A Comic Genius and How he became one.
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I have been a huge steve Martin Fan ever since I saw a clip of him doing stand-up on BBC Comic Relief in 1989. Since then I have seen all his films, purchased his comedy albums and all his books, This book is the best of the lot.
I was in America the day this book came out and I bought it on that day. I couldn't put it down it was such a well written, enjoyable read. It was finished within the day I bought it. His description of him and his fathers relationship is dealt with exceptionally well, the early years at disneyland and the Bird Cage Theatre, The realisation on a sunny day that he is now going to have to write his own material so he can achieve Originality, his relationships, his television writing, his lonely life on the road, all the way through to his enormous success and eventual step-down are all written about in a wonderful, sometime self deprecating, way that I have returned to sections of this book many times since reading it originally.
It is also a book that explains the culture of the late sixties through the seventies from someone who was there but not out of their head all the time... His description of the 'Streets Of SanFrancisco simmering with a toxic vitality' makes me wish I was around at the time as well.
If I have any complaints about this book it is in what he left out, although the stories were mentioned briefly there was no mention of the publication of 'Cruel Shoes' Also there is no mention of his appearance on the Muppet Show, a Television show as Subversive and funny as SNL which he mentions... Also I was disappointed to learn that the white suit he wore, had a practical purpose and wasn't just to make him look crazier...
Excellent Read... Especially for any Comedy Performers out there.
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Will the real Steve Martin please stand up
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Take a look at Steve Martins resume and it quickly becomes obvious that not only is he a prolific performer but also one with great staying power. To the modern generation he is perhaps best known for his many recent so-so comedy films but the truth is that he is much more, innovator, peer to many & much loved icon. This autobiography does much to further his reputation by showing him as a consummate professional, tireless worker & as is the case with so many comedians, a far more reserved & quiet character than he at first appears.
A fascinating insight on not only his early years of learning stagecraft also sheds much light of 1950's/1960's America. His early job's at both Disney & Knott's Berry Farm are both detailed well and present much of interest about those he worked with and how he grew as an actor. He describes many varied people he met and worked with and although giving an honest appraisal he avoids any 'dirt' and is always generous in his praise & giving due thanks to his influences.
Martin's style is quick and serious. This works to avoid any point of the narrative dragging and instead of trying to entertain the reader you feel as though he were just relating those points in his early career he feels are important, no drama, no jokes, just a chatty & honest jog through his memories. He is also honest in his appraisal of himself. The overall impression left is of a man that,even after all these years & successes, still examines his motives & actions and is still unsure of just when the audience is going to walk out.
I am not a huge fan of autobiographies as they nearly always tend to be self-congratulatory, delusional & scathing of everybody but the author. Not so here. This is informative,interesting & offers much insight to the real character of its writer.
A book that repays the time and effort taken to read it.
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Origins of Creativity and Notes from the Star Track
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Born Standing Up will be of most interest to young people who want to create a career performing in stand-up comedy. I was fascinated by Steve Martin's recollections of the lessons he learned at the magic shop in Disneyland and in performing at the Bird Cage Theater at Knott's Berry Farm. Both places were favorite haunts of mine while he was doing his apprenticeship, and I'm sure I saw him perform but don't remember him. Knowing a lot about both places, it made it easier for me to appreciate the other steps he took to develop an act and to become recognized. His description of being on the Tonight Show was a good lesson in patience . . . the first dozen or so appearances don't do a thing for your career.
Having seen him perform, I could never figure out why he chose to do the self-deprecating bit and wear a white suit. Now I know how all that came about. It was definitely interesting.
But if you want to know a lot more about Steve Martin, the man, and his daily thoughts and challenges . . . this book will leave you disappointed.
At times I felt like I was reading a book about how to plan a career rather than an autobiography -- especially towards the end when he explained how heavy touring while you are hot makes it inevitable that you won't develop the new material you need to stay hot. I guess there's a reason why Bob Hope always had so many writers working for him.
I haven't always enjoyed Steve Martin's humor, and I found myself wondering over some examples of what was great about his humor. If you aren't a big fan of Steve Martin's or don't want to be a stand-up comedian, you might find it wisest to skip this book. It's probably a two or three star effort for you.
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Well, Ecuuuse Me
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"Even for readers already familiar with Mr. Martin's solemn side, "Born "Standing Up" is a surprising book: smart, serious, heartfelt and confessional without being maudlin. Decades after the fact he looks back at a period of invention and innovation, marveling at the thought that his efforts might have led absolutely nowhere if they had not wildly succeeded. While there is much to validate his sense of having been lucky, nobody put it better than Elvis Presley, whom Mr. Martin once encountered backstage when both were enjoying the status of show-business kings. "Son," he says Presley told him, "you have an ob-leek sense of humor." Janet Maslin
The wild and crazy guy known to us from Saturday Night Live, is in reality a straight square guy. His performance dress is a pressed suit and smartly parted hair. In fact when Steve Martin was in college his intellectual pursuit was philosophy where he garnered 'A's'. He deplored the wearing of jeans, and he gave up his one hippiness, smoking marijuana-it caused him anxiety. He was born near Disneyland, and the years of his youth were not happy ones. His father was a businessman who had yearned to be in show business. He gave up that life because he needed to earn a living for his family, and in doing so he gave up his dream. He was a man with little humor and rarely paid attention to Steve. It was Steve's mother who was the light and love. Her greatest love was shopping and when she died, Steve and his sister buried her facing a shopping mall.
Steve's early years started by working with magicians and he would fastidiously copy down every magic act. He worked at Disneyland and knotts Berry Farm for most of his youth, and then he was ready to move on. He moved to San Francisco to do comedy. One of his first jobs was to bring in people for an audience at a club. He entered this foray at the beginning years of Hippydom and though he was never really part of this era he enjoyed it. He gradually built up his stand-up comedy act. He appeared on Johnny Carson many times. His act was so strange that Johnny relegated him to appear with his stand-ins. After Steve made a hit on 'Saturday Night Live' and in his stand-up routine Johnny welcomed him back to the prime time. Steve realized that when his 'gigs' became so large that he could not bring the audience into the street he realized stand-up was over for him. He has appeared in many 'family films, written several books and still has a comedy routine. His life has become exactly what he wants it to be.
"Martin's memoir will similarly confuse those who come to it looking for laughs. It is a mostly unfunny yet oddly stirring book about the comedian's early life, beginning with his boyhood before moving through his 20s and on up to 1982. Having watched him make a career out of mixed cues, out of blending lofty ideas with physical comedy, Martin's audience can get confused. He once predicted that if he withheld a punch line long enough, "the audience would eventually pick their own place to laugh, essentially out of desperation. And so, having been conditioned by the first 20 years of his career, we have a Pavlovian response to the mere sight of him: We laugh. Even if it is out of desperation, it's no less sweet. " Erika Schickel
An insightful book and look into the stand-up life of Steve Martin.
Highly Recommended. prisrob 12-03-07
The Alphabet from A to Y With Bonus Letter Z!
PLEASURE OF MY COMPANY, THE: A NOVELLA
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"Doing comedy alone on stage is the ego's last stand."
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Looking back twenty-five years to his eighteen-year stint as a standup comic in the 1970s, Steve Martin analyzes how he became "the biggest concert comedian in show business, ever." His difficult childhood and hostile relationship with his father lead him to find a job at Disneyland, where as a young teen he practices magic and card tricks, becomes a juggler, and learns rope tricks, but by the age of twenty he has moved out and moved on, eventually acting in melodramas at Knott's Berry Farm, and traveling to New York, Cambridge, and Aspen in an effort to find his comedic "voice."
Comedy does not come easily to Martin and it is not until he studies philosophy at Long Beach College and decides to write all his own material that he finds a personal direction. Working as a writer for the Smothers Brothers and Glen Campbell, he eventually teams with Rob Reiner, but for all his outward success, he suffers. Anxiety attacks, hypochondria, and phobias about nightfall, plague him for twenty years, and often make his life a misery.
A college psychology class changes his life and his act in an unexpected way. After reading a treatise on comedy and what makes us laugh, Martin decides to take the opposite approach: "What if there were no punch lines?" he wonders. "What if I created tension and never released it? What if I headed for a climax, but all I delivered was an anticlimax?" With this revolutionary idea, Martin's style is born. His phenomenal success, with concert audiences of up to twenty thousand people, however, makes him feel like a party host, not a comedian. Traveling to eighty-five cities in ninety days, he never has time for a regular conversation, he has no privacy, and he has no natural way to meet people. By 1981, he knows it is time to walk away.
Though Steve Martin's narration of the audiobook, is, according to friends, very amusing, the book itself could not be more serious. Martin's approach is intellectual, analytical, and extremely thoughtful. His comedy is not spontaneous but cerebral, and his own evaluation of what made his comedy so successful in the seventies is enlightening. Giving no juicy tidbits about Hollywood, Martin remains as private in this short book as he is in life, providing little information about his professional life after standup, and almost nothing about his personal life. A huge star who has managed to create a life of his own, Martin shares his past but not his present. "These events are true," he says, "yet sometimes they seemed to have happened to someone else." he says. Mary Whipple
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