Steve Interview


http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/living/13017932.htm
Philadelphia Daily News
Posted on Fri, Oct. 28, 2005
Steve Martin discusses writing, and more
By HOWARD GENSLER

TORONTO - Steve Martin is running late.

He's at the Toronto International Film Festival promoting "Shopgirl," based on his own novella, and between the print media and TV interviews, he's way behind schedule, but we were able to grab him for a quick chat.

Q: You've written screenplays, plays, novellas, magazine pieces. Does the idea inspire the form?

A: Absolutely. If you have an idea, it just tells you what it is. When I first wrote "Shopgirl," it was simply a novel. Then later - much, much later - I thought of it as a screenplay. But in general, everything comes wrapped up on its own medium.

Q: Do you ever say to yourself, "I just wrote a screenplay, now I'd like to write a play"?

A: Sometimes I do do that, too. When I sat down to write "Picasso at the Lapin Agile," I definitely wanted to write a play. So I guess it works both ways.

Q: Any other forms of writing? A blog, perhaps?

A: No. The idea of writing every day, sort of thoughtlessly, would kill me. I spend so much worry over every sentence, I don't want to just put it out there.

Q: Was there a conscious choice by you to go against type in playing the lead? You're usually the lovable good guy. Here, not so much.

A: No, I never really had any qualms about it. The only other person I thought should play the role was Tom Hanks. And I asked him. After that, I wasn't just going to give it over to another actor and sort of be the writer guy.

Q: What's the driving force behind Mirabelle's choice? Your character and Jason Schwartzman's are so different. Yours is smarter, smoother, far wealthier...

A: The war is not really about personality, it's about age. It's about peers. Here are two people who are seeing each other who are not peers, and here are two people who are peers, who are at the same stage of their life of growing up. It's not a choice between two men, it's a choice between a lifestyle, a moment of your life, and what's more comfortable.

Q: Is it your plan to alternate between lighter fare, like "Cheaper by the Dozen," and more serious films like "Shopgirl"?

A: No, not really, although I find it works that way. Right now I'm very interested in writing something, but I don't know what. I need that interior time. I just finished "Cheaper by the Dozen 2," which is a very active experience, and now a little quiet time in front of the computer would be good.

Q: Do you have a next film?

A: No. I'm hoping "Pink Panther" [due in early 2006] is a hit, and we'll do another one of those.

Q: Any chance you'll do any more TV - or another album?

A: Probably not. It's a choice between movies, books and retirement, not movies, books and television.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/29/2005 09:26:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Steve talks about loneliness and other things


http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/entertainment_columnists/article/
0,1299,DRMN_84_4194474,00.html
RockyMountainNews.com
Entertainment
Denerstein: Martin's 'Shopgirl' flirts with cure for loneliness
Robert Denerstein
October 29, 2005

Steve Martin never thought he'd make a movie out of his novella Shopgirl, but as the book's themes simmered beneath the surface, he began work on a screenplay that employs a nearly poetic writing style.

When Martin talks about the movie that resulted, it's likely he'll find himself weighing in on loneliness, isolation and the forces that push an older man into a younger woman's bed.

In Shopgirl, which opens Friday in Denver, Martin tells the story of Mirabelle (Claire Danes), a young woman who works behind the glove counter at Saks Fifth Avenue. Mirabelle becomes involved with Ray Porter (Martin), an older businessman wary of commitment. Perhaps on a deeper level, Ray understands Mirabelle's vulnerability.

When I met Martin at the Toronto International Film Festival, I began by asking whether he thought loneliness, as someone once said, constitutes one of America's great, unacknowledged problems.

"It's a human issue, certainly," he said. "I remember this William Styron quote at the beginning of a book he wrote about his health. He said, 'You're either in the land of the sick or the land of the well, and when you're in the land of the sick, all you can think about is getting into the land of the well.' That's sort of like, 'You're either lonely or not.'

"But loneliness is a thing that's cured in a second. It can be cured walking down the street. It can be cured with just the right person, whether it's a friend or a lover."

True enough, but look how many movies and books are devoted to characters desperate to end their loneliness, I say, not even bringing up the fact that Martin starred in a 1984 comedy called The Lonely Guy. Loneliness can be cured in an instant?

"Yes, but it's not that casual," said Martin. "The big stories are about how it happens, how loneliness is cured - whether it's romantically or through a friend. That's what this story's about."

When we first meet Mirabelle, she's standing behind the counter at Saks, tucked into a quiet corner of a department store.

"In the book, I wanted by the end of the first paragraph for the reader to know who that girl was without saying she's 5-foot-6, has brown hair and does this or that. I wanted the same thing in the movie. I think it happens within the first 10 minutes.

"Mirabelle hasn't said a word. She works, drives home and goes to her apartment. You sense her loneliness and isolation . . . I love those things. That's something moviemaking can really do."

Because Martin plays the older man in Mirabelle's life, it's difficult not to ask the "autobiography" question. Is this character him?

"Lets put it this way. At one point in my life I highly identified with this character. It's like writing a memory, but it's never 100 percent. Every guy has been that guy, either for 10 years or five seconds."

In those 10 years or five seconds, that guy we've all been tells a woman: "Look, I'm not interested in a serious relationship and you should know that up front. I think we should keep our options open."

Translation: "I want to sleep with you but I'm not willing to make a commitment."

"It's just some kind of a safety thing," said Martin.

"Ground rules (in relationships) don't mean anything, even to the person who's speaking them. The person who's speaking them is leaving a door open, but he's still in the door. He's just providing an excuse. But if a woman says it to a man, he's thinking, 'Yeah right. You haven't met me yet.' "

But why do so many subscribe (at least in their fantasies) to a grass-is-greener philosophy?

"I think it partially has to do with the sex drive. It's so powerful that you have to keep moving."

Martin says the impulse for writing the novella came from a lifetime of observing relationships - his own and others.

"I wanted to understand something and writing about it was the best way . . . I was surprised at how much I knew. You start writing and this flood of information starts coming - about Ray, about Mirabelle, about relationships, and you realize, 'Oh, I have been paying attention.' Every relationship is weirdly successful, even when they break up, because you come out of it with new information, ready for the next."

OK, there's sex and there's shopping; Mirabelle works in a classy department store and maybe there's some kind of link here.

"You remind me of something. I happened to see the screenplay for L.A. Story (a 1991 comedy Martin wrote) the other day. There's a scene that takes place in a hip clothing store. Sarah Jessica Parker is a sexy clerk there.

"In the screen directions I said that an L.A. clothing store is one of the sexiest places. Everyone's changing. There's music and there are girls and guys. A department store is a little like that. Everyone's on display. When Ray goes into that department store (where he meets Mirabelle) he's shopping and it's not just for clothes."

Even critics who haven't entirely embraced Shopgirl have been raving about Danes, who gives the kind of performance that allows her to come into her own as an actress. Martin had a hand in casting Shopgirl, which was directed by Anand Tucker. (Martin thought another eye on the material was essential and avoided directing). In Danes, he saw all the qualities Mirabelle needed.

"It's her stillness as an actress. There's a sadness that other actress couldn't get. Her simplicity was so important to the movie. She has to be interesting walking across her lonely apartment - and Claire is. By the way, she's also vulnerable to this man, which is important."

When Martin completed the novella, a movie was the furthest thing from his mind.

"When I finished writing, I thought, 'At least there's no movie here.' But the mind works subconsciously. When you read the book you almost think nothing happens. There are no car chases. No mystery. When I read the book again I thought, 'Things do happen. There are events.' "

Shopgirl gives Claire another suitor, bumbling young Jeremy, played by Jason Schwartzman.

"Jeremy's almost like a sprout that's growing and looking for direction. . . . I won't say I was trying to write a typical teen-ager with Jeremy because I don't know any. I'll just say he's a character who didn't have etiquette. He goes on the road (he sells amps to rock bands) and he learns a little about relationships and about etiquette, about dressing and cleaning up his room.

"Later when he comes back he apologizes to Mirabelle for the way he treated her. He kind of grew up - and yet at the end, he's still that guy (from the beginning of the movie) even though he's got a suit. It's not a transformation. It's an attempt to change and to treat her well."

Shopgirl has a markedly gentle quality, almost a quiet elegance. Even Ray, who could have been portrayed as predatory, never seems odious.

"I think that's really important. Everybody's doing their best. Ray believes that what he did was fair. Mirabelle doesn't do anything wrong. Jeremy does what he thought was right. There was just a conflict of personality and events."

As this conflict unfolds, Martin keeps the audience in touch with the written word. He delivers a sparse off-screen narration that often comments on the characters.

"I first wrote the screenplay with no narration. I then realized I could take a few passages from the book and build moments from them. . . . The narration almost functions like chapter endings that summarize. I see them as a real part of the movie, little poetic interludes, and they were built over silence."

And that may be the way you feel about all of Shopgirl, a movie built over silences that Martin, at 60, isn't afraid to let speak.

KMT
- posted by sookeyjane 10/29/2005 09:05:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

For those who can make it to Vegas


http://www.newsday.com/travel/ny-glbc4485805oct30,0,4143450.story?
coll=ny-travel-headlines
Newsday.com
Travel section
Three days of yuks in Vegas
MEREDITH DANIELS
October 30, 2005

For those who don't see the humor in losing money at a blackjack table,
The Comedy Festival schedule for Nov. 17- 19 in Las Vegas might be just
the thing. This inaugural event, an outgrowth of the annual U.S. Comedy
Arts Festival held in Aspen, will feature performances by comedians
Dave Chappelle, George Lopez, Bill Maher, Dennis Miller and Jon Stewart.
Jerry Seinfeld will be honored as the first recipient of The Comedian
Award.

More than 50 events will take place over the The Comedy Festival's
three days. They will include stand-up performances, sketch comedy and film
screenings. Shows will be held in nine venues at Caesars Palace and the
Flamingo Las Vegas.

A two-hour comedy extravaganza called "Earth to America!" will kick off
festivities on Nov. 17 at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace. Scheduled to
appear live are Larry David, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, Dustin
Hoffman, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Steve Martin, Ray Romano, Martin Short and Ben
Stiller. Pre-taped segments feature Jack Black, Will Ferrell and Robin
Williams. The show will be taped and shown Nov. 20 on TBS stations. The
festival is being presented by HBO and AEG.

Tickets are available for single events as well as in packages. They
range from $25-$125 for individual shows and up to $1,500 for Platinum
Pack admission to all events. Tickets are available at the Colosseum box
office, online at www.thecomedyfestival .com and www.ticketmaster .com,
and by phone at 877- TCF-FEST.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/29/2005 08:58:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Steve on NPR about Mark Twain and Shopgirl


To hear the NPR interview of Steve this morning, go here. You will find other links as well to other NPR interviews of Steve and to clips.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/28/2005 12:23:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Seattle P.I. says P.U.


http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/movies/246182_shopgirl28q.html?source=rss
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
MOVIES
Friday, October 28, 2005
'Shopgirl's' first mistake: Steve Martin plays it straight
By WILLIAM ARN0LD
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER MOVIE CRITIC

Steve Martin produced, wrote the screenplay (from his own novella) and stars in "Shopgirl," and reportedly was so involved in all the behind-the-camera decision-making that he probably could claim a co-directing credit. So it's the closest thing to an auteur-shot he's ever made.

MOVIE REVIEW

SHOPGIRL
DIRECTOR: Anand Tucker
CAST: Steve Martin, Claire Danes,
Jason Schwartzman
RUNNING TIME: 104 minutes
RATING: R for some sexual content and language
WHERE: Meridian 16, Seven Gables

GRADE: C+

Yet, surprisingly, the movie has little of his distinctive humor. In fact, it's barely a comedy at all. It's more of a whimsical and melancholy love story, and the earnest, slightly self-pitying, expression of a comedian who wants to be taken seriously.

Shot in 2003, and edited and re-edited for well over a year, the film occasionally sparks with life, but it's aspirations of being a quirky, inter-generational romance in the same league with "Lost in Translation" fail, and the weak link in the acting department is Martin himself.

Framed as a kind of modern urban fairy tale and narrated by the Martin character, it tells the story of a sensitive young sales clerk (Claire Danes), who has journeyed to L.A. from her Vermont home with aspirations of being an artist.

She's also, of course, looking for true love, and, after a long, lonely dry spell, she finds herself torn between two candidates: a goofy slacker (Jason Schwartzman) and a divorced, late-50-ish computer magnate (Martin) who commutes between L.A. and Seattle.

Since the younger suitor is as lovable as a pooh bear and the older one is a well-meaning but selfish case of arrested development who can't commit to a relationship, the love triangle is a bit one-sided and doesn't turn out to be much of a contest.

The film's comedy is given to Schwartzman, who we see humorously on the road with a rock band and being seduced by Danes' beautiful but hateful co-worker (Bridgette Wilson). He's cute, but the comedy is forced and out of sync with the rest of the story.

The film's modest success as a romance is due almost entirely to Danes. Without a trace of the mannerisms and affectation that have marred so many of her performances, she's as vulnerable, appealing and believable here as she's ever been on the big screen.

Martin is less so. He plays his character very straight, and, while this worked for him in the "The Spanish Prisoner," it doesn't here. Without the saving grace of comedy, his natural abrasiveness is off-putting, and he just doesn't have the stuff of a romantic lead.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/28/2005 12:03:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

SF Chronicle liked Shopgirl


http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/10/28/DDGO3FEEF521.DTL&type=movies
San Francisco Chronicle
Feeling down in the dumps? Go shopping. You never know what you'll find.
Mick LaSalle, Chronicle Movie Critic
Friday, October 28, 2005

WILD APPLAUSE

Shopgirl: Drama. Starring Claire Danes, Steve Martin and Jason Schwartzman. Directed by Anand Tucker. (R. 100 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)
A man sees a pretty young woman walking down a street or standing behind a store counter, and something about her gets his mind going: "Who is she? How did she get here? What is her life like?" A cynic could file these ruminations under the general category of sex, but their true origins are in longings that sex can't answer.

And then ... well, that's usually it. But in "Shopgirl," Steve Martin takes this commonplace feeling and builds from it, shaping ruminations into art. The film, which he wrote, based on his own novella, is a wistful contemplation of a young woman, directed with a rare combination of delicacy and decisiveness by Anand Tucker. Despite a mannered performance by the unprepossessing Jason Schwartzman, "Shopgirl" is a film of wisdom, emotional subtlety and power.

The director puts his stamp on the material from the opening shots. As a classical string piece plays on the soundtrack, the camera moves through a Saks Fifth Avenue store, finally arriving at Mirabelle (Claire Danes), who stands behind a counter in the glove department, at the center of the frame. This is a confident opening, in that it could easily seem absurdly ostentatious. Instead the effect is one of contemplation and timelessness, as though the movie has chosen to focus on this one person, out of all the people in the universe.

That Mirabelle's story is interchangeable with that of any other young person is emphasized later by an overhead shot showing her lying in bed. The camera moves back, and we see her through the skylight of her small apartment. Then it moves farther back, and she just becomes a spot of light, one of many. Tucker is the director a screenwriter dreams of: He makes big choices and yet all of them serve to underscore the mood that's already in the material.

Two men emerge in Mirabelle's life. First, there's Jeremy, a young fellow played by Schwartzman, who needs a shave. He has no money, no sensitivity and looks as if he sleeps in his clothes. After a couple of nights with him, Mirabelle is ready for something better -- so is the audience -- and that's when she meets Ray (Martin), who's rich, reserved and many years older. He pursues her carefully, with a meticulousness that's either romantic or mechanical. That is, it seems romantic if you're young, but if you're older, you know what he's doing: the gifts, the taking his time, the letting her get used to the idea of an old guy, etc.

Until Martin's arrival, "Shopgirl" is stylish but perfunctory. With the arrival of Martin comes the real intent and interest of the story, which is a study of a relationship between a young woman, offering youth and freshness, and an older man, offering money and a wider world. It's a relationship that is functional in many ways, bringing advantages to each partner. It's also one that comes with an undertone of sadness that can't ever be completely forgotten or ignored.

As Ray, Martin goes through much of the movie looking forlorn, keeping a part of himself distant, even as he feels himself being irresistibly drawn toward her warmth. When he touches her, it's a past-tense kind of touching, as though he's touching her while simultaneously seeing himself through the eyes of her future, or his own, in which he's either a memory or a ghost. He's too old to believe that a moment can be seized or held. Before he has a moment in his hands, it's running through his fingers, and his only defense is to stand back from it and not care.

Much is conveyed through very little. At one point, Mirabelle is happily modeling a new dress he has bought her. The camera moves in, and he brushes his hand gently near her waist. In the shot, we see her midsection and his face, nothing else, and the thought that he seems to be thinking, which comes leaping from the screen, goes something like, "Why are you, through sex, messing with the baby-making apparatus of this fresh young woman, when you really have no intention of giving her the love she deserves and is supposed to have?" And, of course, there is no answer. He's frozen between pulling back and letting go.

It's not surprising that Martin should understand Ray, but he has a compassionate insight into Mirabelle as well, and Danes responds with a distinct, beautifully shaded performance. Schwartzman still presents some problems -- someone told him he's funny, probably the same person who told him not to shave -- but he gets better as the movie goes along. Still, for all the movie's virtues, it's a grim concept, the notion that all a nice shop girl has to hope for is the choice between a morose 60-year-old man and a 25-year-old fellow who can't remember his last bath.

-- Advisory: Sexual situations.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/28/2005 10:46:00 AM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

A more complete account of the Mark Twain Awards Show


http://www.gwhatchet.com/media/paper332/news/2005/10/27/Arts/
Rolling.Out.The.Red.Carpet.For.Steve.Martin-1035543.shtml?
norewrite&sourcedomain=www.gwhatchet.com

The GW Hatchet
Rolling out the red carpet for Steve Martin
by Maura Judkis
Arts Editor
Issue date: 10/27/05

The red carpet lining the Kennedy Center's Hall of Nations looked like a Hollywood red carpet, paparazzi and all, on Sunday night. Photographers angled for a view, and autograph-seekers squirmed through the crowd as limo after limo arrived, each bearing a new celebrity - perhaps Tom Hanks, Larry David or Queen Latifah - to be blinded by flashbulbs.

The occasion was in honor of Steve Martin, who received the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. To celebrate the comedian, actor and writer, many of Martin's A-list friends flew out from tinseltown to strut the red carpet and give him somewhat of a roast.

Hanks, sporting Bono-esque slicked back hair, jump-started the program, which was taped for television broadcast, with a suitable homage to Martin.

"Poems will be written about him; operas will be performed here in his name," he said, " … and they will all be lousy. So we might as well celebrate him now."

The theme of ripping on Martin continued throughout the night.

"What is it like to be Steve's friend?" asked actor Martin Short. "Well, it's intimidating - and not just because of the guns."

He continued, "I think that genius rubs off on us. Steve was a philosophy major in college, and there's not a single one of us not wondering, 'Why are we here?'"

In between speakers, clips of Martin's films, such as "The Jerk," "Father of the Bride" and "Bringing Down The House," were shown, along with clips from appearances on Johnny Carson's show and "Saturday Night Live." The audience was also able to see a quick clip of Martin's newest film, "Shopgirl," which opens Friday (See "Shopgirl," page 8).

Claire Danes, dressed elegantly in a black, off-the-shoulder number, was the only serious speaker of the evening, sharing her experience working with Martin on "Shopgirl." Then, Diane Keaton, Martin's co-star in the "Father of the Bride" movies, sang "The Way You Look Tonight" - but cracked up partially through the song when she looked at Martin, seated in a box above.

Larry David of HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" made an appearance, along with Monty Python's Eric Idle, singer Paul Simon, comedian Lily Tomlin, humor columnist Dave Barry, comedian Carl Reiner and Lorne Michaels of "Saturday Night Live."

Queen Latifah discussed a particularly sexual scene in their film "Bringing Down the House," in which she teaches Martin's character to be less uptight.

"I've worked with a lot of white guys," she said, "But Steve Martin - he's white."

At the end of the evening, to the tune of ragtime music, Martin emerged from his box to come onstage and accept his award.

"I am so proud to be in D.C. - which I have recently learned is the nation's capital," he said. "This is the only significant award for American comedy, except for money."

"When I look at the list of people given this award, I feel very satisfied," he said, "but when I look at the list of people who haven't received it, I am even more satisfied."

"The Kennedy Center Presents: The Mark Twain Prize 2005" will air on PBS Nov. 9 at 9 p.m.

KMT
- posted by sookeyjane 10/27/2005 08:02:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 



http://citypages.com/databank/26/1299/article13807.asp
Minneapolis/St. Paul
City Pages
Volume 26 - Issue 1299 - Film
Movies

'Shopgirl' actor-author can't cut the mustard, but licks the jar

Sampling the Merchandise
by Lindsey Thomas
October 26, 2005

It's a good time to be an old, rich white guy. All right, that's an eternal truth, but right now Hollywood is playing up the silver-haired bachelor as if he's going out of style--or maybe just ready to keel over. Like fellow comedic stalwart Bill Murray, Steve Martin no longer plays the fool, but the wise, wealthy sophisticate. Where once stood a loser--pants around his ankles, hands clutching a table lamp--now there's a dapper gentleman who's not just rich, but private-jet rich.

Martin's placement as an elderly Casanova is a bit more deliberate than Murray's, because Martin wrote the novella on which Shopgirl was based. In the story, the unfortunately named Mirabelle Buttersfield (played by a charmingly plain Claire Danes) spends her days hidden behind the antiquated Saks Fifth Avenue counter that supplies full-length gloves to debutantes. By night, she lies on the outer edge of her bed, accentuating its empty space as only a lonely film character can. But soon she's plagued by two romantic choices: Jason Schwartzman's fidgety weirdo Jeremy, who borrows money (from her) to take her on a date; or Martin's suave Ray, who claims he's not looking for a commitment, just a warm body. Mirabelle takes up with the latter, and what ensues feels very much like a relationship. Not surprisingly, Mirabelle mistakes Ray's mixed signals for love, by which time Jeremy has hit the road with a friend's band.

This is by no means a new venture for the 60-year-old Martin, as either actor or writer. He posed himself as a midlife-crisis sufferer trying to keep up with a pretty young thing in L.A. Story--and that was 14 years ago. And Schwartzman, of course, already competed with Murray in Rushmore. But whereas we all knew there was no way poor teenage Max would win the girl, things aren't so certain for Jeremy. Shopgirl's love triangle works because it doesn't favor either man, not even through the superficial eye of the camera. Watching Martin caress the inner thigh of a woman less than half his age is really no more repulsive than seeing the hirsute Schwartzman naked from the socks up. Feminists might argue that Danes's twentysomething, so desperate for attention that she'll make a booty call to the monkey man, perpetuates myths of impending spinsterdom. But it's the single senior who warrants the most pity. Much like Murray's numerous forays into the role of graying loner, Martin radiates an impenetrable sadness that bleeds into the rest of the film.

Shopgirl will garner plenty of comparisons to Lost in Translation, in part due to the meticulous pacing, which Martin's characters slow down even more. Ray and Mirabelle aren't a fun couple: In Tokyo for a night, they'd probably stay in and order Chinese. But the fact that their relationship isn't particularly energized by money, or even sex, helps define it as one of comfort (and those are the toughest to leave). When the clinically depressed Mirabelle is sprawled out on her bed, sobbing and conjuring eerie flashbacks to My So-Called Life, Ray takes care of her, and the idea of a long-term commitment isn't unthinkable. The pairing isn't perfect but it's a nice change of pace given that most romantic comedies come with easy answers.

While Martin the actor knows his flaws, Martin the author--who slips in his own third-person voiceover--is more of a narcissist. Nothing says I did this! Me me me! like a personal reading. (Save it for Barnes & Noble, Steve.) These brief passages of text also show how much work his basic narration skills need. In setting up the voiceovers, the film literally slows down to make sure everyone is paying attention to hackneyed musings about, say, what it's like to lose something you never really had. Martin fares better with witty dialogue and character development. While he doesn't make himself the bad guy, he's also aware that he's not the crowd favorite. Jeremy the spaz is sweet and harmless, as long as he can be convinced that a plastic bag is no substitute for a condom. He's also hilarious, even if his best lines make his pitiable date wince. Still, from the moment he meets Mirabelle in a laundromat and assures her, "I'm an okay guy, by the way," the audience has someone to root for-- with occasional reservations. While other films about falling in love would have used Jeremy as a gag or just another obstacle for a girl trying to make the right choice, Shopgirl thrives on its open interpretation of "right." Maybe Martin isn't so concerned with winning or losing. Maybe old guys just want to prove they can still play the game.

KMT
- posted by sookeyjane 10/27/2005 12:30:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

On the red carpet for Mark Twain


http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2005-10-23-martin-twain_x.htm
USA Today
Posted 10/23/2005 8:20 PM Updated 10/23/2005 9:47 PM
It's Steve Martin's night
Karen Thomas, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Zany was the red-carpet mood Sunday at the Kennedy Center, where there were no arrow hats, just lots of tuxes and good-natured barbs.

Comedians gathered to honor Steve Martin, recipient of this year's Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, for his work as an actor, comedian, author (he published two novellas, Shopgirl and The Pleasures of My Company), playwright (he has written two Broadway plays, Picasso at the Lapin Agile and The Underpants) and musician (he once played banjo with Earl Scruggs on Scruggs' Foggy Mountain Breakdown). The ceremony will air Nov. 9 on PBS.

Martin, 60, and his Three Amigos co-star Martin Short hammed it up on the red carpet, with Martin insisting "this is my night," as Short mingled with applauding fans. "You get in there," the honoree said, pointing to the concert hall entrance and mocking Short's height.

A friend for over 20 years, Short said Martin is "witty, self-deprecating, and he doesn't take his stature for granted."

Randy Newman, songwriter for Amigos, and legendary comedy director Carl Reiner, who directed Martin in four early films, traded compliments. "You're voice is worse than Satchmo's," Reiner joked, calling the songwriter "a god."

But it wasn't all just a bunch of wild and crazy guys at the celebration. Lily Tomlin laughed about Martin's "big heart," "pipe-cleaner bones" and "we all know the rest of him is made of rubber."

The Twain award is a "great honor," Martin said, but even better, "it's a gathering of friends." He recalled getting his start performing stand-up at the Kennedy Center in 1976.

Tributes came from old friends: Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels recalled meeting Martin in 1976, the second season of SNL. "He made the show," Michaels said. And from new friends: Curb Your Enthusiasm's Larry David has known him only about four years, "but I could be off by two years on either side," Martin said. "He's fastidious," joked David, adding that Martin, a collector, has "great taste in art."

"He plays a great banjo, too," added Monty Python's Eric Idle.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/25/2005 05:51:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Quotes from Mark Twain Prize show


Associated Press Worldstream
October 24, 2005 Monday
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
From 'wild and crazy guy' to actor and playwright: Steve Martin receives Twain award
JUAN-CARLOS RODRIGUEZ; Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON

Steve Martin's character in "The Jerk" is ecstatic to find his name in print - in the phone book. "Things are going to start happening to me now!" he says.

Twenty-six years later, the actor and writer is receiving a more prestigious form of recognition.

For his career achievements, Martin was honored Sunday with one of the nation's top comedy awards - the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

Among those saluting the versatile performer at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts were actors Tom Hanks, Lily Tomlin, Diane Keaton, Martin Short and Claire Danes and musicians Paul Simon and Randy Newman.

"He redefined comedy by defining the moment of our ascendancy as a generation," Hanks said. "As did Charlie Chaplin, as did the Marx Brothers, as did Laurel and Hardy define their own times, Steve Martin defined ours."

Martin's colleagues paid tribute in between dozens of clips from his movies and TV appearances. Newman performed "I Love to See You Smile," a song from Martin's film "Parenthood."

Tomlin said, "His artistry soars to heights of sublime silliness and divine absurdity."

In accepting the Mark Twain Prize, Martin mentioned some other awards he had won, including a 1969 writing Emmy for "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour." "But of course the Mark Twain Prize is more special to me," he said, "because it's more recent."

"He's an original genius," Short said before the ceremony. "He's kind of blazed his own trail."

"I think he's the most intelligent man I've ever met," said Monty Python veteran Eric Idle. "Honesty, simplicity and truth are the secret to his comedy."

Hanks disagreed, saying Martin's success was based on "self-loathing and unhappiness."

Asked if he had any regrets, Martin said, "It's a life of cherishing a few things and regretting a lot of things, but that's the life of a performer."

Martin's career got off the ground in the late 1960s, when he wrote for the Smothers Brothers' show. As a standup comic, he grew popular on campuses and often appeared on Johnny Carson's "The Tonight Show."

He hit his stride playing larger-than-life characters while hosting "Saturday Night Live" in the 1970s. His performances on that show - from a singing King Tut to Georg Festrunk, better known as one of two "wild and crazy guys" - earned him fame as a zany comedian.

After starring in the hit "The Jerk" in 1979, Martin appeared in more than 30 other films. He also wrote the screenplays for such films as "Roxanne" (1987) and "A Simple Twist of Fate" (1994).

Over the years Martin expanded his repertoire to include plays, novels and humorous magazine pieces for The New Yorker. His 1993 play, "Picasso at the Lapin Agile," which envisioned a meeting between Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso at a Paris cafe, has been produced around the world.

Despite these sophisticated career turns, Martin, now 60, hasn't forgotten where he came from - he will star next year as the stumbling, bungling Inspector Jacques Clouseau in "The Pink Panther," a prequel to the popular Peter Sellers movies.

Previous Mark Twain Prize winners include Richard Pryor, Jonathan Winters, Whoopi Goldberg and Bob Newhart.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/25/2005 04:51:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Partial transcript of Mark Twain speech


ABC News Transcripts
GOOD MORNING AMERICA (07:00 AM ET) - ABC
October 24, 2005 Monday
PICTURE OF THE MORNING STEVE MARTIN

CHARLES GIBSON, ABC NEWS

(Off Camera) Well, we want to lighten the mood a bit with our "Picture of the Morning." This is comedian Steve Martin. He was honored last night with one of the nation's top comedy awards. It is the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. Well-deserved. But here's a bit of his speech at the Kennedy Center in Washington last night.

STEVE MARTIN, ENTERTAINER

I want to thank my family up there in the box seats who have made my life so rich. My secret family in the other box who knows nothing about the other family. So, please. When I look at the list of people who have been given this award it makes me very, very satisfied. But when I look at the list of people who haven't been given this award, it makes me even more satisfied. I'm laughing at something, a Mark Twain quote that I love, and I wrote it down because I wanted to get it exactly right. He said, whatever you do, for God's sake, do not name a prize after me.

DIANE SAWYER, ABC NEWS

(Off Camera) I love, "The Washington Post" said over the weekend, it should be the Steve Martin Award. They could give it to Mark Twain. But Steve Martin's the funny guy.

ROBIN ROBERTS, ABC NEWS

(Off Camera) He sure is.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) Well-deserved award. We'll be back.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) Coming up on "Good Morning America," America's favorite handyman reveals his greatest passion. And we're not talking about Teri Hatcher. Plus, the secret scene they didn't have time to show you last night.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/25/2005 04:49:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Ray a "cold fish" in Shopgirl


The Toronto Sun
October 21, 2005 Friday
FINAL EDITION
ENTERTAINMENT; Pg. E5
CUT-RATE PHILOSOPHY; A JAUNDICED STEVE MARTIN OFFERS SOME OFF-THE-RACK THOUGHTS ON LOVE AND ROMANCE IN SHOPGIRL
JIM SLOTEK, TORONTO SUN

Forgive me, but I wouldn't go to Star Jones for diet tips. Similarly, I suspect Steve Martin is not as good a person to go to for insights on the ways of the heart as he might be on subjects like comic timing and Einstein.

Which isn't to say the pieces aren't sufficent to appreciate in Shopgirl, the movie based on Martin's quasi-autobiographical novella about a rich, emotionally closed older man who can't commit and the naive young woman who suffers for it.

The movie, directed by Anand Tucker, is putatively the story of its title character, a demure, fresh-off-the-turnip-truck wannabe artist named Mirabelle (Claire Danes), spinning her wheels in Los Angeles while working as a salesgirl in the glove department of Saks.

There she is approached in a circumspect fashion by Ray, a fiftysomething older man who is um... what's the word I'm looking for here? Besotted? No, that's not right. Let's say interested and precise in his intentions.

Armed with expensive wines, nice suits and sad, laconic conversation, he sweeps this girl off her feet and into bed, forcing her to forget all about Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman), an adoring puppy boy whose attentions she'd also been fielding. Her relationship with Ray meanders along as Jeremy takes off to be a band's roadie. Ray helps Mirabelle when she stops taking anti-depressants and freaks out, and Ray sleeps around.

This is only putatively Mirabelle's story because the movie is also narrated by Martin, who offers up her thoughts, as well as Ray's on a platter. It's an essential conceit, because it serves to offer up abstract rationalizations for Ray's cold-fishery and sometimes callous disregard for Mirabelle's feelings, and ascribes great emotionalism to him under that immobile mug (at times there's something that could be sadness on Martin's face, but the deadpan that is his moneymaker as a comedian is his Achilles Heel as an actor).

Martin has much in common with Bill Murray on that score, just as Shopgirl is much like Lost In Translation -- minus the appealing quirks and Murray's superior ability to use his deadpan to convey turmoil.

The movie is impeccably shot. Director Anand Tucker shoots with warmth and with a loving eye for the Los Angeles skyline, reminiscent of Martin's L.A. Story.

Meanwhile, such comedy as there is in this rom-com comes mainly from Schwartzman, who is, admittedly, an acquired taste. But things definitely could have been worse (Jimmy Fallon was originally cast as Jeremy). At that, they lose him early and only reintroduce him at what amounts to the romantic payoff.

Even that is rationalized in a jaundiced manner by Mr. Narrator. In Steve Martin's view, nobody is right for anybody -- just less wrong.

BOTTOM LINE

Cold-fishy ambivalence isn't the most compelling theme for a romantic comedy. Lost In Translation got away with it through pure quirk, but this one takes its deep thoughts on love far too seriously.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/25/2005 04:47:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Washington Times on the Mark Twain Prize


The Washington Times
October 21, 2005 Friday
SHOW;; Pg. D01
Steve Martin's many faces; Mark Twain Prize winner also writes films, plays
By Christian Toto, THE WASHINGTON TIMES

It's a funny thing about Steve Martin. Every time we pigeonhole him, he wriggles free with either a new persona or yesterday's model spruced up with a fresh coat of paint.

The erstwhile "wild and crazy guy" picks up the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor - a career honor - Sunday at the Kennedy Center, but even at 60 his body of work remains in flux.

The performer, who declined our interview request, regained some of his former box office magic with 2003's "Bringing Down the House" and "Cheaper by the Dozen."

These twin farces gave us the "old" Mr. Martin, the slapstick stooge whose rubbery limbs helped pave the way for pranksters like Jim Carrey.

What's next, "The Jerk 2: Even Jerkier?"

Mr. Martin's more recent work seemed to glide along a maturing curve, greased by the pithy novella "Shopgirl" and some respectfully received plays.

Why would he revisit his goofy side just as he was approaching the age for Social Security benefits?

Mr. Martin's career began in near-textbook comedy fashion. He worked as a Disneyland concessionaire in his teens, juggling and tap dancing for passersby before graduating to writing for such performers as Dick Van Dyke and the Smothers Brothers.

Stand-up comedy came next, and while his fellow comics adopted fashionably countercultural stances in both dress and material, Mr. Martin played it straight - until he slipped that broken arrow prop around his head. He rode the bit and his silly "King Tut" ditty on "Saturday Night Live" to concert ticket and record sales more befitting a rock star than a stand-up comedian. He stood before us prematurely gray and as lean as a racehorse, but he moved like a man who just grabbed the business end of a live wire.

That energy coursed through "The Jerk," the smash 1979 comedy that launched his film career. More cagey comedies would follow, like the underappreciated "The Man With Two Brains" (1983) and "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" (1982), all collaborations with director Carl Reiner.

Yet, early on, his need to explore other facets of his talent gnawed at him. The 1981 musical "Pennies From Heaven" didn't revive that long dormant genre, but neither did it embarrass the young star.

Respect wouldn't come swiftly.

Some critics applauded his physical comedy in 1984's "All of Me," while others warmed to his turn as both performer and writer in "Roxanne," his 1987 twist on "Cyrano de Bergerac."

The late 1980s proved his film zenith, with hilarious turns in "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" (1988) and 1989's "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" as slow-burning straight man to John Candy. He proved equally comic in the poignant "Parenthood" and helped steer 1991's "Father of the Bride" to box office glory.

The mid-to-late 1990s saw Mr. Martin's film career tumble, while his writing prospects took off. Busts like 1996's "Sgt. Bilko" and 1999's "The Out-of-Towners" meant more time to admire his cerebral play "Picasso at the Lapin Agile" and the best-selling novella "Shopgirl." He also became an irregular contributor to the New Yorker magazine.

Sunday's ceremony, to be broadcast at 9 p.m. Nov. 9 on WETA-TV, will find the contemplative comic surrounded by such show business chums as fellow Mark Twain Prize winners Carl Reiner and Lily Tomlin.

What we won't see is any one Mr. Martin. Sure, we'll likely get glimpses of the childless star looking paternal in clips from "Parenthood" and "Cheaper by the Dozen." And no doubt we'll get a glimpse of him in that King Tut garb speak-singing his 1970s novelty hit.

Mr. Martin's immediate future promises more big screen features. First up is "Shopgirl" - he both wrote the screenplay and stars as its aging Lothario. Next on the schedule are the obligatory "Dozen" sequel and an attempt at resurrecting the "Pink Panther" franchise early next year.

We could keep scratching our heads over his ability to leap from dumb and dumber comedy to more refined fare, but this year's Mark Twain Prize winner may be showing us it's best the real Steve Martin still refuses to stand up.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/25/2005 04:43:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Ray is sleazy, per review


Newhouse News Service
October 19, 2005 Wednesday
ENTERTAINMENT
Film review;
A Muted Steve Martin in Story of May-December Romance
By LISA ROSE; Lisa Rose is a staff writer for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. She can be contacted at lrose(at)starledger.com.

In his recent efforts, Steve Martin has allowed himself to be upstaged by his co-stars.

The children of "Cheaper by the Dozen" earned the biggest laughs, while Queen Latifah and Eugene Levy dominated "Bringing Down the House." The best scenes in "Bowfinger" featured Eddie Murphy in dual roles.

Once a wild and crazy, arrow-accessorized comedian, Martin has mellowed into straight man, ceding the spotlight to younger performers.

Although "Shopgirl" is unlike anything the writer-actor has made of late, it again features him in down-tuned mode. Claire Danes, playing the title sales clerk, owns the film with her intelligent, luminous portrayal. After a series of middling pictures, she finally delivers on the promise of "My So Called Life."

Danes' performance is a grace note in a movie that is otherwise misguided. The adaptation of Martin's bestselling novella lacks the flow and depth of its source material.

Penning the screenplay, Martin had his work cut out for him. With its meditative nature, the book doesn't easily lend itself to Hollywood plotting.

Martin pads the picture with extra narrative, while his voiceover commentary belabors obvious points and creates an air of pretense. Director Anand Tucker ("Hilary and Jackie") coaxes good work from his lead actress but falters in the areas of structure and pacing.

"Shopgirl" is more a sullen mood piece than a laugh-oriented romantic comedy. In his performance, Martin takes a melancholy cue from fellow "Saturday Night Live" alumnus Bill Murray. He's so low-key, his character seems a bit dull, less a lost soul than a one-note depressive.

Ray Porter (Martin) is a wealthy logician who must have hired a shrewd divorce lawyer. He slumps around his sprawling vacation home in the Hollywood Hills and gazes wistfully out private plane windows.

Mirabelle (Danes) also suffers from a mood disorder but at least she tries to channel her gloom into creative endeavors. A struggling artist who makes rent selling gloves at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills, Mirabelle leads a lonely life of long, dull work days and evenings at home with her reclusive cat.

Before she encounters Ray, she crosses paths with Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman), a slacker with poor social skills and worse grooming habits. During their first night out together, he asks if they can split the cost of movie tickets, and then borrows $2 on top of that.

After one more unspectacular date, Jeremy leaves town, hitting the road as a tech with the band Hot Tears (the lead vocalist is portrayed by cult singer-songwriter Mark Kozelek). This is no great tragedy to Mirabelle, who soon meets Ray. He visits the shop for a pair of gloves and she finds his purchase gift-wrapped on her doorstep with an invitation to dinner.

Ray is the opposite of Jeremy, debonair and worldly, but he is not emotionally available. He tells Mirabelle that he doesn't want a committed relationship and she naively accepts his terms. Meanwhile, on the tour bus, Jeremy starts listening to self-help tapes, his rock 'n' roll road trip turning into, ironically, a journey of personal growth.

Ray is callous and unfaithful to Mirabelle over the course of their romance. Ultimately, he is the tragic character, however. She blossoms while he remains in a rut, incapable of investing enough of himself in a relationship to sustain it over time. The book expresses this idea far more elegantly than the film.

Even if Ray seems destined to die alone, he isn't someone you'll feel sorry for. He's too rich, too aloof and too sleazy to stir much sympathy. Only aging entertainment moguls might identify with his plight.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/25/2005 04:41:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

LA Times on Shopgirl


Los Angeles Times
October 21, 2005 Friday
Home Edition
CALENDAR; Calendar Desk; Part E; Pg. 1
Movies; Maneuvering through a man's world;
'Shopgirl,' about a love affair between a retail clerk and a millionaire, is sure to inspire debate.
Carina Chocano, Times Staff Writer

"Shopgirl" is like "Pygmalion" for the upper-middle-brow business class flier. Which isn't to say it's bad. On the contrary, it's smart, spare, elegant and understated. Especially the sex scenes, in which Claire Danes poses like an Ingres Odalisque in an extra languid mood. The movie positively blushes with class, taste and high-mindedness, and anyone thinking of seeing it just for the chance to see Danes naked will be sorely disappointed. She appears strictly in the \o7nude\f7.

Directed by Anand Tucker ("Hilary and Jackie") from a screenplay adapted by Steve Martin from his novella (he also produced), "Shopgirl" is a wistful account of the yearlong love affair between a 50-year-old millionaire and a lonely, debt-saddled service sector serf in her 20s. It stars Danes, Martin and Jason Schwartzman, respectively, as the girl in the window, her benefactor-with-benefits and a grotty fellow waif whom success, improved grooming and prolonged exposure to self-help literature eventually transform into a suitor the millionaire-narrator can feel good about handing her off to.

Mirabelle Buttersfield (Danes) is stranded at Saks Fifth Avenue, selling evening gloves nobody wants from a remote counter off the coast of the couture department, when a browsing computer tycoon sees something he likes. Ray Porter (Martin) buys a pair of gloves, finagles Mirabelle's name from management and has the accessories delivered to her shabby Silver Lake apartment, along with a note inviting her to dinner.

Having endured a few dates with a socially inept amp salesman and font designer named Jeremy (Schwartzman), whose idea of a date consists of taking her to Universal CityWalk and borrowing money, Mirabelle agrees to go out with Ray -- but not before Martin has assured us in voice-over that what this girl needs is "an omniscient voice to illuminate her, to tell the world "this" one has value."

This one, that is, as opposed to that one -- as in Mirabelle's gold-digging co-worker, Lisa (Bridgette Wilson-Sampras), whose fanged bimbonics further secure Mirabelle's place among the ranks of the cute, deserving poor. Lisa serves another important function: She makes Ray's interest in Mirabelle look more curatorial than acquisitive. His taste in girls (like his taste in clothes, art, cars, food, wine, etc.) is exquisite. He's no rank consumer. He's a connoisseur.

Okey-dokey. But then who, exactly, is calling her a "shopgirl"? (Certainly not Saks; they understand the magical morale-boosting properties of "sales associate.") Well, that would be her omniscient lover. From the get-go, Ray and Mirabelle's relationship is based on a power dynamic roughly analogous to the one in "Bambi Meets Godzilla," the Merchant-Ivory version. A self-described "terrible judge of character," Mirabelle concludes on their first date that Ray is not dangerous, and from that point forward nothing he does can change her mind -- not even the rehearsed morning-after speech he delivers announcing that he would like to keep seeing her, but -- everybody now -- he's not looking for a relationship at the moment.

As Mirabelle falls in love, Ray falls into a creepy "in loco parentis" role, spoiling her with little luxuries that far exceed her means (like new dresses), and quickly moving on to grand gestures of life-changing largesse. Ray's beneficence, combined with an oddly fusty Victorian tone imported from the book, give "Shopgirl" an almost Dickensian feel -- like "Oliver Twist" for dirty old men. For a movie predicated on themes of power and exploitation, in other words, it does a pretty nimble dance around the elephant in the room -- even as the elephant slowly lowers its haunches, threatening to pulverize every carefully constructed rationalization and sophisticated attitude in sight.

This, naturally, is the most interesting thing about the movie, and really a very good reason to see it. It's hard to think of another film this year as likely to inspire debate, or even smashed crockery. It's not that the movie is blind to its characters' faults -- it's not. It's just honest up to a point. Mirabelle awkwardly calls Ray "mister," like a kid in a joke about a stranger with candy, but never dares call him "sweetheart." And Ray's inability to love Mirabelle is copped to early and often. But "Shopgirl" never removes its gloves.

For an artist (she draws), Mirabelle is strangely lacking in insight. Never once does she rebel against Ray's remove, never once does she even wonder whether their relationship is purely transactional. She only submits -- and so graciously. She's not dumb, though. And there are hints that the relationship is taking its toll. But the depression that knocks her off her feet in the middle of the movie (she stops taking her medication because she's happy) is treated like a purely chemical pathology. Ray has a shrink to talk to; when Mirabelle crashes he takes her to the doctor and gets her back on her meds.

And it's not just Mirabelle who doesn't get a turn illuminating Ray. Nobody else -- not his awful, viperish ex (Rebecca Pidgeon), not his shrink, not even Jeremy -- get a single word in on the subject. There's just that omniscient voice admitting that the relationship was, er, fundamentally problematic and, um, ultimately bittersweet, but, as Ray concludes in parting thoughts, "that's life."

That's life? That's it? OK, it stands to reason that director Tucker didn't push things further. Actually, considering the circumstances, Tucker does exceedingly well. Shifting the movie's point of view to Danes helps quite a bit. Danes can fill a scene with one wounded glance, and her body language alone conveys a richness of character that makes an otherwise not very expressive character mesmerizing. She also does something interesting with Mirabelle's passivity-- she plays it as quasi-mute, awestruck intimidation that speaks volumes.

For some reason, it made me recall Hans Weingartner's recent, excellent "The Edukators," in which a waitress roughly Mirabelle's age becomes indentured to a man roughly Ray's age after she crashes her uninsured Volkswagen into his Mercedes (of which he, like Ray, has several), and he makes her buy him a new one. When the waitress sees just how huge the discrepancy between his effect on her life and her effect on his, she trashes his house. In "Shopgirl," she leaves without a fuss.

For all of its sensitivity and intelligence, and its finely observed details ("Shopgirl" is nothing if not hawk-eyed about the accouterments of social rank), the movie is oblivious to the pleasures of life off the status grid. Rather than let the warm, eccentric, goofy Jeremy just wise up to Mirabelle's demure charms, it nudges him subtly into Ray's camp. It's one thing when Jeremy sends Mirabelle a rose, another when he shows up in a shining new Toyota and tells her he'll protect her. She's been protected enough.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/25/2005 04:37:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Newsday review of Shopgirl


Newsday (New York)
October 21, 2005 Friday
ALL EDITIONS
PART II/WEEKEND; Pg. B05
MOVIE REVIEW; 'Shopgirl': Can't buy her love
BY JAN STUART. STAFF WRITER

(3 1/2 STARS) SHOPGIRL (R) Claire Danes works up sympathy as a romantically myopic sales clerk who is all too willing to be taken in by the lavish attentions of millionaire Steve Martin. Jason Schwartzman is irresistibly unkempt as the spoiler in this gently biting comedy of love and self-delusion, from Martin's novella. Directed by Anand Tucker. 1:43 (some sexual content and brief language). In Manhattan at the AMC Empire 25, Loew's Lincoln Square, Loew's 19th Street East and Loew's Village VII.

In his edgiest star turn since "Pennies From Heaven," Steve Martin plays a poor little rich boy trapped inside the body of a 50-plus-year-old man. Martin's Ray Porter lives in a sexy glass house high in the hills of Los Angeles, where he can gaze down upon the struggling folk of Silver Lake who fly economy and take 25 years to pay off their college loans. He's a bit stiff in the joints with romance, but when he gets lonely, he can always take out his wallet and buy himself a girlfriend.

Which is more or less how he worms his way into the heart of Mirabelle, the eponymous department store clerk of "Shopgirl." Played with relaxed verve and charm by Claire Danes, Mirabelle is a small-town Vermont emigre to L.A. who dabbles in art and guards the ladies gloves counter of Saks Fifth Avenue like a sentry. Since there isn't much traffic on evening accessories, she has lots of time to contemplate the abyss that is her new West Coast life.

Mirabelle is naturally wary when she receives a dinner invitation out of the blue from Ray, accompanied by a costly pair of gloves that she sold him some time earlier. She doesn't know the guy from Adam, and he's old enough to be her father. But he's got her attention. And he's way smoother than the only other guy in her life, Jeremy (a delightfully ramshackle Jason Schwartzman), a socially inept, financially indigent amplifier salesman whose notion of a hot date is to sit outside an IMAX cinema and imagine the wonders they would behold within if only he could spring for tickets.

No contest? Well, in the screwball comedies of yore, Jeremy would be the terminally flawed stooge that the leading lady ultimately throws over for Cary Grant. But Martin, who adapted "Shopgirl's" wise and scrupulously honest screenplay from his novella of the same name, is not letting himself or us off that easily.

The self-delusional mating dance between Mirabelle and Ray is familiar to anyone who has barreled into a relationship with funnel vision, filtering out the messages that don't conform to the scenario one has constructed from a shaky foundation of romantic gestures.

Martin projects the clenched confidence of a man who is used to seducing women with the same close-to-the-vest style and selective candor that's made him so successful in business. It's a brave performance, exposing a personal place of frailty that is usually hidden behind Martin's common mask of affability.

While it's really Mirabelle's story, it's Ray's tightness that lends the film its air of formality. Sometimes the studied gloss of Anand Tucker's direction and Peter Suschitzky's excellent cinematography feels "too done," in the way that Ray describes his home's manicured interiors. Fortunately, Schwartzman's mangy-mutt Romeo is barking somewhere in the wings, ready to rush in and mess up "Shopgirl's" immaculately polished surfaces.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/25/2005 04:35:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Interesting article by NY Observer on Shopgirl


This article focusses on Danes, but read it all. Very interesting.

New York Observer
October 24, 2005
PAGE ONE; Cover Story 1, Pg. 1
Our So-Called Star
Suzy Hansen

Steve Martin, apparently the guest of honor with his velvet suit and powdery skin, thanked the small crowd seated at bunched-in, circular dinner tables for celebrating his new film Shopgirl. It was at Tina Brown and Harry Evans' quaint Sutton Place mini-palace on Monday night, and another promotion party was under way.

In Ms. Brown's arched doorway stood Mr. Martin's co-stars, Jason Schwartzman and Claire Danes, looking exactly as happy and grateful as actors do at such events. Mr. Martin took his seat beside his ladyfriend, pretty New Yorker staffer Anne Stringfield, who has good glasses, better hair and an upturned nose. The short and large-headed Mr. Schwartzman dissolved into another room, back where he came from. Ms. Danes, Crudup-less and Lohan-blond but wearing a redhead's dream hue of deep forest-green velvet, gingerly attempted to make her way between the chairs, a plate of food balanced in one hand.

But there were no seats. They were already occupied by a curious mix of New York folks: Kurt Andersen, Zac Posen, Times Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus, Shopgirl director Anand Tucker, New Yorker writer Ken Auletta, Nora Ephron, pundit-intellectual Fareed Zakaria, Slate's Jacob Weisberg and Joyce Carol Oates, among others. In the back, rowdy Regis Philbin and Phil Donohue occupied the same table and talked loudly at each other. Their spouses, Joy and Marlo, hushed them up.

So, at first, no one noticed this dilemma--that the ingenue didn't have a seat--and Ms. Danes' very wide mouth curled small and slightly downward, in the genuinely pained but mock-forlorn female expression of "Oh no, where am I gonna sit?" By the time chants of "I'll get up" and "You can sit here" erupted from a few guests, Ms. Danes was already matching them with quick retorts: "Oh no! ... Don't worry about it! ... No, I'm fine!" Then Claire Danes, the 26-year-old movie star, laughed big and said to no one in particular, "This is just like high school!" and plunked herself down at a newly vacated seat across from Chip McGrath, the New York Times literary man.

And so it was at Tina Brown's own version of a high-school cafeteria: the brains, the cool kids and Claire Danes, all mixing happily, awkwardly, in one tight space.

"I am a New Yorker and I am an actor," said Ms. Danes a bit later, daintily eating a syrupy dessert while Mr. McGrath rubbed shoulders with Mr. Auletta. "But not some combination of the two." And yet she seems like one of those subway-riding actors; it was hard to imagine Charlize Theron in her place.

There was an impulse at Tina and Harry's to note that Ms. Danes' reference to scary high-school cafeterias recalled her character, Angela Chase, on My So-Called Life. One tried to resist that impulse. But with her, even more so than with most celebrities, it's absurdly easy to confuse the character and the human. After all, she had even noted on My So-Called Life that high-school cafeterias are like prison movies.

No famous person resists the blurring of celebrity, fiction and gossip. Over there was Steve Martin, who wrote a book (Shopgirl) about dating younger women, stars in a movie (Shopgirl, based on the book) about dating younger women, and who actually dates younger women. There was that little Coppola, Jason Schwartzman, at once unattractive and attractive--just like he is onscreen! Regis Philbin looked silly and cute, like a wobbling Weeble ... just like ... And all-seeing Joyce Carol Oates looked about to rip seven novels off the shelves and write an 8,000-word essay for The New York Review of Books (which was probably true).

Except--surprise!--Claire Danes, in person, is nothing at all like Angela Chase. It is, of course, a blessing and a curse that those who grew up with the character wish it were so.

"They seem to do it more now than they did even five years ago," Ms. Danes said, furrowing her brow and yet completely unconcerned. "Which is weird. I don't understand why."

And will it ever end? On the eve of Shopgirl's opening, the more serious question of whether Ms. Danes will finally leave behind Angela Chase and become a big-time movie star has become, at long last, a legitimate one. This film is as good a chance as any for the breakout performance that My So-Called Life fans have been waiting for. But does the sometimes beautiful, sometimes odd and quirky girl have a chance against the Scarlett Johanssons and Natalie Portmans of the world? Where does the interesting girl go in Hollywood after she's left high school?

Ms. Danes, for her part, said she never had an idea of how she wanted her career to unfold. She "just wanted to work with clever, searching" people.

Many movie stars have suffered the curse of child stardom, but for Ms. Danes it's a different story. Her Angela Chase was in many ways wise beyond her years, a moody teen and a soulful granny fighting out their differences in one small, uneven body. So while other teen stars, such as Kim Fields (Tootie on The Facts of Life) and Tina Yothers (Jennifer Keaton on Family Ties), always seemed tinged with an aura of inevitable downfall, the teenage Ms. Danes suggested the opposite. Fans of the show, ignorant then of the fickle miseries of Hollywood, trusted that a young person that talented could do whatever she pleased. Who would Claire Danes grow up to become? Who cares, she had time. When she decided to take some time off to go to Yale--good for her. She had her whole long life ahead of her to develop into the next Meryl Streep.

But the last 10 years of Ms. Danes' career--since her lovely, plain-Jane turn in Little Women, and since Romeo + Juliet, when she and Leonardo DiCaprio were hyped and hailed as the finest actors of their generation--haven't amounted to the commercial or even critical success that My So-Called Life fans believed was as inevitable as Angela's flannel outfits. Not that her talent has diminished, or that she hasn't been working, but rather that she isn't the star everyone thought she deserved to be.

In fact, many of her films have been multi-starred ensemble pics, like The Mod Squad or Igby Goes Down. In The Hours, she played Meryl Streep's daughter for about 10 minutes. Stage Beauty landed when Ms. Danes was also being cast in real life as not only a man-stealer, but as a daddy-stealer, in a love triangle with Mary-Louise Parker and Billy Crudup that made Brad Pitt look like Tom Hanks.

For some people happily lost in Tabloidtown, Ms. Danes' reputation was blighted as well. And even so, Claire Danes was almost unidentifiable, a New York star who had virtually no public personality, except that at one time she was a brilliant actress who must have been a lot like the pained, thoughtful character she played on TV. In the absence of a defined persona, and in the confusion of a scandal, Danes fans fell back on what they used to know: that, at heart, Claire Danes was still and would always be the perceptive actress who played Angela Chase. Maybe Claire was Angela. For teens, after a day of staring into the depths of a hallway locker and longing to jump inside, watching My So-Called Life was a swimming pool of solace.

How could her face--wide planes, large features, a hard-won smile--express so perfectly all the wonderful things and terrible things that teenagers felt and thought and congratulated themselves about? Lately I can't even look at my mother without wanting to stab her repeatedly, she said in the first episode. More than once on the show, she smiled widely and cried down deep inside, the strong upward tug of her lips the only thing keeping the entire face from collapsing in upon itself. (She rivals Julia Roberts in the art of beautiful weeping; the more talented Ms. Danes is more gut-wrenching to watch.) She was capable of comedy and remarkable physical control: After finally properly kissing long-time crush Jordan Catalano on the show, she danced in her front yard and up her front steps, part ballerina, part Chaplin. It was joyous whimsy, but also skillfully executed in the way only a true dancer can.

If you'd seen that episode, it wouldn't come as a shock that Ms. Danes danced in Christina Olson: American Model a few weeks ago at P.S. 122 in New York. It was the same venue she'd danced at as a child growing up in New York City before she left for L.A. and TV. For the solo act, Ms. Danes wore a series of plain dresses and spent a decent amount of time on the ground. Critics loved it.

Ms. Danes cooperated on the project with a family friend. She just felt like dancing again; she'd loved it when she was younger.

And yet it seemed obvious to ask, especially for those for whom dance in New York is akin to a jazz solo in a Philadelphia nightclub: Why would a movie star take part in a small-time dance performance--and right before a major movie opening? This wasn't Nicole Kidman dropping her drawers for David Hare. This wasn't even Broadway. It was humble, maybe even humbling.

But in Shopgirl, Ms. Danes is the woman, the only woman, the center of a rather cruel tale, actually, about a lonely artist from Vermont working at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills. In the ads for the film, with Ms. Danes smiling sweetly and leaning over a department-store counter, she's the object of desire for mankind as embodied by an actor-cum-New Yorker writer on her right and the dude from Rushmore on her left. In the film, Mr. Martin is an old, rich, blank-hearted man named Ray Porter, and Mr. Schwartzman is a messy boy named Jeremy who paints amplifiers for a living.

But although Ms. Danes said that she thinks Shopgirl is "generous" to all its characters, her character endures a good amount of anguish. This is an incredibly painful and somewhat unfair movie--especially for women. Ms. Danes will naturally win (back?) their sympathy and affection.

In the beginning, she is forlorn. The moving initial shot of the film, which starts above Los Angeles and slowly moves through the city, the sunny glitz of Saks and the hushed rooms of a very, very expensive floor in that store, finally stops on a girl. She is far away, standing behind a glass counter, her head almost imperceptibly tilted, her arms resting lightly on the case; she's staring straight ahead, but at nothing. It's Ms. Danes, and the effect is mesmerizing because it is exactly the kind of physical brilliance that is particular to, and immediately recognizable as, Claire Danes. It's apparent how sad this woman is, even without seeing her face. You can almost feel melancholy radiating from the way she holds her shoulders.

A jarring voiceover, performed by Mr. Martin, tells us that this is Mirabelle Buttersfield, and that since she's moved to L.A., she's been waiting for something to happen to her. That's what she looks like behind the counter: both ready for something, and highly vulnerable to whatever that is. This is Ms. Danes' trademark pose, one she established as a teenager.

What happens to Mirabelle is Ray Porter. Out of every shopgirl in the place, including that hot, pointy-nosed blond actress who's Pete Sampras' wife in real life, this rich man from Los Feliz picks the poor girl in barrettes and 40's dresses. He buys her things. She falls in love.

He, of course, does not. In one sequence, after Ray and Mirabelle discuss the terms of their relationship, the camera cuts to Ray in therapy explaining how he let her down easy, and Mirabelle with her two twit friends, rhapsodizing about how much he loved her. It's a cliche that men and women can't communicate, and an ever bigger one that women always misinterpret men's intentions, and yet in this case, it's so over the top--the women so stupid and the man so cold--that it becomes clear the film is signaling that even uglier stuff is to come.

The imagery is excruciating and humiliating to watch: Mirabelle splayed and hysterically crying on Ray's bed after he cravenly writes her a letter and makes her read it in front of him; scenes of her happiness transforming her face, contrasted by Ray's mute and frozen expression, eyes black; Ms. Danes' adorable vintage clothes and old-fashioned suitcase suddenly seeming silly and immature in Ray's L.A.-sleek home, just after he's hurt her so carelessly. Why don't you love me? she asks.

It's no fun to watch Ms. Danes get hurt again and again in Shopgirl, though that blurring of reality and fiction may allow some people who hate her for the whole Mary-Louise thing to vent some of their own relationship woes. Mostly, the film is a reminder of Claire Danes' very special ability to be Everygirl. It was that which made her so accessible, and which made fans love her so much. She's inhabitable. And while she is very much a girl in this film, by the end, with that stunning smile blotting out any residual pain or naivete of growing up and getting hurt, she's something else: a thoughtful actress whom even the most nostalgic so-called fans will never really know.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/25/2005 04:28:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

More Shopgirl reviews


National Post (f/k/a The Financial Post) (Canada)
October 21, 2005 Friday
National Edition
ARTS & LIFE; Chris Knight; Pg. B1
Danes and Martin great in the Saks
Chris Knight, National Post

SHOPGIRL

I loved Broken Flowers, the movie that starred Bill Murray as an ageing playboy revisiting the women of his youth; but a lot of people, including Robert Fulford writing in this paper, complained that it was deadpan with the emphasis on "dead." To them I say, give Shopgirl a try. It's not the thrill-a-minute ride that is Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (this weekend's other L.A. story), but it's a tender tale of love with an identifiable heartbeat.

Steve Martin wrote the novella Shopgirl, adapted it very closely for the screen, provides an odd bit of opening and closing narration taken straight from the book and stars as Ray Porter, which makes sense since the character is at least partially based on the author. Ray is, like Murray's Don Johnston in Broken Flowers, an unattached, affluent man in his late fifties whose wealth is never fully explained but seems to have been spawned by a dot-com.

Unlike Don, Ray is not content to sit in his well-appointed home mooning over the past. He walks into Saks Fifth Avenue, buys a pair of gloves from Mirabelle (Claire Danes), then sends them back to her with a note asking her to dinner. Mirabelle is already in the early stages of being wooed by Ray's polar opposite, Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman), a twentysomething font designer (was there ever a less urgent need than new fonts?) whose quivering libido causes him to jump on her like a nervous badger at the first sign of romantic sparks.

Just about the time Ray enters the picture, however, Jeremy leaves town to pursue a career as a roadie/amplifier salesman with a rock band. He won't be back for a while, robbing us of a Martin/ Schwartzman showdown, which would have been an appealing echo of the 1998 Murray/ Schwartzman bout in Rushmore. It also leaves Ray free to pursue Mirabelle without direct competition; however this romance blooms or withers, he will have only himself to blame.

Shopgirl the book is a narrative that focuses on feelings and internal dialogue, and includes such terrifically unfilmable sentences as "they exchanged exactly one semi-humorous line each." On the screen, people actually have to speak specific lines, but Martin and director Anand Tucker (Hilary and Jackie) also manage a lot with silences. Take the scene in which Ray and Jeremy are each at home, watching football on TV and eating takeout while standing at their kitchen counters; their body language (and the difference in the quality of their meals) speaks volumes about the similarities between these two members of the male species, and how the australopithicine Jeremy might yet evolve into Ray Porter, homo prosperous.

Mirabelle is an artist from Vermont with stolid, American Gothic parents and a depressive streak requiring daily medication. She's also the object of Ray's and Jeremy's desires, which again makes for a complicated concept to put on the screen. Tucker replicates the book's mostly male gaze clumsily, by more than once showing Mirabelle drying her hair or shaving her legs. Danes does a better job at portraying a fragile woman whose wide, unblinking stare is so appealing to behold that the men in her life seldom wonder what the view is like from her side. She obviously has feelings, but Danes' carefully neutral smile is the look of a woman who has learned not to show her cards too soon.

There are some beautiful parallels besides the kitchen scene; Ray travels by private jet from Seattle to L.A. and back, sipping champagne, while Jeremy's bus trips are slower and more meandering, but ultimately more revelatory. ("I've been reading a lot of books on tape," he later tells Mirabelle.) Martin uses points like this (and the more obvious ones, like Jeremy's crappy beater v. Ray's two identical luxury cars) to posit the differences between age 25 and 55, the move from hostel to hotel, from coach to business class, from fries to lobster.

What doesn't change is our ability to confuse sex with love, to talk endlessly yet never be understood, probably because we never really understand ourselves. In Martin's world view, love is a many squandered thing. That may sound melancholic, but it's the kind of melancholy that moves us closer to an ultimately unattainable state of romantic grace.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/25/2005 04:26:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

USA Today on the Mark Twain Show


USA TODAY
October 24, 2005, Monday, FINAL EDITION
LIFE; Pg. 3D
It's Steve Martin's night
Karen Thomas

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Zany was the mood Sunday at the Kennedy Center, where there were no arrow hats, just lots of tuxes and good-natured barbs.

Comedians gathered to honor Steve Martin, recipient of this year's Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, for his work as an actor, comedian, author (he published two novellas, Shopgirl and The Pleasures of My Company), playwright (he has written two Broadway plays, Picasso at the Lapin Agile and The Underpants) and musician (he played banjo on Earl Scruggs' song Foggy Mountain Breakdown.) The award ceremony will air Nov. 9 on PBS.

Martin, 60, and his Three Amigos! co-star Martin Short hammed it up on the red carpet, with Martin insisting "this is my night," as Short mingled with fans. "You get in there," the honoree said, pointing to the concert hall entrance and mocking Short's height.

The show included movie clips and tributes. Fellow Twain award winner Lily Tomlin said "may this award bring you a lucrative modeling career."

Mike Nichols and Eric Idle spoke simultaneously (in the interest of time, the announcer said) while Paul Simon played The Sound of Martin on guitar. Dave Barry, who was on Martin's writing team for the 2001 Academy Award show, joked about Martin's first e-mail to him. "It said, 'I'm hosting the Oscars and would like to put together a team of geniuses. Do you know any?'"

The Twain award is a "great honor," Martin said before the show, but even better, "it's a gathering of friends." He recalled getting his start performing stand-up at the Kennedy Center in 1976.

Pre-show tributes on the red carpet came from old friends: Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels recalled meeting Martin in 1976, the second season of SNL. "He made the show," Michaels said. And from new friends: Curb Your Enthusiasm's Larry David has known him only about four years, "but I could be off by two years on either side," he joked. "He's fastidious," joked David, adding that Martin, a long-time collector, also has "great taste in art."

"He plays a great banjo, too," added Monty Python's Idle.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/25/2005 04:24:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Variety on the Twain Prize Show


Daily Variety
October 25, 2005, Tuesday
NEWS; Pg. 10
Laff luminaries laud Martin at Twain event
PAUL HARRIS

WASHINGTON In taking home the Kennedy Center's Mark Twain Prize for Humor Sunday night, Steve Martin quipped after receiving a miniature bust of the 19th century humorist : "This prize is special because it's the most recent."

His nonchalance was in the true spirit of the evening, a clip-a-thon of great Martin moments in film and TV presented by a contingent of comics, humorists and thesps who flew in to pay irreverent homage. They included Tom Hanks, Martin Short, Carl Reiner, Mike Nichols, Larry David, Eric Idle and Dave Barry.

With Martin looking on from a box seat, Hanks kicked off the evening with a reprise of a career he said began when the comedian "rode into town on a banjo and a non sequitur." Hanks then introduced a clip of Martin's pantomime perf of "The Great Flydini" on "The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson."

Others on hand included past recipients Lily Tomlin and Lorne Michaels. Tomlin lauded Martin's keen sense of "sublime silliness and divine absurdity," and predicted that he would uphold the award's high standards while performing his "duties and obligations" at rodeos and other events.

Reiner offered a clip from "The Jerk," which he directed, while comedian Short discussed other Martin films, including "The Three Amigos." Barry intro'ed Martin's classic 1977 film short "The Absent-Minded Waiter."

Diane Keaton ("Father of the Bride") sang a breathy "The Way You Look Tonight" to piano accompaniment. Queen Latifah ("Bringing Down the House") and Claire Danes ("Shopgirl") also chimed in. Michaels introduced highlights of Martin's "Saturday Night Live" appearances, while David offered his curmudgeonly perspective. Paul Simon and Randy Newman also performed.

The Mark Twain Prize, now in its eighth year, celebrates American humor while benefiting the center's education programs. The event at the center's Concert Hall will be broadcast Nov. 9 on PBS.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/25/2005 04:17:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Stephen Hunter reviews Shopgirl


Stephen Hunter, one of my favorite reviewers and authors.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/21/AR2005102100367.html
A Happy Feat
By Stephen Hunter
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 23, 2005; Page N01

NEW YORK
You Know What's Funny About Twain Prize Winner Steve Martin? Everything.

See, here's a much better idea.

Instead of the Kennedy Center giving Steve Martin the eighth annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor tonight, the Marble Sepulcher folks should give Mark Twain the first annual Steve Martin Prize for American Humor.

Twain was great. Twain was fine. Twain was courageous. Twain was wonderful. Twain wrote a great novel. Twain had cool hair.

But he was no Steve Martin.

As who is?

Answer: Nobody.

"I prefer to mix the old comedy bits with the new comedy bits because that way there's more . . . money."

Since he first broke out nationally on the late-night talk show circuit in the early '70s, the frosty-haired comic has moved with ease between the various worlds of comedy. Seemingly without breaking a sweat, he's been a great TV stand-up, a record album smash (he sold more comedy albums than anyone until this summer, when Dane Cook surpassed him), a "Saturday Night Live" host of mythic dimensions, a movie star, writer and producer, a comic essayist for the New Yorker, a playwright, a novelist, the master of just about any form that by its noble reach makes audiences cough their lungs up in laughter.

And he has much cooler hair than Mark Twain.

Best of all, he seems rage- and neurosis-free, apolitical, unmoored in time, unaffiliated to a particular generation (at 60 a classic baby boomer, he seems to have missed that generation's infinite patience with its own narcissism). He's unaffiliated with the zeitgeist: He has happy feet but also a happy soul, and a guarded private life of no interest to gossip-mongers. Divorced from actress Victoria Tennant years ago, he now quietly dates a New Yorker fact-checker. He does one thing: He's just damned funny, all the time. It ranges from gut-splitting oxygen debt to reserved, ironic bemuse ment. But always some form of funny.

"You know that look women give you when they want to have sex with you? . . . Neither do I."

And he's modest. When an important concept is explained to him over a recent lunch in New York -- the theory of awarding Twain in his name, not him in Twain's name -- he gives a little chuckle but backs away fast as a startled snake.

"Oh, he was very great. He was a great man. No, no, no. He took real risks."

Does it follow then that a great comic has to take risks?

In journalism we call this a trick question. They teach it at Columbia. The deal is, if he says yes, which he almost certainly has to, then your professional reporter will say, "Hmm, and what would be your biggest risk?" to which he would have to answer by defending his whole career, and the questioner gets to appear wise and all-knowing and -- but Martin's too "clever" for that. He says, honestly and correctly, "No."

And that's the truth. His job is to lighten the load, not to reform the world. His job is to acknowledge the surrealism that flickers through the ionosphere, point out the folly and the craziness, yet at the same time stand for decency and stability, all of which Martin does, again without breaking that sweat.

"Hi, I'm Steve Martin. With so many celebrities endorsing cosmetics these days, I wanted to make sure the cosmetic I endorsed was very special. That's why I'm proud to put my name on . . . Steve Martin's all-natural Penis Beauty Cream."

Typical Martin. Notice the soft setup, which is in the banal form of the celeb-endorsement, and then the arrival of a strange word that twists the whole thing off in an absurdist direction. I mean, really . . . beauty .

In this palmy, pale Manhattan eatery, he is a study in graceful cool. Sweat seems inconceivable. He's dressed for style, speed, stealth. Black slacks, dark green shirt, a ball cap and jacket, soft-soled shoes, shades on a loop, he moves fast, not making eye contact, negotiating an aisle among swells slurping vichyssoise and nibbling on brie and frisee without a ruffle. He seems more like a .300 hitter than a showbiz celeb, quick and peppy and pink, blooming with health and purpose, ticking off today's agenda. He's in so fast no one notices him, and the funny thing is that in this particular eats-joint, there's another celeb.

Who is that guy?

At another, far more visible table (Martin's, by design, is snugged in the corner, blocked largely from view by a colonnade of some sort) is the famous face of a man who knows the meaning of adoration, who sold affability and aplomb as a product for decades. He's the buzz in the room where nobody has caught on that the dark flash with the snowy roof is the famous S. Martin, well-known wild 'n' crazy guy.

"Who is that guy?" Martin is asked, and he is not so vain that he gets anxious when the attention is directed elsewhere.

"Isn't he a quiz show guy? Something on TV. Or maybe a host guy. He's some kind of host."

And though this famous fellow's name can't be conjured, he brings a certain rumble of memory with him and the disclosure that Martin . . . knew Paul Lynde!

Now, what about giving Paul Lynde -- you know, fabulously funny comedian and center square on "Hollywood Squares" all those years -- a Steve Martin Prize for American Humor. Like Mark Twain, Lynde was funny for a lifetime, unique, brilliant, had cool hair and is now dead. But we didn't come all this way to talk about ghosts, even if the comedian is pro enough to laugh and show delight at a reporter's mention of Paul Lynde. Because Steve Martin knows comics. His may be a postmodern stylization, but it's not without its foundation of respect for those who came before.

As a kid, he says, he wanted to be like the TV comics of the '50s and that's where it all began for him, that's why he's sitting in this room before an egg-white omelet and persnickety water ("Tap water. No bottled water. Tap water"), wealthy, famous, beloved all these years later.

"I watched Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Red Skelton, Jerry Lewis. A lot of it was stupid but funny, but that's all right. Comedy is comedy."

By high school, the essential Steve Martin was already in place. He looked like he does now, handsome but unremarkable, with a thick shock of hair (then it was black; it would turn gray in his late twenties, white in his thirties but stay thick forever) and a slightly fleshy nose. Not quite sexy. Not quite smoldering. Never brutal or dark. Not the sort of man good girls would throw their lives away for. Yet not regular, either; something too mischievous in the eyes, something too ironic in the face. A guy who'll stick a fake arrow on his head for laughs can never seriously brandish a gun in a movie. Why, he almost looks like the sort who might have worked at Disneyland.

In fact, he did. His first showbiz job was the magic shop at the Anaheim theme park, where he prepped under a magician called the Great Aldini.

"I had some dexterity, so I could be a juggler, a coin manipulator, a lasso artist. I would do anything to get onstage. That's where the banjo came from. Folk music was big then."

His hunger for the stage also included election as Yell Leader with his pal Morris Walker at Garden Grove High School in Garden Grove, Calif., where he grew up (he was born in Texas; his family moved west when he was 6). The two ran for office on the policy position "Martin and Walker are 1 Percent Human and 99 Percent School Spirit."

A picture survives from that golden Jurassic, and Walker reprints it in a book he wrote, "Steve Martin: The Magic Years." Both kids wear Eisenhower era skinny ties and Stay-Prest white shirts and dark suit coats. Theirs could be anybody's youth, and at the same time there's something utterly moving about the image. (Walker, still friends with Martin, became a video producer in Oregon.) "At school, whether throwing a fancy line of double talk or just conversing with classmates, the active pair make things interesting for all," a local newspaper reporter wrote in the early '60s, in what must be Martin's first shot of press coverage. "Makes things interesting for all." Hmmm, how's that for prognostication.

After high school, Martin attended Long Beach State for a while, majoring in philosophy.

This would be Serious Steve. He yearned to get onstage but wasn't sure how. He seemed to need some kind of philosophical underpinning to his work.

"I knew there was something funny besides a joke, but I didn't know what it was. Maybe a feeling of glee, something less formal, less programmatic than a joke. I couldn't express it, I couldn't do it, but I had a sense of it."

He found a kind of key in philosophy.

"Philosophy taught me two things. First, the reality of the absurd. Absurd was funny. You didn't need a punch line, a structure, you just needed an ironic juxtaposition. Second, there's a logical progression to things, but when you disrupt it, that's very funny. I got that from Lewis Carroll. There's a word for it. I don't know it, but I know there's a word for it."

Example, from an old monologue: "I'd never divorce you, because I love you, I cherish you, I honor you and I don't want to lose half my stuff."

Armed and undangerous with his new insight, he took to the road to find material. He also worked as a writer on TV shows, honing his material. But his laboratory was always the road, opening for folk groups and then rock bands, trying desperately to find a persona.

"I did everything I could to get up to 15 minutes of good material. Some nights I had nothing. But it's like Windows, you know the way screens just keep coming on to cover other screens. You pile it on. Or it's like evolution. One night you mutate. You're all alone, you and 40 people in a room somewhere, and you're just looking for something that works and it just happens."

What Martin settled on was something that could be called The Deluded Man. It's a kind of postmodernism, a figure so steeped in showbiz realities and traditions that he just doesn't realize what he's doing isn't funny. It's a parody of showbiz conventions by someone who doesn't realize it's a parody.

The arrow through the head, an ancient vaudeville trope, is a perfect case of this. If you put an arrow on your head, nobody would laugh at it. But if you put an arrow on your head and sell the audience on your being so naive and uncool and clueless that you think they'd think such a lame-o stunt is funny, then magically the oldest joke in the biz is reinvented and becomes hysterical.

Martin's lunch companion believes (but can't verify) that he saw the breakthrough moment: his first network appearance on Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show" on Feb. 15, 1972. It was a time when American comedy was particularly dead, the buttoned-up comics of the '50s long forgotten, the war in Vietnam sucking much of the comic oxygen out of the nation, Woody Allen in his serious phase and "Saturday Night Live" three years away. "Steve Martin"? What could someone with a Fuller Brush salesman's name add to this?

He blew the house up and the reporter can recall being dazzled by the guy's antic craziness, his deft use of showbiz idiom but skewed slightly toward the insane, his vivid energy.

"Steve, Steve, people say to me, you're a ramblin' kind of guy, what makes you ramble?"

Sheer genius. He got the comic power of a word like "ramble," never used in conversation except by the delusional, by someone so clueless that he thought being called ramblin' was really cool. But it was also in the body language. Martin had a powerful way of expressing irony through his body. It was his facial expression, faux-smug, a little too sure of the self, not aware, really, how off-key he was; and it was his physical exuberance, subtler than slapstick but still expressed in flesh. But most of all it was his sense of language.

He had a great gift for finding the apposite word and then infusing it with comic meaning so profound it would become funny even when shorn of context.

"Excuuuse me!" is one such, or "We are two wild and crazy guys ."

"I was very lucky," he recalls. "Before he died, Johnny sent me a disc with all my appearances on it. That first night, the camera happened to cut away from me to Sammy Davis Jr., falling out of the chair. That sold me. What I didn't realize was that Sammy always fell out of the chair; the camera cut just happened to catch it."

It was the first of five performances on "Tonight" that year; to date he's been on a total of 45 times, for the second most appearances (Bob Hope is first with 103; David Letterman third with 44). "Saturday Night Live" ginned up around that time, and his talents meshed perfectly with the show's -- his gift for sketch humor, his quickness with an ad-lib, his ability to rally the young cast, who didn't yet realize they themselves were on the way to becoming the new establishment.

One of Martin's gifts is consolidation: He masters a form, then moves on. The first feature film came in 1979, "The Jerk," directed by old pro Carl Reiner. Many of his early films were simple projections of his stage persona. But he was adventurous as well, as witness the flop that became a cult hit, "Pennies From Heaven" in 1981. "All of Me," in '84, where he shared a body with fellow Twain winner Lily Tomlin, put him over the top critically. From then on his pattern, a kind of pinball ricochet between more serious "acted" works (frequently he wrote and produced as well) and lesser, more popularly oriented broad comedies. In 1999, for example, he made "The Out-of-Towners," a broad, stupid comedy, and "Bowfinger," a much smaller and more focused film, which he wrote and co-produced. He'll follow up this month's "Shopgirl," which he wrote from his novella, with the upcoming "The Pink Panther."

"Martin seemed one of the few American artists of any sort who, working within a late-modern, ironic self-conscious sensibility, have found access to a vein of real feeling and genuine poetic invention, without ever becoming sentimental, precious, or self-congratulatory" the critic Adam Gopnik wrote of him in 1993. It's still true.

"I don't think I ever made a conscious career plan. Something always seems to come up. I never feel disciplined."

He describes his process as a constant search for "topics." He never knows where he'll find one, what it'll be, where it'll take him. But he's always looking for something to engage his imagination and take him on a little voyage.

"Shopgirl," which he stars in with Claire Danes, is typical: He wanted to try to imagine a young woman's mind, based on an encounter he'd had, but he didn't want to stoop to cheap psychology. He tried to write a paragraph that summed her up, feeling that if it worked, if it were accurate, it would take him to an interesting place.

"I think of it as about behavior. The book does not analyze this young woman. If you describe intently, you get the psychology." And then it's time to rush off. He has some German art collectors to meet, to see the paintings in his New York apartment as opposed to his Beverly Hills house. Glasses come on, baseball cap covers the permafrost, jacket is pulled tight, and fast and silently he departs, unnoticed by a room that has spent the past hour gawking at -- Peter Marshall.

Martin probably remembered Marshall that afternoon, as he joked he would; and maybe he wished he'd said a word or two to the retired old "Hollywood Squares" host.

But he had to hustle on.

"I just want a new topic in my life," he said.

KMT
- posted by sookeyjane 10/24/2005 06:55:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Steve promotes from home


http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2005/10/23/the_funny_thing_about_steve_martin/
The Boston Globe
The funny thing about Steve Martin
The 'Shopgirl' writer and star may be prone to reflection, but zaniness is never far away
By Mark Bazer, Globe Correspondent
October 23, 2005

CHICAGO -- There's a funny, endearing, and more than a little loopy character who shows up wearing a white suit at the end of "Shopgirl." The film stars and is written by Steve Martin, but the suit belongs to costar Jason Schwartzman's character, Jeremy. Martin, on the other hand, plays Ray Porter -- wealthy, reserved, a little aloof, sharply dressed but more than content not to stand out in a crowd.

A quarter of a century after Martin pulled the fake arrow out of his head, and even 14 years after the comedian roller skated through an art museum in "L.A. Story," Ray Porter is now the kind of character we aren't at all surprised to see Martin play. Heck, even in 2003's "Bringing Down the House," it took a while to get him to loosen up.

While Martin is hardly the minimalist, Jim Jarmuschized Bill Murray -- in 2003, he went on "Letterman" and pretended to dangle a baby off a balcony, à la Michael Jackson -- like his fellow elder statesman of comedy, he often has a reserve that suggests contemplation and having something to prove beyond getting the laugh. There was always an intelligence behind even his zaniest bits, and, these days, Martin's zaniness occasionally pokes its head out of something that's more reflective, like "Shopgirl." Contrary to the title of one of his classic comedies, Martin only has one brain.

"Shopgirl" will likely be classified as a comedy, but on the phone from his home in Los Angeles, Martin describes the tone of his 2000 novella, on which the film is based, as "very melancholy, or achy, or thoughtful."

And so for Martin, the screenwriter, the big challenge was to transfer this tone to the screen -- and to adapt a 130-page text that largely exists without dialogue and within the minds of its three protagonists, Ray, Jeremy, and, most centrally, Mirabelle (Claire Danes).

"If you notice, in the first 10 minutes of the movie, there's no dialogue at all," Martin says. "And, yet, as in the book -- one of my purposes when writing was, I wanted by the end of five paragraphs or even one paragraph for you to feel for this girl. And I think the director [Anand Tucker] successfully did that."

Mirabelle, it's established from the first time we see her, is a lonely, delicate young woman working in the loneliest nook of the Beverly Hills Saks Fifth Avenue -- behind a counter of formal gloves that both customers and co-workers, like the sexed-up, quintessentially LA makeup-counter girl Lisa (Bridgette Wilson Sampras), only pass by.

We see Mirabelle "among the rich world and then going home to her collegiate apartment," Martin says. "And then, of course, the first thing you see her do that strikes you, she takes a nude photo of herself. To me, I always thought that was a nice surprise for the character.

It's perhaps this quiet, erotic vulnerability that, in the span of a few days, draws both Ray, a divorcee who made millions in computer software, and Jeremy, a slacker who stencils logos on guitar amplifiers, into Mirabelle's solitary world. That, or they're just single and horny. So Ray sends Mirabelle a pair of the exquisite gloves she knows so well; Jeremy takes her to an IMAX film and borrows money from her for a ticket. She chooses Ray.

But Mirabelle's relationship with Ray, we sense from the beginning, is destined for failure -- he wants a young woman and no commitment, she wants to be loved and makes the mistake of thinking he does, too.

Relationships "are always a part of learning about life," Martin says. "And I think, you know, it's surprising what relationships you look back on, now that I'm older, as the ones that were extremely valuable, and the ones that I learned something from through disaster, whether it's romantic or not."

What saves the old hurt-but-wiser-for-it lessons of the doomed relationships in our own lives from feeling like Hollywood cliches is exactly that -- they're our doomed relationships. And what saves ''Shopgirl" from the same fate is Martin's use of small moments to subtly illuminate his characters and life's Big Themes. Mirabelle making a nude self-portrait is one among many.

"I believe that the intimate view of someone in small moments really reveals character well," Martin says. "Those private moments of Mirabelle drawing, looking in her refrigerator -- those are all very specific.

"After Ray Porter asks her out on a date, the next thing you see her doing is bathing, meaning she said yes, or she's getting ready."

Martin adds, with a laugh, that he'd originally planned to follow up Mirabelle's subtly sexy date preparation with a shot of Lisa, her anything-but-subtle co-worker, shaving her bikini line. "From the back, obviously," he adds.

That scene wound up on the cutting-room floor, or is perhaps destined for the bonus features of the "Shopgirl" DVD. But you may be starting to get the picture: Steve Martin may dabble in serious fiction these days, but he's still, well, Steve Martin. He humorously tweaks the May-December romance in one scene set in Mirabelle's apartment, situating Ray deep in the crevices of a ratty futon that his old joints have a hard time navigating.

"I remember equating that experience of doing that scene with dancing with a really great dancer and all I had to do was follow," his co-star Danes says, in Chicago for a screening of "Shopgirl" at the city's annual film festival. "Suddenly, I felt hysterical, like my timing was great, but it was really that I was in his wake. With the futon bit, he tilted it so that his knees would come up even higher. And he played with [the word futon] a lot; he knew that was a funny word. And he immediately assessed that situation and exploited all the inherent jokes that were in there. He found them."

Still, you get the impression from Danes that Martin wasn't exactly cracking up the cast and crew on the "Shopgirl" set.

'He was working hard, I think he had to make a lot of decisions," she says. "And he was playing someone who was more somber, or sober, and grown up, so that influenced his persona on set, I think.

"Occasionally he'd make some really silly banana peel joke or something, and I'd be jarred by that," Danes says. " 'Oh, right, right, you're funny. You're, like, one of the funniest guys ever.' He's a lot of different things and is as comfortable as the fool as he is the exceedingly earnest intellectual."

No one, of course, would accuse Martin of wearing the earnest intellectual hat for his next film, "Cheaper by the Dozen 2." That sequel and "Shopgirl" are, as Martin says, "two entirely different animals." But while the comedian may not have the same intense personal connection to the family films he's starred in (but never written) as he has to his own creations, like "Roxanne" or "L.A. Story," he doesn't sign on just for the paycheck.

"I really like -- if we can keep it from getting too redundant and corny -- these family films," he says. "I think comedy at this level, at sort of the family-film level, is a way to very kind of lightly and politely learn about Mom and Dad and what they go through and what the kids are thinking."

Some longtime fans of Martin who wore out the grooves on his standup records and maybe even exclaimed "Excuuuuse me!" every chance they got might want to reach for their DVD of "The Jerk" rather than embrace his more intimate, brooding films or his family-friendly comedies (though the first ''Cheaper by the Dozen" was Martin's biggest box office hit to date).

But to argue that there's been more than one Steve Martin would be false. He'll thoughtfully discuss his approach to writing his silly 1999 comedy, "Bowfinger," and he'll play the fool in a futon in the "very melancholy, or achy, or thoughtful" "Shopgirl." Martin's comedy of the mind and of the body have never been far apart.

As his other "Shopgirl" costar, Schwartzman, also in Chicago for the film festival, says, "To say 'the real [Steve Martin]' to me makes it seem like then there's a fake guy, and there's not. He's always honest, and he's always Steve Martin."

And there had to be some jokes on set about how Martin should've been wearing the white suit, right?

"Nope," says Schwartzman. "No jokes."

KMT
- posted by sookeyjane 10/24/2005 06:44:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Excellent article with pics on the Mark Twain Prize


Check out the pics from Steve's career and from the red carpet at the Mark Twain awards


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/
2005/10/23/AR2005102301673.html
Washington Post
Well, Incluuuude Him: Martin Joins Twain Pantheon
By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 24, 2005; C01

There's so much of Steve Martin to love -- actor, comedian, writer, banjo player -- that it was hard to hit all the high spots when he received the eighth annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the Kennedy Center last night.

This year's ceremony, which was taped for broadcast Nov. 9 on PBS, had a homecoming feeling to it. Martin, who has been a frequent presenter of the award, was this time honored by previous winners Carl Reiner, Lily Tomlin and Lorne Michaels. Which meant that half of the eight Twain winners were in the house (the other four: Bob Newhart, Jonathan Winters, Whoopi Goldberg and Richard Pryor).

In receiving the award, Martin called it "the only significant American award for comedy -- except for money."

He added: "When I look at the list of people given this award it makes me satisfied. When I see the list of those who haven't been given the award it makes me even more satisfied."

He then pulled a slip of paper from his pocket, to read his favorite Twain "quote": "For God's sake, please don't name an award after me."

Not that anyone is keeping track of such things, but Martin, 60, is by far the most versatile of the illustrious group of winners. He has, among many things, won an Emmy for comedy writing ("The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour"), won Grammys for two best-selling comedy records; done sketch and stand-up comedy; written two off-Broadway plays and best-selling novellas (one of which, "Shopgirl," has been made into the new movie starring Martin and Claire Danes); and assembled a world-class art collection. In the did-you-know category, Martin also won a Grammy for his banjo playing in the Earl Scruggs video of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown."

And so the evening inevitably skimmed the highlights. It was, in fact, like a Steve Martin career highlight reel, with the occasional roast as intermission.

Martin Short, who has made four films with Martin, recounted that "Steve got his first job in comedy as a writer on the 'Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour' because he was dating one of the dancers. Oh, by the way, Steve, Tommy Tune says hi."

Short correctly noted that Martin took comedy from clubs to the arena ("and back to the comedy clubs"), becoming "the first comedy rock star." Roll clip of Martin's 1978 stand-up performance at the Universal Amphitheater in Los Angeles, with all the iconic bits: arrow through the head, the banjo, "Happy Feet" and, of course, "Well, excuuuuse me ."

Lily Tomlin, who starred with Martin in "All of Me," noted his somewhat overlooked gifts as a physical comedian. And indeed, one look at his work in that movie, in which Martin's body is inhabited by Tomlin's character, and his fancy footwork in "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid," was enough to prove the point.

The biggest surprise of the evening may have been Diane Keaton, accompanied by a piano, singing a spare and lovely version of "The Way You Look Tonight" to Martin, beaming in the mezzanine. Diane Keaton, singing? And it was lovely? Yes and yes.

Dave Barry, who wrote jokes for Martin's Oscar-hosting gig two years ago, mentioned that he performed his Academy Awards monologue with his fly open. "And," said Barry, " I think it says something about Steve as a performer, and as a man, that no one noticed."

The most off-message message of the evening came from Larry David, who told a hilarious shaggy-dog tale in which Martin mistreats a homeless guy, plagiarizes a Dorothy Parker story, abuses a cat, acts boorish in a theater and finally insults David's Jewish heritage. "Maybe next time you'll give this award to someone who deserves it," said David. "Someone whose personal conduct is beyond reproach. Someone like . . . uh, you'll figure it out."

Tom Hanks introduced "The Great Flydini," Martin's brilliant silent bit from "The Tonight Show" in which all manner of things -- flowers, telephone, eggs, a martini -- emerged from Martin's fly.

Martin has been so good at so much for so long, in fact, that the pre-show chatter from his comic peers and friends quickly ranneth over.

Larry David called Martin "quite smart and quite fastidious." Huh? "Well, he has art in his apartment. It's stacked floor to ceiling. And he can name the artist for every single painting." Could David do that? "If they were pictures of the Yankees of the past 50 years, I'd do just as well."

Lorne Michaels recalled how Martin had guest-hosted on "Saturday Night" at the beginning of the show's second season, and then went on to host more than a dozen times, a record, with more appearances as a guest over the years. "He helped make the show."

Martin engaged in a bit of tomfoolery with old pal Martin Short on the Kennedy Center's red carpet. As Short worked the delighted crowd, Martin arrived to louder applause. "It's my night!" he yelled, waving Short off. When Short refused to give way, Martin put his hand over Short's head in the universal applause gesture. The crowd clapped tepidly. Martin then held his own hand over his head. Wild applause.

It was his night, after all.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/24/2005 04:37:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Hear Steve talk about Shopgirl


Steve was interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air on 21 Oct 2005 about Shopgirl. Go here to play the interview.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/22/2005 09:13:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Hear Steve interview with NPR on Shopgirl


You can hear Fresh Air's interview with Steve here
- posted by sookeyjane 10/22/2005 09:07:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

New pics to check out


New pics n two pages of Steve at the Tina Brown party for Shopgirl Oct 17th.

Also, new poster of Steve for Pink Panther (check out the socks).
- posted by sookeyjane 10/22/2005 08:57:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Interesting take on the movie


Los Angeles Times
October 21, 2005 Friday
Home Edition
CALENDAR; Calendar Desk; Part E; Pg. 1
Movies; Maneuvering through a man's world;
'Shopgirl,' about a love affair between a retail clerk and a millionaire, is sure to inspire debate.
Carina Chocano, Times Staff Writer

"Shopgirl" is like "Pygmalion" for the upper-middle-brow business class flier. Which isn't to say it's bad. On the contrary, it's smart, spare, elegant and understated. Especially the sex scenes, in which Claire Danes poses like an Ingres Odalisque in an extra languid mood. The movie positively blushes with class, taste and high-mindedness, and anyone thinking of seeing it just for the chance to see Danes naked will be sorely disappointed. She appears strictly in the \o7nude\f7.

Directed by Anand Tucker ("Hilary and Jackie") from a screenplay adapted by Steve Martin from his novella (he also produced), "Shopgirl" is a wistful account of the yearlong love affair between a 50-year-old millionaire and a lonely, debt-saddled service sector serf in her 20s. It stars Danes, Martin and Jason Schwartzman, respectively, as the girl in the window, her benefactor-with-benefits and a grotty fellow waif whom success, improved grooming and prolonged exposure to self-help literature eventually transform into a suitor the millionaire-narrator can feel good about handing her off to.

Mirabelle Buttersfield (Danes) is stranded at Saks Fifth Avenue, selling evening gloves nobody wants from a remote counter off the coast of the couture department, when a browsing computer tycoon sees something he likes. Ray Porter (Martin) buys a pair of gloves, finagles Mirabelle's name from management and has the accessories delivered to her shabby Silver Lake apartment, along with a note inviting her to dinner.

Having endured a few dates with a socially inept amp salesman and font designer named Jeremy (Schwartzman), whose idea of a date consists of taking her to Universal CityWalk and borrowing money, Mirabelle agrees to go out with Ray -- but not before Martin has assured us in voice-over that what this girl needs is "an omniscient voice to illuminate her, to tell the world \o7this \f7one has value."

This one, that is, as opposed to that one -- as in Mirabelle's gold-digging co-worker, Lisa (Bridgette Wilson-Sampras), whose fanged bimbonics further secure Mirabelle's place among the ranks of the cute, deserving poor. Lisa serves another important function: She makes Ray's interest in Mirabelle look more curatorial than acquisitive. His taste in girls (like his taste in clothes, art, cars, food, wine, etc.) is exquisite. He's no rank consumer. He's a connoisseur.

Okey-dokey. But then who, exactly, is calling her a "shopgirl"? (Certainly not Saks; they understand the magical morale-boosting properties of "sales associate.") Well, that would be her omniscient lover. From the get-go, Ray and Mirabelle's relationship is based on a power dynamic roughly analogous to the one in "Bambi Meets Godzilla," the Merchant-Ivory version. A self-described "terrible judge of character," Mirabelle concludes on their first date that Ray is not dangerous, and from that point forward nothing he does can change her mind -- not even the rehearsed morning-after speech he delivers announcing that he would like to keep seeing her, but -- everybody now -- he's not looking for a relationship at the moment.

As Mirabelle falls in love, Ray falls into a creepy \o7in loco \f7\o7parentis \f7role, spoiling her with little luxuries that far exceed her means (like new dresses), and quickly moving on to grand gestures of life-changing largesse. Ray's beneficence, combined with an oddly fusty Victorian tone imported from the book, give "Shopgirl" an almost Dickensian feel -- like "Oliver Twist" for dirty old men. For a movie predicated on themes of power and exploitation, in other words, it does a pretty nimble dance around the elephant in the room -- even as the elephant slowly lowers its haunches, threatening to pulverize every carefully constructed rationalization and sophisticated attitude in sight.

This, naturally, is the most interesting thing about the movie, and really a very good reason to see it. It's hard to think of another film this year as likely to inspire debate, or even smashed crockery. It's not that the movie is blind to its characters' faults -- it's not. It's just honest up to a point. Mirabelle awkwardly calls Ray "mister," like a kid in a joke about a stranger with candy, but never dares call him "sweetheart." And Ray's inability to love Mirabelle is copped to early and often. But "Shopgirl" never removes its gloves.

For an artist (she draws), Mirabelle is strangely lacking in insight. Never once does she rebel against Ray's remove, never once does she even wonder whether their relationship is purely transactional. She only submits -- and so graciously. She's not dumb, though. And there are hints that the relationship is taking its toll. But the depression that knocks her off her feet in the middle of the movie (she stops taking her medication because she's happy) is treated like a purely chemical pathology. Ray has a shrink to talk to; when Mirabelle crashes he takes her to the doctor and gets her back on her meds.

And it's not just Mirabelle who doesn't get a turn illuminating Ray. Nobody else -- not his awful, viperish ex (Rebecca Pidgeon), not his shrink, not even Jeremy -- get a single word in on the subject. There's just that omniscient voice admitting that the relationship was, er, fundamentally problematic and, um, ultimately bittersweet, but, as Ray concludes in parting thoughts, "that's life."

That's life? That's it? OK, it stands to reason that director Tucker didn't push things further. Actually, considering the circumstances, Tucker does exceedingly well. Shifting the movie's point of view to Danes helps quite a bit. Danes can fill a scene with one wounded glance, and her body language alone conveys a richness of character that makes an otherwise not very expressive character mesmerizing. She also does something interesting with Mirabelle's passivity-- she plays it as quasi-mute, awestruck intimidation that speaks volumes.

For some reason, it made me recall Hans Weingartner's recent, excellent "The Edukators," in which a waitress roughly Mirabelle's age becomes indentured to a man roughly Ray's age after she crashes her uninsured Volkswagen into his Mercedes (of which he, like Ray, has several), and he makes her buy him a new one. When the waitress sees just how huge the discrepancy between his effect on her life and her effect on his, she trashes his house. In "Shopgirl," she leaves without a fuss.

For all of its sensitivity and intelligence, and its finely observed details ("Shopgirl" is nothing if not hawk-eyed about the accouterments of social rank), the movie is oblivious to the pleasures of life off the status grid. Rather than let the warm, eccentric, goofy Jeremy just wise up to Mirabelle's demure charms, it nudges him subtly into Ray's camp. It's one thing when Jeremy sends Mirabelle a rose, another when he shows up in a shining new Toyota and tells her he'll protect her. She's been protected enough.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/22/2005 08:14:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Steve is "spooky" in time for Halloween


Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA)
October 21, 2005, Friday
FEATURES; WEEKEND; Pg. 14
A May-December glove story
By Peter Rainer Film critic of The Christian Science Monitor

Steve Martin makes broad-based family entertainment like "Bringing Down the House," but he also has a history of making the occasional personal film like "Roxanne" or "L.A. Story." Not coincidentally, he writes the personal stuff himself. His new film, "Shopgirl," which he also scripted and stars in, is based on his popular novella, which makes it a very personal affair indeed.

Although it has some marvelous comic moments, "Shopgirl" is far from a comedy. Martin plays Ray Porter, a dotcom millionaire with fancy homes in Los Angeles and Seattle and a private jet. Shopping for gloves in Saks in Beverly Hills one day, he takes a fancy to a winsome salesgirl, Mirabelle Buttersfield (Claire Danes), and successfully woos her. It doesn't take much.

Mirabelle is a stay-at-home type from rural Vermont who feels disconnected in the L.A. sprawl. An aspiring artist still struggling to pay off her college loans, she seems primed for a Prince Charming. For a while she endures the attentions of the immature, overaggressive Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman), but once she meets Ray it's showtime.

What gives the film its fascination is that, contrary to the usual older-man/younger-woman scenario, "Shopgirl" doesn't haul out the hearts and flowers. Ray is far from a lout with Mirabelle, but he makes it clear early on that he is interested only in seeing her for sexual companionship when he is in town. Mirabelle wants Ray to love her, but it's never clear just how large a capacity for love he has.

Although "Shopgirl" is framed as a valentine to Mirabelle's romantic fortitude, what we see onscreen is often at odds with that interpretation. For one thing, it's not really believable that someone who looks as good as Mirabelle - Vermont or no Vermont - would be pining at home with her cat. Not in Beverly Hills anyway. (The director, Anand Tucker, offers her up almost as a Depression-era waif.)

Mirabelle's loving attachment to Ray is presented almost entirely as a selfless act of innocence, but we're left wondering why more isn't made of the fact that Ray showers her with expensive gifts and pays off her student loan. Is it too cynical to suggest that his generosity might have something to do with her devotion? In the world of this movie, the guileless Mirabelle is simply the angelic beneficiary of her suitor's blessings.

Ray's melancholia, like hers, is ultimately meant to have romantic depths. He is fated to break up with her because she's too young for him and he cares too much to let things go on. But what we observe in Ray's steely eyes and rote courtesies is something else again. Whether intentionally or not, Martin has given us something truly spooky: A full-fledged portrait of a hollow man. Grade: B
- posted by sookeyjane 10/22/2005 07:49:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

NY Daily News review


Daily News (New York)
October 21, 2005 Friday
SPORTS FINAL EDITION
NOW; Pg. 50
'SHOPGIRL': DRAMATIC DEPTH NOT MARTIN'S DEPARTMENT
BY JACK MATHEWS DAILY NEWS MOVIE CRITIC

SHOPGIRL. With Steve Martin, Claire Danes, Jason Schwartzman. Director: Anand Tucker (1:44). R: Sexual content, language. 2 Stars.

Readers of Steve Martin's two books, "Pure Drivel" and "Shopgirl," have come to know two sides of the author - or, at least, know that there are two sides to his creative range.

"Pure Drivel," his collection of humor pieces for The New Yorker, is pure Martin, a gifted farceur whose prose writing is a kind of slapstick variant on Kurt Vonnegut. He is hugely funny, and the book - while living up to its title - is a breezy, laugh-out-loud read.

With "Shopgirl," on the other hand, he attempts to plumb genuine human emotion and motivation. It's a story about a glove sales clerk in a Beverly Hills department store, a woman whose woeful love life is suddenly flush with the attentions of a geeky lad her age and a dapper, wealthy old guy who would like to try her on for size.

While the novella has its fans, I found it tedious, boring, undeveloped, lazy and lightweight, and I seriously doubt that it would have been published without Martin's celebrity to inspire the publisher's marketing department.

The movie version of "Shopgirl," adapted by Martin and directed by Anand Tucker ("Hilary and Jackie"), is a few grams heavier, if only because of Claire Danes' wonderful, three-dimensional performance as the book's objectified title character, Mirabelle Butterfield.

Danes' smart, fun, radiant and very attractive Mirabelle actually undermines the premise of the book, which has been taken by people who have a better grasp on celebrity gossip than I have to be a self-scolding by Martin for an emotionally reckless romance with a young - and, I'm guessing, starstruck - lover.

Like most wealthy middle-aged men whose faces are as familiar as the four on Mount Rushmore, Martin can surely attract as many young, smart, beautiful women as he has time for.

But Ray Porter, his character in the film, is merely rich and attentive. For us to accept Mirabelle's quick and fully committed love for him, he needs to show her - and us - more than the money.

He does not. Martin is so flat and uninteresting in the role, you have to imagine charms that aren't apparent. There is no chemistry between the characters, because Martin brought no chemistry to the set.

He can act and write up a storm in comedy, but, on the evidence, he can neither write nor perform drama.

In the novella, Martin doesn't bother with dialogue or developed scenes - he simply tells readers what the characters are thinking, which makes them all literary stick figures.

The movie has to dramatize the events and fill out the figures, and it's a sign of how difficult all that was for Martin that he felt compelled to include patches of his prose as voice-over narration.

To say it's a distraction to hear Martin's voice telling us in the third person what his fictional character is thinking is to ignore the better word, weird.

Another problem not overcome by the script is the weakness of the third side of the romantic triangle, Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman), a slovenly electronics-store clerk whose big dream is to sell custom amplifiers to rock bands.

The role is expanded, at least in terms of his appearances, and while Schwartzman doesn't make him a legitimate option for Claire, he provides the film's only comic relief.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/22/2005 07:41:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Toronto Sun review


The Toronto Sun
October 21, 2005 Friday
FINAL EDITION
ENTERTAINMENT; Pg. E5
CUT-RATE PHILOSOPHY; A JAUNDICED STEVE MARTIN OFFERS SOME OFF-THE-RACK THOUGHTS ON LOVE AND ROMANCE IN SHOPGIRL
BY JIM SLOTEK, TORONTO SUN

Forgive me, but I wouldn't go to Star Jones for diet tips. Similarly, I suspect Steve Martin is not as good a person to go to for insights on the ways of the heart as he might be on subjects like comic timing and Einstein.

Which isn't to say the pieces aren't sufficent to appreciate in Shopgirl, the movie based on Martin's quasi-autobiographical novella about a rich, emotionally closed older man who can't commit and the naive young woman who suffers for it.

The movie, directed by Anand Tucker, is putatively the story of its title character, a demure, fresh-off-the-turnip-truck wannabe artist named Mirabelle (Claire Danes), spinning her wheels in Los Angeles while working as a salesgirl in the glove department of Saks.

There she is approached in a circumspect fashion by Ray, a fiftysomething older man who is um... what's the word I'm looking for here? Besotted? No, that's not right. Let's say interested and precise in his intentions.

Armed with expensive wines, nice suits and sad, laconic conversation, he sweeps this girl off her feet and into bed, forcing her to forget all about Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman), an adoring puppy boy whose attentions she'd also been fielding. Her relationship with Ray meanders along as Jeremy takes off to be a band's roadie. Ray helps Mirabelle when she stops taking anti-depressants and freaks out, and Ray sleeps around.

This is only putatively Mirabelle's story because the movie is also narrated by Martin, who offers up her thoughts, as well as Ray's on a platter. It's an essential conceit, because it serves to offer up abstract rationalizations for Ray's cold-fishery and sometimes callous disregard for Mirabelle's feelings, and ascribes great emotionalism to him under that immobile mug (at times there's something that could be sadness on Martin's face, but the deadpan that is his moneymaker as a comedian is his Achilles Heel as an actor).

Martin has much in common with Bill Murray on that score, just as Shopgirl is much like Lost In Translation -- minus the appealing quirks and Murray's superior ability to use his deadpan to convey turmoil.

The movie is impeccably shot. Director Anand Tucker shoots with warmth and with a loving eye for the Los Angeles skyline, reminiscent of Martin's L.A. Story.

Meanwhile, such comedy as there is in this rom-com comes mainly from Schwartzman, who is, admittedly, an acquired taste. But things definitely could have been worse (Jimmy Fallon was originally cast as Jeremy). At that, they lose him early and only reintroduce him at what amounts to the romantic payoff.

Even that is rationalized in a jaundiced manner by Mr. Narrator. In Steve Martin's view, nobody is right for anybody -- just less wrong.

BOTTOM LINE

Cold-fishy ambivalence isn't the most compelling theme for a romantic comedy. Lost In Translation got away with it through pure quirk, but this one takes its deep thoughts on love far too seriously.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/22/2005 07:31:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Salon's review hated it


Salon.com
October 21, 2005 Friday
Movie Reviews
"Shopgirl"
Andrew O'Hehir

Is there anything more torturous than watching a waxwork Steve Martin woo Claire Danes?

There were some things I liked about "Shopgirl," the film adaptation of Steve Martin's bestselling novella. I write those words with teeth firmly clenched, because it's basically a dreadful film that should never have been made. Actually, the things I liked can pretty much be summed up as Claire Danes, who brings her appealing, off-balance combination of gawkiness and sexual hunger to the role of Mirabelle, a young artist from Vermont lost in the diluted urban soup of Los Angeles.

Mirabelle is deliberately (I guess) presented as an oddball, a young woman in some version of the 21st century who doesn't seem to watch TV, listen to pop music or own a pair of pants. That might all be fine if "Shopgirl" presented her in some coherent social context, or possessed the aesthetic intensity to forge its own universe and make such questions irrelevant (like, say, this year's powerful British import "My Summer of Love"). But Mirabelle drifts like a ghost through a gloomy realm that looks like contemporary L.A. but is swaddled in a deadly concert-hall hush, facing horrors worse than those encountered by any splatter-movie heroine.

First she goes out with Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman of "Rushmore" fame), an assemblage of groan-inducing slacker stereotypes that Martin and director Anand Tucker apparently see as a satirical portrayal of Today's Younger Generation. Jeremy stencils logos for a company that builds amplifiers. He asks Mirabelle for her number at the laundromat, but doesn't have a pen. Or paper. He shows up to get her without cleaning the crap off the passenger seat of his old beater, then has to borrow money from her to go to the movies. A bit later in the evening, he pulls the "condom" out of his pocket only to discover that it's a mint, which he eats. OK, that bit's actually funny. But the general mode here is laborious shtick that might have felt vaguely current and halfway amusing in a Hollywood movie of 1989.

I would have been grateful, nay, delighted, to have "Shopgirl" stick to Mirabelle's tepid relationship with Jeremy, caricatured aficionado of corn chips and masturbation that he is. If, that is, we might thus have been spared Martin's terrifying performance in the sugar-daddy role of Ray Porter.

I'm not quite sure what has happened to Steve Martin; I was never his biggest fan, but some of his early movies are silly and fun and some of his mid-period ones, like "Roxanne" and "L.A. Story," are enjoyably sweet. If I were his therapist, I would no doubt applaud his desire to reinvent himself as an author of worldly-wise fiction. I haven't read "Shopgirl" and am hopeful that it's better on the page than on-screen (although Martin's snippets of voice-over narration are not encouraging: "...he had hurt them both, and he cannot justify his actions except that, well, it was life"). But his character in the film, resembling more a Madame Tussaud waxwork of Steve Martin than the real thing, crystallizes all the discomfort below the surface of "Shopgirl" and turns a dreary movie into an awful one.

Ray is supposed to be the suave older guy with money and taste who sweeps Mirabelle from behind the glove counter at Saks (if indeed the Saks store in L.A. even sells gloves) and makes her feel appreciated, in body and spirit, for the first time. First of all, this is a trite and slightly unpleasant theme that cries out for original handling and doesn't get it here. Martin's performance is one of implacable, rubberized unhappiness; you get the feeling he saw Bill Murray in "Lost in Translation" and thought, "I can do that."

He can't, though. Is Ray a damaged divorce who falls in love with Mirabelle, after his own fashion, but can't express his feelings? I guess that's the idea, but you can't really tell. He could also be planning to add her to his collection of chopped-up girlfriends beneath the pool. He could be a narcoleptic. He could be the reanimated corpse of Richard Nixon, nervously sweating embalming fluid. He could be shot so full of Botox it's a wonder he can speak at all.

Faced with her competing Lotharios, Mirabelle inexplicably does not flee the country or enter a convent or explore her long-suppressed interest in the lesbian leather-and-latex community. Instead, she falls in love with Dead Nixon, or whoever he is, and is heartbroken when he sleeps with an old flame. (Rebecca Pidgeon's one-minute cameo as the seductress has more life than the entire rest of the film.) Unbeknownst to her, Jeremy is on the road with some bad band in the Pearl Jam vein, reading self-help books and obsessing about her. We know that he's a changed man when he gets back because he has shaved and owns a beige Hyundai.

Good movies usually happen when director, actors and script come together in an inexpressible kismet. Truly bad movies, as opposed to mediocre or careless ones, require the same sort of chemistry. Tucker, the English director who made "Hilary and Jackie," seems to have been a marvelously wrong choice for Martin, both as actor and author. "Shopgirl" might have worked, by which I mean been halfway tolerable, as a breezy comedy that faced its own ickiness and lack of originality with a little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down the pants.

There's so little sexual chemistry between the actors in this film that it seems like a kind of accomplishment. I've seen shows on C-SPAN that were hotter than this. There's an early scene with Danes and Schwartzman in bed that's no worse than mildly embarrassing, but I sat through the film in queasy terror, awaiting the moment when the Nixon zombie might doff his clothes, expose his burnt-sienna flesh and make sweet, sweet love to his little mademoiselle. Mercifully, good taste -- or just sanity -- intervenes. But that must be why Martin looks so unhappy: He's sitting there the whole time thinking, "I'm asking the audience to sit in the dark for two hours and think about me sleeping with Claire Danes. Have I completely lost my mind?"

Tucker shrouds his scenes with piss-elegant darkness and frames them with Bergman-esque snippets of chamber music. Even the decision to use Martin as a narrator, reading bits of his New Yorker-parody prose, is bewildering: Is this Ray talking? If so, how does he know all this stuff about the other characters' inner feelings? If not, is this some arch, postmodern gesture, the god of this universe intoning from Olympus? If none of the above, why doesn't he shut up? Like the whole movie, like the damn tongue-in-cheek title, it's supposed to seem old-fashioned and muted and tasteful and true. When it's really just art decoration for an aging celebrity's unpleasant fantasy.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/22/2005 07:28:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Reporter's view of Steve as an interviewer


http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/
Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=
1129845011893&DPL=IvsNDS%2f7ChAX&tacodalogin=yes
The Toronto Star
Oct. 21, 2005. 01:00 AM
A nose for a good story; Steve Martin's creative skills are on display as he promotes Shopgirl, the new movie based on his own book

PETER HOWELL
MOVIE CRITIC

Over three decades in the public eye, Steve Martin has learned the art of saying a lot while keeping secret that which he chooses not to reveal.

It's a skill that politicians, major rock stars and the most serious of actors employ to stay out of trouble and to protect their privacy and sanity. Martin, who recently turned 60, has long wished to be considered a serious actor, and so this one-time "wild and crazy guy" has become the mild and evasive man. He's very good at it, I've found, both in one-on-one interview situations and in press conferences, where he adjusts his technique to suit the audience. He's been doing plenty of both to promote Shopgirl, his wistful new romance that opens today, starring himself, Claire Danes and Jason Schwartzman.

On his own, the Texas-born and California-reared Martin is unfailingly polite, apologizing for interrupting a journalist's question. He's self-deprecating and eager to please, avoiding any appearance of putting on airs. He gives long and thoughtful answers, unless you ask him something that goes against the grain or intrudes on a personal space. Then you get "no" or "never" or both in reply. Such as when I asked him if he will ever return to his wacky stand-up comic routine that first won him fame in the 1970s: "Nope. Never, never, never, never, never."

At press conferences, including the one he shared at the Toronto film festival with Shopgirl co-star Claire Danes, he's more the jolly raconteur. He spins out one-liners ("In drama you worry and in comedy you really worry") and banters back and forth. He appears to enjoy the process of discussing his writing, his acting and his theories about comedy.

But listen carefully and you can hear the steel gates clatter down and the castle doors clang shut. Such as when a journo poses the most sensitive question of all regarding Shopgirl, the screen adaptation of Martin's 2000 novella about a naïve sales clerk with artistic ambitions (played by Danes in the movie) who falls for a secretive and manipulative older man (Martin).

Here goes: Exactly how much of Shopgirl is based on Martin's own romantic past?

He bristles at the query but quickly rallies his defences.

"Well, it's hard to answer," he says, guarding a smile. "Some is personal, some isn't. It's a work of fiction. It's a work of imagination, I hope. It's also that you draw characters from life."

In point of fact, Shopgirl is based on a lot more of Martin's recent life than he cares for the public to know. A few days after his Toronto visit, the New York Times published an interview with his ex-girlfriend Allyson Hollingsworth, 36, who looks a lot like Claire Danes and who met Martin in similar circumstances as those in Shopgirl. She is also an artist, and she worked as artistic consultant for the Shopgirl movie, which Martin also produced. Bit by bit, she recreated a striking nude charcoal self-portrait of herself, which Danes' character Mirabelle Buttersfield is seen making and displaying.

In deference to Martin, Hollingsworth declined to comment on her past romantic relationship with him, or to reveal how closely Shopgirl reflects it. Martin also declined comment, and the topic was still not on his agenda when I chatted with him by phone from L.A. last week.

He did, however, agree with me that he has become less forthcoming as his career has progressed, and he has grown weary of the constant need to "stoke the star-maker machinery," as Joni Mitchell once said of fame. He doesn't like having his picture taken — this is the same guy who used to prance on stage in King Tut and bunny rabbit outfits — and he does press interviews out of a sense of duty, not desire.

"It is difficult talking about things, because I don't like to get political in interviews," he says.

"It just leads to trouble. And I don't know why I'm telling you all this, but I don't think I can add anything to my own work. Nothing that anybody else couldn't add, just by looking at it."

He admires the way Bob Dylan has so skilfully befuddled and blocked every interviewer who has dogged him since the early 1960s.

"You don't want to know what Bob Dylan is thinking," Martin insists, expressing a minority opinion he takes to be common sense.

"I'm a different personality. I wish I had that same strength. I always find that interviews with artists are always wrong. They're always wrong about themselves. What we like about (their art) and what they like about it are really two different things."

You can sympathize a bit with Martin, even if it's hard to muster many tears for a man who has hit movies, TV shows, plays, books and records to his credit, and whose sizeable personal wealth has allowed him to indulge his hobby of collecting art by such greats as Picasso, Hooper and de Kooning.

When he first hit it big as a comedian, this one-time Disneyland children's performer and gag writer for the Smothers Brothers and Sonny and Cher liked to mock show biz conventions. He was the clown prince of the counter-culture, the master of the ironic putdown of the old and the corny. He wrote jokes and short stories — remember Cruel Shoes, his 1979 publishing debut? — that appealed to corners of the brain where logic learned to "get small" and to mock the straight.

He didn't have to sell his work or even talk about it. He was so hip, all it took were a few appearances hosting Saturday Night Live — the hottest show of the 1970s — for everyone to know what he was about, and to get where he was coming from.

"I grew up in the '60s and it was just a whole other attitude," Martin agrees.

"Lorne Michaels talks about how he never marketed SNL. And I never did Steve Martin lunch boxes in the '70s, because our ethic was that you were supposed to let the work speak for itself. But now the process is that you write it and you make it and then you explain it. Which you know, in a sense, you're doing the job of the journalist or taking away the job from the journalist."

Lately he's more acutely aware of this situation than usual. Besides Shopgirl, he's also answering questions about his remake of The Pink Panther and his comedy sequel Cheaper by the Dozen 2, both due out in coming weeks owing to an unfortunate collision of production and marketing schedules.

He's not looking forward to trying to talk intelligently about his two comedies — "Sometimes you're just making stuff up''— but he knows it's demanded of him, and he will oblige. He's much more willing to man the phone and smile at press conferences for Shopgirl, because it means so much more to him, and it's part of the serious artistic expressions he wants to make for the rest of his life. "I feel a connection to Shopgirl. It was my first serious prose piece. So I really became intimate with every sentence. I felt really personal about it, although it's not a personal story."

Not a personal story? So there's nothing about Martin like his Shopgirl character Ray Porter, the outwardly courteous and generous millionaire who deep down has serious intimacy issues? To give an honest answer to that question, Martin would have to reflect on his failed past relationships not just with his Shopgirl muse Allyson Hollingsworth, but his long string of former flames that have included his ex-wife Victoria Tennant and girlfriends Anne Heche and Bernadette Peters.

Martin is not about to get that personal, so here's what he says about playing Ray Porter: "I understood the character. It was hard to say some of the things that Ray Porter had to say."

It's too soon for him to get much feedback on the movie, but Shopgirl has been out as a book long enough for Martin to hear some interesting comments, which split along gender and age lines. Many men have told him they understand Ray Porter, too. Many older women describe the story as sad, or even a tragedy. Many younger women, however, call it romantic. He finds that fascinating.

The steel gates are starting to roll down and the castle doors are being closed on the interview. But Martin finishes with an anecdote he'll likely tell many times as he promotes The Pink Panther, in which he recreates the bumbling Inspector Clouseau character made famous by Peter Sellers.

"I met Peter Sellers once, at a promotional event in Hawaii about 1980. He was extremely kind to me. He came up to me, and I don't tell this story very often, and I was doing stand-up and I had The Jerk coming out. I was under a lot of criticism because I was kind of a flagrant comedian. And he said, `I know you're under a lot of criticism right now, but I know what you're doing.' It was really nice."

It sounds like the most honest and intimate thing Martin has said in the entire interview. But how could anyone know for sure?

maybe KMT knows :)
- posted by sookeyjane 10/22/2005 06:01:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

More Shopgirl reviews


http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/
Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1129845011902&DPL=
IvsNDS%2f7ChAX&tacodalogin=yes
The Toronto Star
Oct. 21, 2005. 01:00 AM
Shopgirl: A melancholy fairy tale
PETER HOWELL
MOVIE CRITIC

Shopgirl

Starring Steve Martin, Claire Danes and Jason Schwartzman. Directed by Anand Tucker. 104 minutes. At the Cumberland and Paramount theatres. PG

It is a scene from a fairy tale, which Shopgirl is, in its own wonderfully melancholy way.

Tucked away at the end of a long aisle of women's accoutrements in a Beverly Hills store, dreamily gazing skyward as she waits for the customers who rarely attend, is a young woman in her late 20s named Mirabelle Buttersfield (Claire Danes).

She sells long formal gloves, the kind that women don't much wear anymore. But that fits her lifestyle, which seems of a time and place somewhere over the rainbow. She's come to L.A. from rural Vermont, and resides in a whimsical flat with an up-and-down staircase. She has a pet cat that is almost invisible and drives a pick-up truck she wishes could be that way.

Mirabelle has abandoned all thoughts of excitement in exchange for low stress and regular hours. And yet she yearns for something more. She stays up late taking Polaroid pictures and drawing charcoal sketches for the avant-garde art she produces every six months or so, and occasionally manages to sell.

She is waiting for life to happen to her, rather than seeking to make her own way. And in the tradition of the best fairy tales, life does just that. Before she really knows what is happening, Mirabelle finds herself being courted by two very different men: the scruffy and fidgety Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman), who is close to her age; and the dapper but reserved Ray Porter (Steve Martin), who is a good 20 years her senior.

It is a love triangle of sorts, one the multi-talented Martin has made more apparent in his screenplay than he did in his novella of the same name. But any similarity to Jules et Jim (which director Anand Tucker referenced in Hilary and Jackie, his best-known film) is not only coincidental, but ludicrous.

Jeremy is not right for Mirabelle. A rock amplifier salesman with few ambitions, he's unkempt, a cheapskate (his idea of a movie date is to sit and stare at the marquee) and he's as dopey as a dormouse.

Ray is so much more appealing. A dot-com millionaire with mansions in L.A. and Seattle, a private jet and enough money to make a girl feel like Cinderella every night, he's made Mirabelle the envy of all the other girls at Saks Fifth Avenue, especially bitchy vamp Lisa (Bridgette Wilson-Sampras).

There can be no comparison between Jeremy and Ray, can there? Unless you make love your basis, and assess how well a person gives it as well as receives it. That levels the playing field for this love match.

Recalling Martin's earlier L.A. idylls in L.A. Story and Bowfinger, the movie dreamily views the City of Angels with a similar smiling benevolence — every night is starry in cinematographer Peter Suschitzky's poetic lens — but with a deep sense of longing. There are so many stories beneath the swaying palms and roaring expressways, and so many of them involve people who just want to be loved.

Shopgirl's feathery plot is lifted by three sterling performances.

As Ray, a man as grey as his suits, Steve Martin has never smiled less or seemed more significant. Fans may be taken aback by how forced his humour seems. Ray is not an easy guy to laugh with.

As Jeremy, the restless rocker, Jason Schwartzman has never seemed more yearning.

And as Mirabelle, the woman with stars in her eyes and romance in her heart, Claire Danes has never seemed more fragile, or more appealing. Her eyes fill with wonder and apprehension as she gazes out into that starry distance, wondering if knights ride among the hills of Hollywood.

KMT
- posted by sookeyjane 10/22/2005 05:53:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 



http://www.washingtontimes.com/entertainment/20051020-092130-3793r.htm
Steve Martin's many faces
By Christian Toto
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 21, 2005

It's a funny thing about Steve Martin. Every time we pigeonhole him, he wriggles free with either a new persona or yesterday's model spruced up with a fresh coat of paint.

The erstwhile "wild and crazy guy" picks up the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor -- a career honor -- Sunday at the Kennedy Center, but even at 60 his body of work remains in flux.

The performer, who declined our interview request, regained some of his former box office magic with 2003's "Bringing Down the House" and "Cheaper by the Dozen."

These twin farces gave us the "old" Mr. Martin, the slapstick stooge whose rubbery limbs helped pave the way for pranksters like Jim Carrey.

What's next, "The Jerk 2: Even Jerkier?"

Mr. Martin's more recent work seemed to glide along a maturing curve, greased by the pithy novella "Shopgirl" and some respectfully received plays.

Why would he revisit his goofy side just as he was approaching the age for Social Security benefits?

Mr. Martin's career began in near-textbook comedy fashion. He worked as a Disneyland concessionaire in his teens, juggling and tap dancing for passersby before graduating to writing for such performers as Dick Van Dyke and the Smothers Brothers.

Stand-up comedy came next, and while his fellow comics adopted fashionably countercultural stances in both dress and material, Mr. Martin played it straight -- until he slipped that broken arrow prop around his head. He rode the bit and his silly "King Tut" ditty on "Saturday Night Live" to concert ticket and record sales more befitting a rock star than a stand-up comedian. He stood before us prematurely gray and as lean as a racehorse, but he moved like a man who just grabbed the business end of a live wire.

That energy coursed through "The Jerk," the smash 1979 comedy that launched his film career. More cagey comedies would follow, like the underappreciated "The Man With Two Brains" (1983) and "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" (1982), all collaborations with director Carl Reiner.

Yet, early on, his need to explore other facets of his talent gnawed at him. The 1981 musical "Pennies From Heaven" didn't revive that long dormant genre, but neither did it embarrass the young star.

Respect wouldn't come swiftly.

Some critics applauded his physical comedy in 1984's "All of Me," while others warmed to his turn as both performer and writer in "Roxanne," his 1987 twist on "Cyrano de Bergerac."

The late 1980s proved his film zenith, with hilarious turns in "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" (1988) and 1989's "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" as slow-burning straight man to John Candy. He proved equally comic in the poignant "Parenthood" and helped steer 1991's "Father of the Bride" to box office glory.

The mid-to-late 1990s saw Mr. Martin's film career tumble, while his writing prospects took off. Busts like 1996's "Sgt. Bilko" and 1999's "The Out-of-Towners" meant more time to admire his cerebral play "Picasso at the Lapin Agile" and the best-selling novella "Shopgirl." He also became an irregular contributor to the New Yorker magazine.

Sunday's ceremony, to be broadcast at 9 p.m. Nov. 9 on WETA-TV, will find the contemplative comic surrounded by such show business chums as fellow Mark Twain Prize winners Carl Reiner and Lily Tomlin.

What we won't see is any one Mr. Martin. Sure, we'll likely get glimpses of the childless star looking paternal in clips from "Parenthood" and "Cheaper by the Dozen." And no doubt we'll get a glimpse of him in that King Tut garb speak-singing his 1970s novelty hit.

Mr. Martin's immediate future promises more big screen features. First up is "Shopgirl" -- he both wrote the screenplay and stars as its aging Lothario. Next on the schedule are the obligatory "Dozen" sequel and an attempt at resurrecting the "Pink Panther" franchise early next year.

We could keep scratching our heads over his ability to leap from dumb and dumber comedy to more refined fare, but this year's Mark Twain Prize winner may be showing us it's best the real Steve Martin still refuses to stand up.

KTM
- posted by sookeyjane 10/22/2005 05:46:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Analyzing Steve


The New York Sun
Arts and Letters
The Day Eustace Tilley Met the Jerk
BY BENJAMIN LYTAL
October 21, 2005
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/21832

Steve Martin has never been shy about his intellectual aspirations. But he has seldom taken them seriously. "'The Apple Pie Hubbub' was a significant novel for me," Mr. Martin says in "A Wild and Crazy Guy," the platinum-selling recording of his early stand-up, "because that's when I first started using verbs. My novels really brightened up after that." Now that Steve Martin really does write novels, it hardly seems right to take them seriously, either.

Yet "Shopgirl," his debut novella of 2000, now a movie, was not very funny. It had a sweet, pastel modesty, largely derived from Mirabelle, its eponymous shopgirl. Mr. Martin's second novella, "The Pleasure of My Company," was less successful because it had a paranoid man as a narrator, a man Mr. Martin has played out in his movies. "Shopgirl" put Mr. Martin in the body of a serious young girl from Vermont. Its author came off not as Steve Martin, the celebrity novelist, but as Sensitive-Paternal Guy, who wrote a book that is elegant and restrained.

The movie version of "Shopgirl" fritters away much of that modesty. Mr. Martin is not only screenwriter (that is to say, adapter), but the producer, the narrator, and the male lead. As an artistic maneuver, it's a blitzkrieg. But Mr. Martin is coy. "I originally thought there was no way this novella could ever be a movie because it was so interior," he says in the press notes. "But then, a year after it was published, scenes just started popping into my head."

How did Steve Martin go from the epochal idiocy of his early days, from "Excuuuuuuuuuse Me," to the creation of a movie like "Shopgirl," a film of lush, unstinting sobriety? When did Steve Martin decide to become an auteur? Did the idea just pop into his head?

In his introduction to his collected essays, "Pure Drivel," Mr. Martin again claims inadvertency. He swore off movies for years, he explains: "During these years, in which I vowed to do nothing and leave myself alone about it, I accidentally produced several plays, a handful of sketches, two screenplays, and a reorganization of my entire self." Lucky guy.

When Mr. Martin first began to write for the New Yorker, in 1996,Tina Brown was increasing that magazine's coverage of fashion and popular culture. Mr. Martin, then and still, was a kind of magic bullet: the most famous person in the world who wanted to be less famous and more intellectual. In short, he was the exact converse of Tina Brown's New Yorker; they met halfway.

The artistic compulsion is figured in a similarly casual manner in Mr. Martin's ars poetica, "Writing is Easy!" Sweating is not to be admitted, even as a joke. According to the secretly cynical speaker, "Writer's block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcohol. Sure a writer can get stuck for a while, but when that happens to real authors, they simply go out and get an 'as told to.' The alternative is to hire yourself out as an 'as heard from,' thus taking all the credit."

Like most Shouts & Murmurs pieces, Mr. Martin takes a voice, gives it a ridiculous goal, and lets it betray itself. But Shouts & Murmurs was no procrustean bed for Mr. Martin. However pretentious or even calculating his contributions to the New Yorker appear, they did not significantly change his original formula. He made his name as a stand-up by making fun of stand-up itself, just as his magazine pieces make fun of writing.

"I think there's nothing better than for a person to come out and do the same thing over and over for two weeks," he said at the end of one two-week gig. "I'm going to do the same joke over and over in the same show; this will be like a new thing." And then he flubs his lips: nuh nuh nuh, idiotically. The premise was always to be smart and idiotic. Yes, he would be smarter than most comics. But he would be dumber, too.

Perhaps Mr. Martin's trajectory, from comedy clubs to "The Jerk" to "Parenthood" to the New Yorker, really was a series of sudden light bulb thought-bubbles, perhaps it was a calculated career arc, but one thing is certain. The idea that Mr. Martin's more serious artistic productions are accidental is entirely consonant with the original premise of his humor: that artistic production itself is deeply silly.

While his novels seem to consolidate the trend of respectability in Mr. Martin's career, in fact they represent something new, something alien to the rest of his career. "Shopgirl" represents a departure from Mr. Martin's founding premise. The only conclusion is that Mr. Martin has finally made the artistic stab - the hilarious scimitar swipe - that he so fruitfully lampooned.

As a sincere expression, "Shopgirl" shows the didactic side of Mr. Martin's personality. If Mr. Martin's mid-career blockbusters, "Parenthood," "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels," and others, profited from the frisson of a doofus in positions of power, "Shopgirl" turns the doofus into a quiet wizard. "What Mirabelle needs is some omniscient voice to illuminate and spotlight her," says the voice-over, and that omniscient voice is Steve Martin. September-May relationships are seldom so paternalistic. At the film's end, you will feel that this man, Steve Martin-cum-Ray Porter, has put Mirabelle through emotional boot camp.

Why has Mr. Martin gone straight? Because he has always wanted to. Why did it take him so long? Because he's much better as a comic.

My So-Called Girlfriend

Watching "Shopgirl," the movie, means evaluating Mr. Martin as an actor among other actors. Jason Schwartzman, in the role of Mirabelle's other, more appropriate suitor, is a tedious slacker, his neuroses glibly conceived. He now has none of the novelty he had in "Rushmore." Claire Danes is an interesting shopgirl; she can look haggard one minute and lovely the next, but, as in "My So-Called Life," she is at her best when narcissistically resolute, as after a teenage crisis, soldiering on in disbelief.

Mr. Martin plays Ray Porter, a Seattle-based logician, afraid of intimacy, and rich. He is the straightest of all straight men. Watching Mr. Martin in this role is fascinating. When Ray betrays Mirabelle, Ms. Danes collapses, like a child, but Mr. Martin is placid, intent, and empathetic but not himself upset. When he takes Mirabelle to refill her antidepressant prescription, he is like nothing so much as a village elder in an icy utopia.

As a film, "Shopgirl" lands just outside the developing genre of quirky hipster dramas. Second only to Mr. Martin's performance, for example, is the film's color palette: In many ways, "Shopgirl" is like "Lost in Translation," except with a pulsing orchestral soundtrack. Mr. Martin, in his paternalism, explicitly spells out Ray and Mirabelle's problems; his script would have benefited from some fashionable ellipses. "Shopgirl" is easy on the eye, and on the heart, and on the brain.

The narrator's closing speech - "He had hurt them both, and he cannot justify his actions except that, well, it was life" - gives the audience the impression that Mr. Martin's longtime interest in philosophy is not analytical so much as aurelian, and that artsiness, as opposed to comedy, is all about quiet consolations.

that KMT
- posted by sookeyjane 10/22/2005 05:43:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Moviella -- what a great word


http://www.the-trades.com/article.php?id=3705
Shopgirl
Movie Review by Sean Conover
Published: October 21, 2005
Grade: A-

One thing is for sure: Steve Martin has an interesting and unique view on relationships.

Since the 1970's when he leapt into the public consciousness as a "wild and cra-zee guy," Martin has grown into a respectable actor, writer and Producer, in particular with 1987's "Roxanne." The sweet retelling of Cyrano de Bergerac was laced with light humor and approachable characters that connected with audiences with the story's tenderness and humanity. A few years later, "L.A. Story" didn't quite connect with the masses, but it is arguably one of the best films to ever attempt to portray relationships from the California-point-of-view. Since then, Martin has stared in many films ranging from the forgettable "Sgt. Bilko" to the father-we-all-wish-we-had in "Father of the Bride," but with the exception of 1994's tepid "A Simple Twist of Fate," he's stayed away from the relationship theme. That is, until 2001, when he published his so-called 'novella' Shopgirl. At a slim 130 pages, stretching the short story into an hour and forty-minute film - without extra filler - must have been a challenge. Then again, Martin has that interesting and unique vision, and again he succeeds.

The basic premise of the story revolves around Mirabelle Buttersfield (Claire Danes), a single, young twenty-something girl from Vermont working at the women's formal glove counter at Saks Fifth Avenue in Los Angeles. She is an introverted artist-type and spends her free time in her meager and drab apartment creating black-and-white charcoal sketches, and her work time standing on her two feet watching couples walk by and wondering why she isn't one-half of a couple herself. She meets Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman) in the Laundromat and while they start to date, the two of them don't seem like a match for each other. When the wealthy, and decidedly older, Ray Porter (Martin) sweeps her off her feet, Jeremy and Mirabelle go their separate ways on their own voyages of self-discovery. As Jeremy travels the rock 'n roll roadie highway, Mirabelle journeys down her own path with Ray, and they both attempt to comprehend what it is they want in life and love.

Stealing a bit of the character quirkiness from "Roxanne" and the sensibility of Los Angeles from "L.A. Story," Martin creates a sweet mixture where the joy is in the character development. The relationship between Mirabelle and Ray takes up a majority of the story, and we watch as Mirabelle goes full circle from loneliness to love to hurt to loneliness, only to end up continuing the never-ending cycle again. The beautifully plain Claire Danes is perfect in her role as Mirabelle. Simple and diminutive, she is unassuming and likeable, and you just know there is something beneath the surface waiting to be set free. You feel for her when she is lonely, you're happy for her when she feels love, and you hurt for her when she cries. As Jeremy, Schwartzman brings almost all of the major humor to the film, and has most of the best lines. He is so unassuming and not your typical Hollywood star, we can easily feel a connection with Jeremy as well. Both he and Mirabelle could be your Average Joe; the person behind the counter at the mall or the burgeoning artist at the t-shirt shop. Thankfully, Martin sticks to the role that suits him best, the sweet, charming older fellow that we all wish we could call our friend.

The relationship between Ray and Mirabelle does have an awkward feel to it, however, and gives an uncomfortable feel to the story. While there is nothing inherently wrong with the so-called May-December relationship, to watch the now 60-year old Martin lying in bed with Danes who is in her mid-twenties just feels wrong. Who knows? Maybe it’s just me.

In the end, the film could be compared to such recent character-driven films such as "Broken Flowers" and "Lost in Translation” (both of which star an older man – and SNL alum – Bill Murray); films that aren't large in scope but are instead deep in meaning. This is a snapshot of a period in Mirabelle's development in life, and it is enjoyable to go along for that emotional ride. Steve Martin has adapted his unique view yet again into a quirky, sweet and rife story with enjoyable characters. “Shopgirl” is by no means an epic, but instead can be perfectly summed up as: 'A Moviella.'

busy busy KMT
- posted by sookeyjane 10/22/2005 05:37:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Slate reaaaaaally didn't like Shopgirl


http://slate.msn.com/id/2128545/
reel time
In the Mood for Moo; Cow eyes and little else in Steve Martin's
Shopgirl.
By David Edelstein
Posted Friday, Oct. 21, 2005, at 1:58 PM PT

What a treat to see Steve Martin evolve from a spasmodically brilliant comedian into a mature, ruminative, self-critical writer and dramatist. Or maybe not. Come to think of it, the best thing I've seen him do in the last decade is the megalomaniacal uber-nerd "Mr. Chairman" in Looney Tunes: Back in Action. (He even held his own against Bugs and Daffy: no higher praise.) Shopgirl (Touchstone) marks an advance—and a dip—in Martin's creative trajectory. Adapted from his own novella, it's an aching reverie in the tradition of Lost in Translation and In the Mood for Love about the vast distances between people who are locked (or have locked themselves) in their own heads. In other words: All the lonely movies, where do they all come from?

Shopgirl opens with the camera drifting through a Saks Fifth Avenue in Los Angeles—past shoppers and counter-women who are costumed and made-up and shot to suggest whores. (Short skirts, lipstick, perfume, come-hither smiles …) They're meant to contrast with our heroine, the old-fashioned and demure Mirabelle (Claire Danes), who works, appropriately enough, in the ladies'-glove department. (The long, refined kind, for long, refined fingers.) The camera floats toward her in the distance, in the middle of the frame, frozen, her head tilted dreamily, like the Little Match Girl. Who will rescue this forlorn, exquisitely vulnerable waif?

Not Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman), a scruffy solipsist who pursues Mirabelle and yet barely registers her, you know, otherness. Maybe her knight is a much older man, Ray Porter (Martin), a wealthy Internet gazillionaire (with dark, expensive suits and a lean silhouette), who lavishes her with expensive meals and clothes—everything but his heart, which belongs to no one, the emotional coward. But Mirabelle, who grew up with an uncommunicative father (by way of demonstration, her father is brought on to not communicate), thinks that this sugar daddy will be a real daddy.

Tweely narrated by Martin (not as Ray), directed with a dose of barbiturates by Ana nd Tucker, underscored with a plaintive cello and piano, this is among the most noneventful romantic triangles ever committed to celluloid. Martin is a student of Chekhov, and Chekhov is about people who don't connect, right? And Jeremy and Ray seem to be scathing self-portraits, of Martin as a young jerk (or young Jerk) and Martin as a successful older man so scared and self-protective that he never dares come close to true intimacy.

At least Jeremy is finally allowed to evolve beyond his creator. Rejected by Mirabelle, he gets adopted by a touring rock group and eventually makes a lot of noise about learning to be "in the moment." The trouble is that Schwartzman … How can I say this? He's supposed to be weird and repellent, but also—provided he can grow up and forget about himself—kind of attractive. I get everything but the attractive part.

In any case, the best performance is by Bridgette Wilson-Sampras as the conniving but peppy slut at the perfume counter. Her big scene—farcical, filthy, surprising—is also the best in the movie. Otherwise, Shopgirl is sadly vacuous, with a sadly vacuous center. Mirabelle is based on a real woman, a lover of Martin's, and the movie is obviously an apology: There you were, this lovely blob of neediness, but all I could see was my own fear of intimacy, and I let you down, and I know I let you down, so let me make it up to you by memorializing your neediness. …

Too bad that Martin gives Mirabelle no interior life, and that Danes obliges by emptying herself of everything but (lyrical, exquisite) need. He still doesn't see her. He sees only his jerkiness. ... 1:40 P.M.
David Edelstein is Slate's film critic.

KMT again
- posted by sookeyjane 10/22/2005 05:23:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

A different interview on Shopgirl, Pink Panther and miscellaneous


http://www.azcentral.com/ent/movies/articles/1023stevemartin1023-CR.html
Wild and crazy renaissance guy: Martin balances comedy, drama, writing
Bill Muller
The Arizona Republic
Oct. 22, 2005 05:18 PM

Comedians trying to transition into serious roles should look no further than Steve Martin for inspiration. The "wild and crazy guy" who once did a stand-up routine with a fake arrow protruding from his head still engages in the antics that made him famous (such as his rapper routine in Bringing Down the House), but he also has appeared as a "real guy" in such films such as Parenthood, Father of the Bride and The Spanish Prisoner.

Martin's latest serious role is that of a well-off, middle-age bachelor who romances a much younger store clerk (Claire Danes) in Shopgirl, a romance based on Martin's novella. The movie opens October 28. Martin will follow that with Cheaper by the Dozen 2 (opening Dec. 21) and The Pink Panther (Feb. 10). We caught up with him by phone.

Question: What inspired you to write Shopgirl?
advertisement


Answer: I found a subject I liked and some characters I liked, and wanted to write about relationships. And I just talked to some friends and pitched them my idea, which is basically "Man buys gloves, sends them to girl who sold them to him. " I just started writing, and characters emerged. The characters are based on some people, pastiche from other people. I'd been single for about, I guess, 10 years when I started writing it, so I had a lot to write about.

Q: Do you identify with your character?

A: Somewhat. I think all men do, or many men do. I've heard that from many men; they say, "Oh that guy's me, that guy's me." It's a lot of men at a certain time in their life. And by the way, they don't have to be older, they can be younger. And be in that very same situation, that commitment phobia.

Q: Is Shopgirl an LA version of Woody Allen's Manhattan (also about an older man who dates a younger woman)?

A: You could consider that L.A. Story (a comedy written by Martin and co-starring Sarah Jessica Parker) is kind of an answer to Manhattan, but I believe that (Shopgirl) is very independent. It's not really based on Manhattan, although it's a similar subject. But it really comes from my novel.

Q: It seems like the city itself — LA — is a character in the film.

A: It's especially that way in L.A. Story, and it's much more subtle in Shopgirl. But it's an environment. It's all about those sort of long distances people travel from work to home and the distances they also travel in class. Here's a girl who's working at the high end, Saks Fifth Avenue, and driving to her collegiate apartment with a futon.

Q: Does that reflect the dichotomy of living in LA, where average people are constantly bumping into the rich and famous?

A: A movie set is the most democratic place on Earth, because there are millionaires working with caterers and everybody has a weird kind of power there and everybody's very friendly, and that's kind of like LA. It's kind of like a big movie set, that everybody's mingling with everybody else.

Q: Why didn't you direct Shopgirl?

A: I wanted someone (Anand Tucker) with more experience than me, someone who can really bring their art to it. I don't know how people do it. Write, direct and act and produce. I wouldn't know how to do that.

Q: Do you still enjoy doing schtick?

A: Oh, absolutely. I've got Pink Panther in the can, I'm very excited about it. All schtick, and verbal comedy, and we have broad things. We really loved making that movie.

Q: Was it daunting to take on the Peter Sellers role of Inspector Clouseau?

A: It's daunting for a minute, meaning a metaphor for a minute, and then you get over it and you do the movie. The way I look at it is, "Hey, I'm funny, too.’ "

Q: What's the biggest hurdle for comedians trying to break into dramatic films?

A: When you're doing a comedy, you know how far you're supposed to go. I think the tendency for a comedian in a drama is to go way too serious, and I sort of had to learn that. I think I started to learn it around Parenthood time, where you're a real guy but you're being funny. Like Father of the Bride, you're a real guy, but you're being funny and find that instinct for the right balance.

Q: Are you concerned that, as a comedian in a drama, you won't meet the audience's expectations?

A: What'll happen a lot of times, I did this movie Leap of Faith, which is a dramatic film, and then they (marketers) become cowardly at the last second and they give it a comic poster — and that, I've found, is the worst thing for the audience, because I always tell them: The people that you're trying to fool are going to smell a rat and not go, and the people who want to see a dramatic film aren't going to go because it looks like a comedy. So it's always a disaster.

Q: When a movie isn't well received, like, say a Sgt. Bilko, does it hurt?

A: Yeah. You feel like you made a big mistake and you've learned for the next time. No matter what level the movie is, whether it's a commercial comedy or an intensely personal film, your ego's in it somehow. I mean you did give birth. It's not nine months, but it's three or four months, and you're kind of linked to it. But as time goes on, you realize it's not the end of the world, either.

Q: How do you judge a film?

A: You don't know if a movie is any good for five years. Then you know if it's lasting and people are still looking at it. Like right now, I'm just starting to get strong feedback on Bowfinger (1999). I thought it was going to make a big splash, and it did about $68.million in a time when movies were doing, 80, 90, 100 (million)."

Q: Eddie Murphy gave a terrific performance in those dual roles.

A: He deserved an Oscar. He was great. I really felt bad that he didn't get nominated for an Oscar because I thought, "Nobody else up there can do that."

Q: What's the most fun you've ever had on a movie?

A: It was Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. We were in the south of France for three months, it didn't get dark until 10 p.m. We'd wrap at 7, have a nice dinner with Michael Caine and Glenne Headly and Frank Oz. Staying in a house on the bay, walk by the nude beach to get to the outdoor restaurant. It was just great.

Q: What are your goals right now?

A: My goal right now is very short-term. Through accidents of nature, I have three movies coming out in about four months. I have a lot of promotion to do, and a lot of gear shifting to do, so I'm really looking forward to getting these movies out and then seeing what I want to do, which I think is just sit still for a while and maybe write something.

from KMT
- posted by sookeyjane 10/22/2005 05:21:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Good Review 2


http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=2775&IssueNum=124
Los Angeles City Beat
Latest Reviews
10-20-05

****
Shopgirl

Like so many before her, Mirabelle Buttersfield (Claire Danes) came to Los Angeles a small-town girl with big-city dreams, only to wind up just another lonely cog in the machine – selling gloves from an isolated corner counter at Beverly Hills’ Saks Fifth Avenue. Then, suddenly, fate throws her an unexpected curve – not one, but two suitors, who could not be more different: Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman), a lovably eccentric slacker, and Ray (Steve Martin), a charming and very wealthy middle-aged logician. But traditional Hollywood love triangulation this is not, for Mirabelle’s emotional odyssey is less about the awkward mechanics of romance than the ways in which human beings fall prey to the emotional arrhythmia of an immense, disconnected urban jungle.

For well over a decade now, Steve Martin has been increasingly exploring his inner poet, all but shedding any remaining vestiges of the erstwhile wild and crazy guy. But with this magical, poignant gem, he verges on the Chaplinesque – that rare nexus where tears and laughter intersect. It’s not perfect – adapting from his own acclaimed novella, Martin sometimes seems to be cutting corners to make the one form fit into the other – but, under the sensitive, artful direction of Anand Tucker (Hilary and Jackie), Martin’s penetrating observations on the agony and ecstasy of life, love, and broken dreams coalesce into a triumphant, heartfelt whole. (Wade Major) (Pacific ArcLight, Laemmle’s Monica)

****

umm... thanks
- posted by sookeyjane 10/20/2005 11:10:00 AM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Pictures of Steve at the Tina Brown Shopgirl Party


See Steve in a Green Velvet Suit!

Go to the left of the page and click on the image gallery.

umm... does good work
- posted by sookeyjane 10/20/2005 11:05:00 AM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Very interesting Danes/Steve interview


http://filmforce.ign.com/articles/659/659752p1.html
IGN » Entertainment » FilmForce » Features
Interview: Steve Martin and Claire Danes
Shopgirl writer/star and his shopgirl.
by Jeff Otto
October 19, 2005

Based on Steve Martin's novel of the same title, Shopgirl stars Claire Danes as the titular character, Mirabelle, and Martin as the older man she embarks on a sexual affair with, Ray. Jason Schwartzman is the quirky Jeremy, who is closer to Mirabelle in age and interesting to say the least, but a bit to strange to capture Mirabelle's attention fully. The story follows the empty life of Mirabelle as she desperately searches for happiness in a lonely Los Angeles. Shopgirl is directed by Anand Tucker (Hilary and Jackie) from a script and story by Martin.

IGN FilmForce got to talk to a paired Martin and Danes at a Shopgirl press day held at Toronto's Four Seasons during last month's Film Festival.

Q: Can you comment on the idea of romantic love versus simply finding a compatible partner?

MARTIN: Well, I know people who work both ways... The question is, how many lovers do you have before you settle in? [he pauses] Four? (Laughs) One night we were going around the table and [the conversation], it was not about romantic love, it was about sex. But someone [at] the table suggested we share how many lovers we've had. And it came to one girl and she said four. And then another, I should say woman, said six and then another said fifty. (Danes laughs) And she said, I was in college and we were just, you know? So it's everybody's story, whether it's one, two, three, ten, twenty or Magic Johnson. This story is about one of those episodes that gets a little out of control. I was re-reading the book, because I had to read something from it, I'd forgotten half of it. And it says that Ray was about to enter into an addiction that he couldn't break, meaning sex with Mirabelle, because he found something in her that was beautiful. So this is a slice of somebody's life. It's some of us, none of us and all of us.

Q: Why is Ray's backstory so vague?

MARTIN: I cringe at backstory. Because it never quite explains or gets into some psychological thing that is never quite right and never quite the truth and who knows why someone is someway. You just can't say (mocking tone) 'And Ray's dad never loved him.' It doesn't explain it. And yet we all know there are people like that. We meet them and deal with them and are them. And it's never quite explained. You never say, 'How come that person exists?'

Q: Can you talk about adapting the narration using the sparse voice over?

MARTIN: Well, I secretly wanted to (include all the narration) but I also know how things work. You can't do that… I did want some of that language in the movie because it creates a tone. That's why it's there. I don't want to be redundant, but if you notice, all of those voice-overs are placed not as exposition but as almost like musical moments. It's always at the end of a scene, over silence, over a static shot or at least a very still shot. When you got action going on, voice going on, music going on, its all lost. You really have to go, 'Listen!'

DANES: Yeah, I think the voice over actually enhances the various moments instead of compensating for something that's lacking. Voice over can be tricky. It can be dangerous because its over-used or inapropietly used. I think in this case it informs the story.

Q: How much did you work on the physicality of Mirabelle?

DANES: Yeah, all of that was intentional, actually. I can say that and mean it this time (laughs) Anand was very careful to plot those moments. In the beginning he really wanted to emphasize my stillness. Which was scary because you know, its hard to trust that that's going to be enough – that the audience is going to remain engaged with her when she seems to be giving very little. I always want to tap dance (mocking) in some way, in some way. But I think it was important to show that she starts to find joy and that's physically articulated at some point.

Q: Why is it hard for Hollywood to make truthful love stories?

MARTIN: It's a very, very good question, but it all goes back to the 'meet cute.' I always feel that there's the person with the inspiration and then there's the person who's going, no, no. This other movie had this and we got to have this. Then it starts getting wrenched out its own heart. Our movie didn't get wrenched. Because basically the book is about small moments and the movie is about small moments, which are obviously the biggest [in life].

DANES: It just seems like the most successful, iconic love stories are not so easy or escapist. I think the ones that stay with us and resonate are full of conflict, discord and misunderstandings 'cause that's what makes drama happens or tension even if it's a comedy. I think people who make movies and have invested a lot of money in them, get frightened that if they challenge an audience they are going to repel them. And I think the opposite, it's really true. It takes confidence and courage to know that and then commit to it.

Q: Have you had a Ray in your life?

DANES: I've never met anyone like him. Did I ever encounter this sort of relationship? Personally no, but its easy to extrapolate. Its my job to find the cornel of truth and then exaggerate, exaggerate, exaggerate until its of an appropiate scale. Again, I said this earlier, but it's well-written so its easily relatable. I mean for everybody. These are not alien creatures. I think these are pretty common [characters] and ironically that's what makes them striking. This story is pretty ordinary.

Q: Steve, how work out the relationship with the director?

MARTIN: We just did. He's a very gentle guy and he understood the script and the movie. There was never a contention when we were shooting, so it was fine.

Q: Did you ever consider directing?

MARTIN: No, not really.

Q: You've gone from broader comedies to smaller personal films?

MARTIN: You're implying that the choice is some kind of choice or that it's deliberate. It's not. It's what comes along, it's where your head is. Is the project ready to go? Do I like it? Who's in it? It's a million different things. There is no starboard where there is someone deciding or a star chamber where we go to figure out the next move. I'm sure that works in certain cases but it doesn't work for me.

Q: How do you approach your writing and how do you decide which stories work better as a novel rather than a script?

MARTIN: Well, if you have an idea it usually comes in a framework in your brain. You know if it's sentence oriented or if it's visual.

Q: Did you expect to play Ray Porter once it was being adapted?

MARTIN: I suspected it. Actually, the first person I asked was Tom Hanks because I thought he was the perfect guy to play it.

Q: How much of the story is autobiographical?

MARTIN: The question implies how much of Mirabelle is autobiographical because I wrote her too. So you know what the say, everything is culled from every source. My own life, other lifes. I'm sixty and I've had sex since I was 18, you know. There's been a lot of stuff going on.

Q: Have you had sex every week?

MARTIN: No, not every week. There's been long dry spells. But the story is from a lot of experience, whether its my own or from conversations and that's where it all comes from. I subsequently wrote a book about a guy who was neurotic in some way and it doesn't apply to me at all but I can imagine it.

Q: Do you find more satisfaction from the films you help create than the ones you're hired for?

MARTIN: I would say the three stages of making a film are the initial 'Are we gonna do this? How much will I be paid? Where is it going to be? Is there a lot of nights ? Who's it going to be with?' The second stage of doing a film is how much fun your going to have doing it. The other things are 'By the way, there are these great comic scenes, they're fun to play, blah, blah blah, blah' The third stage is, 'Was the film a hit?' Whether I'm involved in creating something or [just acting]… A personal issue like, do I respect it, comes later. But you can only know that five or ten years later…

Q: Claire, talk about the general reaction to the getting the part of Mirabelle?

DANES: Well I was thrilled when the opportunity arose. I had read the book and was really affected by it. I know a lot of people who were, so I'm not very special by having been moved by it. But I was. And I couldn't have been in more exquisite company (for this movie) I loved Hilary and Jackie, so I felt confident that Anand would render the story with subtlety and depth and smarts. And Steve has really been a hero of mine forever. So anyway, it was a total joy. I felt capable of playing her. Sometimes I am more nervous than others about inhabiting a character. Sometimes they seem a little more inaccessible , but this one was there. I think it was because she was so well-written and also because I draw too. It wasn't very effortful. I mean it was an intense experience and I had to remain focused to be able to do it. But it was pretty easy (playing her). All the signifiers were in place, I just had to be open and receptive and something good was going to happen.

Q: Why was Claire the perfect Mirabelle for you, Steve?

MARTIN: Well we had lunch and Claire didn't even have to speak before we knew she was exactly right for her because she's naturally beautiful as opposed to unnaturally beautiful in Hollywood. I always think in twenty years, where are the old actors going to come from, because they're all going to look like this (pull the skin on his face back). There isn't going to be anyone to play 80. Or you're doing a period film and there's people with fake breasts.

DANES: These are fake. (Laughs)

MARTIN: Claire just fit in her simplicity into this role. There is a quiet solitude to her performance, which we've seen before. But she could also play a glamour girl. It she had to be a buxom dancer she could.

DANES: Chicken cutlets.

MARTIN: But she's quite stunning in this movie. I was always amazed. How does she know that emotion?

Q: How was it doing the romantic scenes with the guy who wrote the romance?

DANES: Steve was incredibly generous. Immediately he made it very clear that if Jason and I needed to rework a scene we had license to. He was great that way. I never felt confined or pressured to do something because it was not intuitive. I never had to do that, because the material was incredibly fertile. Also, I'm kind of methodical, so once I commit to something I'd rather just do it than change it. So that was good, it made me feel more relaxed. It became our story and Steve made that possible. He shared it. He's been doing this for a long time. Anybody who knows how to make a good movie, knows that it's a collaborative undertaking. To deny that its really dangerous. I was very impressed by that, cause he could have been possessive or territorial or stingy. He was the antithesis of that.


um... does it again.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/20/2005 10:50:00 AM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

This one liked it


http://www.excal.on.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=981&Itemid=2
Excalibur Online
Shopping for love in L.A.
Written by Colleen Hale-Hodgson - Assistant Arts Editor
Wednesday, 19 October 2005

Steve Martin creates an insightful story about love and life

Title of movie: Shopgirl
Directed by: Anand Tucker
Starring: Steve Martin, Claire Danes, Schwartzman
Excalibur rating: ****

When Steve Martin isn't wasting his time with poorly produced comedic drivel (Cheaper By the Dozen, Cheaper By the Dozen 2), he's writing surprisingly mature and thoughtful relationship dramas. Shopgirl, originally a novella penned by Martin, appears to be the 60-year-old actor's ticket to a kind of artistic respectability as yet unseen in his extensive career.

Heralded as a love story for adults, Shopgirl follows Mirabelle (Claire Danes), an aspiring young artist who makes ends meet by working at the unpopular glove station in Saks Fifth Avenue. The story explores the two relationships Mirabelle starts, mostly focussing on the one involving Ray Porter (Martin), a much older, richer and emotionally unavailable man than her other admirer, Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman), who's simply romantically inept.

Shopgirl is not your typical "romantic comedy". First of all, the comedic aspects of the film also reveal strikingly insightful life truths. For example, the first time Jeremy and Mirabelle sleep together is awkward and unsatisfying, hardly a movie-like start to a relationship, but sadly common in real life.

Secondly, the obstacles these lovers face within their relationships are far more complicated than the overly constructed love stories in your typical Jennifer Lopez movie. And the ending is certainly no "happily-ever-after".

Danes' vulnerable portrayal of the poor and naïve Mirabelle is garnering some whispers of Oscar glory, but the real standout character is the comedic relief, Jeremy. Schwartzman has proven himself several times over as an indie film star, but he truly shows his metal while playing the painfully hopeless Jeremy.

Martin was perfectly cast as the smooth, yet somewhat creepy, Ray Porter. He plays it so finely that while the audience hates what he's doing to Mirabelle, they still can't hate him.

A fourth lead character can be said to be L.A., the city in which the story takes place. Martin is known for having L.A. as a character in his screenplays, and Shopgirl is no different. The city permeates through every scene, and it allows the emotions of loneliness and isolation to appear strikingly onscreen.

Shopgirl seemed destined for the silver screen. Martin's novella reads much more like a screenplay than it does as a narrative. He prefers to tell the reader what Ray Porter is thinking rather than show them, which is why the story works so much better as a movie. In the novella, the characters aren't as fleshed out as they are in the movie; they're somewhat stale and kept at a distance - almost as if Martin was afraid to let his readers get too close to them.

Anand Tucker, a fairly new director from the U.K., fixes this problem with ease. Utilizing the character- revealing details hinted at in the novella, Tucker skilfully constructs the subtle scenes in which he allows the actors to fully inhibit their characters.

Already drawing comparisons to the other older-man/younger-woman flick, Lost In Translation (which coincidentally also features another Saturday Night Live favourite, Bill Murray), Shopgirl will likely have the same sort of underground popularity that the former movie has. Not everyone will see it, but those who do won't regret it.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/20/2005 10:48:00 AM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

A not so good review


http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9745498
'Shopgirl' Lacks Light Touch
REVIEW
By John Hartl
Film critic
MSNBC
Updated: 2:13 p.m. ET Oct. 19, 2005

Based on Steve Martin’s 2000 novella, “Shopgirl” is a curiously clueless mess: a would-be romantic comedy from which only Jason Schwartzman emerges unscathed.

Handed his best role since “Rushmore,” Schwartzman is the sprite who keeps the movie from being overwhelmed by its own arty tendencies. Whenever he’s not around, “Shopgirl” loses most of its energy and all of its charm. As Jeremy, a nearly penniless Los Angeles artist who grows up in a hurry when he takes a road trip with a rock band, Schwartzman dominates the first half hour with his nervy, try-anything presence.

Whether he’s picking up a girl at a laundromat, or taking her on a cheap date to examine the neon marquees in a mall, or adopting a dubious philosophy by listening to self-help books on tape, he comes close to being the whole show. Alas, once Jeremy is on the road, he’s also out of sight, and the role turns out to be supporting.

“Shopgirl” was written and co-produced by Martin, who also plays the central male role: Ray, a distant millionaire who falls for an insecure young photographer, Mirabelle (Claire Danes), whose daytime job is selling gloves and accessories at the Beverly Hills branch of Saks Fifth Avenue.

Ray is very big with the gifts, buying pricey clothes for Mirabelle and even paying off her substantial student loan, but his generosity, which he admits is easy for him, doesn’t lead to true intimacy. He isn’t comfortable getting close to people, though Mirabelle thinks she can help him.

Complicating their relationship is Jeremy, who dated Mirabelle first and clearly offers her more of a future than the fickle, easily distracted Ray can. It takes the movie 106 minutes to arrive at the same conclusion that most moviegoers will have reached much earlier: Ray is a creep, and Jeremy is a hoot.

It can’t be easy for someone like Martin to take on a role like this. He tries to locate hints of humanity inside Ray; he makes a valiant attempt to express a soul behind the vacancy. But the character resists all attempts to make him likable, especially when the script resorts to a moralistic, voice-of-God narration to underline Roy’s soullessness.

Mirabelle’s character was inspired by Allyson Hollingsworth, whose drawings and photographs are used in the film. She’s also listed in the credits as a consultant, yet “Shopgirl” reveals very little about what kind of work she does or what inspires her. Although Danes does her best to give the character an edge, this ordinarily excellent actress is stranded with almost nothing to play.

The director, Anand Tucker, drew Oscar-nominated performances from Emily Watson and Rachel Griffiths in “Hilary and Jackie” (1998), but he seems uneasy with the demands of romantic comedy. Most of the non-Schwartzman episodes have a heavy, self-conscious quality, underlined not only by Martin’s deliberately inert performance but by a score that suggests Samuel Barber’s deadly serious “Adagio for Strings.” To put it mildly, Tucker does not demonstrate anything remotely resembling a light touch.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/20/2005 10:37:00 AM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Tina Brown throws party for Shopgirl


http://www.nydailynews.com/news/gossip/story/357144p-304357c.html
New York Daily News
Daily Dish
Lowdown
Lloyd Grove
October 19, 2005

****

The briefing

'SHOPGIRL' SHINDIG: That was quite an all-star party that Tina Brown and Sir Harold Evans threw at their E. 57th St. manse Monday night for the cast of "Shopgirl" - namely Steve Martin, Claire Danes and Jason Schwartzman. While the dazzling Danes held court at her table, Schwartzman and Martin dutifully worked the crowd. "I'm schmoozing!" Martin announced as he dropped by one table after another. Responding to Brown's toast of welcome, the white-maned comic-actor-writer initially stood up, raised his glass, gazed searchingly around the room and then wordlessly resumed his seat - getting a big laugh from the likes of Regis and Joy Philbin, Phil Donahue and Marlo Thomas, Phyllis George, designers Zac Posen and Narciso Rodriguez, and CNN president Jonathan Klein and his MSNBC counterpart Rick Kaplan. I found myself sitting with the magnificent Lillian Ross, the legendary New Yorker writer, who subjected me to a withering interrogation. "Why," Ross demanded, "do you write a gossip column?" Hmmmm. To pay the rent?


Thanks to KMT
- posted by sookeyjane 10/20/2005 10:32:00 AM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Danes on Steve Sex


http://www.imdb.com/news/wenn/2005-10-19/#celeb7
IMDB News
WENN
19 October 2005

****

Danes Worried About Martin Romp
Claire Danes initially found it hard to disrobe and shoot a raunchy sex scene with older co-star Steve Martin in new movie Shopgirl, before realizing her awkwardness was perfect for the film. The 26-year-old admits she was nervous when faced with the prospect of romping with 60-year-old Martin. She tells the New York Daily News, "The age difference seemed a little awkward, but the movie is about that. I didn't want to be coy about their relationship. It ultimately evolved into something more complex, but initially he wanted to have sex with her, and she wanted to have sex with him."
- posted by sookeyjane 10/19/2005 12:59:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Recent article from W magazine


r.l. brings this to you
W Magazine
October 2005
All of Him
By Marshall Heyman

Aesthete, intellectual and slapstick star, Steve Martin is a man of many facets.

“Hit, miss, hit, miss, bad review, good review, you’re in, you’re out, you’re up, you’re down.”

This is Steve Martin’s quick run-though of his nearly four-decade-long career as a comedian, writer, movie star and banjo player. Sipping a glass of iced tea at Isabella’s, a crowded brunch spot not far from his Manhattan apartment on the Upper West Side, Martin looks ageless, and his attire—khakis, baseball cup, button-down—seems designed to blend in with the crowd. Were it not for the pair of bright yellow socks on his feet, you’d forget he has a comic streak.

One thing that can be said about Martin is that he’s still, as they say, here. His costars in any number of Eighties comedies, such as Chevy Chase and Rick Moranis, either by choice or bad luck, haven’t had quite the same stamina. Meanwhile Martin, who turned 60 in August, constantly finds new ways to spin his creative energy into gold. This is not to say that he hasn’t had his share of bombs, Mixed Nuts (1994) and Sgt. Bilko (1995) among them.

But the past several years have been good to him. There have been huge box-office smashes. Bringing Down the House in 2003, a comedy of errors costarring Queen Latifah, and that same year’s remake of Cheaper by the Dozen together brought in nearly $300 million. He’s also published countless humor pieces in The New Yorker, strengthening his fan base among the intelligentsia. And his two best-selling novellas have secured his place in literary circles: 2000’s Shopgirl, a lyrical “tone poem,” as Martin likes to call it, about a love triangle between a rich older gentleman, a saleswoman and a slacker; and 2003’s The Pleasure of My Company, a more slapstick work of fiction about an obsessive-compulsive agoraphobe.

He is the first to say that, at the moment, “my career is a real delight.”

Martin is on a break from filming Cheaper by the Dozen 2, which will be released in December, two months after the film version of Shopgirl. February will see a prequel to The Pink Panther, in which he stars as Inspector Clouseau, opposite Kevin Kline and Beyonce Knowles. (Martin compares stepping into the role made famous by Peter Sellers to playing Hamlet.) In Shopgirl, which he adapted himself, he plays Ray Porter, a wealthy but aloof older businessman with a fear of commitment and intimacy, who strings along Mirabelle Butterfield (Claire Danes), a glove saleswoman at Saks.

Reading Shopgirl, one can’t help but imagine that the uncommunicative Ray Porter has to be a version of Martin himself, who, since divorcing the British actress Victoria Tennant in 1994 after eight years of marriage, has had a series of relationships with younger, well-known women, including Anne Heche, Helena Bonham Carter and the artist Cindy Sherman. He was also recently linked to a former fact-checker at The New Yorker. To watch Martin play this character onscreen makes the autobiographical angle even more apparent.

“Steve is revealing a part of himself in Shopgirl that he could have kept concealed,” says Danes. “He exposes vulnerability and a certain unattractiveness—which I think is very brave—playing a guy who’s a little self-deluding and not entirely sure about forging true intimacy with a partner.”

“You’re right, it’s a little weird, playing the scenes you wrote and in some moments lived,” Martin finally admits, after the question of his taking the role arises a few times. “When you’re in a scene where you tell someone you don’t love them, you know it’s not real, but you also get a clammy feeling.”

Still, the possibility of not starring in the film felt even stranger: “I thought, If I’m going to sit there on the sidelines as the screenwriter, the next thing they’ll be looking for is a 50-year-old guy to ply the role, and somebody else takes the glory.”

Coming from a man who made “King Tut” a hit single and wore a monstrous prosthetic nose in Roxanne, what’s even more surprising about Shopgirl is just how elegiac and sad it is. Watching the bittersweet plot enacted--three lonely, depressed characters in their quest for love in Los Angeles—makes you realize how different it is from 1991’s L.A. Story, the film’s closest companion in the canon of Steve Martin. In that satire about Hollywood life, traffic signs offer fortune-cookie advice on relationships, and a romantic escapade involves roller-skating through the Los Angeles Museum of Art.

“Shopgirl is the dark side of L.A. Story,” explains Anand Tucker, the director of Shopgirl. (Martin isn’t willing to make the same observation.) “It’d probably be a great double bill to figure out what’s happened to Steve the artist over those years. I think he’s deepened, he’s more reflexive, he’s got an ability to look out of the eyes of people. That takes some wisdom, and you have to have your heart broken a few times. The man I met was clearly a man who has battled his own demons and come to peace with himself.”

Martin, who splits his time between residences on both coasts, won’t cop to battling any demons, or any mixed sentiments about Los Angeles, for that matter. He says he originally considered setting Shopgirl in Manhattan. “I was going o call it Bergdorf’s Girl, but I thought I was a little on unsafe ground here,” he says. “I know L.A. really well.” Just like that he goes into a list of all the things he appreciates about the city: “your backyard, ad dining outside in your backyard, and having your dog run in your backyard and hearing him spontaneously get himself in the pool.” A regular day for Martin in L.A. might include a hike or yoga in the morning, lunch out, a little bit of writing and then dinner. “I don’t work very hard at all,” he goes on, “I’d like to be working a little bit more, actually.”

Danes, a New Yorker, recalls having to tell Martin she had no interest in moving to sunny California. “He was sort of incredulous,” she says. But the actress doesn’t see Martin as your typical Angeleno. (Born in Waco Texas, he moved to Garden Grove, California, near Disneyland, with his family when he was 10.) “He doesn’t seem to have the cliché values that other people in Los Angeles do. He likes fancy ideas and fancy art.”

Martin started buying paintings at age 21, but was burned by his first purchase: a piece that was said to be by John Everett Millais. “Fake, absolutely fake,” Martin remembers. His collection now includes Ken Noland and Cy Twombly. As with most details of his personal life, Martin insists his love of art is nothing special. He wouldn’t call chasing artwork as “shopping.” “I just occasionally buy a painting,” he says, shrugging.

Despite Martin’s reluctance to label himself as art aficionado, the company he keeps suggests otherwise. He counts gallerist Larry Gagosian and the painters Eric Fischl and April Gornik among his friends. Though he buys some of their pieces, there’s never any pressure. “I don’t expect them to see my movies, and I don’t think they expect me to buy,” Martin explains. “That would kill a relationship.”

That said, It’s hard to imagine a serious artist lining up for tickets to Cheaper by the Dozen 2. There’s something incongruous about Martin’s sense of aesthetics and aspects of his commercial film career—though he doesn’t see it that way. “It doesn’t surprise me,” he says. “I’m just me.” He did turn down Cheaper by the Dozen before recognizing that each time he read the script, he’d cry a bit. Besides that, he says, “it’s great to have hits, no doubt about it.”

Still, falling back on physical comedy, not to mention making sappy family films, is what keeps Martin in business. For someone whose misanthropy is legendary, this is where the joyful persona really seems to come out. “Once you’re doing it, you forget about all the aches and pains,” he says of the especially grueling stunt work in The Pink Panther, where he gets to run, leap and “fall from the ceiling.”

He sets the scene for an active set piece on Cheaper by the Dozen 2: “The day before yesterday, we were shooting on the lake and I’m kneeboarding. The kids inadvertently send me over a ramp, so I’m flying through the air, I land in the water, and then I’m being dragged by a rope. And I’m thinking, here I am, almost 60, being dragged in a lake and it’s kind of fun. Oh my God, it’s great.”
- posted by sookeyjane 10/19/2005 11:47:00 AM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 



umm... found this for you:

http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/artslife/story.html?id=
f7dba700-715d-4c4d-9a74-6aacaf3f3bb7

canada.com Entertainment
A mild and savvy guy
With three family-friendly films out over the next few months, Steve Martin reveals he's nothing if not an excellent salesman

Bob Thompson
National Post

Appearing in films over the next few months are the three faces of Steve Martin: the zany-goofy guy, the stressed-dad dude and the sulky-solitary male. The triple-personality threat shows itself like this.

Martin is remaking the classic Pink Panther farce by reinventing the bumbling Inspector Clouseau, made famous by Peter Sellers. That would be his goofy fellow, who's due in theatres by mid-February. His uptight father figure is resurrected for the comedy sequel Cheaper by the Dozen 2, set for release at Christmas.

And to experience the serious-minded Martin, look no further than Shopgirl, the cinema version of his novella, which opens on Friday with all kinds of anticipation. Why?

Claire Danes, who plays the title character, may earn her first Oscar nomination for her role as a lonely and desperate department-store employee. And Martin, who also wrote the screenplay, is earning great notices for his portrayal of the repressed millionaire exploiting the shopgirl's disposition.

That one-two-three Martin combination is a splendid reminder of how multi-talented the 60-year-old is and how sharp he must be as a marketer. "Well," says Martin, almost smiling, "you're implying I have choices, or that this is something that's deliberate on my part, when it is not like that at all."

So what is it like? Coincidence colliding with opportunity, he suggests. More important to Martin is that the three release dates seem to make sense for each film.

More critically is that the story he envisioned in Shopgirl has made it to the big screen. Martin made sure the movie's tone received extra care and attention. Only a few compromises were made in his screenplay.

One was the use of voice-over to emphasize the narrative points, although he initially tried to resist. "And I cringe at backstory in films, too," Martin says. "Because backstory and voice-overs never quite do it correctly, or then sometimes they get into some psychological thing that's never quite right and never quite the truth."

Shopgirl, he feels, is the exception. Martin salutes director Anand Tucker, who previously revealed his abilities with 1998's Hilary and Jackie.

"Anand understands," says the Shopgirl writer, "that the book is about small moments, and the movie is about small moments, which are obviously the biggest treats for me."

Also key was Mirabelle, the shopgirl. And the way Martin tells it, there was no other option after he met with Danes.

"We had lunch, and Claire didn't even have to speak," he recalls. "She was exactly right for it, for all kinds of reasons, but especially because she is naturally beautiful as opposed to unnaturally beautiful in the Hollywood way."

She also has a knack for being expressive without saying much, a valuable commodity in a movie that refuses to state the obvious. "There is just a real quiet solitude about her performance and about her," Martin says. "Her simplicity is stunning, but how can she trust that emotion is showing through?"

She does and it does. And Martin's aloof Ray Porter is a marvel, too. "I always suspected I might play him if the book did become a film," he says. "But the first person I asked was Tom Hanks, because I think he would have been perfect, but he wasn't available."

Martin was, and since he wrote this mini-profile of a self-centred man in emotional denial, he must have known him well. In fact, he must have known him in an autobiographical way.

"Your argument, that it must be autobiographical, applies to the shopgirl, too, I take it," says Martin, smirking. "Everything's culled from every source -- my own life, other life experiences and conversations. And I'm 60, and I've had sex and relationships since I was 18."

Lots of life lessons, then, learned or imagined. He shakes his head, "Yes."

So if Martin had to choose one of his three movies to do well at the box office, would it be Shopgirl? Not necessarily. This is how he explains himself.

"I would say there are three stages of making a film," says Martin.

"The initial phase is, "Am I going to do this? How much will I be paid? Where are they going to do it? Who's it going to be with? And are there knives involved?' "

The second stage is the shoot "and how much fun you're having, and the fabulous scenes that are great to play and blah, blah blah."

And the third stage? "Was it a hit?" Martin says. "What I'm saying is whether I'm involved in creating the film or not, it all comes down to the same thing, the most immediate thing. How is it received?"

And how does he think Shopgirl will be received? Like his character, he doesn't commit.

"Sometimes, it's a happy accident," says Martin, shrugging. "Sometimes, it's not."
- posted by sookeyjane 10/19/2005 11:34:00 AM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 



KMT is busy:

San Francisco Examiner
http://www.sfexaminer.com/articles/2005/10/18/columnists/scoop/20051018_co01_scoop.txt
Steve Martin’s ‘Shop’ talk
Scoop!
Monday, October 17, 2005 8:30 PM PDT

Making the rounds on the publicity circuit to promote his new movie, “Shopgirl,” based on the book he wrote by the same name, it’s Steve Martin’s job to answer questions — but there is one thing he’s keeping to himself. Since “Shopgirl” hit bookshelves a few years ago, critics have mulled the idea that the male lead is based on Martin himself — a character Martin reprises in the film opening Oct. 28. Speaking to the New York Daily News, however, Martin gives no easy answers. “There’s no way to answer the question of how much is autobiographical. I mean, who knows? Maybe a little bit of it is me,” Martin says. “But there’s a little bit of me in ‘Father of the Bride,’ too.”
- posted by sookeyjane 10/18/2005 05:30:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Shopgirl interview with Claire and Steve


thanks to umm...

http://comingsoon.net/news/topnews.php?id=11544
Shoptalk with Steve Martin & Claire Danes
Edward Douglas
October 14, 2005

Ever since the '70s, Steve Martin has earned his reputation as a "wild and crazy guy" with his hilarious slapstick comedy, but after hitting the big 6-0 a few months back, the comic actor has been a bit more reflective and introspective on his life.

Nearly 25 years his junior, actress Claire Danes has been doing some soul-searching of her own. Having started her career as a teen over ten years ago, she's now clearly made the leap to more adult roles, and the two have been brought together by Shopgirl, a film based on Martin's own 2000 novella, which Martin adapted for the big screen.

In the film, Danes plays Mirabelle Buttersfield, a lonely salesgirl in the glove department at Saks in Los Angeles, who suddenly finds herself being chased by two very different men: a sophistical older gentleman, played by Martin, and a young clueless romantic, played by Jason Schwartzman. It's a far more poignant work than what we usually might expect from Martin, and it's particularly surprising that he's not providing the film's comedic element.

Martin and Danes were in Toronto premiering their film last month, so ComingSoon.net used the chance to catch up with them. (Danes showed up a few questions into the interview.)

CS: How was this experience different from making "L.A. Story"?

Steve Martin: Well, "L.A. Story" is a very different kind of film in that the city of L.A. in "L.A. Story" is a character. It's still a character in this movie but in a less specific way than "L.A. Story." In "L.A. Story," it's mystical, magical. It speaks, and it talks. Here, it's a strange thing. It's a mood. I think of those vast shots of Mirabelle's apartment where she's got a $600 a month apartment yet an entire view of the city, which often happens in LA. (Note: that was sarcasm)

CS: We have to assume that you enjoy setting your movies in L.A.

Martin: Oh yeah, I've lived there my whole life. Well, having written the book, I would have to say yes. But I'm not sure what that means. They're all personal. They all have your heart in them.

CS: Is the movie at all autobiographical? Is Ray Porter supposed to be you?

Martin: No. Like anything, a little bit, some of this, some of that. Some of it's just about men. Some of it's talking to men.

CS: When did you realize you wouldn't be playing the comedic role?

Martin: Well, I couldn't have. I'm the wrong age first of all. I always knew what the movie was. I always knew what the role was so there were no surprises to me. In my head, I know everything I've done. In my head, I'm going well, I've done a lot of dramatic work. Even in comedies, I've done dramatic work. But I know that in other people's head who don't know everything I've done, they see it maybe a little differently. But at this point, I go so what? The movie is a movie and the movie's touching and I think it works and it's effective. That's what I want. It's not about trying to fulfill some audience's dream. In this case it's about fulfilling your vision on film and book, etc.

CS: Since you had a long time to think about these characters since writing the novel, can you talk about the casting of Mirabelle?

Martin: Well, I knew it was a juicy part. That's what I felt. We wanted to make sure we got the right actress, because I felt we had a lot of choices, because actresses don't get a role that's meaty, juicy, and this emotional and sexy. It was a very short list before we got to Claire. We had lunch and we knew that it was she that we wanted. Even when we had financing and it fell apart, then we got other financing, none of the elements changed. Nobody said, "Well, this is an opportunity to get rid of so and so." No, we knew the team worked. It's so clear as you saw the movie that Claire is the exact right person to play the role. You can't imagine anyone else in it, so that's what we saw.

CS: What does Mirabelle see in these two very different men?

Claire Danes: Well, I mean, Jeremy's a mess but he's a charming one, and he's not offering enough when she initially meets him. He's not ready. That's crystal clear. But when she re-encounters him and sees the transformation that he's undergone, no matter how superficial, I think she trusts that he's moving in some way. And I think he really likes her and that's a pretty powerful aphrodisiac. If somebody likes me, I'm inclined to like them.

Martin: I just have to jump in, because I think that it's a very common experience to have a lousy date and still go out with them, because you're there. I think that Mirabelle, standing at that glove counter as someone comes up to her is subconsciously saying "What's going to happen?" When Ray Porter shows up, this is going to happen, and when Jeremy shows up, it's like this is going to happen. There's not like a million choices. It's like I have a friend of mine, when you ask us "What type of film do you want to do next?" as though we're offered every film and then we're going to pick one. No, they're filtered through, and that's the way it is with people. You're not going why? It's there. It's in front of me, not over the hill. That's one reason why we do these things, and get involved.

CS: And why are they interested in her?

Martin: There's a very simple answer. And I can't remember if it's still in the movie because it's a tiny little moment. Ray takes Mirabelle to a very fancy restaurant and the first thing the maitre d' says to Mirabelle is "Nice to see you again." Which is a mistake because she's never been to this restaurant. It's meant to imply Ray's been here with other women. But that's a minor thing because Ray's not a serial sexual guy. But in that scene, Mirabelle says, "Why me?" And
Ray looks up at the waiter and they have a moment. The waiter knows why and Ray knows why. He wants to sleep with her.

CS: Is this really a love triangle since the two sides of it never meet?

Danes: Oh, I never thought of that. They are in the same scene.

Martin: The thing about a triangle is they can't work out unless suddenly all three of them are happy living together.

Danes: Maybe that's the sequel.

CS: Was this intended as a story about intimacy or lack of it?

Martin: You know, that's an analysis after the fact. It certainly wasn't "I'm going to sit down and write a story about intimacy." No, you're writing a story about characters and then it might turn out that that's what it's about. All I know is that to me, this is a character study of a young woman, cloaked in drama and film. That's the way I see it and what happens to her and how she is affected, how she grows, which is also another corny word, and how she moves from one point of her life to another. In the movie, we don't get the backstory of Ray Porter, because there's no time. That's one thing, but you also don't need backstory for Ray Porter. You need backstory of Mirabelle, and we do, when we go back and we see her family that barely speaks, and we know why she wanted to get out of there, why she went to LA searching for a new life.

CS: Were you trying to say anything about the L.A. class system with this?

Martin: Oh, I wouldn't say that the subject is that large. It's really just about people living in LA in a Hollywood environment, in a rich environment, poor environment. The big difference about L.A. is that it's spread out, and yet, you can get from Beverly Hills to Silverlake in 20 minutes and it might be 15 miles. It seems like it's forever away but it's not. Sometimes driving in LA, it's 6pm as the sun is going down, suddenly you're elevated on a freeway, and there are these lights and mountains and sea. All you're doing is just driving, and you weren't expecting it. So you can be suddenly overwhelmed with this good feeling as the sun is setting.

CS: Anti-depressants played a large part of Mirabelle's character in the book. Were you trying to make a statement for or against them?

Martin: I don't have a negative view of it. Only in discussion with people who had taken them, I was told that one symptom is that you can be going along fine, going along fine, going along fine and then it just quits working. And you can have a big crash and the solution is to get a different one. And then you take that pill and then that brings you back but it takes a couple of weeks. That's what that episode is about.

Danes: Actually, she consciously decides to stop taking them. She's feeling overly confident about her own emotional stability.

Martin: That's another thing. Right, that is what's different in the movie and the book. In the movie, which is also a symptom I've heard, is that you feel so good, so you stop taking the pills. That leads to a big crash. And that's actually the difference between the book and the movie. In the book, that doesn't happen. It's just a letdown.

Danes: So physically, it's really dangerous to do that and if you're going to wean yourself off of them, you should do so cautiously and incrementally. To suddenly just drop it is really risky.

CS: Claire, you looked great in the movie. Can you talk about the fashionable transformation that your character goes through?

Danes: Well, thanks. Nancy Steiner designed the costumes and she's incredibly gifted. It was really exciting to collaborate with her because she's really capable and imaginative and empathetic and just kind of has great style. So we had a lot of conversations about how we would articulate her experience and her character through clothing. And she had a lot of great ideas. Steve keeps talking about how important detail is in this movie and in keeping with that, she was so specific in her choices, down to the little bird pins. [Mirabelle] could only afford those vintage clothes. I think she had actually a great aesthetic sense. I mean, she's an artist and has an inherent dignity. But she could afford very little, so I had this idea for wearing vintage clothes because you can find beautiful things.

Martin: Well, in the book and the movie, it's implied that Mirabelle does have a fashion sense, and it's just about price as the movie goes on. I know people like this who look great in their clothes. I know it's not expensive clothes. It's just putting something together in some way, and I always liked that about Mirabelle's character that she starts out looking kind of interesting on a budget.

CS: Would you consider this your version of a European art film?

Martin: Well, only by genre would it be European.

Danes: The director's European.

Martin: Yeah, right, that's true. But the American films aren't quite made like this. I mean, there are some. Certainly "Lost in Translation" is an American film and certainly this movie is in that genre, but I guess us older folks say it's kind of European. But basically, it's a really American film. It's about Americana.

CS: Why do you think Steve has such great insight into women?

Danes: Ooh. I don't know. It's really impressive that he's been able to draw this woman so convincingly and so compassionately. I guess he's known a few of them.

Martin: Well, for me, as I was writing the book, the hardest part to write was Ray Porter and it took me a while to figure out why.

Danes: Oh, that's interesting.

Martin: Because when I look at the opposite sex, I know what's interesting to me. I'm listening and I'm finding "Oh, that story's interesting. That aspect is interesting. That's interesting." So I can write about a woman and go… but when you're writing about a man, because I am one, I know the thoughts, I know the feelings but I don't know what's interesting. So it was really hard to pick and choose. What needs to be known? What is being one? And so that was the hardest part. But it's easy to be an observer and appreciator of the opposite sex.

Danes: It's really interesting because it actually relates to the previous question about this being a European movie or an American movie. Since Anand's European, I think he could actually create a vivid portrait of L.A. because it was a little alien to him. You know how some directors' connection really capture something simply that is not so familiar to them? I think of Ang Lee doing "Sense and Sensibility". Sometimes it takes an outsider to really get the scoop.

CS: Why did you change the store from Neiman's in the book to Saks in the movie?

Martin: That's very simple too. We could shoot in Saks and not in Neiman's. But they're equivalent, I think. I mean, aren't they?

CS: But you weren't tempted to make any Winona Ryder jokes?

Martin: Oh, no, no, no.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/16/2005 04:51:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Another review


http://www.emanuellevy.com/article.php?articleID=382
Emanuel Levy
ShopgirlC+

A romantic triangle of three misfits is at the center of Anand Tucker’s “Shopgirl,” based on Steve Martin’s short, minimalist novella, published in 2000. The woman in between is shopgirl Mirabelle (Claire Danes) and the two men she’s dating are a rich, older businessman (Martin) and a poor but charming slacker Jason Schwartzman).

Intermittently poignant, this bittersweet portrait of modern relationships follows the intertwined lives these trio who, though different in class and other matters, are looking for the same thing, meaningful connection. Overall, “Shopgirl” is a disappointing, and a bit dull, movie that’s likely to divide critics and viewers along love it or hate it.

Neither a conventional comedy, not a typical fairy-tale romance, the movie walks a fine line between the two genres, which might present a marketing problem when the film bows theatrically in October. Despite honorable intentions, this tender exploration of love in its messiest form suffers from a major problem: Whose story is it telling and from whose point of view. On the surface, since Mirabelle is the central, ordinary “femme fatale (I’ll explain later), you’re inclined to think that it’s her POV.

However, the film begins and ends with a third-person narration by Martin, which skews the story to his side, suggesting that Mirabelle is being looked at from the outside, through a male gaze, and an older one at that.

Consider, for instance, the voice-over that ends the film: “As Ray watches Mirabelle walk away, he feels a loss. How is it possible, he wonders, to miss a woman who he kept at a distance, so that when she was gone, he would not miss her? Only then does he realize how in wanting part of her but not all of her, he had hurt them both, and he cannot justify his actions except that, well, it was life.”

The effort to present a fairytale and a realistic modernist story is not entirely effective either. Some of the tale’s ambiguities and ironies are intentional, based on Martin’s knowledge of the text, first as the book’s writer, and then as its screenwriter, producer, and star. Others are not. Best-case scenario for this movie is to provide a fodder for thought about older men-younger women relationships, which until recently used to be the norm, onscreen and off. Late in their careers, Cooper, Gable, Bogart, and Grant dated women who were half their age.

Offscreen, we recall the scandals involve in Woody Allen courting (and later marrying) the daughter of his companion, Mia Farrow, the shock of Roman Polanski’s charges of raping a teenager, and then the news of his marriage to actress Emmanuelle Seigner, who’s two generations his junior. While these patterns still exist today, we are also witnessing the reverse trend, of older women dating younger men, hence the enormous publicity accorded to Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher’s “unusual” relationship.

As the story of an older man-younger woman, “Shopgirl” recalls the central couple in “Lost in Translation,” a better picture, in which the bond was between Bill Murray (a contemporary of Martin, and peer-alumni of SNL) and Scarlett Johnasson, though that bond was more platonic than carnal. On the plus side, Martin steers clear from the “Lolita” syndrome, as evident in Nabokov’s novel and its various film versions,

“Shopgirl” is an ambitious film that only partly fulfills its aim to provoke thinking about the confusion and miscommunication between men and women that characterize contemporary affairs. Occasionally, the story raises conversation-sparking questions about the different things we want from love, and how we often settle for what we need.

The tale begins when the paths of three disparate Los Angelenos unexpectedly collide. Mirabelle is an appealing but unspectacular woman who works in the unfrequented glove department at Saks Fifth Avenue. With plenty of time on her hands, she observes the customers, and her look naturally gravitates toward couples, both old and young, who seem to be happy together. The quiet, thwarted, yearning Mirabelle stands behind the dull glove case, anxious for the right customer to appear. She lives with no one but her cat to keep her company in a drab L.A. apartment, hoping to pay off her huge student loans.

Enter Jeremy, whom Mirabelle meets at the local laundromat, a hapless font-maker of little ambition and zero means. They begin an awkward relationship with dates to Universal City, though both lack the money to see a movie or enjoy the attractions. Sex doesn’t come easy, either. After awkward beginnings and interruptions (lack of condo, her cat’s interference), they finally go to bed.

Then along comes Ray Porter, an older, wealthier, worldly charmer, whom Mirabelle meets at Saks, while he buys a scarf. The next day, a beautifully wrapped package arrives in her apartment with the scarf inside. With gentlemanly courtship of the old school, Ray sweeps Mirabelle completely off her feet.

Utterly honest, Mirabelle tells Jermey of the affair, and the latter embarks on a music bus tour that will prove to be life changing. Both Jeremy and Mirabelle undergo a major transformation, though there’s a question mark about the future of Ray, a cold, detached man, incapable of feelings and commitment.

Martin has said that he viewed his slim novella as “Jane Austen for the twenty-first century,” and you can see why. It’s an unlikely trio, conditioned by different interpretations of who they are, and what their relationships mean. Which leads to a tangle of unrealistic expectations, misunderstandings, and unanticipated realizations. In the end, what happens to Mirabelle, Jermey, and Ray is not what any of them has dreamed off.

Since the movie is set in Los Angeles, viewers may recall Martin’s valentine to the city in “L.A. Story,” in which he also courted a much younger woman, but not as young as Mirabelle, Sarah Jessica Parker. Other than these elements, the films don't have much in common.

The film is directed by British helmer Anand Tucker, known for his theatrical work and indie movie, “Hilary and Jackie,” with Emily Watson in an Oscar-nominated performance. Though the problems reside in the narrative, Tucker can’t help much as a director, because he, too, is unable to locate the center, or what’s the story’s most compelling strand.

Despite the fact that Martin wrote the script and was involved throughout, “Shopgirl” misses on what was special about the book, its tone and mood. The novella was light yet pensive. I won’t say that Tucker’s version maims the novella, but his version certainly lacks its poignancy.

The book and film seem personal, and Martin deserves credits for exposing intimate parts of himself never revealed before. He captures something of the syndrome of fiftysomething men who’re dating twetysomething girls and end up hurting them.

The main characters are not shallow or opportunistic. For one thing, Mirabelle still has the chance to date a guy her own age. And the rich "older man" is not even remotely in it for sex. “Shopgirl” is neither an indictment of nor an apology for the "trophy girlfriend" syndrome. In fact, the movie offers meditative, wistful insights into why older guys crave younger gals.

A word about the sex scenes is in order. The first time Ray and Mirabelle go to bed is awkwardly touching for both, with elements of shock and voyeurism. When Martin returns to the bedroom, he finds Mirabelle naked, lying on her stomach. Looking at the young woman and caressing her body may offer greater gratification than intercourse.

The three leads are in top form. Dominating the film, Danes is heartbreaking in a number of scenes. As Mirabelle, she delivers her best work in years. Danes' character is deceptively simple, based on her vulnerable yet insistent need for love or connection of any kind. Danes takes risks in playin a complex woman, who isn't on the expected path to a more mythical happily-ever-after romance. However, though mischievous, Mirabelle is not malicious and she never exploits her relationship with Ray. With uncanny ability, Danes captures Mirabelle’s contradictory qualities, her romantic naiveté and poignant vulnerability.

Schwartzman's turn as Mirabelle's more "age appropriate" and scruffy suitor, brings a satisfying dose of offbeat humor and arcane warmth to his role. By now, having appeared in “Rushmore” and other similar roles.
Schwartzman is an expert at playing goofballs yearning for maturity.

As writer, Martin has produced a new kind of script. Unlike “Roxanne,” it’s not based on a famous play, and unlike “L.A Story,” it isn’t a rollicking satire. As an actor, Martin plays one of his most mature and nuanced roles, a skilled bachelor who is not cruel or callous as someone who deludes himself into believing that he can somehow feel passion without emotional damage or consequences. Seemingly inspired by the recent work of colleague Bill Murray, Martin underplays his role, creating a classy guy who just wants companionship.

“Shopgirl” is not a conventional romantic comedy, in which the characters are pre-destined to make their wildest dreams come true. Ultimately, though, it’s yet another coming-of-age story of a twentysomething woman who’s not entirely formed. Problem is, the film catches Mirabelle at a particular point and we don’t know how she has evolved into that naïve,earnest woman.

Familiar on the surface yet boasting serene surprises throughout, "Shopgirl" is an intermittently engaging look at one particular modern romance. The film might inspire viewers to think differently about older men-younger women relationships, and also older women-younger men bonds.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/10/2005 11:25:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

An early Shopgirl review


KMT strikes again.

http://www.andpop.com/article/4974
Movie Review: Shopgirl
Posted on 10/10/05 at 2:40 PM ET
Written By: Adam Gonshor

Beyond the sometimes-outrageous, often wild and crazy, performance that one expects from Steve Martin, the silver-crowned 60-year-old is a gifted actor.

King Tut may be a cocky stiff without the persona, but signs of Martin's true acting abilities have been seen throughout his career, whether it was playing the annoyed grumpy family man opposite John Candy in Planes, Trains & Automobiles or more recently responding to his disorderly household in Cheaper by the Dozen.

His dramatic skills—the ones that are not dependant on a response of laughter—have never been more evident than in his most recent work, Shopgirl.

The film, based on Martin's 2001's novella, stars Claire Danes as Mirabelle, a struggling artist, forced to sell gloves at an L.A. department store.

Mirabelle meets Jeremy, played by Jason Schwartzman, and is turned off by his immaturity after their first date. She's sophisticated, he's far from it, but perhaps thinking he's the best she can get, or maybe curious as to why she is attracted to this unshaven oddball, she calls him and their relationship continues.

In the department store, she meets Martin's character, Ray, a much older gentleman, well-kept, handsome, dressed in a bold suit, reeking of power and money. In other words: the opposite of Jeremy.

Jeremy realizes he needs to change and begins a long tour serving as a band's equipment manager. Mirabelle and Ray begin a relationship that everyone –Ray and the audience—knows is doomed from the start. Ray tells a psychiatrist that the relationship is purely sexual. Mirabelle tells her friends she sees a future. She's so content with her new relationship that she stops taking her anti-depressant medication.

Ray has everything he could want in the world, except happiness. How he got rich, what profession he is, or was, in and his history of past relationships is never discussed. All the audience knows is he's wealthy and dishonest. That's all they need to know.

Mirabelle is young and vulnerable. In one scene, she returns to her parent's home and it becomes obvious why she left and moved to California. Her family lacks any emotions and barely utters a word while she is present. Just being able to live alone in California makes her a success.

Without losing her smile, Mirabelle is slowly being destroyed by a relationship that is based on sex, which she is too blind to see. The film is a half comedy, half tragedy. Even with a member of the comedic royalty always around the corner, Schwartzman brings the much-needed comic relief to an otherwise depressing plot. It's easy to forget that Martin normally plays the funny role, with the combination of his exceptional acting and Schwartzman's ability to cause laughter.

It's difficult to really care for anybody in the movie besides Mirabelle. You are angry with Ray, and you don't see enough of Jeremy to really gain a definite opinion. But you'll see some aspect of yourself in Mirabelle and pray she opens her eyes.

Martin's acting will be appreciated and the audience will no doubt see that the true comedic legends, who seemingly are always "on," have to also really know how to act and hide the comedic urge when necessary, like in Shopgirl. It's what sets Martin and Robin Williams apart from guys like Rob Schneider and Andy Dick, who both will one day be given purchased stars on Hollywood Boulevard despite not deserving them.

Don't judge the movie by its marketing campaign. The poster shows Mirabelle surrounded by Ray and Jeremy, but the movie is far from a love triangle (Ray and Jeremy never even appear in the same scene together). It's far too easy to classify this as a typical love triangle, suggesting Mirabelle has to choose between a young-slacker and a rich-older man, because it's far from that. Shopgirl will entrance you into a world where you ponder the true meaning of love, money, and happiness.

4*/5*

Shopgirl hits theatres in New York, Los Angeles and Toronto on October 18. It will screen in other cities in following two weeks. Check your local listings to see if it plays in your area.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/10/2005 10:23:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Is Steve going to Chicago?


umm... found this one.

http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?AID=9690
2005 Chicago Film Festival GLBT Movies
by Richard Knight, Jr.
2005-10-05

Though less than 10% of the more than 100 films at this year’s Chicago International Film Festival, Oct. 6-20, have upfront GLBT content, at least two of them are “must sees” for film lovers of all persuasions. First up is Transamerica, in which Desperate Housewives Emmy winner Felicity Huffman stars as a male-to-female transgender person connecting with the teenage son she never knew about. The second is That Man: Peter Berlin, a documentary about the 1970s gay poster pin-up boy and inspiration for erotic artist Tom of Finland and photographers Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe.

****

Kutza also hinted that we might see a surprise appearance by Steve Martin at the fest, who is represented by Shopgirl, the comedy made from his bestselling novel that stars Claire Danes. ****

NOTE:
Shopgirl shows on Oct. 11, 2005.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/07/2005 09:54:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

More on Princeton


Brought to you by the ever-vigilant KMT

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15344422&BRD=
1091&PAG=461&dept_id=425695&rfi=6
Princeton Packet
Perhaps a wild and crazy guy, but a literate one as well
Kara Fitzpatrick, Staff Writer 10/07/2005


Steve Martin reads from his works during Princeton University visit

Even before he set foot on the stage, Steve Martin had the audience laughing.

After a flattering introduction by author Joyce Carol Oates, Mr. Martin rose from his first-row seat and walked briskly toward the door. With the audience howling, Mr. Martin came right back in, with a smile, and began reading works from his impressive career as a fiction writer.

As part of a Princeton University creative writing program reading series, Mr. Martin — writer, comedian, actor and director — took the stage Wednesday at McCosh Hall to address hundreds of students, faculty and community members.

Reading excerpts from his works — some of which dated from his early days as a writer — Mr. Martin had no trouble getting an audience reaction.

Reciting "Side Effects" — a piece previously published in The New Yorker — Mr. Martin poked fun at the lengthy warnings that often accompany prescription drug commercials. Potential side effects from the mystery drug, his piece cautions, could range from visions of the Virgin Mary appearing in treetops to the acquisition of lumpy back syndrome.

"You may feel a sense of impending doom; this is because you are about to die," Mr. Martin read from "Side Effects."

In addition, Mr. Martin shared excepts from his novella "Shopgirl," which was published in 2000 and has been adapted into a movie starring himself and Clare Danes. "Shopgirl" will open in theatres later this fall.

After nearly an hour of readings, Mr. Martin fielded questions about his career and work.

When asked about the process of adapting "Shopgirl" from a novella to a screenplay, Mr. Martin said he was first inspired to convert the work after he began picturing movie scenes.

"The stillness of the book translates easily in the film," Mr. Martin explained.
Prompted by a question, Mr. Martin recalled his experience hosting the Oscars twice.

"The first time, I was like, 'What am I doing here?'" he said. The second time he played host, he said, the Oscars coincided with the night the war in Iraq started. He compared that scenario to one he experienced the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963.

As a young actor performing at California's Knott's Berry Farm, he and his cast had to determine whether to perform on the evening of President Kennedy's death.

"It was decided to go on — and we had one of the best shows of our life," he said. He added that the experience provided a valuable lesson: "You've got to deliver the show."

And delivering the show is something that Mr. Martin seems to do with ease. Even as he concluded his Wednesday appearance, he continued to charm the audience with his wit. Fumbling with his pile of notes, he dropped and sprinkled them all over the stage, clumsily pretending to lose his footing.

As he made his exit to applause, he placed the remaining sheets of paper in a recycling bin nearby the door. As the crowd began to shuffle out, fans snatched up the souvenirs on the paper-strewn stage.
- posted by sookeyjane 10/07/2005 03:32:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Steve says new things about Shopgirl


http://www.filmstew.com/Content/Article.asp?ContentID=12486&Pg=2

Anything but a Jerk
Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2005
Pam Grady

"It's an awkward position to walk into,” muses Jason Schwarztman during a recent interview in Toronto with FilmStew.

“You're going to hopefully be the funny person in a Steve Martin movie. That's like getting a call that Keith Moon wants you to come and play drums on his record. It's like, 'Shouldn't he do that?'" adds the actor, who provides the comic relief as Jeremy, the third spoke in the triangle at the heart of Martin's new romantic comedy Shopgirl.

Schwartzman's reservations are understandable. Not only is he usurping the silliest bits of business from the comedian whose zany, prop-filled routine made him a stand-up superstar in the '70s and who went on to launch his movie career with that masterpiece of absurdity The Jerk. Schwartzman is also aware that if he failed in his mission to be funny, the person he would be letting down the most would be Martin. And that’s not good, because the older actor is not just Schwartzman's co-star, but also Shopgirl's producer and screenwriter, adapting the story from his own novella.

A Deceptively Simple Novella

The original 2000 book is slim; 130 pages offering up the deceptively simple tale of Mirabelle, the dreamy, 28-year-old girl who works behind a department store glove counter while waiting for her life to begin. She is lonely, but an attempt to jumpstart her love life with a boy her own age, Jeremy, is faltering just about the time middle-aged businessman Ray Porter begins pursuing her.

"Steve wrote a novella in which you feel every word has been cut to the bone. It's taut and terse and Mametian in its muscularity," observes Shopgirl's director, Anand Tucker.

This marks Tucker's first film since 1998's critically acclaimed Hilary and Jackie. Like Schwartzman, he admits he was initially nervous about the project and the prospect of working with Martin. "The idea of it was incredibly daunting, because you're flying on a plane from London to New York to meet STEVE MARTIN!!!! Oh my God! And he's written a book and he's written a screenplay, he's a producer, that's a tough one."

So it was something of a relief when the Londoner finally met his future collaborator. "Within one minute of meeting Steve, he's actually an incredibly generous and unprepossessing person whose main concern was that he just wanted the film to be good and to be emotionally truthful," Tucker recounts, adding. "He let me get on and own the movie in my own way, for which I'm eternally grateful."

In person at the recent Toronto International Film Festival, the snowy-haired Martin lives up to his reputation for affability, only growing slightly agitated when asked about the autobiographical nature of the work. Though the New York Times recently published an article about the ‘real’ Mirabelle, Martin bristles a bit when the subject of how close Ray Porter is to himself comes up.

"[Then] what is the autobiographical side of Mirabelle? 'Cause I wrote her, too,” bristles the Waco, Texas native. “You know, they say everything's culled from every source, my own life, other life experiences. I'm 60 and I've had sex since I was 18, there was a lot of stuff going on," he explains.

"Not every week – there were long dry spells," he laughs, relaxing. "So there's a lot of experience, whether it's my own or others or conversation, and that's where it all comes from. I wrote a book subsequently [The Pleasure of My Company] about a guy who was [neurotic] in some way. It doesn't apply to me at all, but I can imagine it."

Whatever the genesis of the story, Martin was seeking to find the universal in the specific. "It's everybody's story, whether it's one [lover], two, three, ten, twenty or Magic Johnson, and this story is about one of those episodes that, you know, gets a little out of control or gets unable to break."

He made a discovery when he revisited the book prior to a public reading and realized that he had forgotten half of it. "It says that Ray was about to enter into an addiction that he couldn't break, meaning sex with Mirabelle, because he found something in her that was beautiful to him. This is a slice of somebody's life – some of us, none of us, all of us."

At first, Martin only intended to produce the movie and write the screenplay. He originally offered the role of Ray to Tom Hanks. "I thought he was really the perfect, perfect guy to play it," Martin insists. But he is too modest. It is hard to imagine anyone other than Martin playing the character with his particular qualities.

On the one hand, Ray is charming, warm, and mature, but he also withholds part of himself and his motivations are sometimes murky. It is a tricky balancing act and Martin enjoys a rare advantage as an actor in knowing this character from the inside out.

If someone else had played Ray, Martin's wry voice, too, would be missed in the movie's voiceover. The device is used sparingly; neither Martin nor Tucker wanted to overdo it, but they were very clear on its purpose. "It creates a tone, so that's why it's there," Martin explains. "If you notice, all those voiceovers are placed, not as exposition, but as almost like musical moments. Sometimes it's like the end of a scene, it's always over silence."

Whatever misgivings Martin may have had about playing Ray, Martin's co-stars, Schwartzman and Claire Danes, Shopgirl's Mirabelle, do not share them (click here for an earlier FilmStew Shopgirl item on Schwartzman). Once they got over the intimidation factor involved in working with a comic legend, they found him a helpful collaborator. Schwartzman laughs when he says that he can now brag that he has been in a Steve Martin movie, in spite of the fact that the two do not share any scenes. But he was grateful to have the writer on set every day to talk him through the script and discuss new ideas.

"The great thing about [Steve], too, is that he's very open. It's not like, 'This is how it's going to be.' He came and said, 'Why don't you try this?' or 'Why don't you try that?' He was suggesting things to me. He's an investigator. It's a pleasure to work for an investigative writer," Schwartzman avers.

Danes is equally effusive as she confesses that she came to the project as something of a fan girl. "I read the book and I was really affected by it. I know a lot of people who were, so I'm not very special for having been moved by it. And I couldn't have been in more pleasant company," she says. "Steve has been really a hero of mine forever, so it was a total joy. And I really felt capable.”

“Sometimes I am more nervous than others about inhabiting a character,” she adds. “Because sometimes they seem a little more inaccessible, but this one was vivid, I think because she was so well-written."

"Steve is incredibly generous. Immediately, he made it very clear that if Jason and I ever needed to rework a scene, we had license to. He was great that way. So I never felt confined or pressured to do something that was not intuitive. It became our story and Steve made that possible."

Tucker, perhaps, faced the biggest potential minefield in that he worked closely with Martin while the screenplay underwent revision. The director loved the script when he first read it, revealing that he saw a bit of himself in Ray. "I have been a major commitment f*ck-phobe in my life. I have messed some girls around," he allows. "I've done that game, so I really identified with that. I think a lot of blokes have been there and identified with that."

But Tucker also determined the story's weakness and that was Jeremy, who was somewhat of a peripheral character. Tucker felt strongly that the story needed to be a "dance between the three characters." For that to happen, Jeremy needed to become a more central character.

"The Jeremy character had to become much more substantial, had to have his own journey which was much more fleshed out," Tucker contends. "So that was the work, really, on the year that we spent on the screenplay, that was what was my main concern." Martin answered Tucker's challenge with that generosity his co-stars noted, not only fattening Schwartzman's part, but also, as the young actor acknowledges, feeding him the movie's funniest bits.

As a longtime Hollywood veteran, Martin is only too well aware of what can go wrong on a romantic comedy. "It all goes back to – what do they call it? - the 'meet cute'? I always feel like there's the person with the inspiration and then there's the person who goes, 'No, no, no! This other movie had this and we've got to have this. And this other movie had this, so we've got to have this. And we've got to have this and we've got to have this,'" he asserts. "It's starts getting wrenched out of its own heart.”

Happily, he reports, the Shopgirl team felt no such interference from Disney, which produced the film under its Touchstone banner. "Our movie didn't get wrenched, because basically the book is about small moments and the movie is about small moments, which are, obviously, the biggest."
- posted by sookeyjane 10/07/2005 01:24:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Dr. Martin lectures at Princeton


http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15338062&BRD=1697&
PAG=461&dept_id=44551&rfi=6
The Trentonian
Tickling the Ivy: Steve Martin wows Princeton writing class
10/06/2005
ALEX RICHMOND,Staff writer

PRINCETON -- What is the sound of one person not laughing? Or, why is it that in a packed auditorium -- in this case, the wood-paneled, idyllic McCosh Hall at Princeton University -- filled with people laughing, it’s the one person that isn’t laughing that stands out?

Freshman Sam Reible seems like the average Princeton student. He stands about six feet tall, was neatly dressed in a blue and white rugby shirt and jeans, and has the distinction of being the only person not to laugh, not even once, at Steve Martin’s lecture yesterday afternoon.

"[Martin’s] brilliant. He’s funny. I can’t believe he’s here," said the bespectacled student.

Deadpan, of course. What gives?

Martin, the award-winning writer, performer, playwright, host of the Academy Awards, and that guy who wore an arrow through his head, came to campus to read his writing to a packed house of creative writing students and professors.

Distinguished professor of humanities Joyce Carol Oates introduced Martin, and called his best-selling novella "Shopgirl" an "intimate, sympathetic portrait" and "a powerfully sustaining work of prose."

When Martin’s play, "Picasso and the Lapin Agile," came to campus last year, tickets for the run were sold out after opening night. The play, about Picasso and Einstein meeting as young men before they had achieved greatness, includes an exchange about why a joke about a pie baked in the shape of the letter "e" is funny. Picasso tells it, then Einstein explains that the reason why it is funny is that the letter "e" is the perfect choice. A rundown of why every other letter in the alphabet fails is next.

Then she took a moment to allow the audience members with OCD to identify themselves by applauding, then shared a tip: to avoid anxiety, simply think of something that makes you even more anxious. What she thought of to relieve herself of the anxiety of public speaking, she didn’t say.

"Shopgirl" will make its motion-picture debut this month. Martin’s first collection of short stories, "Cruel Shoes," still has a rabid fanbase.

Martin said that, over the years, his writing has progressed in three stages.

"It started out with comedy, then it got serious, then it got turgid. So that’s what order I’ll read in today."

After noting that his many pages of notes were double-spaced, he started off with "Cruel Shoes." Then, after noting that he was "all out of time," he skipped to an essay that was published by the New Yorker in the early 90s, "Side Effects," which includes the gem, "After taking this medication, you may feel yourself feeling lost of vague. This would be a good time to write a screenplay."

He introduced another set of essays by saying, "I didn’t mean them to turn out this way, but these later pieces had a lot of cynical romantic thoughts." He read dialogue from his play "Wasps;" "In the beginning of something, the end is foretold. We met in an elevator going down."

Two armed guards present worked hard at suppressing their laughter, and brilliantly failed at the line, "Son, whatever you do in life, I’ll be there to shame you."
- posted by sookeyjane 10/06/2005 11:55:00 AM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Martin Mull exhibits in NYC, Steve does a blurb


New York Observer
October 3, 2005
CULTURE; Currently Hanging, Pg. 22
Philip Pearlstein: A Drab Hand
Flaunts a Keen Eccentric Streak
Mario Naves

****
White-Bread Noir

The aspirations and disappointments of suburban America continue to haunt the paintings of Martin Mull, on display at the Spike Gallery. Mr. Mull's collage-like juxtapositions of middle-class trappings and noirish, dissociated figures are suffused with a dry, absurdist melancholy. A pasticheur through and through, Mr. Mull cobbles together his wry and dreamy narratives by painting from preexisting images--photos that look like they're cut out of mass-circulation magazines circa 1957. He renders them in a soft monochrome, usually black and white, at times with a greenish cast, or in a palette that takes its cues from overexposed and faded Kodachrome snapshots.

Mr. Mull can't quite relinquish a certain smugness of tone; he has a tendency to flaunt his distance and smarts. Those leanings are nevertheless offset by an acknowledgment and acceptance of mixed feelings. No readymade cynicism here: A cool disdain for Leave It to Beaver doesn't obscure a simultaneous hankering for its white-bread fictions. Mr. Mull has more to tell us about the promise and limitations of "the American psyche" (as Steve Martin puts it in a blurb) than Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg--if not Stuart Davis and Edward Hopper. He's a painter capable of holding a viewer's attention and, almost against one's better inclinations, tugging at the heart.

Martin Mull: The Contemplation of Assets is at the Spike Gallery, 547 West 20th Street, until Nov. 12.

****


You can find pictures of his work and more information at Spike Gallery.

Here's Steve's quote:

"Mull’s eye is focused dead center on the American psyche, and his hand is grounded in the tradition of American realism, which, in spite of dramatic excursions away from it, maintains a powerful grasp on American art."
- Steve Martin
- posted by sookeyjane 10/04/2005 04:16:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS