Browse: Home / Celebrating the Living: Steve Martin

Menu

Skip to content
  • Home
  • Who We Are
  • About
  • Privacy
  • Contact Us
  • Login

The-SoluteLogo

A Film Site By Lovers of Film

Menu

Skip to content
  • Features
  • Reviews
  • Long Reviews
  • News
  • Articles and Opinions
  • Other Media
  • The Friday Article Roundup: The Truth is In Here
  • Lunch Links: Schwarzfahrer
  • Websites on the Internet: THE SOLUTE
  • New on DVD and Blu-Ray
  • Movie Gifts Holidays 2024

Celebrating the Living: Steve Martin

Posted By Gillianren on May 15, 2016 in Features | 93 Responses

I’m hesitant of the concept of the lifetime pass. Everyone, no matter how great, can reach the point where they’ve made too many turkeys to be forgiven. However, I do believe there are people where you’ll still hold the soft spot in your heart, even if you won’t always give their new work a chance. You’ll just keep wishing they could make the thing like the things they made already that you love.

I want Steve Martin to be funny again. His next movie is a drama by Ang Lee with what looks like a hell of a cast, and that’s great; he’s underrated as an actor in my opinion. He’s also done a lot of music; it seems I’m always broke when he’s performing around here, but I’d love to see him in concert one of these days. But he hasn’t done a comedy that appeals to me since the ’90s, and I’m one of the seven people on Earth who likes Mixed Nuts. I think there’s a place for the urbane, arrogant character he sometimes plays in his sketches, if he chose to write a movie about that. The guy he seems to play a lot these days just isn’t funny to me.

Still, when he was funny, he was extremely funny. It’s hard to pick the best scene of The Muppet Movie, but his “Insolent Waiter” is probably the funniest of the celebrity cameos. (He was great on the show, too.) Several of the comedy classics of the ’80s have his imprint. His stand-up was pretty consistently funny.

Let’s not forget the writing, either. Roxanne was a great take on the classic story of Cyrano de Bergerac, shifted into a ski resort with volunteer firefighters. It dabbles with the original script of the Edmond Rostand play, even lifting word-for-word in places, yet isn’t afraid to change what needs to be changed. Actually, there are a lot more women in it than in the original, as I recall. Which is nice. And the Roxanne character has a lot more personality.

There’s also something to be said for a man who was willing to cash in some of his chips in Hollywood to make a romantic comedy costarring his own wife. Which also, it’s worth mentioning, mocks the idea that all male leads should naturally be with love interests decades their junior; while Victoria Tennant, Martin’s then-wife, is five years younger than he is, that’s not a huge gap at all. And she was forty-one at the time, yet still very much seen by the movie as desirable and frankly more interesting than the character played by then-twenty-six-year-old Sarah Jessica Parker.

As you can see, there’s a lot of interesting to Steve Martin. His autobiography, Born Standing Up, is a delight. He’s recently done a few albums with Edie Brickell, wife of his old friend Paul Simon. I still haven’t actually sat down and watched Shopgirl, but I’ve meant to ever since I found out that he wrote it. He’s multitalented, one of the few people to win a Grammy for both comedy and music. And, indeed, he’s a wizard on the banjo, not an instrument people necessarily think of as a virtuoso instrument.

He’s young-ish for this column, I admit, though not the youngest I’ve covered. And in fact, he’s yet another person with a Disney connection—young Steve worked at Disneyland for the first three years it was open, selling guide books, and then for a while starting in August 1960 worked at the Main Street Magic Shop. He also spent some time less than ten miles away at rival park Knott’s Berry Farm. The rumor Back Home has long been that he was a guide on the Jungle Boat Cruise at Disneyland, but he was honing his craft in a different way at the time.

Posted in Features | Tagged celebrate the living, Steve Martin, tribute

About the Author

gillianmadeira@hotmail.com'

Gillianren

Gillianren is a forty-something bipolar woman living in the Pacific Northwest after growing up in Los Angeles County. She and her boyfriend have one son and one daughter, and she gave a daughter up for adoption. She fills her days by watching her local library system’s DVD collection in alphabetical order, watching everything that looks interesting. She particularly enjoys pre-Code films, blaxploitation, and live-action Disney movies of the ’60s and ’70s. She has a Patreon account at https://www.patreon.com/gillianren

Related Posts

Life is a mysteryCelebrating the Living: Madonna→

Clearly Pryor knew a thing or two about wooing womenAttention Must Be Paid: Richard Pryor→

Definitely how most people picture him.Celebrating the Living: John Cameron Mitchell→

A sexy hot mess bigot!Attention Must Be Paid: Patricia Highsmith→

  • Comments
  • Popular
  • Most Recent
  • j*****@yahoo.com'
    mr_apollo on Year of the Month: Mon OncleWonderful piece, Sam. It's made…
  • j*****@yahoo.com'
    mr_apollo on Year of the Month: Mon OncleFellow heretic here. I've never…
  • n***********@gmail.com'
    Ruck Cohlchez on Film on the Internet: AN AMERICAN CRIMEI wouldn't have called it…
  • j***********@gmail.com'
    Son of Griff on LIFE ITSELFGlad to hear back from…
  • n*********@gmail.com'
    Jake Gittes on Film on the Internet: AN AMERICAN CRIMEThis is the single most…
  • “The End” of SAVAGES

    38501 views / Posted November 10, 2014
  • The Untalented Mr. Ripley: The Craft of Standup Comedy and the Non-Comedy of TOM MYERS

    31063 views / Posted June 26, 2018
  • What the fuck did I just watch? SPHERE

    30475 views / Posted March 19, 2015
  • Gordon with Mr. Looper

    Attention Must Be Paid: Will Lee

    27707 views / Posted January 7, 2023
  • Scenic Routes: SHOWGIRLS (1995)

    23561 views / Posted November 20, 2014
  • The truth is FAR out there.

    The Friday Article Roundup: The Truth is In Here

    December 6, 2024 / The Ploughman
  • This is a way lower res image than I will be allowed to get away with at the new site.

    Lunch Links: Schwarzfahrer

    December 5, 2024 / The Ploughman
  • Websites on the Internet: THE SOLUTE

    December 4, 2024 / ZoeZ
  • New on DVD and Blu-Ray

    December 3, 2024 / Greta Taylor
  • Movie Gifts Holidays 2024

    December 2, 2024 / The Ploughman

Last Tweets

    ©2014 - 2016 The-Solute | Hosted, Developed and Maintained by Bellingham WP LogoBellinghamWP.com.

    Menu

    • Home
    • Who We Are
    • About
    • Privacy
    • Contact Us
    • Login
    Do NOT follow this link or you will be banned from the site!