Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 10, 1991 TAG: 9102070259
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURIE HALPERN BENENSON
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"I always saw it as a love story set against a background of Los Angeles," says Martin, who wrote the film.
"LA is the milieu in which the romance takes place. It provides the humor. I can go into surreal gags and elements and kind of push the boundaries of comedy. You just couldn't make this movie in Dallas."
The Los Angeles of "L.A. Story," playing at Salem Valley 8 in the Roanoke area, is lush, magical, enchanted - and, to a great extent, imaginary.
"On the first page of the screenplay," Martin says, "I wrote: `LA at its best. No smog, no traffic.' That other image, the ugly image, has been done so much, there's nothing new about it. I wanted it to be LA through lovers' eyes."
The notion of Los Angeles as a paradise, however, doesn't extend to its social or cultural environment; wildly comic send-ups of Angeleno idiosyncrasies account for a good deal of the film's content, with a love story acting as a rather slender frame.
Habits of socializing, shopping, dating and dressing are scrutinized as closely and humorously as in a Jane Austen novel - and then exaggerated to the point of absurdity. But even the foibles of the city are presented more with affection than with malice.
"My wife," Martin explains, referring to Tennant, "said it perfectly. She said this movie is like teasing your best friend. You have to know them pretty well and like them, in order to be able to do it."
Martin, who grew up in Orange Country in Southern California and has lived in Los Angeles for 25 years, says he has ambivalent feelings about the place.
"I read a quote by someone; it was about art collecting, but it applies to how I feel. He compared it to a mistress; he said, sometimes you love it and sometimes you hate it. That's exactly what LA is. You can't make a case for it, and you can't make a case against it."
Like many celebrities of his prominence, Martin hates to talk about his personal life. He told one interviewer: "Once private things get into print, your private life is over. Everybody knows exactly who you are, and it makes you dull."
So it is surprising that he has fashioned what could be construed as a billet-doux to his wife. In fact, he admits that he first began thinking about the project that became "L.A. Story" seven years ago, when he and Tennant first became romantically involved.
But he's reluctant to say that "L.A. Story" is more than merely superficially "Steve and Victoria's story."
"I don't want to take anything away from it, but what's really personal is the fact that she was from England, and I was from California, and we met, and I was suddenly happy as opposed to depressed. Everything else is fiction, except for some of the characters, which are based on real people.
"It's really a valentine to romance. I tried to make tangible that five minutes or two weeks or three months that you can put your finger on."
The story is unabashedly romantic, in the vein of love overcoming a number of very realistic obstacles. "By the time you're our age" - Martin is 45, his wife is 38 - "it's hard to let yourself get swept away by love and romance. We've seen so much. We've failed so much.
"So I had to make the forces that bring them together emotionally powerful, larger than the two of them, something almost supernatural." He smiled. "It'll be too much for some, but for the rest of us, it's right on the money."
This is the second picture Martin has done with the producer Daniel Melnick; the first was the surprise 1987 hit "Roxanne," also written by Martin. It was Melnick who told the actor about the British director Mick Jackson, whose only previous feature film was the barely seen "Chattahoochee."
"Dan showed me a tape of a show Mick had done for British TV called `A Very British Coup,' and it was fantastic. I knew the screenplay needed a visually stylish approach."
Martin dismisses the idea that a relatively unknown director would be easier to bend to his will. "I like the idea that someone else comes in and thinks about the visual. When it comes to the gags, I think I know how it should be done. But when it comes to this whole other thing, I like someone who's been thinking about it his whole life and is maybe at the same stage in his directorial education as I am in my comedic education."
Martin is an avid collector of contemporary art, and Mick Jackson is a painter, so perhaps it's no surprise that there are artistic references throughout the movie. The most obvious one is the work of David Hockney, whose vivid, sun-splashed pictures of California swimming pools and homes perched on promontories overlooking verdant canyons are a persuasive argument for the idyllic, sensual aspects of the city.
The first few minutes of the film feature not only a swimming pool scene that's a clear homage to Hockney, but also the artist's painting "California" itself, which depicts two figures floating on rafts in a pool.
Cultural references dot "L.A. Story." One thread that runs through the movie is Shakespeare. At the beginning of the movie, Martin bowdlerizes a quote from Shakespeare's "Richard II": "This scepter'd isle, this other Eden, demi paradise, this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this Los Angeles."
While there are lines from other Shakespearean plays, the motif is more or less accidental, Martin said.
"I only started off with two references to Shakespeare, and the rest were added later. For instance, the `other Eden, demi paradise' was added as a voiceover after we screened the picture the first time and found the audience wasn't sure in the beginning whether this was supposed to be a big put down of L.A. or what.
"And the `sound and fury' line was added to give the audience a signpost that this was not supposed to only be a comedy. Sometimes you do a very serious scene in a comedy, and people laugh. And if you give them a little signpost that says, `Don't laugh,' they're fine. As long as they know what they're supposed to think. Which I think is a secret to doing comedy."
The name of his character, Harris Telemacher, is not meant as a classical reference, Martin says, even though Telemachus was the son of Odysseus and Penelope.
"It was completely made up," Martin said. "If you're shooting a movie in L.A. and you name a character Peter Johnson, there are five Peter Johnsons out there, and they sue you. So I had to come up with a name no one would have."
Sort of like the way he came up with a comedy style nobody else had when he first broke into the business. What gives him the confidence to be one-of-a-kind?
"It's partially stupidity," he replies, "not knowing that it's supposed to be done any other way. When I first started doing my act, I played the banjo, did comedy, magic tricks, juggled, read poetry. I stuck it all in. I didn't know you were supposed to just stand up and tell jokes. Essentially, that's what my act became: those five elements - except I dropped the poetry."
Martin has no regrets about leaving the stand-up world. He says he's enjoying himself now more than ever before.
"It's a cliche, but stand-up life is really hard. Life is much more comfortable these days. And, for the first time, I'm truly confident of my abilities. . . . Now, I've finally allowed myself to relax quite a bit, to think I can do it because I've done it in the past. The pressure to come up with the material is the same but, because the anxiety about whether I can do it is gone."
A good deal of the fun Martin pokes at L.A. is aimed at its neuroses, with what he calls the kitsch of New Age trends and cures. As a rational observer, he felt that he had to try at least some of them, just to see.
"I went into an isolation tank once, on the recommendation of a friend. It was exactly what you think. It was boring. And I remember going to the local guy who lived next door for acupuncture. He put incense on - the whole thing."
Did it make Martin feel better?
"No," he says, "but then, I wasn't really feeling bad."
Some of the information in this story comes from the Los Angeles Times.
New York Times News Service
AUTHOR NOTE: Laurie Halpern Benenson is co-editor of Movieline magazine.
by CNB