If you haven’t already, you can still enter to win two tickets to see “A Conversation with Steve Martin” at The Palace Theater. The contest ends tonight at 11:59pm! Get crackin’!

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Steve Martin

Image via Wikipedia

Earlier in the week I wrote of my early appreciation of and exposure to Steve Martin through Saturday Night Live. Another early attachment I have to Martin is through the film “Three Amigos.” The film was an early favorite and bonding moment for my father and I, and continued to serve as a barometer for those with whom I would develop the closest friendships (including friends like Eric and my roommate Steve). I find that if someone likes the film “Three Amigos,” I’m more or less guaranteed to like them.

But it’s not just his film or even his comedic roles that is at the root of my admiration. It is his body of work as a whole. It’s his range as an artist, and the fact that his range does not effect the quality of his work. Martin is not a celebrity who dabbles in different projects with middling (or lesser) results. He’s a legendary comedian, a good director, a wildly entertaining playwright, a fascinating playwright, an engaging orator, and so on and so forth.

He didn’t have to extend himself in the ways that he has through his career, and he certainly isn’t one of those that comes across as pushing his work on the basis that he’s a celebrity. Rather, he does it because he is compelled to do so artistically. That’s something I identify with; not in the sense that I think any of the output I have or will generate is at or neat the quality of his work, but that there’s nothing wrong in doing the things that you want to do and not being afraid to branch out past the expectations of those around you.

That’s why I consider him one of the few people that I’d liken to a role model that continues to push me to do different and varied things.

Which is why I plan on being in attendance on March 30th. I want to hear this man talk about his art, and his continued art. I want to get an insight into what his creative process is and what gives him the right to be a wild and crazy guy and a mad scientist and write two very well received novels and tell the story of a chance meeting between Picasso and Einstein at the Lapin Agile. I want to thank him for showing me that one can be both thoughtful at times and silly at others, and embrace both aspects of life.

Then I want to ask him “what the Hell is that?”

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7 Responses to Steve Martin: a man for all reasons

  1. justagirl says:

    The Three Amigos gave the world the best insult ever “you son of a motherless goat!”
    :-)

    • Yes! It also has my favorite movie speech of all time, spoken by Lucky Day (Steve Martin himself):

      “In a way, all of us has an El Guapo to face. For some, shyness might be their El Guapo. For others, a lack of education might be their El Guapo. For us, El Guapo is a big, dangerous man who wants to kill us. But as sure as my name is Lucky Day, the people of Santa Poco can conquer their own personal El Guapo, who also happens to be the actual El Guapo.”

  2. Hal Jordan says:

    Is this going to be a debacle like when Martin was scheduled to talk about art at the 92nd St Y in NYC, and instead, was told during the intermission to “be more funny”?

    • Hal – hopefully not. It’s made pretty clear in the marketing that it’s “A Conversation with Steve Martin” rather than a performance. It also has a different moderator & people handling it.

  3. Jango Davis says:

    Martin stoppeed being funny and relevant about 1983.

    • Jango - You’re right. The rest of America must have simply imagined seeing all the movies he was in, attending the plays he wrote, and buying the books he authored in the meantime.

  4. Doberspirit says:

    Dear Mr. Marshall:

    I was looking forward to reading your blog entry; however, you lost me at “The film was an early favorite and bonding moment for my father and I“….

    Don’t fret; your content is interesting. Many educated folks erroneously use the first-person pronoun “I” in the objective sense, when they ought to use “me.” To illustrate why the use of “I” in your sentence is grammatically unsound, try removing the words “and bonding moment…my father and” from the sentence. You’re left with “The film was an early favorite for me.” Having eliminated your father as part of the compound object in this sentence, it would not make sense to write, “The film was an early favorite for I.”

    To cite the formal rule, the pronoun “I” is used only as the subject of a sentence, whereas “me” is always used as an object (i.e., a direct or indirect object, object of a preposition, etc.).

    I’m really not trying to be a grammar “Nazi.” I’m just dedicated to preserving the language. Otherwise, nice article!

    Kind regards,

    Doberspirit

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