Books: 'Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life' by Steve Martin
Most under 30's will remember him more for playing the embarrassingly silly yet funny white-haired Dad trying to cleave to his dignity in movies such as Parenthood, Father Of The Bride and Cheaper By The Dozen, while the slightly older generation may appreciate his early stand up routines and comical Saturday Night Live performances.
In some respects his buffoonery ways are taken for granted by and underestimated as mere unintelligent rants accompanied by funny facial expressions. If you thought this you will think twice after reading his memoir as there is much more to Mr Steve Martin!
I always admired his zany comedy tactics (his comedy thought train or where he brought the humour) as apposed to what many may have dismissed as 'zany antics' or pre-school punchline humour. No this guy is definitely a 'thinker', a philosopher actually.
In the late 1970's, Steve Martin's career as a stand-up comic was at
a climax. With legendary appearances on Saturday Night Live, two
platinum comedy albums, and ubiquitous catch-phrases (Well, excuuuuusee
me!), this gray-haired, white-suited comedian burst seemingly out of nowhere, straight to the top. But Steve Martin was no overnight sensation. He had spent the prior decade and a half tirelessly learning, honing, and refining the character and the act that in the late 1970's would be indelibly imprinted on the frontal lobes of a nation. Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life is all about what went before stardom; it's about Steve Martin's fifteen year slog through the trenches of stand-up comedy. The story of his rise to fame includes some tender accounts of family life growing up in Los Angeles and his awkward detached relationship with his father who resented his family for disrupting his own acting aspirations.
From a career that began in 1955 aged 10 when he landed a job selling guidebooks at the brand new Disneyland theme park in Anaheim, California, to his growing education of rope and magic tricks, joke-telling and essentially his learning a code of practice and discipline to which he would adhere over the next couple of decades - many of the seeds of Steve Martin's later persona would be sown at Merlin's Magic Shop during his teenage years, where manipulating playing cards for eight to twelve hours daily taught him to appreciate "the pleasure and subtlety of physical expression and the potency of movement".
However the most notable lesson of Steve Martin's Disneyland career came
from former vaudevillian, Dave Steward, who instilled in the aspiring
performer the notion that laughter need not be punchline-dependent, but
could rather be "created out of absence." A startlingly new concept at the time but one that was further nurtured by Martin's exposure to the
comedy of Lenny Bruce and Tom Lehrer, cutting-edge comedians at that
time.
But it was his infiltration into the world of television that eventually got
Steve Martin noticed. In the late 60's he became a writer and sometimes
performer on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, for which he won an
Emmy. This led to numerous appearances on daytime talk shows which in
turn led to work on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
It was in 1974,
during his sixteenth Tonight Show appearance, that Martin experienced a
major breakthrough. During his crazy act he speed-talked for about two minutes then started a wild flail, which must have been pretty funny because at that moment the camera cut
away to a dimly lit Johnny Carson, precisely as he whirled up from his chair,
doubling over with laughter. Suddenly and subliminally, a showbiz miracle occurred and he was endorsed. At
the end of the act, even Sammy Davis Jr. came over and hugged him.
This is a really enjoyable memoir to read (or listen to if you choose the audio book, Steve Martin himself tells his own story) and with that set aside, a word to the wise, if you have gone through life with no knowledge of or having not seen The Jerk (1979), a movie written by and starring Steve Martin, you haven't lived. It’s a movie that inspired a whole comedy niche: Smart dumb - the smarter the joke, the dumber it felt. True Steve Martin fans and movie comedy devotees will have seen it of course but it's well worth a watch!