'Saturday Night Live') in 'The Three Amigos,' a put-on of the old West and old Westerns, opening Dec. 'Three Amigos' is Martin`s fifth feature credit as a writer and first as an. Stephen Glenn Martin (born August 14, 1945) is an American actor, comedian, author, filmmaker, and musician. Martin came to public notice in the 1960s as a writer for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, and later as a frequent guest on The Tonight Show. It's also the name of a rather silly (but funny) movie starring Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, and Martin Short. Not to be confused with the Three Caballeros, a disney cartoon with DonaldDuck, Joe Carioca (a Parrot from Brasil) and Panchito (a Mexican Rooster). The term is an example of the ReuseGroupName pattern. A Power Trio of best friends, usually high school or middle school age, consisting of:. The Hero, very often a Cool Loser and/or Everyman protagonist.; A best friend of the same gender, frequently of another race and/or nationality.Can be a Token Black Friend and/or Fat Best Friend.; A best friend of another gender, and potential Love Interest, 50% of the time an Unlucky Childhood Friend.
Comedian and comic filmmaker Steve Martin was in an apologetic mood as he opened the door of his stark-white Beverly Hills home. 'Are you hungry?' he asked, probably hoping the answer would be 'no.' It wasn`t, so he produced two trays of frigid bite-size tuna sandwiches and crackers topped with cheese. 'But I have some really good iced tea,' he said. 'My girlfriend (English actress Victoria Tennant) is out of town, and I`m sorry I don`t have much.'
Martin`s California house (he also has a New York apartment) is filled with modern art, superb, major examples of the work of Franz Kline, Richard Diebenkorn, Georgia O`Keeffe, Arthur Dove and Cy Twombly, among many others, including a 'little' Picasso and an Edward Hopper watercolor.
'After you`ve taken all the vacations,' he said, 'art is the last remaining thing of value to spend money on.' He then went on to bemoan, like so many collectors, the skyrocketing prices of modern art. 'I would love to own Jasper Johns` `Out of the Window,` but I can`t afford it.' (The painting was sold at auction the other day for $3.63 million.)
While a young computer whiz worked in an adjoining room, setting up an elaborate personal computer and telecommunications system, Martin talked about his movie career, including his latest comedy, 'The Three Amigos,' a satirical romp through the Old West and Mexico.
Although his film career has been marked by big laughs, big risks and commercial failure, it didn`t start out that way, he said. 'I had been doing my standup act for years,' he said, settling into a chair in front of a massive Helen Frankenthaler canvas, 'and I was always writing down jokes I thought I might use in a movie. In fact, the premise for my first film came right from one of my routines. It was the line: `I was born a poor black child.` '
The joke begat the smash hit movie 'The Jerk,' and it remains Martin`s biggest hit to date, having grossed more than $100 million in 1979. It would be six years and four films later before he had a comparable success in his double-gender farce, 'All of Me,' costarring Lily Tomlin. In-between came risk-taking and failure.
'Actually I didn`t think of my second film (the Depression-era musical
'Pennies From Heaven') as much of a risk. Everything I had done until that time had been wildly successful--the concerts, the records, the TV shows, `The Jerk`--so that the commercial failure of the film actually caught me by surprise. I still think artistically it`s a very good film.'
Martin plays an achingly lonely man who lives a secret life of passion only while performing musical numbers of the `30s. 'I`ve rarely seen a role that showed that kind of vulnerability in a man. It`s a special film to me, and if I had to find fault, it would be that I think some of the music could have included more popular songs of the period.'
The failure of 'Pennies,' which cost millions, did not stop Martin`s film career. 'The Jerk' had been too big of a hit for that. That`s why his next project could be almost as daring, a black-and-white spoof of old crime movies called 'Dead Men Don`t Wear Plaid.'
Through a painstakingly created series of intercut, matching shots, Martin played a bumbling detective who 'talked' with the likes of Alan Ladd and John Garfield. It was a film that preceded Woody Allen`s similar and highly praised 'Zelig' by three years.
'I guess my favorite scene in `Dead Men` is when I`m leaving this guy`s office and I have a dog with me, and the dog has gone on the floor. This guy yells at me, `Pick that up!` Well, I finally put it in a bag, and as I`m leaving his office, I give one of his secretaries a little dog, and I give the other one the bag. After I leave the office you hear this scream on the soundtrack.'
Martin retells this funny story in quiet, modulated tones, a speech pattern that barely wavers for two hours. A philosophy major in college, he measures his words carefully, regularly going back over a sentence to express himself more precisely. 'Normally I am this soft-spoken,' he said. 'I`m not a closet tyrant. I always try to find the easiest way to accomplish what I want. The only thing you`re not seeing from me now, I suppose, is the playfulness when I`m with friends.'
After 'Dead Men,' which was another box-office loser, Martin made one riotous film ('The Man with Two Brains') and one poignantly funny movie
('The Lonely Guy'), both of which failed to draw a significant audience.
'I really can`t explain the lack of response to `The Man with Two Brains,` he said. 'I really liked the scene where I`m embracing Kathleen Turner, and I say, `I wish this moment would last forever,` and the next shot is of the two of us the following morning still locked in the same embrace.
'As for `Lonely Guy,` maybe the title had something to do with it; I didn`t write the script. I thought Charles Grodin was very funny in it. And the (film`s best known) scene, where I enter the restaurant to eat alone, a spotlight hits me, and everyone stares, actually is missing one of the best bits that was written. A waiter was supposed to come by with a chainsaw and cut the table in half, but someone forgot to bring the chainsaw that day.'
Of this point in his movie career, with four commercial flops in a row, Martin said that, yes, he was getting a little nervous. 'I was rattled. But then I found this script of `All of Me,` which I thought was hilarious, especially the courtroom scenes with me (transposed into Lily Tomlin`s body)
trying to play Lily trying to play me. I thought that was funnier than my walk in the movie, which got a lot of attention.'
The film was a commercial hit, and Martin received rare honors for a comedic performance--best actor awards from the New York Film Critics association and the National Board of Review.
San Martin Caballero In English
Flushed with success and leaving his standup act far behind ('the crowds began getting more hostile as they got more doped up'), Martin moved his film career into high gear.
'It happened just like they say it happens. The weekend after the reviews and the grosses came out on `All of Me,` my phone started ringing:
`Where have you been?` `Let`s have lunch.` '
The result is that Martin will be seen in two major holiday comedies next month, as well as a romantic comedy early next year.
Steve Caballero Heritage
First up is Martin, costarring with Chevy Chase and Martin Short (from
'Saturday Night Live') in 'The Three Amigos,' a put-on of the old West and old Westerns, opening Dec. 12. 'Three Amigos' is Martin`s fifth feature credit as a writer and first as an executive producer.
'I sort of coasted for a lot of years with my films,' he said. 'This time I realized that even though it`s a collaborative art, you still have to look after every detail yourself if you want to succeed.'
Dressed along with his partners in black and silver Mexican outfits with frilly white shirts and red sashes, Martin cuts a ridiculous figure as Lucky Day, one of three silent film actors who are the Three Amigos. After having a falling out with their studio boss (Chicago actor Joe Mantegna), the three caballeros wind up in a Mexican town trying to save the local peons from a brutal tyrant, while believing at first they`re merely performing in a sideshow.
For me the film is never as funny as in the title sequence, when the Three Amigos are on horseback singing their wildly heroic theme song. Martin disagrees.
'I do think there are many more funny scenes, and I also think it`s one of the few clean entertainments--except for one line--that the whole family can attend this year.
'And that`s important to me,' Martin said, 'because I think when we look back at all the foul humor of the last few years, I don`t think it`s going to last; it`s going to look dated and tacky. I intend to work clean.'
He`s clean and raunchy in 'Little Shop of Horrors,' opening Dec. 19, a funny comic-horror-musical based on a long-running Off-Broadway play, about a man-eating plant, that is based on a cheap cult horror film from the `60s.
Martin appears in a show-stopping cameo role as a sadistic dentist who rides a motorcycle and looks and talks suspiciously like Elvis Presley. 'That was the appeal of the character for me--a sadistic Elvis. I like the contrast. I told the director I didn`t want to do anything like a mad scientist.'
So once again Martin gets to sing and dance and act the fool, a role that he is comfortable performing on film for many more years, he said. 'My next film is `Roxanne` (costarring Darryl Hannah), and it`s a modern version of Cyrano De Bergerac. He pulls out a Polaroid shot of him in makeup with a nose that looks like a large cocktail frank.
Just then the phone rings. His host for dinner, 'Amigos' director John Landis, is calling, inquiring when Martin will be arriving. He already is a few minutes late. Martin pleads with Landis and the other guests to start their meal. 'You know how guilty I`ll feel. I`ll come in with this hang-dog look on my face and I won`t have a good time. Please start. It`s going to be 20 minutes. No, no, don`t say you`ll wait; you know what it`ll do to me. Oh, okay, I`ll try to hurry. No, okay, I won`t hurry.'
Now how can you not like and laugh at a guy like that?
Three Caballeros With Steve Martin
Two last questions, though. Martin was asked what he thinks his contribution to comedy has been; he is widely acknowledged as a ground-breaker. 'I think I set comedy free in the early `70s,' he says without bravado. 'When I started in 1973 there were no young comedians, except for Richard Pryor.
'When I`d appear on a talk show like Steve Allen`s and say I was a comedian, the bookers would say, `What`s that?` Now comics are everywhere. So I think my success did open the door for some people.
'I went back to being dumb on stage at a time when everybody else was so hip and so smart and so political. That`s what I rebelled against.'
Martin agreed that his film 'Three Amigos' also carries the seeds of rebellion. 'I think it`s very easy to be avant garde in films. But it`s harder to get to the meat and do a nice clean movie with a beginning, middle and end.'
And what, he was asked, did he think, at age 41, he knew for sure? 'The limits of my own talent,' he said. 'You have some success. And then you see a film by Woody Allen and you feel like a hod-carrier with a long way to go.'