Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 2, 1992 TAG: 9201010114
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MAL VINCENT LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: ORLANDO, FLA. LENGTH: Long
SERIOUSLY FUNNY
That wild and crazy guy is not so wild or crazy anymore.He's an uptight and possessive father now; specifically, he's the "Father of the Bride," the only outright comedy of the holiday season.
"Love is wonderful - until it happens to your only daughter" read the ads.
"They were worried that I couldn't play the father of a 22-year-old girl," said Steve Martin, chuckling softly. " `I can play it,' I told them. As a matter of fact, I'm almost past it."
In real life, Martin, 46, has no children - and concedes that it probably will remain that way.
"I like children," he said. "I get along with them. There are times when I am one of them, but I don't know about having them around all the time. And, more importantly, I don't know about working in this business and having children. I made three movies this year."
He's married to British actress Victoria Tennant (his co-star in "L.A. Story"), whom he met in 1984 on the set of "All of Me." The marriage was a surprise to his fans (he had been dating Bernadette Peters), and their wedding was a far cry from the hoopla pictured in "Father of the Bride."
"There was just the two of us with the justice of peace in Rome," Martin said. "It was about as small a wedding as you could have. We fooled all the press. None of them knew about it. But it's a big statement. Marriage is always a big statement. The kind of marriage that is pictured in the movie is no more valid than the way we did it."
"Father of the Bride," which is showing in the Roanoke area at Salem Valley 8 and Valley View Mall 6, is a remake of the 1950 mini-classic thatbrought an Academy Award nomination to Spencer Tracy. It is regarded as one of Tracy's greatest comedic creations, although it is also a drama. Elizabeth Taylor played Kaye, the winsome bride, and Joan Bennett was the fussy mother. The remake co-stars Kimberly Williams (lifted from the sophomore class at Northwestern University) and Diane Keaton.
Martin said he doesn't think about following in Tracy's footsteps.
"If I thought about it, I'd never do it," he said. "I don't take too much stock in thinking about the first film. You just get out there and do it. Our film is for the 1990s. It's very different, but I think the people who liked the first film will not be insulted. It's kind of a suggestion that the family goes on, the family survives."
Martin was on a soundstage at the Disney studios in Orlando. Outside, tourists were rushing for the Star Tours and "Great Hollywood Ride."
It is an ironic twist to his own life. Born in Waco, Texas, he grew up in Southern California and as a boy worked at Disneyland. He described the park as "the good side of Fascism. I sold souvenir books, and for a long time, I was a trick roper in Frontierland."
In the early '60s, he wrote for the Sonny and Cher and Smothers Brothers shows, winning an Emmy for the latter. He surprised the critics in the 1970s when his cornball stand-up routines - a parody on middle age - became a sensation with young audiences.
His cohort Carl Reiner called him "the first rock-star comedian." Rolling Stone wrote that "Steve Martin has one joke - and he's it."
Today, he vows he will never go back to doing live performances.
"I like that character, but doing stand-up comedy night after night is really my idea of hell," Martin said. "Now that I've escaped, I see no reason to go back. You have to be good every night, every single night. It's like going out there naked every time - and you have no life. You live in dressing rooms and you seldom know what town you might be in. No thank you."
Seven years ago, Martin was named best actor by the New York and Los Angeles Critics for playing a young lawyer who has to live with the soul and spirit of Lily Tomlin in "All of Me." Four years ago, the Los Angeles Film Critics cited him again for playing a modern Cyrano de Bergerac in "Roxanne."
Strangely, he didn't get an Oscar nomination for either role.
"Oscar nominations?" Martin said, breaking into a comic grimace. "They make you mad. Sure. You look at the list every year and you wonder `Who is this crowd?' But time passes, and next year you don't even remember who was nominated.
"A lot of people, though, seem to remember that I wasn't ever nominated. I doubt if I'll ever win. I'm regarded as a clown. I'll have to play an alcoholic or a suicidal person if I want to win."
"Bride" screenwriters Nancy Meyers and Charles Shyer ("Pvt. Benjamin," "Baby Boom") said they vowed to keep their script serious, maintaining the "pathos and humanity" of the original. They said Martin worked with them.
"When we learned that he was to play the lead, it immediately brought ideas to mind," Meyers said. "We assumed he'd want to write a good deal of it himself, but he left most of it to us. He contributed a scene in which he does a Tom Jones imitation in a too-tight tuxedo. He also wrote most of the scene in which the father visits the in-laws and snoops around their house. Aside from those two scenes, Steve stuck pretty much to our script."
"I have no problem being serious," said Martin, who will be seen next in Lawrence Kasdan's soon-to-open "Grand Canyon."
"In fact, people who know me think I'm too serious a lot of the time. This film is about a father who loves and adores his daughter, and it comes as a shock to him that he's losing her to some horny little guy who's going to take her away, and . . . well, daddy is going to lose his little girl. It's one of the great dramas of life.
"Comedy is really heavy work. I'd like to do a straight drama but, then, I think I have. I think a lot of the movies I've done were dramas. The fact that you laugh sometimes doesn't mean the whole thing is silly."
Martin does worry, however, that audiences expect him to be funny.
"It's a problem that comics have," he said. "But no one is funny all the time. Everyone is serious. Take Marty Short. He's in this movie with me. He plays the caterer for the wedding. He's one of the funniest people in the world, but he's serious when the camera isn't turning.
"I'm not depressed or sad too much, but I am serious. The thing is that when people meet me, they expect me to be `on.' I'm not. I can't ad lib jokes when I'm walking down the street. I'm not a performing monkey."