clown has changed from an overconfident asshole (he said admiringly...) to a doddering old man and I appreciate that

I don't think his comedy makes any sense at all extracted in little fragments like those Comedians in Cars clips. And the audiences there are going wild mainly because they've heard a catchphrase they recognize. In context, his act involved various levels of intentional stupidity and artlessness. His white-suited persona was essentially that of a clueless simpleton with a perverse amount of self-confidence and swagger, with elements of hipsterism mixed in to add to the weird contradiction of it.

That said even at his peak he was divisive, and there was always a segment of the population who found him totally alienating and unfunny. He did represent a break of sorts with traditional standup comedy in the US. Don't know how well he crossed the Generation Gap either - probably the bulk of his fans were Baby Boomers in their 20s/early 30s (plus some kids).

A spirited defence of then man but what is on trial here is his comedy which btw is shit

life is a tragedy for those who feel

but a comedy for those who think

something to consider

xp Random five second snippets from some show =/= his comedy is what I'm saying.

Seinfeld inserted those only to jog Americans' memories.

a) '70s Martin was less 'here's a joke that I legit believe to be hilarious' than it was proto-anti-comedy, b) comedy ages about as poorly as sliced avocado

a long time ago i picked up one of his comedy LPs for $1, and before i listened to found this insert:

https://i.imgur.com/XZvFvH8.jpg

i listened to it anyway, but kind of knew it was a lost cause

b) comedy ages about as poorly as sliced avocado

otm

b) comedy ages about as poorly as sliced avocado

otm

read some 17th c funny stuff and understand it's not that those people had poor senses of humor, it's that comedy is generally audience-specific

This discussion all belongs on the controp thread tho I agree most humour doesn't keep and maybe when we laugh at old stuff we're laughing differently than the original audience

But his first 4 or 5 movies are golden and gtfo with opinions to the contrary

The same lads here now would have me listening to 17th century symphonies as if it wasn't all a sham

not even rising to that obvious nonsense

Yeah, it's weird that my reaction to his standup is 'yeah, I can see why people might've found this funny' while The Man With Two Brains still kills me.

a little lime on that avocado does wonders for it

not even rising to that obvious nonsense

― Under the influence of the Ranters (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 4 March 2018 21:46 (thirty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is what the internet is for

for years I had been putting avocado in a small bowl and stretching plastic wrap across the top, I only recently learned from my sister to take the plastic wrap and push it down flush to the avocado, works nicely

very few people remain funny over the course of a long career, there's nothing at all wrong w/ Steve Martin

Attaboy

I found a cheap vinyl copy of Let's Get Small a few years back and thought it was hilarious. Definitely (proto-) anti-comedy, though, so if that's already not your thing, you're not going to like this any more than any of the current variants.

i have a record of his, "A Wild and Crazy Guy", and totally love it. i may be biased cos as a kid i was in a summer art school performance of King Tut and that song has always ruled. my favorite bit on the record is "Cat Handcuffs"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gw58NYktVY