Steve Martin Book:

		List Price: $25.00		Publisher: Scribner Salesrank: 7106
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		Media: Hardcover

Editorial Review:
At age 10, Steve Martin got a job selling guidebooks at the newly opened Disneyland. In the decade that followed, he worked in Disney's magic shop, print shop, and theater, and developed his own magic/comedy act. By age 20, studying poetry and philosophy on the side, he was performing a dozen times a week, most often at the Disney rival, Knott's Berry Farm. Obsession is a substitute for talent, he has said, and Steve Martin's focus and daring--his sheer tenacity--are truly stunning. He writes about making the very tough decision to sacrifice everything not original in his act, and about lucking into a job writing for The Smothers Brothers Show. He writes about mentors, girlfriends, his complex relationship with his parents and sister, and about some of his great peers in comedy--Dan Ackroyd, Lorne Michaels, Carl Reiner, Johnny Carson. He writes about fear, anxiety and loneliness. And he writes about how he figured out what worked on stage.

This book is a memoir, but it is also an illuminating guidebook to stand-up from one of our two or three greatest comedians. Though Martin is reticent about his personal life, he is also stunningly deft, and manages to give readers a feeling of intimacy and candor. Illustrated throughout with black and white photographs collected by Martin, this book is instantly compelling visually and a spectacularly good read.


Amazon.com Exclusive
Three Bonus Deleted Passages from Steve Martin's Born Standing Up

On Returning to Disneyland
Ten years later, after the Beatles, drugs, and Vietnam had changed the entire tenor of American life, I returned to the magic shop at Disneyland and stood as a stranger. As I looked around the eerily familiar room another first came over me, a previously unknown emotion, one that was to have a curious force over me for the rest my life: the longing tug of nostalgia. Looking at the counter where I pitched Svengali Decks and the Incredible Shrinking Die, I was awash with the recollection of indelible nights where the sky was blown open by fireworks and big band sounds drifted through trees strung with fairy lights. I remembered my youth, when every moment was crisply present, when heartbreak and joy replaced each other quickly, fully and without trauma. Even now when I visit Disneyland, I am steeped in melancholy, because a corporation has preserved my nostalgia impeccably. Every nail and screw is the same, and Disneyland looks as new now as it did then. The paint is fresh, and the only wear allowed is faux. In fact, only I have changed. In the dream-like world of childhood memories, so often vague and imprecise, Disneyland remains for me not only vivid in memory, but vivid in fact.

On Meeting Diane Hall
During the day, I attended Santa Ana Junior College, taking drama classes and pursuing an unexpected interest in English poetry from Donne to Eliot. I would occasionally assist on a college stage production--never appearing in one--as a member of the crew. Years later I was looking through a box of memorabilia and noticed a silk-screened playbill of the musical Carousel, May, 1964, which listed me as a stagehand. The lead actress was Diane Hall. Something connected and I remembered that Diane Keaton's name was once Hall, (hence, Annie Hall). I confirmed with her that she was in that production. Neither of us remembers meeting the other, yet we must have worked in proximity. More evidence that I was a wallflower. Decades later, we ended up "making love" on the floor of a movie set on Father of the Bride.

On the Kennedy Assassination
One Friday in 1963, I had finished a class and was about to drive to Knott's Berry Farm for the afternoon shows when I saw a clump of agitated students across the campus. I asked someone what was going on. "They're saying that the president's been shot."

I drove across town to Knott's and punched radio buttons. I could hear the scheduled programs clicking off and being replaced by live broadcasts. Assassination seemed so ancient and inconceivable, I was sure that someone would soon correct the erroneous report. President Kennedy died that day and I didn't know that news could be taken so personally by a nation. Sitting backstage, watching the Birdcage's black-and-white TV drone out the increasingly grave report, we were all mute. We assumed the performance that night would be canceled, but as show time neared, word came down that we were going on. We couldn't fathom why; we believed no one would show up, much less enjoy us. I still can't explain the psychology, why the very full house that night was able to roar with laughter. The obvious must be correct: our silly show was providing some kind of balm that soothed the ache.

In 2003 I hosted the Oscars on the particular weekend that the United States invaded Iraq. The news was grim and just hours before the show I flipped on the TV and saw a report, subsequently proven false, that our captive soldiers were being beheaded. I quickly turned the TV off, sick. I knew, from my experience forty years earlier with the Kennedy assassination, what my job was, and I harbored a secret knowledge that the audience would laugh. I also felt that soldiers who might be watching would be tuning in to see the Oscars and all its hoopla, not a cheerless comedian doing what he doesn’t do best. I decided to acknowledge the circumstances early in the show and then get on with the jokes. The academy had announced that the show would "cut back on the glitz." I walked out for the opening monologue, took a look around the stage at the dazzling, swirling staircases, mirrored curtains and polished floor, and simply said, "I'm glad they cut back on the glitz." It got a laugh of relief and the show could go on.

More from Steve Martin

The Alphabet from A to Y with Bonus Letter Z!

Shopgirl

The Pleasure of My Company

Picasso at the Lapin Agile and Other Plays

Pure Drivel

"Absolutely magnificent. One of the best books about comedy and being a comedian ever written." --Jerry Seinfeld, GQ

"The writing is evocative, unflinching and cool. When Martin takes a scalpel to his life, what you feel is the precision of the surgeon more than the primal scream of the unanaesthetized patient...Born Standing Up is neither fanfare nor confession. It gives off a vibe of rigorous honesty. With lots of laughs." --Richard Corliss, Time Magazine

"A spare, unexpectedly resonant remembrance of things past…Martin's one true subject is the evolution of his comedy--the transcendent moments...A smart, gentlemanly, modest book…winning." --Jeff Giles, Entertainment Weekly, EW Pick: A

"A charming memoir tracking what the great comic characterizes as his 'war years.' Martin offers an eloquent and exacting account... [and] approaches his subjects with generosity, warmth and integrity." --Kirkus Reviews

"Sure to delight fans and create new ones." --Laura Mathews, Good Housekeeping

"What fun to discover the humble beginnings of some of his iconic personas...inspiring." --Rachel Rosenblit, Elle

"The archetypical story of the underdog's rise and a particularly American story...beautifully written, honest, engaging, and quietly brave." --Frederic Tuten, Bomb Magazine

"Son, you have an ob-leek sense of humor." --Elvis Presley

Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life Reviews:
From a serious Steve Martin fan. I loved it. I really, really loved it.
2008-08-21 - I became a Steve Martin fan in college when my roomates and I saw him on Johnny Carson trying to make people laugh by reading names out of a phone book (the way great actors can supposedly make people cry by doing the same thing). Of course, no one was laughing so he resorted to his standard balloon hat, bunny ears, arrow through the head and Groucho Marx glasses. It was so bizarre and crazy, we were in stitches. Of course, we were also pharmaceutically challenged at the time so that helped.

When reading this book, it also helps if you lived through the 60s and 70s. Steve makes many references to those times as he was growing up and his comedy career morphed. If you also grew up during those times, you can relate to so much more of what he's talking about. But regardless, it's really quite entertaining as he pulls you through the 60s and his time as a writer on the Smothers Brothers show and his early attempts at comedy in the 70s.

If you followed Steve's stand-up career, I think you will really like this book. You really get to know the man and his struggles with his comedy career, his family and his love life. This is the first book of his that I've read and I never realized what a good writer he is. I breezed through the book as he has a way of painting a picture and and scene in a very visual way. So many times through the book, I read a sentence and stopped and thought, "You know, that's true. It really is". A few of my favorites were "Thankfully, perseverance is a great substitute for talent", and "Despite a lack of natural ability, I did have the one element necessary to all early creativity: naivete, that fabulous quality that keeps you from knowing just how unsuited you are for what you are about to do".

Every young performer should read this book, whether you're a Steve Martin fan or not. It is inspiring as well as entertaining. If you were born after the Steve Martin phenomenon of the 70s, go to YouTube.com and find some old Steve Martin stand-up clips. You will not regret it.

A Funny Man Revealed
2008-08-13 - I remember watching Steve Martin's seemingly meteoric rise from Tonight Show guest, to Saturday Night Live stalwart, to concert hall blockbuster. He made me laugh. He helped take the edge off the 70's. I remember leaving one of his Nassau Coliseum shows thinking that all in the world was good and it's ok to be goofy - for a little while anyway. It was from that melancholy recollection I read through this book.

While Martin's stand up humor was edgy, innovative, and visual, Born Standing Up is laced with a dry humor that sometimes brings chuckles one or two lines afterward. We can see that as is true for most seemingly overnight success stories there are years of hard work and sacrifice behind the sensation. Though there is only a small window into Steve's creative genius, you can see how his young life contributed to the product he presented on stage. Martin's stand up act was filled with silliness, idiocy, and just plain tomfoolery. In Born Standing Up we see the crafting of that act took an intellectual approach and technical dissection of how comedy works. Laced with stories of his family life, upstart employment, inspirations, encounters and collaborations with familiar performers from the era, and the eventual eruption of his show, Born Standing Up leads down a road of opportunities realized and acted upon.

Tracking the career of Steve Martin can be confusing. The performances of the stand up era are dramatically different from the ones we see in movies today. So different that when I played some of "Let's Get Small" for my kids (who are very familiar with the Cheaper by the Dozen dad) they had a hard time believing it is the same person. Born Standing Up reveals an underlying personality that is constant throughout Martin's career.

I believe this is a 5 star book for anyone who fondly remembers Martin's stand-up. Thanks Steve for making the world a little less serious!


Simply the best
2008-08-02 - Steve Martin is simply the best and is now copied by all other stand up comics. Great belly laughs.

Laughed all over again
2008-07-30 - Martin's book is a terrific look at what it took to succeed in comedy during the 60s and 70s. For someone who, as a teenager, lived for Martin's appearances on The Tonight Show or Saturday Night Live, I was able to laugh all over again at the memories of his gags, silliness, and craziness. They were events for us 15-year-olds, gathering around the TV and then carrying our favorite bits forward to reenact in the classroom. Martin is quite honest about his complicated relationship with his father and other family members, but noticeably -- but inconsistently -- discreet when it comes to certain marital or romantic relationships. At one point, he references a divorce he was going through when we, the readers, hadn't yet been apprised that he had married. Here we thought he was still the lonely guy. In any event, overall, this is a wonderful chronicle of a hard-working comedian, as well as how difficult it is to make it within that business. I found this book to be as enjoyable as Harpo Marx's "Harpo Speaks," which also examines a life well lived within a cut-throat industry.

What am I missing?
2008-07-11 - Having just finished Steve Martin's "Born Standing Up" I can't for the life of me understand the 5 star rating that so many people have given it. His breathless staccato writing style is a far cry from great literature and reads more like a fleshed out resume than an actual autobiography. I found it mildly interesting but kept waiting for it to get better. I'm still waiting. Mercifully, at least it's a slim volume and I bought it used so not much time or money spent. I can neither recommend it nor caution one to stay away. Just don't pay retail.