A Blog of My Own

In Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Jenna Fischer (sweet, modest Pam from The Office) gives whole new meaning to the word wow.

But the really great thing about Walk Hard is that because of it, Hollywood will never be able to make a movie like Walk the Line or Ray again. Satire in the right hands can kill, and Walk Hard kills the clichés of the musical-biopic genre like a bucket of cold water on The Wicked Witch of West. To all screenwriters who might tell the story of a musician’s life the same old way again, Walk Hard issues a big, fat, “Don’t even think about it.” It’s a hoot, and a public service to all Americans.

If you’ve always wanted to know how Frank Sinatra disposed of his assets, now you can. Find out what Frank left to his wives, his children, his restaurateur pal Jilly Rizzo. Find out who got his sheet music. The will of Francis Albert Sinatra is available for viewing right here.

Why am I so fascinated, and enchanted, by pictures of a younger Hillary Clinton? I think it’s because I see something in them that feels real to me; they yield up an impression of a person I know, not one who lives behind an Invisible Shield™® as the Hillary of today seems to. And the real person they yield up is a person I like. This is the Hillary who Hillary wants me to believe she is. I want to believe her. Why I love these pictures is that they turn something I want to believe into something I do believe.

Another factor, no doubt, is that I am roughly the same age as Hillary. (She has about two-and-a-half years on me.). So when I see pictures of her younger, I see my friends when they (and I) were younger. Knowing who we were then, I know who she was then. And since I believe that person is still inside each of us, I believe it’s still inside her.

Speaking of Invisible Shields™®, here’s the original:

Like a picture I posted on May 7, this one (from a wedding in 1979) shows that when it comes to fun couples, no one does it like Bill and Hillary.

I have encountered Steve Martin three times in my life now, once each in the 70s, 80s and 90s. I wouldn’t blame him for thinking I’m stalking him very very slowly. But I’m not.

1975. Steve’s career is on the way up. He is appearing at a small club in Evanston, IL called Amazing Grace. This club is so hippie-ish that instead of on chairs, the audience splays out on the floor and on bean-bags! He puts out more energy than I have ever seen a human put out. It is superhuman. It is a question mark whether the walls of the room are structurally sound enough to withstand the ergs of hilarity being generated by his force field.

After the show, we go across the street to an ice cream parlor called Doctor Jazz. (No longer there.) Besides featuring good fountain creations, it has old-fashioned nickelodeon pianos and other mechanical music-playing contraptions. Who is sitting in the booth across from us but Steve Martin! Alone, recovering with a sundae. He is now the opposite of what he was. Just fifteen minutes ago he had been an exploding supernova; now he is a black hole sucking all the energy in the room into his vortex. He seems clinically depressed, as in just-kill-me-now, but it occurs to me that this state of near-death is the only way he can restore himself to something approaching equilibrium after that performance. We leave him alone, as does everyone else in the place. It is what he needs, and it is the least we can do for him after what he has done for us.

1984. Upper West Side, Columbus Avenue, New York. A bar called The Museum Café (because of its proximity to the Museum of Natural History.) The cell phone has yet to be invented, so my wife is using the bar’s pay phone. I sit at the bar. Glancing over, I see that Steve Martin is waiting right behind her to use the phone. My wife is unaware of this. I try to be inconspicuous, but I think my wife needs to know this, not because I think she needs to yield the phone to a celebrity, but because if we leave the bar without her ever realizing Steve Martin was standing right behind her, she will never forgive me. I go over and, as surreptitiously as possible given that Steve Martin is standing 14 inches away, whisper in her ear, “Steve Martin is standing right behind you.” She replies, out loud, “I don’t care who’s standing behind me, I’m finishing this conversation.”

1998. The Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. I am in Los Angeles to shoot a commercial with my partner. We meet for breakfast in the hotel’s dining room. I face my partner at a table for two. Just behind my partner is another table for two, and one of the people at it is Steve Martin. As luck would have it, he is sitting so as to face me directly, and I him. The result is that I cannot look at my partner without also looking at Steve Martin, but I know that this is bad form and Steve Martin does not especially want to be looked at, so I do my best not to, but it is impossible. And because of the layout, Steve Martin is no more able to look at his tablemate without looking at me than I am able to avoid looking at him. I sense that Steve Martin recognizes me. He doesn’t know why, but he knows he’s seen me somewhere before. He probably thinks I’m someone he’s met in the movie business. Or else, he’s going to come over and say, “I don’t know who you are, but stop following me!” Or else, with a little more time, he’ll sit there and it will dawn on him, “Hey, there’s that guy who didn’t bother me in the ice cream parlor, and who ten years ago told his wife I was standing behind her at the pay phone!” But it is not to be. Whoopi Goldberg comes into the room and hugs him before going to her table. His concentration is broken.

I am looking forward to meeting Steve Martin again sometime in this decade. The fourth time is going to be the charm. Unless he has me arrested.

Steve Martin’s Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life might just be the unfunniest book ever written by a comedian. That’s a recommendation. He isn’t going for laughs here. The book isn’t an extension of his act. He’s trying to write the most truthful account he can of how he came to be the most original comic of his time. Martin being a melancholy man, the book has a melancholy tone. Oh, Martin also being a witty man, there’s a smile in it every fourth paragraph or so, but this book is serious. It’s also important, and unputdownable. If you have even a wisp of a thought in your head that you might like it, I can guarantee you that you will.

In the book, he spends a fair number of pages on his time writing for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. The brothers let him perform occasionally, and here, in this clip, you can see him at a formative stage. He wasn’t yet the “excuuuuuse me” absurdist intellectual clown that took the world by storm, but the larval beginnings of that genius are evident:

Later, when his act took shape, Martin always gave full value to his audiences as a standup, and then did the same as an actor in most of his films. He has continued to deliver as a novelist, comic essayist, and screenwriter. Now, in his first attempt at autobiography, he promises to share with us the life experiences that formed him, and the thought processes that led to the creation of his standup persona—and then, remarkably (since the “comedian autobiography” is not a genre known for delivering truth and insight), actually does so. Steve Martin is a man of his word.

To my knowledge, you’re parked at the only outpost in the blogosphere that has, as part of its mission, the glorification of the American fish stick. So thanx and a tip o’ the Hatlo hat to Bill Pope for calling the above Michael Maslin New Yorker cartoon to my attention.