Today, we’re bringing you a preview of Pushkin's new audiobook, “So Many Steves.” Steve Martin is more candid than he’s ever been about his creative life in this engrossing audio-biography centered around a series of conversations recorded over many afternoons at home with his friend and neighbor, writer Adam Gopnik. You can get “So Many Steves,” an audio-exclusive, now at Audible: http://audible.com/stevemartin
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
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I melton gladwell, just getting it said, Martin, but like belgium, I love audio books so much so that I wanted to make one myself my audio original recorded with new yorker writer and my long time friend Adam got neck in it. He'll hear a series of conversations about my career and creative life, starting with magic, get your copy of so many steve's afternoons with Steve Martin at audible,.
by the way to new law. Now I have to do this. I don't like to, but it is by law. Comedians must make a financial disclosure
This is a clip from Steve's second album, which was
these two nineteen seventy eight and was called a wild and crazy guy
Then I figured out a potential.
common to fill a three thousand feet, all three dollars per ticket grosses.
Nine thousand dollars. You fill a three thousand feet tall, it seven fifty per ticket, they grosses twenty, two thousand,
dollars, and just for fun, I figure out if you feel a three thousand feet hall at eight hundred dollars a ticket gross.
two million four hundred throughout the city, but I'm sure
one joe goodbye,
Would you just heard suggests what was happening to Steve? He went from working in small clubs where he could achieve unhappy fulfilment of his absurdest manifesto with its roots
victims, dines particularism and louis carols logic and all the rest to become
you're kind of rock star of comedy in many ways, the first rock star of comedy that
was a doubly uncomfortable position for him to find himself in first, because that
kind of fame is always alienating whomever it falls on and
Steve natural insularity and somewhat stifled emotions left him w.
Alone at a time
and when his fame was speaking, the street
This thing for me was in my latter days of stand up. It was the least creative I have ever been
At the same time, you replace daddy, I'm right to come up with
something new and try to work it in there was no vehicle
to get it in the try. It try a little thing when you're in a club you could,
something and move on going and change the subway, but their every word was amplified on a mike
it had to be solid, had to be heard at to be delivered
really at the end there doing rock concerts yeah. It was
if I had understood that I would have been better off, because I kept thinking I'm doing
comedy show up. I want them to laugh.
not cheer.
I was just a completely out of debt
chapter three movie star
Steve's career as an actor in the movies, took three very distinct and different paths.
I guess I've been aware of them over the years
becoming closer to Steve. In the course of these conversations gave me
a different kind of insight into them. The first path
involve the movies he made, while he was still a working commedia, where he too
Sad absurd is dotted. Persona, though,
It had made him famous onstage and took it to the screen
in the jerk is first film, it's all
at the rise of a naive idiot to wealth and faint. I wish I could get that excited about that later,
a kind of one tiny and muddled, putting your name and french people, I'm implant,
That movie set the tone for wonderfully funny, and I think original films like dead man, don't wear plaid and the man with two brains.
in the late eighties. Steve worked with one of the most successful directors of the entire late twentieth century, John Hughes.
collaboration, the movie planes, trains and automobiles still
its families year in and out, and it stands is one of the few thanksgiving movies in the cannon. Steve plays a wonderful grump trying to get home for the holiday his unwell.
Companion in this adventure is played by the late. An incomparable john candy
very tolerant person. Would you like a mouthful of teeth, but to me this middle period of steam? Some career is
defined by his attempts to create personal comedy
and that effort produced what to my mind,
by far the two best films he ever made roxana and l a story both of them, not, coincidentally, with scripts written by steve
you heard me big, knows, lack faced flat and then finally, the third act or path of his movie career involve some giant. Obviously commercial and walk bus. Do films,
other the bride series and then the cheaper by the dozen serious mr banks are. You can count on dad George. I should add at once that I do not mean to condescend to those films they gave mike.
huge delight when they were younger, but they were clearly not the works of art that rock san in l, a story aspire to be, and I've always been puzzled entreat by steve's reluctant sore inability to go forward in the movies. In that very personal and poetic direction.
it's one of the things I most want to talk to you about today. Well,
when I first started in movies,
I had one vision, which was the jerk to look for another bottle of the chatroulette to ah yes, but no more nineteen, sixty six, let's splurge, bring us some fresh wine. A precious gift got this year's no more of this old stuff. We miss you. He doesn't realize he's dealing with sophisticated people,
its vision was laughs, jokes and the subsequent movies were last jokes. That's what I want to last year, but it wasn't the vision
the movie the vision.
something else of just pudding
comedy on screen and I'm still learning how to act, and I remember saying
I think this could be an easy transition. I've done a million things on stage it. I've done
sketches I've done Saturday night live have done, this is going to be natural and then the first thing you're asked to do is
sit down with the glass your hand and put it on a table. That's the shot,
I think
so do I sit first and then,
the glass over, or do I put it down
as I'm, putting an emphasis. Really, you realize, oh, my god. This is. This is more complex than I thought
and it doesnt have a lot to do with being a performer on stage or europe.
Yeah, no, it's just something else, then there's all the mechanics which I love, the mechanics of not putting the glass down. While someone else is talking cause, you hear a clunk on their line and then they have to loop. It
but my goal make a lot of movies and nurseries in order to get five good movies. You have to make forty because you'd they're just unwieldy, you can't
perfect. I couldn't perfect a movie from the ghetto because it
she's gonna be wonderful. I thought every movie was gonna, be wonderful. Are you awake.
there's something I want to say. The choice has been very difficult for me to say,
let the sheet the sheet I slid and on the flooded sheet I said now, sir
first movie the jerk was directed
Carl reiner, an american comic
stir of a significantly older generation than steve's
tonawanda, hit first become famous in the nineteen fifties, is a kind of all purpose straight man on the legendary Sid Caesar your show of shows he could be
in interrogating sid's, mad german professors and then,
He became even more famous in the nineteen sixties as millbrook straight man on those beautiful
astounding two thousand year old man records and four thousand eve,
greatest thing mankind ever devised. I think, in my humble opinion, is saran wrap you equate this with
discovery of space. That was good
the
Carl reiner was far more comic, mench and master than just a straight man. He had
everyone agreed an absolute knowledge of how to set off a comic relief. He
is universally respected food
but his unique mix of comedy savvy
personal generosity, all wrapped in a deep well of,
no business knowledge
call reiner be told me this. He said I think it's important to have refrigerator laughs and I
what's a refrigerator laugh. Is this what you see the movie and now your home
you're, getting something out of your refrigerator, and that's when you, when you remember that we remember- and I have
is found that you don't make told me once said. I always
think we should have one thing in our move
is where we say: can we do that mike is MIKE Nichols? The immensely accomplished director
the graduate and carnal knowledge and many other classics I have found over
I'm that those little moments when you're thinking should we. This is not very clear. Those are the ones that people pick out and remember alike. In rock san it wasn't scripted, but it was starting to be dusk. I asked
director, I said dab said. I have an idea. There was a newspaper rack, and so I went
over two issues one shot I went over to it, but the quarter in pulled out
newspaper certain walkway read the headline star
screaming went back to the thing put another quarter in and through the newspaper you think closed
it was improvised on the promise yeah, I didn't even tell them what I was going to do. This episode of revisionist history is brought to you by t mobile for business. You know when we make a podcast here, revisionist history. The end result is only as good as the quality of the people who helped craft. It were more creative than we used to be because our tools of collaboration have gotten better t. Mobile for business has the advanced five g solutions we all need. After all, disruption is in their dna. They launched the first nationwide five g network and continue to reshape the way business gets done. Now is the time to business bravely and start building. Your future today go to www t mobile dot com. Slash now to learn more hello, hello. This is Malcolm cabo. Have you ever been to Maui? I have you know that maui has rich volcanic soil filled,
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Transcript generated on 2023-12-28.