Steve Martin

Interview By: Rocco Passafuime
RoccoPassafuime@TheCinemaSource.com

Steve Martin is comedy's ultimate renaissance man, a comedian, actor, columnist, and even bluegrass musician. In the 1970's, he took the burgeoning and increasingly edgy 1970's stand-up comedy format to new heights with a self-effacing style and a then-unheard-of arena-sized following. At the close of that decade, Martin starred in a string of hit comedies that stretch from The Jerk to Roxanne to Three Amigos! to Father Of The Bride to Bowfinger, among only some of the many.

In the past decade, his film career has not lost once ounce of its shine, starring in hit comedies like Bringing Down The House, the Cheaper By The Dozen movies, and as the seminal Inspector Clouseau in the remake of Blake Edwards's classic Pink Panther. Now as Steve returns for another go in the role in The Pink Panther 2, the comic actor explained to us how he made such a classic Hollywood comic character originally played by the legendary Peter Sellers set itself apart for a new generation.

''Because I'm playing it,' Martin believes, 'I also think it's strange what film does. The qualities of Inspector Clouseau, which are pettiness, egocentricity, arrogance, lack of intelligence, and bumbling in a film are lovable, but in life, you go, get me out of here!' I think he is a classic character though that Peter Sellers invented.

'But fortunately for me, I do believe we've taken it somewhere else, in a sense, made it our own and we haven't stolen anything from them,' he continues, 'We view the character like James Bond where other actors could play,' he continues, 'But it's interesting, I realize I am the fourth actor to play this role when I really think I am the second and three of them were done by Blake Edwards, the original director.'

'Because I'm playing it. I also think it's strange what film does. The qualities of Inspector Clouseau, which are pettiness, egocentricity, arrogance, lack of intelligence, and bumbling in a film are lovable, but in life, you go, get me out of here!'

Inspector Clouseau is the classic archetypal bumbling and clumsy police officer whose comedic qualities are brought out through slapstick, physical gags not unlike the legendary silent film actor Charlie Chaplin. We asked Martin whether or not he consciously modeled off any of his own Clouseau after the legendary actor.

'I had certainly seen all those movie,' he says, 'I was watching that Make 'Em Laugh show recently, which shows how great Charlie Chaplin was though. I felt like what a pretender I am. It's just something that I do. I didn't really study up on anything.'

'Although, I did have an idea that we were making a kind of, I don't want to say slapstick because it's so the wrong word, a physical comedy,' Steve adds, 'And that we should go back and look at all those films and evaluate those gags. There must be a hundred great gags that we could actually just take and no one would know, but we didn't do that. But I did appreciate all those films.'

We also asked the actor of his preparation for comic timing for the numerous slapstick gags involving Clouseau in the film.

'Well, for me, not Harald [Zwart] the director and Jean [Reno], it's mostly done in my head,' he reveals, 'I just visualize the scene, it's automatic, and you kind of get the feeling for what the timing should be. We try to get in physical shape, of course, to do it. But I think there's an intellectual property to the physical gags, because in my world, they have to be set up. You don't just walk into a door. You have to walk into a door for a reason that's been laid down.'

'I think there's scenes in the movie, I don't know what, but maybe the pope scene where you just know that trouble is coming and it's a logical scene,' Martin continues, 'It's not just getting bumped around and I think that's very important, otherwise, you just lower the film a little bit. The bottle scene, the juggling, has a certain elegance to it and I utilize my high school skills of juggling, although I juggle a little bit more, but it got cut. The movie was written and then improvised around. It went on maybe five times as long as the script.'

In discussing the stuntwork involved in Closeau's numerous physically comic gags, Martin shared with us the most difficult one he endured in his long-idiosyncratic dry-witted comedic fashion.

'The stunt that was the trickiest was the opening scene when I gave that guy the parking ticket,' Steve reveals, 'And then, I get my hand caught in the car and I'm running alongside the car. But the way that was actually done was, don't tell anybody, that there was a little running board they put on the car so I didn't have to run on the ground.'

'But you know how hard it is to run in place'' he continues, 'It's harder than running and I have to make my legs are hitting a foot below that point to make it look genuine, so I did that stunt. But then, there was another high angle where somebody actually did it. I'm walking on the globe, but it's a contraption, special effects. I actually did walk on the globe, but I was supported by wires. They've improved the harnesses through the year. I only got hurt emotionally.'

We also boldly asked Steve if his stunt work in the films compelled him at all to ever work on an action film.

'You know, I always dreamed of doing an action picture because I know that they would spend days shooting a car and I would be home relaxing,' he replies, 'And then, I would come in at the last minute and sit behind a car and go, what! And then, I would go back home and have dinner and go to plays and theater and then I'd come in two days later go, I told ya so! But, it doesn't work out that way actually.'

For the first time since Bowfinger, Martin not only has starred in the The Pink Panther films, but also co-written it as well. He discussed his level of contribution to the film's story, as well as the film's unlikely ending which Steve claims is part of his formula for his long-term comedy film success

. 'The writers came up with the dream team idea for the story,' Steve explains, 'But when I pitched it to Sony, I was sort of dealing with other arcs of the story. I said, you know I have to tell you that every movie I've ever done that ends in a wedding or me holding a baby has been a hit.'

'But, actually, I was being cute,' he adds, 'But I really think that though, in our field, we discovered, as we were making these movies, that there really is a romantic thing happening between Nicole and Inspector Clouseau. And in this movie, I think it's a great thing to use. I think it's happy and nice. If we ever do a third, it would obviously open with our honeymoon, you know, taking her across the threshold with armpads and a helmet.'

Nicole Nuveau, played by Emily Mortimer, is not the only woman on Clouseau's team this time out. Also appearing this time out is Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai, who plays criminologist Sonia. Steve discussed how the two women both contributed to the shaping of The Pink Panther 2.

'Well, Emily's such a delight,' he says, 'I think we all agree. She's a real candy and she's also funny in life. She also has a great sense of humor, so going to work with Jean and Harald in the morning or John Cleese, you're not walking into a tense situation. You're walking into a funny situation already. Aishwarya, I didn't know about her before the movie and I realized she is a major star and can't walk down the street, which, I, of course, am jealous of.'

'It's a little bit like I wrote in my autobiography, it's like I want celebrity when I want it and when I don't want it and that's absolutely true,' Martin adds, 'It should have been funny, but'She had married one of India's top actors and I guess she made headlines. She was very, very nice and sweet. You never know what you're going to get into and she was very great, very nice.

The Pink Panther 2 also marks a return to some familiar territory for the 63 year-old. The first is Steve's sharing the screen with Lily Tomlin, who co-starred together in the seminal comedy All Of Me.

'First of all, it's a delight to work with Lily,' he believes, 'And second, there's a thing in show business where you can work with someone for three intense months twenty years ago, maybe see them in passing over twenty years.'

'But then when you're finally back together again, you're finishing a sentence you're starting twenty years ago, life is like that,' Martin adds, 'So we had no warm-up period. Lily and I, we were close friends during that movie and it was very easy to work with her.'

The second return to familiar territory with this film is promoting it with yet another appearance on the seminal TV sketch show Saturday Night Live, which Martin will host a record-breaking fifteen times. And despite his now numerous legendary appearance on the show, it's still an exciting gig for the comic actor.

'It's still live, so it never gets to be old hat,' Steve says, 'There's still that little surge of energy before you go out there. I tend to prepare for it. Actually, I had this idea for a bit. You ever get to see those mass e-mails they send out Swedish dance band album covers from the fifties and sixties.'

'They have like the worst, funny outfits and they have this weird hair and they have lightning on their shirts,' he continues, 'I thought I could go through possible album covers for my book and I can put my head on them. They really look funny, but I think about them a lot.'

In a time with the world in economic crisis and film studios securing their bottom lines with a recent surge in PG-rated films not entirely targeted at children, we asked Steve if the wide success of the first film gave him any pressure to keep any potential risqu' elements in the sequel to a minimum.

'Well, we learned something from the movie, which by the way, I made a joke about it, I loved the first movie,' Martin says, 'But we were kind of dealing with the legacy of the Peter Sellers/Blake Edwards movies, which were kind of risqu'. So we had some of that in the movie and we realized for this movie that the audience that loved it were adults and foreign families. So you have to be careful that you don't suddenly start to try to appeal to a specific audience and then you suddenly sold yourself out because what they loved about the first movie is that it might have been a little risqu'.'

'So you have to be very careful that you don't become pandering,' he adds, 'We just thought it would be nice to have like how Jean's having children actually brings his character to life and makes him a very genuine person. The rapport I have with Jean on screen is real. He has a bit of a dry sense of humor. He's way ahead of the game when it comes to understanding comedy. And the hairwashing scene, which I think is hilarious, works because these are two lonely guys in Paris who think, let's go out on the town! And they end up shampooing each other's hair.'

As Steve Martin has now reached his sixties, his comedy has only endured with the kind of career very few actors, much less comic ones in particular, can only dream of. When we asked him what it was that has kept him going this long, he said the reasons lie in the fundamentals that separate the truly great actors from the ordinary.

'You have to think. I've said before that acting keeps me alert to people in life because you can sense bad acting, which is essentially lying,' he believes, 'And if someone's poorly toward you, you can feel it and something insincere is happening. There's something about going to work and working hard. It helps you stay concentrated, I think that's it. It keeps you're mind going, I don't know. And of course, there's makeup.'

'I'll just say one thing I've learned about comedy,' Steve continues, 'In any profession, when you make it, you end up wearing a suit, sitting behind a desk, but when you make it in show business, you end up wearing a clown suit, riding on an elephant.'