I know, I know, it's a knitting blog, not a book blog. I have to say, this is my last day of vacation before my last weekend before going back to work again. I can't say when I've enjoyed 2 weeks off more than I just have. It's been day after day of deciding whether to read, knit, spin, or nap. Heaven.
So, I've finished another book. I heard Steve Martin talk about this book a couple of weeks ago on NPR and he was brilliant. He's so low key about his celebrity it makes me want to sit and have a cup of coffee with him.
In Martin's own words this book is "a biography, because I am writing about someone I used to know." It chronicles his childhood entrance into show business and follows him all the way through playing stadiums in the 1980s.
What interested me most is his approach to doing stand up. I've often wondered what it's like to essentially create your own job out of nothing. Martin didn't want a new routine to flop, so he would break it down into tiny pieces and begin by putting the tiniest piece into his act. If it worked, he would add another piece. If it continued to work, it continued to grow; if not, he dropped it. This is such a common sense approach to creating an act. I guess I assumed that many comedians worked more like Robin Williams does - movement and zaniness until you drop.
Martin also talks about the downside of fame. How once he was playing to such huge audiences, he worried that the people in the back could only see him as a white dot on a stage very far away. It stopped being fun - there was no time to do something new or to experiment. I guess that explains why it seems like he just disappeared. I can understand just wanting to be done.
At the end, he talks about writing the book and listening to some of his old routines. He wondered if they were even funny anymore. I have to say, Little Big Man LOVES Steve Martin. He jumps up and down when the new phone book comes in. We joke back and forth about "cup-a-pizza". Hub will look at me every now and again and say, "...and then we throw dog poop on their shoes" and laugh like a maniac. Yeah, it's still funny.
Hubby & I just listened to the audio book version on a trip to Phila. I've been a big fan of his all my life, but really didn't know anything about him personally. It was fascinating to hear about how he started out and his creative process.
Posted by: kim | January 09, 2008 at 06:54 PM