THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, December 7, 1995 TAG: 9512070026
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 138 lines
IS THERE ANY danger the wild and crazy guy, an icon of the baby boom generation, might be going sane?
You have to wonder as Steve Martin sits across from you, looking oh-so-serious. He has that ``Oh no, not-another-interview'' look.
There's that same shock of white hair covering the same head that once had an arrow through it - back in the days when he sold out every seat at Norfolk's Scope. He was called the first ``rock star comedian.''
The fact that he turned 50 last Aug. 14, has nothing, really, to do with his newfound gravity. For one thing, he's become a serious playwright.
Currently at the Promenade Theater in New York is his hit play ``Picasso at the Lapin Agile.'' It's all about a make-believe meeting between Picasso and Albert Einstein at a Paris cafe called the Lapin Agile (``nimble rabbit'') in 1904.
``I have less of a compulsion to make films right now,'' Martin was saying as we probed him about the new profession. ``Writing is so concise. Theater is so concise. In making movies, all the effort is in getting there. You have so many takes to get into the character.''
He admits that it floors him to see his name spread across the theater marquee, even though he doesn't have to show up at all. ``In movies, who ever asks who wrote it? In the theater, the writer is a big star. It makes you wonder. Of course, it's scary too.''
Martin's new movie, opening this weekend, is a far cry from the old wild-and-crazy guy, too. For the second time, he's playing the epitome of upper-middleclass Dad-dom - George Banks who, in the runaway 1991 hit, was the father of the bride. In ``Father of the Bride, Part II'' the Dad who didn't want his little girl to leave home is even more disgruntled when he finds that she's, uh, pregnant.
He looks at his son-in-law with the glare of an accuser who almost yells, ``You did this to my daughter? I knew it!''
The plot, which brings back the entire cast of the first film, also has Martin and his movie-wife, Diane Keaton, get a shock of their own: they are about to become parents again too.
Martin said he didn't hesitate to undertake the sequel. ``After all, the first film had a sequel, too. It's kind of like the fourth time around - a sequel to a remake that was also a sequel.'' The original ``Father of the Bride'' was a 1950 hit with Spencer Tracy getting an Oscar nomination for the role. Joan Bennett played his wife and Elizabeth Taylor was the bride. The sequel was ``Father's Little Dividend'' and had Tracy losing the baby at one point.
The 1991 version of ``Father of the Bride'' not only pulled in more than $100 million in America, it was a surprise hit overseas, where foreign audiences liked this version of an American family.
``It's a slightly idealized version of the 1990s family,'' admitted producer and writer Nancy Meyers. ``The house is a great house - upper-middleclass. We made the right decision in judging that people wanted to see this kind of family. Our first draft had the family as a kind of Archie Bunker group - lower income.''
The filmmakers, though, aren't the most likely to create Norman Rockwell Americana. Martin has just gone through a stormy divorce from actress Victoria Tennant. He has never been a father. Meyers and director Charles Shyer have two children and have long been co-creators (``Baby Boom,'' ``Private Benjamin''), but they've never bothered to marry. Keaton, the irresistible Annie Hall of our moviegoing past, is more known for romances with people like Warren Beatty and Al Pacino than for motherhood.
Still, audiences are likely to go along with Martin's bewilderment at becoming both father and grandfather this time around.
Martin says the secret is to take the whole thing seriously. ``This is light entertainment, but the cast isn't supposed to know that anything is funny about it. The trick is to be light, but appear to be heavy.''
Keaton, who was his date at the Academy Awards last year, is, according to him ``a brilliant comedian. Her timing is a marvel. There's a sequence when I'm trying to be young, and I dye my hair. Her reaction when I come in with the dyed hair is perfect. She does a quick take and then kind of recovers to be kind and let me think it doesn't look so bad.''
Steve Martin's family moved from Waco, Texas, to Southern California when he was 5 years old. At age 10, he was selling programs outside Disneyland. His father, who is now 81, is a retired real estate salesman who suffered a stroke some years ago.
``I learned that I'm not going to save anything,'' Martin said. ``There's no point in planning the good life some faraway day. You never know.''
He'll never do stand-up comedy again. ``That was a miserable life. Going from city to city every night - standing in front of people and hoping they'd laugh. No, I'll never go back to that. Not ever.''
He's amused that Broadway is just discovering that he's a writer. After all, he won an Emmy in 1969 as a staff writer on ``The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.'' He also wrote for ``The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour'' and for Glen Campbell and John Denver specials.
He's taken comedic chances over and over, often signaling that he can't be pegged as an ordinary comedian. He had already won Grammy Awards for his comedy albums ``Let's Get Small'' and ``A Wild and Crazy Guy'' before he went to movies. His musical comedy single, ``King Tut,'' became a million-seller. His first film, a short called ``The Absent-Minded Waiter'' got an Oscar nomination in the short subject category. The Academy, though, has ignored him ever since, in spite of the fact that the critics often honor him.
His first film, ``The Jerk,'' in 1979, was directed by Carl Reiner. ``Pennies from Heaven,'' a bittersweet musical comedy, signaled that he wasn't going for the usual.
``Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid'' remains a unique homage to film noir with Martin, in black and white, co-starring with everyone from Ava Gardner to Barbara Stanwyck in a unique blending of old and new film.
The New York film critics gave him its best actor accolade for his half-woman, half-man portrayal in ``All of Me.'' In 1987, his adaptation of ``Cyrano de Bergerac,'' which he called ``Roxanne,'' was named by the Los Angeles Film Critics as the best performance of the year. Still, no Oscar nomination.
He isn't bitter about it. ``It would be pretty wrong of me, wouldn't it, to say that I thought they should have nominated me. When a comedy actor does comedy, it isn't regarded as something special. People probably don't think Jim Carrey was acting in `The Mask.' But the Academy hasn't ignored comedy. It's just that serious actors who do comedy are regarded as acting. Clowns are just clowns.''
Clearly, he doesn't think of himself as a clown. ``What I do is more a matter of taste than talent. Taste holds you back. On the set, there's only the crew there. You have to see if they smile. I like smiles better than laughs, I think.''
The marriage to British gentry, Victoria Tennant who had family in the uppercrust of London society, was regarded as unlikely from the first. Still, it lasted several years. He even wrote a role for her in ``L.A. Story.''
For his play, he studied the logic of Lewis Carroll (author of ``Alice in Wonderland'') ``who used to work mathematic problems in hilarious ways. A play is a matter of verbal gymnastics. I studied logic to do the dialogue.''
He winces a little when he's compared to playwright Tom Stoppard, a writer who specializes in word games. ``Of course Stoppard is the god of that kind of writing,'' he mused.
From the niceness of fatherhood and the seriousness of Einstein and Picasso, he'll return to pure clown-time next. He has the Phil Silvers role in the big-screen movie version of ``Sergeant Bilko.'' It'll be released in the spring.
Maybe, after all, that wild and crazy guy was just acting all along. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photos]
Steve Martin
KEYWORDS: PROFILE INTERVIEW by CNB