Playboy Interview: Steve Martin

Navin Johnson is The Jerk: a character of comedian Steve Martin's fertile imagination who began as a simple stage routine that has now turned into a movie that Universal is hoping will make Martin its answer to United Artists' Woody Allen and Warner Bros.' Mel Brooks. The idea is simple and funny: Martin stars as Navin, who was raised by a poor black family only to discover late in life that his skin would never turn dark. Setting out to make his fortune, he stumbles through a series of escapades and inadvertently invents a product called Opti-Grabs, which fastens to the bridge of one's glasses and keeps them from slipping. It makes him ridiculously rich, but not even wealth can make him smart.

After a poolside scene has been shot, Martin and director Carl Reiner go to watch it on instant video replay. Reiner thinks Steve can do better. He demonstrates for Martin, who listens obediently. Reiner, after all, has worked with the best--from Sid Caesar and George Burns to Mel Brooks--and Martin appreciates talent.

Martin's mother, standing offcamera, appreciates a porcelain rose Steve has given her, though she's unsure what to do with it. "Do you put it in a vase?" she asks Steve's girlfriend and co-star, Bernadette Peters. "I think it's best to keep it flat, like on a table," Bernadette says. Steve's father is also on the set, watching his son make his first movie. He looks at Steve's bare torso and comments on the mat of gray hair that covers his back and chest. "They always called him hairy," he says, "even when he was young."

Steve Martin whose bizarre, often existential humor shot him to the forefront of American comedians a few years ago, has been called a lot of things besides hairy. His comedy has been labeled silly, brainless, Disneyesque and West Coast wacko. He has been known to lead entire audiences into the street after a show, ordering 600 hamburgers from a junk-food dive, only to change it to one order of fries to go. He has made the arrow through the head and the phrases "Excuuuse me!" and "I'm a wild and crazy guy" his trademarks.

At the Grammys (which he's won twice for his first two comedy albums), he has appeared without his trousers, and at the Oscars, without his head (he wore a dark stocking over it). At the American Booksellers' Convention, he appeared on the dais with James Baldwin and Ray Bradbury and received an enthusiastic ovation from the booksellers, who were applauding the fact that his book of short, zany stories, "Cruel Shoes," which was critically killed, was at the time the country's number-one best seller.

He recently completed an East Coast tour (which he is hoping will be the last tour he ever does), in which he stood before audiences ranging from 5000 to 20,000 people, pulling out old favorites (turning balloons into animals, singing his 1,000,000-seller single "King Tut," showing his seven-minute film, "The Absent-Minded Waiter") and adding new material. With his new album, "Comedy Is Not Pretty," approaching gold (his first album, "Let's Get Small," sold about 1,500,000, and his second, "A Wild and Crazy Guy," sold about 2,500,000), Martin is now concentrating his energies on the promotion of his first feature film, which he conceived and co-wrote.

Huge success has happened very fast and has made Martin very rich. (His manager and longtime friend, Bill McEuen, worked out advantageous career moves for Martin, including complete ownership of all his albums and properties. When Steve appears, he doesn't get a set fee, he works on a percentage of the gate--which can, at times, close in on $1,000,000 for him in just a few days.)

Privately, Steve Martin is not a goof-ball, not wild and crazy, not even very funny. Born in Texas but raised in Garden Grove, California, he grew up an avid churchgoer (something he has forsaken as an adult) and a diligent worker (his parents like to tell how he once swept floors for a quarter when he was nine). At the age of ten, he was hired to sell guidebooks at Disneyland, and for the next eight years, he worked at the Magic Kingdom, demonstrating tricks at the magic shop, selling books and newspapers, and dropping in at the Golden Horseshoe Revue, where his idol, Wally Boag, delighted audiences five times a day (he's still there, in his 24th year, doing the same show) with balloon tricks and cracking cornball but perfectly timed jokes. Boag was Martin's inspiration. But it was at the Birdcage Theater at nearby Knott's Berry Farm where he was given the chance to do his magic act and comedy routines.

While there, he met a girl who convinced him that a college education was important, so he enrolled at California State, Long Beach, and studied philosophy for a few years. When that got too confusing, he tried theater arts at UCLA, where he took a TV writing course. He was also performing in Westwood at Ledbetter's (Randy Sparks was instrumental in giving him the chance to perform) and, by the time he was 21, he was hired to write comedy for the Smothers Brothers TV show and eventually made $1500 a week. He dropped out of college, but the pressure of writing funny regularly led to high anxiety and a near nervous breakdown.

When "The Smothers Brothers" was abruptly canceled, Martin got other jobs, writing for Sonny and Cher, Pat Paulsen, Glen Campbell, John Denver. But what he really wanted to do was perform his own material. His agents at William Morris said he'd never make it, which encouraged him to try (and to drop them once he proved them wrong). He started appearing at the Boarding House in San Francisco, as an opening act for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. In the late Sixties and early Seventies, he went on the road. Soon he was opening for the likes of Ann-Margret and Helen Reddy in Las Vegas. With a new agent, Marty Klein, he was booked on "The Tonight Show" and "Saturday Night Live," which brought him the kind of audiences that change careers.

To date, he has guest-hosted "The Tonight Show" numerous times and his appearances on "Saturday Night Live" have become classics.

In real life, Martin, who is 33 and prematurely gray, lives alone but steadily sees Bernadette Peters, whom he considers to be a stabilizing influence on his life. He was once linked with Linda Ronstadt for a brief time and he has lived with other women at different times. He likes to ski, play tennis, get massaged and work. He owns a solar-heated house in Aspen, another house in Beverly Hills and another in Santa Barbara. His primary obsession, outside his comedy, is collecting 19th Century American art, which Contributing EditorLawrence Grobel(whose "Playboy Interview" with Al Pacino appeared last month) discovered when he met with Martin at his apartment just off Sunset Strip. Grobel's report:

"The first thing I noticed was the paintings, which covered all the walls, and the boxes filled with art books, which covered most of the floor space. Steve claimed he doesn't even look at his paintings while they hang on these walls, because it's all temporary--he's waiting for his home in Beverly Hills to be remodeled--and he considers his current setting as storage.

"After describing some of the paintings, he sat down behind a large desk and we began our talk. I had visited the set of 'The Jerk' a few times, and he was pleased that it was over with. He was also anxious about how it would be received, and prepared for the worst. Steve is a cynic and a worrier. He feels he is vulnerable to criticism and that he has been unfairly attacked recently.

"He showed me a short review of the film 'Alien' that he had submitted to The New Yorker (which later rejected it--one can't move in too fast on Woody Allen's turf) and was interested in an opinion, an action generic to writers, who are constantly looking for feedback. During our talks, he would try out bits of new routines, play tapes he'd made and discuss properties he was considering for potential film projects.

"I flew to New Jersey to catch his concert act, but, unfortunately, saw him on an off night. The audience was not completely with him and he pulled out all his tricks in a desperate attempt to get the Big Laugh, which never came. The next day, I met him for lunch at the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan and we discussed what had gone wrong. Afterward, he dropped some of the bits that weren't working, juggled some routines around and tightened up the act he had not wanted to do in the first place. (He recognizes that even Woody Allen did stand-up until he could make it just doing films, and that's the direction Martin is following.)

"Our last time together, we went to the Frick Collection on 70th Street off Fifth Avenue. It's one of Martin's favorite places and there are two particular paintings he likes to see. One is a melancholy, wistful Holbein portrait of Sir Thomas More and the other is a portrait of a lady, by T. Lawrence, whose pure-white skin reminded me of Bernadette Peters'.

"We parted on Madison Avenue. My last words were, 'See you on the cover.' Which seems an appropriate way to begin this interview."

[Q] Playboy: Our cover shows you in character--a wild and crazy guy. Is this going to be an in-character interview?

[A] Martin: It's hard for me to be funny for 14 days or however long we're going to do this. I can't disguise my true self that long. But I'll be funny when there's a question I don't want to answer.

[Q] Playboy: We thought we'd start with your background and work our way up through your--

[A] Martin: Nobody gives a shit about where I grew up and all that. That's boring. Even I don't give a shit. When I read an interview and it gets to the part where the person grew up, I turn the page.

[Q] Playboy: What, then, interests you?

[A] Martin: The only thing of interest to me is the future.

[Q] Playboy: How do you see your future?

[A] Martin: I have no idea. I don't even know what my plans are. So I can't talk about it.

[Q] Playboy: Let's get this straight: You're bored with your past and you can't talk about your future. The present is probably too fleeting, so that leaves us with what? Sex?

[A] Martin: Well... as long as I don't get into: Did I go to bed with Linda Ron-stadt? Actually, I'm reluctant to talk about sex or my girlfriends or ex-girlfriends, because that's really your private life and you're affecting people who never thought they would be affected.

[Q] Playboy: No past, no future, no sex. What about politics?

[A] Martin: I'm not political, because I don't know what's going on. Get someone who knows politics to talk about it.

[Q] Playboy: What you're saying is you don't have much to say.

[A] Martin: In theory, you do an interview because you have great things to say. If I had great things to say, I'd say them onstage or in a movie, or somewhere else. In my work, I disguise what I have to say. That's what art is.

[Q] Playboy: What do you mean?

[A] Martin: You can't just say, "Life is not worth living." You have to write a novel that says life is not worth living. In an interview, you're talking directly; you're not an artist anymore.

[Q] Playboy: You're forgetting that there is an art to conversation.

[A] Martin: That's true. I've turned down all other requests for interviews because I want this one to have meaning.

[Q] Playboy: Which will be quite a feat, since you've put so many restrictions on yourself.

[A] Martin: The interviews I've done in the past are so redundant. Superficial. Either you give it all or you shouldn't give any of it.

[Q] Playboy: Our feelings exactly. Should we stop now or continue?

[A] Martin: Obviously, this is where I end up giving it all.

[Q] Playboy: Terrific. Now--

[A] Martin: Although there are some things I'm determined not to talk about.

[Q] Playboy: Let's start over. You're a comedian. This is an interview. To hell with the restrictions. Now, who's the funniest person in America today?

[A] Martin: Richard Pryor.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever asked anyone for an autograph?

[A] Martin: Bobby Fischer. I followed him into a bathroom.

[Q] Playboy: When you were a kid, what was your image of a man?

[A] Martin: Guys who dressed in black and wore swords. Zorro.

[Q] Playboy: Would you like to have kids of your own one day?

[A] Martin: I don't want any kids. It's a lifetime job. People have kids and go off and do something else. Or they're too stupid to raise them. Every time you think that you might want to have kids, go to a restaurant and sit next to one. You just don't want one.

[Q] Playboy: What's the most enjoyable thing you can have done to you without fearing the consequences?

[A] Martin: Get a massage. It's the one thing that feels good that doesn't lead to trouble. If you smoke, you get cancer. If you eat desserts, you get fat. If you fuck, she gets pregnant or you get involved. A massage--you pay for it and it feels great. It's the one thing that doesn't have a bad consequence unless it loosens a clot that goes to your heart.

[Q] Playboy: Did you ever go to bed with Linda Ronstadt?

[A] Martin: I saw her for about three weeks one time. We were just friends. We never got in bed. We had a mutual affair without sex.

[Q] Playboy: If you could choose how you could be remembered, what would that be?

[A] Martin: There's one thing, specifically. I would have liked to have done. That was when the guy knocked 8,000,000 dominoes over on The Tonight Show. If it'd been me, I'd always be remembered for that thing.

[Q] Playboy: Well, that about does it. You got anything you'd like to add?

[A] Martin: What about comedy? I can talk about that.

[Q] Playboy: Comedy? Oh--right, we forgot. What makes you think you can talk about that any more than sex or politics? After all, most politicians are comedians and most comics have sex.

[A] Martin: OK. Let's take the question Why am I not political? One reason is purely aesthetic. There were too many political thinkers in the Sixties. There was too much political comedy. It was a cheap laugh. The world didn't need another political comedian. The world still doesn't need another serious person. There're too many people who are really good at it; they don't need me.

[Q] Playboy: A Ralph Nader of comedy you're not.

[A] Martin: As Ralph Nader is necessary, so am I necessary. Checks and balances. If everyone were Ralph Nader, we'd have no consumers; and if everyone were me, we'd have no champions. Choosing not to decide something is an existential decision. That's the way I feel about politics. Choosing not to be socially aware, choosing to be naïve about it, is a statement.

[Q] Playboy: Did you make that choice from the beginning?

[A] Martin: When I was starting out, I intended to put meaning into my act, to be a social satirist, to say something about truth and beauty and everything. And then the Beatles came along and they started saying it--in their songs, with Sgt. Pepper. And I went, shit, they did what I had planned to do. They had put meaning into entertainment. So, at that point, I said, now I have to turn it the other way. That's what was the premise of my whole act during a time when it never could have succeeded. I was doing my act without meaning. Consciously avoiding politics.

[Q] Playboy: Why, at that time, did you feel it couldn't succeed?

[A] Martin: Because the Sixties needed a hard-hitting response. People were being killed. There was a real threat, people were going to war. So they had to say it, they didn't have time for satire. Satire was so easy then, because everyone knew what you were talking about. Everyone knew that you were supposed to laugh at a drug joke and to applaud a war joke and anything you said about Nixon was all set up. But then everything became so stupid, like suddenly every idiot had something to say. They almost had no right to say it, because they weren't artists. And the songs were stupid. Bob Dylan, the Beatles, they were real masters of the form--then for six years afterward, you had guys singing these drug songs, "Blow my mind"... it was just very trite.

[Q] Playboy: You've taken quite a leap. For an asocial, nonpolitical comic, that is.

[A] Martin: The last time I voted was for McGovern. Or was it McCarthy? Mc-Govern. OK. He was defeated so badly, I thought it was the stupidest thing I'd ever been involved in. That's exactly why I don't talk about politics, because it's so futile. You can only close your doors and think about your own life. You don't live in America, you live in Hollywood.

[Q] Playboy: How do you see what you were doing at the time?

[A] Martin: I was freeing myself and representing people who didn't have to be socially or politically conscious. When you vote for McGovern and you're defeated by a landslide, that's insignificant. You're powerless, it was a waste of a day, a waste of registering. My act symbolized the need to turn away from the phony responsibility, when it was hip to have an opinion. Where one time to protest the Vietnam war was a necessity, it suddenly became hip. You had people growing their hair who never should have grown their hair long. And then Watergate--that was past the point of our being able to do something about it. The next thing was that it was OK to create your own world or your own country in your head.

[Q] Playboy: And your timing was right?

[A] Martin: The timing was so right. I see myself as a success of timing, having the right act at the right time, when everybody was sort of starting to think that way. That's why I was a phenomenon rather than just another comedian. We were in the midst of the Sixties when I was starting to formulate this idea. I'd say, "Someday this consciousness will grow tiresome." It's like impressionism: a master movement, a great movement; but no matter how great it was, someday it was going to grow tired. That's what I felt in the Sixties. This was a master movement and I was into it. I knew that someday we'd have to change, just out of boredom, and that's what I was formulating. Almost getting ready for it, in retrospect. I felt like I was the avant-garde. And three years ago, I was the avant-garde.

[Q] Playboy: It sounds very calculated. Let's see if we can focus on this master movement. What does your comedy deal with?

[A] Martin: I'm dealing with a very personal side of a human being's brain, that little tiny area that tells him if this is funny or not. The best way to hit that is to never determine that for him. That's what I believe is the reason my comedy worked, ultimately. It became a private joke among friends. My first, initial, original thought in comedy was, If I say a joke that has a punch line and they don't laugh, then I'm screwed. If I just start talking funny-type things and never give them a punch line, eventually their tension is going to grow so much that they will start laughing on their own, they'll start choosing things to be funny, which is the strongest kind of humor. They have determined what is funny, not me. The laugh I like to get is, "What? I don't know why I'm laughing."

Laughter is the most peculiar emotional response of all. It doesn't relate even to joy, as tears relate to sadness and terror. But laughter is really a spontaneous act. It doesn't even mean you're happy. It's a very strange commodity--laughter. To be supplying that to people. I used to stand up there and act like I could not care less if this got a laugh. I'd take out the jokes and do those nonsense things. One of the first jokes I'd say was, "Now, the nose-on-the-microphone routine." And I'd put my nose on the microphone and go, "Thank you." Which is all very simple and childlike, looking back, but that was the premise that I first started operating on. At that time, if they didn't laugh, you had to believe it was their fault, they didn't get it.

[Q] Playboy: What you're saying is that you were at the forefront in taking us from the social Sixties to the silly Seventies?

[A] Martin: I've been criticized for being on the brainless side, which is the furthest thing from the truth in my head. Silliness. It's so way off, I don't have to defend that. Comedy has always been brainless, superficially. Are Laurel and Hardy brainless? I don't think so. What I say onstage relates more to psychoanalysis. It relates to human beings, to individuals.

[Q] Playboy: Do you see yourself more as a harbinger of the "me" decade?

[A] Martin: I hate to hear it referred to as a narcissistic point of view, because that means love of yourself. That's only turning inward without a reason. Not for love of yourself, just for its own sake.

[Q] Playboy: For the sake of this interview, let's look at some real issues and get your views of them. OK with you?

[A] Martin: OK; this might help me in my routines.

[Q] Playboy: What do you think about the problems in the Middle East?

[A] Martin: I've always heard there was trouble over there, but I went there personally and there was no trouble at all in the Middle East. I went to Tennessee, East Virginia, Maryland, and I'm happy to say there's no trouble.

[Q] Playboy: That's certainly good to hear. Let's move closer to home. Where do you stand on the E.R.A. issue?

[A] Martin: I just can't figure out all this turmoil over the Earned Run Average.

[Q] Playboy: All right, one more: Are there any causes you support?

[A] Martin: I wanted to get involved in a cause now that I have the time. Celebrities have an obligation to have a cause to live for. I didn't know what I wanted to live for, so I put all the causes in a hat and I just chose one. It was gay rights. So I joined it and worked for it, but then I quit.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Martin: I'll tell you why. Because that organization is infiltrated with homosexuals!

[Q] Playboy: And now you have nothing to live for?

[A] Martin: This brings to mind Manhattan, the scene where Woody Allen is fooling with his Dictaphone, talking about the reasons to live. It was the most daring thing I've seen in modern film making, where a guy numbers, enumerates the things that are worth living for. I don't care what he said, I admired the fact that those were his personal things. And except for a couple of food things, they were all artistic things--Mozart, performing artists, Groucho.

[Q] Playboy: What's your greatest pleasure in life?

[A] Martin: My greatest pleasure is conversation. And wit. The most fun game in life is exploring your own wit and intelligence and feeding off someone else's. All it takes is a little bit of your own intelligence and a lot of intelligence from the people around you. It's like, choose your friends. If you hang around with slobs, you'll be a slob.

[Q] Playboy: Who are some of those people?

[A] Martin: There's a clique in New York that's so much fun: Mike Nichols, Candice Bergen, Paul Simon, Carrie Fisher, those people. Real intelligent, witty, fun. On this Coast, I know Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Dom DeLuise--which can be the most hysterical evening you'll ever have. And their wives.

[Q] Playboy: Do you try out new material for these people?

[A] Martin: Oh, yeah, I'll try out with people I'm with, like Carl, because I'm around him a lot now, or an art-dealer friend, Terry DeLapp, or Bernadette [Peters].

[Q] Playboy: Can you give us an example of how your friends may influence your material?

[A] Martin: A new bit in my act is something I was doing at Terry's house. We'd get together and he loves big-band music of the Forties, so he'd put this on and I'd start dancing to it. You know, silly. And his wife would just die laughing. The more she'd laugh, the more I'd do it. Then I'd think, God, it'd be great, I'm going to be standing onstage doing my act, then have this big band, Benny Goodman's Stompin' at the Savoy come on and I'll go, "What's going on here? What is this music?" Then I'll start my toe slightly tapping and then I'll do my dance until it gets real big. In the middle of it, I'll turn on a strobe light and stand perfectly still for 30 seconds.

[Q] Playboy: That sounds like a variation of your Happy Feet. Where did that one come from?

[A] Martin: The genesis of that was I wanted a routine where I look like I'm being controlled by something else. I was going to look up at the sky and start dancing and go, "Leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone." And that evolved into Happy Feet. The audiences didn't get it when I looked up and said, "Leave me alone." They didn't understand the setup, but the dance got laughs. So I just dropped the setup. It's funny, just the way it looks, with your arms and feet flying. But there's also a little more sophisticated concept: like, does this happen to you often? Is it something everyone gets?

[Q] Playboy: Sort of like your line about farting when someone smokes?

[A] Martin: Bill McEuen, my manager, made that up. He said it at a dinner table one night. He overheard someone say, "Mind if I smoke?" He said "No; mind if I fart?" My eyes lit up and I said, Gold! I got up and wrote it down. It became a staple of my act for a long time. "Mind if I fart?" It would get a big laugh anywhere. It was a little sanctuary for me. It's like once I'm experimenting out there, I can always go to this and it will be pretty safe.

[Q] Playboy: Like your King Tut bit. Did that come to you after seeing the exhibition?

[A] Martin: Yeah. I went to the art museum and thought it was a shameful exploitation of King Tut. So I said, What's the stupidest melody I can think of? What're the dumbest lyrics? That's where King Tut came from.

[Q] Playboy: Are new routines constantly popping into your head?

[A] Martin: I thought of one this morning, for a TV special or something. You see me with a bow and arrow, then you cut to one of those big targets made out of hay. I shoot the arrow and the next scene is I've got the target on the dinner table. I've got to write that down.

[Q] Playboy: While you do that, are there any routines that you feel are funny but that don't go over?

[A] Martin: There was a routine that I always had confidence in. The Jackie Onassis bit. Where I meet Jackie Onassis for lunch and she turns out to be a pig, eating with her hands, unbelievably bad table manners. They didn't go for it in 1970; I guess she was too sacred. But then about two years ago, I put it back and it started getting laughs. It's on the third album.

[Q] Playboy: Which is Comedy Is Not Pretty. Why isn't it?

[A] Martin: That's a line I ad-libbed one night. I did the joke about my girlfriend who came to me and said, "I don't think you respect me as a woman." I said, "What are you talking about? You are the best hog I have ever had." The audience just laughs and they go boo. So I said, "Hey, wait a minute, comedy is not pretty." That's where the title came from. I like everything about that album.

[Q] Playboy: Each of your three albums seems to get a little further out. Is that intentional?

[A] Martin: There was a method in the release of those records. I couldn't put those new bits on the first record. In Let's Get Small, I had to put the bits that made the most irrational sense, that were concrete, that were self-contained and clean. I don't mean languagewise, I'm talking about the clean lines of the routine that flow from piece to piece. On the second record, we went with material that was probably a little further out. The last record is the most challenging.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't you have some problems with the second album, A Wild and Crazy Guy, and a distributor because of the language?

[A] Martin: It was a problem. You go on The Tonight Show and you don't say fuck. Then the parents go and say, "He's great for little Billy, 'cause he doesn't say fuck," and they buy the album and it says fuck. As much as I realize that parents went out and bought their kids my album and it says fuck on it, I can't rescind, I can't say I apologize. The only thing I apologize for is it doesn't say on the record: "By the way, this says fuck on it." That's fair. Tell them what they're buying ahead of time. But you don't change it, that's censorship. Records and movies are great sanctuaries to be away from censorship. It's not like I suddenly went out and said, "Well, now I'm going to say fuck." I've been saying it in my act since I was 19. It used to be worse.

[Q] Playboy: While the reviews of your first album seemed mostly favorable, you were cut up a bit for the second album. A Rolling Stone critic wrote that "clean, apolitical comedy is one thing, while cartoonish mediocrity that wholeheartedly supports a decade's social clichés instead of deflating them is another."

[A] Martin: That comment is very interesting in that he's acknowledged that I've elevated mediocrity to a place of importance. That is really the secret of my act. But it's done intentionally. He doesn't regard it as satire when, in truth, it's very satirical. It's like he missed the last point of my act.

[Q] Playboy: Did he also miss when he compared your "smug, emasculated, rancid showbiz condescension" to Milton Berle's push-anything-for-a-laugh excess?

[A] Martin: The point has been missed again. It's not, for instance, that the arrow through the head is funny, it's that someone thinks the arrow through the head is funny. It so happens that the nose glasses are funny, but my point was, it's gone beyond the glasses; it's the putting on of the nose glasses that is funny. I'd love to answer with such a sword that it cuts up that criticism, but I'm vulnerable to it. It's true, in a way, if you don't really examine what I'm doing, if you just stop there. But kids like my act because I'm wearing nose glasses. Adults like my act because there's a guy who thinks putting on nose glasses is funny.

[Q] Playboy: Would that analogy apply to your coming out to deliver a Grammy award on national TV without your pants?

[A] Martin: That was logical because it had a payoff that made total sense. It wasn't a person who was dropping his pants for a laugh--that's the Milton Berle approach. My approach was that I thought it would look funny first of all. But I had to have more than that. I had to say it was because my pants didn't show up. After the bit's over, the thought the audience may have is of me standing back there going, "I don't have my pants, they're not here yet, they're supposed to be back from the cleaners. Well, I'll just have to go on like this." To me, that's the best part of the joke. The subtext. The thinking that the audience has to supply to figure out why I went out without my pants on. Although, I must say that my first thought was, I'll go out with no pants.

[Q] Playboy: Good old Uncle Miltie.

[A] Martin: You know what it is? It's making fun of the situation. All these awards and people in tuxedos and it's making fun of it. I did that with the Billboard Award show, where I went out and said, "This is the most coveted award in the business, we should understand the sanctity of this award." And I pulled out a cheese sandwich wrapped in wax paper and ate the sandwich while I gave the award.

[Q] Playboy: Do you believe in awards?

[A] Martin: Only the fun side of them. I don't like to feel like I'm in a race or a contest, and that's what it becomes. It's like Miss America. You've got 45 losers is what you've got. The history of awards is they're usually wrong. The people who really take them seriously are the people who want them and the people who refuse them.

[Q] Playboy: When you were up for a Grammy, did your heart beat steadily?

[A] Martin: I must say my heart pounded a little fast when the thing came up. That's just the thrill of being there. The Grammys are the stupidest comedy award ever.

[Q] Playboy: The Oscars will probably mean something else to you this year, now that you're the star and one of the writers of your first film, The Jerk. Actually, make that first feature film, because you did write and star in a seven-minute short with Buck Henry called The Absent-Minded Waiter. Since that is shown, for the most part, at your concerts, what is it about?

[A] Martin: It was a sketch I wrote about ten years ago. It took me about an hour. Submitted it for TV. Turned down. Went on to other TV shows. Submitted it. Turned down every time. Then, on the new Smothers Brothers Show a couple of years ago, we did it and it went over great. Then, in our deal with Paramount [Paramount dropped its option to The Jerk], one of the ideas that [producer] David Picker had was to make a short that would promote my face to the moviegoing public. So when my movie came out, I would be a movie star, in a sense.

[Q] Playboy: And you just happened to have something you wanted to do.

[A] Martin: I thought this was the safest thing to do. I worked over the script with Carl Gottlieb, who directed it. It takes seven minutes. I'll tell you what it's about. A couple--Buck Henry and Terri Garr--go to a restaurant and ask the maitre de for my table. Buck Henry says, "You're not going to believe this; you're going to see the most absent-minded waiter ever." And she says, "So what? Why did you bring me here?" I come and say, "Here's your water," and pour the water on the table and then set down the glasses. There's water all over them now. Then I say, "Can I take your order?" Buck orders. I turn to Terri, "May I take your order?" She orders. I turn back to Buck, "May I take your order?" Buck orders again. I go to Terri, "May I take your order? OK. What would you like to drink? Two martinis? Fine. What would you like? Martini? OK. And what would you like? OK, two martinis. And a martini." I come back and bring them six martinis. After the drinks, I bring the desserts. Buck says, "We haven't got our main course yet." So I say, "Oh, that chef, he's always forgetting," and go back and bring them the main course, but it's all screwed up. A lard omelet and a Truly Maple Surprise. Meanwhile, Terri Garr is going, "Why did you bring me here, this is our one night out, why here?" Buck says, "Don't worry, just stick with me." Finally, she says, "That's it, I'm so pissed off, I'm never going to come here again, and I'm just as mad at you." Then I come in and I go, "And here's your change... ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety, a hundred, two hundred, three hundred, four hundred, five hundred, a thousand, two thousand, three thousand, ten thousand dollars. Thank you and come again." And I walk away. They start giggling. Buck starts lighting up the money. I come back and go, "May I help you?" Terri goes, "Yes. Two. For dinner." And they sit down and go through the whole thing again. It is funny. I've seen it play 500 times on my concert dates and it just works great. I'm really proud of it. I'm proud that I made something that is funny. Not any other reason, just funny.

[Q] Playboy: Is that how you feel about The Jerk?

[A] Martin: I think it came out great, very funny. We congratulate ourselves a lot, in that it's a picture that has never been made before. That's the one thing we're most proud of is that, really, you don't know what's going to happen next in the picture.

[Q] Playboy: Whose idea was The Jerk?

[A] Martin: The script was basically my idea: A guy is raised by a poor black family but realizes at some point that he's actually white--and a bum. Then he gets rich off the dumbest thing in the world. That story always fascinated me, about the guy who invented the hooks on your pants who made a million billion dollars. Then the story appeared about the guy who invented a plastic gasket, a millionaire living in Palm Springs, and he's still got his gas-station shirt on. So that's all I had. The rest was vignettes. That's probably why it needed two rewrites. Carl Gottlieb and I worked for six weeks on the first version.

[Q] Playboy: What was Carl Reiner's contribution?

[A] Martin: Carl Reiner added wisdom. And structure and character. He made it better. In fact, it would have been a lousy movie without him.

[Q] Playboy: His son is also in the picture, isn't he?

[A] Martin: One of my favorite scenes is with Rob Reiner. I'm hitchhiking in front of my house. It's night, I've been standing there for eight hours. Finally, a car comes and he pulls over. He says, "I'm going down to that fence," which is, like, ten feet away. I go, "OK." I get in and I say, "What's your name?" And he goes, "Well, here we are." I say, "Thanks for the company," and he drives off.

[Q] Playboy: Is it wrong to assume that you're now in a position in which anything you want to do will get done?

[A] Martin: I feel that right now. I don't have to sell. I can walk in and say, "I've got an idea for a movie about a clock that gets shit on." "Sounds good, Steve, baby." After the picture comes out, we'll have more power--or less. That's why it's critical right now for me to be thinking, because they'll say yes to anything. So I have to think what's good for me. My agent said, "Steve, you've got to read your scripts with care, because if you say you'll do it, the picture will be made. No matter how bad." It's like Moment by Moment. They had John Travolta and Lily Tomlin. I'd make that picture. How could it bomb? How could The Fortune bomb? It had Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty and Mike Nichols directing.

[Q] Playboy: And The Jerk has you, Bill Murray, Rob and Carl Reiner and Bernadette Peters. It's a pretty important film for her, isn't it?

[A] Martin: Oh, yeah. This is the first part she's had that hasn't been a crazy woman. Her talent is unrevealed to the public. I think this movie will do more for her than for me. I really do. What I do in the picture is expected. What she's doing is a surprise.

[Q] Playboy: Is she very anxious about it?

[A] Martin: No, she's the most calm, easygoing person I've ever met. She really can take things or leave them. Her ego is not big. She doesn't read her reviews, let's put it that way.

[Q] Playboy: Sounds like you're proud of her.

[A] Martin: Yeah. People go nuts when they meet her. I feel proud of her when her talent is exposed. She'd be happy being an actress, but I think she wants to pursue performing, singing, records. She's a great singer; I think she can be one of the best--a real landmark singer. Because her voice is so controlled. It has an unusual quality to it.

[Q] Playboy: Where did you meet her?

[A] Martin: In Vegas one time when I was working there. I was with another girl, it was a celebrity softball game. We went out to a dinner afterward. Then I met her on Hollywood Squares. I was attracted to her, so I clowned around like a teenager. She was a square below me, so I'd throw things down. I was having fun. I had put up a Venetian blind in my square, so I could close it. I put up a sign that said Closed and Open. Move the slats so I could look out. It was funny.

[Q] Playboy: Sounds like you stayed in character in your attempts to woo her.

[A] Martin: I got her phone number that night. Like I was in high school. And I started seeing her. She had just had an affair break up, six months earlier.

[Q] Playboy: Would your parents like you to marry her?

[A] Martin: Oh, they'd love it. They'd die for it. It doesn't occur to me. It only occurs in certain moments, and then you live to rue the day, as I seem to recall e. e. cummings said. No, I have no interest in it.

[Q] Playboy: But if Bernadette wanted to get married, would you do it?

[A] Martin: I'd certainly consider it. If it meant losing her or getting married, I'd consider it. But she's a woman who has lived all her life without getting married, too, so obviously, it's part of her make-up. She lives alone and we're two peas in a pod that way.

[Q] Playboy: Why aren't you living together?

[A] Martin: There's no way we can live together right now. When my new house gets off the ground, we'll see. We've talked about it.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever lived with anyone?

[A] Martin: Yeah. I lived with three different girls. The longest was a couple of years; but I'm against talking about sex. I don't think it's essential to my personality. It's purient, per, pru, perient, prurient in regards to me. If you're asking Roman Polanski that, then it might relate to his personality. It's private with me. You have to choose to whom you reveal your past. Maybe there's something I don't want Bernadette to know, because it's pointless and it may throw a wrench in something. Maybe there's something I don't want my mother to know. So why should I suddenly, for the nation, reveal something that I don't want my mother to know?

[Q] Playboy: That's an understandable position. However, being on the road for all those years, surely you were exposed to a lot of wild and crazy temptations.

[A] Martin: That's something I don't want to talk about.

[Q] Playboy: Because of your mother or Bernadette?

[A] Martin: I have a different life now. That part of my life is five years ago, so anything I say about that doesn't apply to now. Because I don't get into those situations anymore. I couldn't go for the one-night thing anymore. I couldn't wake up with a stranger. That whole thing--it was depressing. And I have to be rude to people who knock on the door here. You open it up and it's a 14-year-old girl. And you just have to say, "Wrong. You go away." Let me just say that it's as hard to get laid if you're Superman as it is... you know... it's harder! At whatever level you are in life, it's hard. It's just as nerve-racking.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever dressed up funny, put on nose glasses, before engaging in any kind of sexual congress?

[A] Martin: I can't remember. Let's just say I've gotten laughs in bed. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: Did you ever fantasize about certain women when you were a kid, some famous actress or singer?

[A] Martin: It didn't have to be a big star for me to fantasize. It could have been the girl in the corner holding the spear. Rhonda Fleming, that's who I liked. For a long time, I was in love with Joni Mitchell. Never knew her, never met her, but she was really appealing to me. Linda, I was really taken with her.

[Q] Playboy: Here we are again, back to Linda Ronstadt. Where did you meet her?

[A] Martin: She was a singer and I was a comedian at the Troubadour. She was with the Stone Poneys. I saw her singing onstage and thought she was great. It was just before she had a hit with Long, Long Time or Different Drum. I started hanging around with her and her friends, like the Eagles, before they made it, and Kris Kristofferson. We were both very changeable then. We were always thinking of the future, looking around the corner to see what else was coming. I'm a little more stable now, because Bernadette's pretty stable. Or very stable.

[Q] Playboy: You mean you realized that the life of a rock star was not for you?

[A] Martin: Yeah, I nixed that. I was into it for a while just because my friends were musicians, but the hard-core rock life--I realized I would kill myself if I did that.

[Q] Playboy: Well, now that you're beginning to live the life of a movie star, are there any actresses you'd like to work with?

[A] Martin: I'd love to act with Jane Fonda. And with Diane Keaton, but that's difficult, because I don't want to be a Woody Allen schlep.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever met Woody?

[A] Martin: No. He's just a real artist. I'd love to meet him, but I'd hate to go through the agony of meeting him over the dinner table or shaking hands with him at a party. Because he and I are both agonized at meeting people. If you said, Steve, you've got to share Woody's apartment with him for four weeks, that would be better.

[Q] Playboy: Do you know that he writes most of his short stories in bed?

[A] Martin: That's probably a good place to do it. Maybe I'll ask him if I can get in his bed and try writing something. His stories are brilliant, some are unbelievable. He's a real writer, a guy who writes every day. He's really concerned with words and language when he writes those stories. What I write has nothing to do with what he writes. I'm a guy who thinks and makes a note and puts it in my act.

[Q] Playboy: Or in your book. You do have a best seller at the moment.

[A] Martin: It's not comparable. On the one hand, Cruel Shoes is a joke book. I'm not demeaning it, I think there's some pretty good stuff in there, but it doesn't take the form of a Woody Allen short story. His are extremely complex and beautiful. Cruel Shoes is like Erma Bombeck's If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, which I presume is very light. I can't judge its quality. It's amusing, it's interesting, it goes from very light to very serious, but it's not J. P. Donleavy. And it's probably not as funny as some people would expect it to be.

[Q] Playboy: Were you surprised it reached the top of the best-seller list?

[A] Martin: That's all a fluke. That's a matter of timing. You know, it's beat out two diet books. I thought it would sell well, because my albums sell up to two and a half million copies, so why shouldn't the book, which is cheaper than an album? The book sold because it was by Steve Martin, a comedian. I know that. That doesn't bother me. It was never intended to be a great book. I like to think that along with buying the book, a little something else goes with it: a better understanding of what my comedy means. I think I'm probably most sensitive to the criticism that my comedy is brainless, when I know it's not. Hopefully, something like the book makes my comedy a larger world.

[Q] Playboy: Not according to most of the critics, who didn't have very nice things to say about it.

[A] Martin: I knew they were going to kill me, but I don't give a shit. It's just like doing The Tonight Show--you're exactly the same on every television set and you've got half the people who loved it and half who hated it. Cruel Shoes is like that. They say, "I loved this one," and another guy says, "I hated this one." There's no sense at all to it. I know what the book is, I don't need to be told. I know where the problems are. But they are criticizing things like the photographs or the length, which is totally ridiculous, because length has nothing to do with quality. Go review The Waste Land and then come back and tell me it's too short. Also, they are missing the point. They are taking intentional bad writing and criticizing it on a very superficial level. Some of the stuff is criticizable--nobody wants to read a poem by a comedian; maybe that was a mistake. Who knows? Fuck you.

[Q] Playboy: You sound disturbed.

[A] Martin: See, I've read 8,000,000 reviews of me, and in the past two years, I can see them start to change in attitude. In the beginning, I thought, Oh, boy, my first review, I'll read it. But I don't want to be influenced by a review. And I found that you are influenced. Reading a review is like being a naughty boy--you know you shouldn't, but you do it anyway.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think part of the criticism has to do with the fact that you've made it so big?

[A] Martin: The press's attitude goes in a cycle. Right now, I'm vulnerable to criticism because I'm at the top. It's now the thing to knock me down. But you know what happens? They don't criticize me, they criticize the audience for liking me. It's weird, it's kind of a perverted way to criticize something. I have been misrepresented through criticism, which is the last way to understand something.

Especially something intended to be aesthetic. If we're going to criticize, then we all have to stand next to Leonardo or Michelangelo or Mozart or Beethoven. And anything is going to look like shit next to that. So once you acknowledge that, then it's OK to go, "Well, I make little jokes."

[Q] Playboy: What you're saying is that you feel a backlash.

[A] Martin: I sat down two years ago and I said to my agent, they're going to love me; for a while, I'm going to be un-criticizable. They cannot criticize if there are 20,000 people there. Then the backlash will start. After the backlash is over, everybody'll mellow out and the truth will come out. And we don't know what the truth is.

[Q] Playboy: It's rather ironic; here you are, at the very top of your profession, and you're sounding like an underdog.

[A] Martin: I'm beginning to understand that the underdog syndrome is important. The insult is in some ways as good as the praise. Right now, I'm being insulted. I need bad reviews as much as good ones. Because every time you get a bad review, someone out there rushes to your defense. Someone more important than the reviewer: the comedy consumer.

[Q] Playboy: Have you always gotten good career advice?

[A] Martin: When I was with William Morris, I went in and told them I was leaving television writing to be a performer. They said, "Don't do it, you'll never make it." Which I loved. I love when they say you're not going to make it. That's like, Jesus Christ, I've seen that in 18 movies. They told the guy he wasn't going to make it and he did. That's all part of it. I almost felt like a third person watching it: Oh, finally somebody said I'm not going to make it. [Laughs] Rejection is part of your accomplishments.

[Q] Playboy: You sound like a man who has a lot of confidence in himself.

[A] Martin: Oh, yeah, I have a lot of confidence in my ability. In show business, if you don't think that you're going to make it, or if you don't think that you're great, you haven't got a chance. Because there's too much working against you. There's too much shit to go through for seven years unless you think you're great. You have to stand there and bomb for three years and think they don't get it. When I started out, it was the thrill of not getting laughs. The thrill of making them go, "What?" more than getting laughs. I thought, Well, the least I'm doing is blowing their minds.

[Q] Playboy: What were some of the more outrageous things you used to do?

[A] Martin: There was a time when I was truly a wild and crazy guy. Onstage and after the show. Like, I used to take the audience into the streets at the end, which I can't do now because of legal problems and because there're 15,000 people now. In Nashville once, the police stopped me because we had 300 people out on the street. The first time I ever did that, I was working a college, 150 seats, and the dressing room was on the stage. There was no way out except through the stage. I finished the show, went back in my dressing room and they were still sitting there. I came out and they were still there, so we sort of went outside and I had them all get in an empty swimming pool. I swam across the top of them.

At one club, I said, "Who's seen me before?" A guy raised his hand. I said, "Get up here and finish the act for me." And I'd go sit and he'd get up there. He'd stumble through some jokes and I'd applaud and say, "Hey, this guy's great." It was real loose and funny.

[Q] Playboy: It also got a bit bizarre, didn't it?

[A] Martin: Yeah. At the opening of my act at the Boarding House, the lights would go down, but I wouldn't go onstage. You'd just hear my voice saying, "They can't hear me, can they? I hate this audience. Why do I have to go out there? I hate doing this. What in the hell am I doing here?" Then I go on: "Hi, everybody!" Then I go off at the end of the show and I'd say, "They can't hear me, can they? What a bunch of assholes. Jesus Christ!"

Sometimes I'd end the show, go back, change my clothes and be walking out when I'd stop and start doing another act. Bill McEuen and I look back on it as the days when I was really funny. That's when we were doing comedy because we had nothing to lose.

[Q] Playboy: It was also when you opened for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, whose audiences weren't too receptive to your style of comedy.

[A] Martin: Yes. It was the days of beer and drugs. The audience was not into comedy, not into listening to someone talk, not into giving a performer any courtesy at all. Even to the band. No respect, almost. That's when I made a very important decision--that I was only going to headline; I'm never going to open another show. When you're opening, I don't care who you are, no one comes to see you. You have to put your name up. I don't care if you're Bozo the Clown, if you put Bozo on top at the Roxy and the Eagles below, half the people there will be there to see Bozo. That's psychology.

[Q] Playboy: Before that decision, though, you worked a lot of hostile crowds. Did you ever get so angry that you just walked off?

[A] Martin: It happened. I was an m.c. for a rock show outside New York. There were five bands. They introduced me and I walked on and there was no change in the din of the crowd. Finally, I gave them the finger and walked off. I've done that a couple of times: "Fuck you" and I walk off.

One time I was standing doing my show and these four 16-year-olds are in the front row, yelling, "Quaaludes! Quaaludes!" to the point where it was interrupting the show severely. I couldn't concentrate. No one else can hear them but me, because they're in the front row. They're just so excited about Quaaludes that they have to call out the name. That's one of my great hatreds of performing live: the uncontrollable idiot in the audience who throws off a show. There are loudmouths who have timing and you can use it to your advantage and there are loud-mouths who don't have any sense of timing and will call out anything at any moment. Which totally frustrates the flow of what you're doing.

[Q] Playboy: It also allows you the opportunity to put them down, which usually goes over well.

[A] Martin: Sometimes. Like when someone starts talking to me, I'll say, "Oh, I'll get my camera, this is great, I've never had a picture of an asshole before." Usually, I mimic them. Someone interrupts with, "Hey, Steve, how's it going?" And I'll say, "And the sad thing is he says that all the time, no matter where he is. He just happened to be here and it happened to fit in. But wherever he is, at restaurants, anywhere, he always goes, 'Hey, Steve, how's it going?' " It pisses me off.

[Q] Playboy: To the point that you want to stop perfoming live?

[A] Martin: I've felt that way. I don't need this. I'm not doing a carnival here. It's harrowing to be in front of 20,000 people and someone's down at the foot of the stage, smacking the floor with a gift he has for me. And I'm supposed to be gracious--oh, wonderful, a T-shirt with writing on it or something. It just drives me nuts.

One time a guy wanted to give me a T-shirt. He wrapped it up in a beer can, full of beer, and then he suddenly threw it on the stage and the T-shirt flew off and the beer can hit me.

You don't know what's happening. You think you're being killed. It's frightening to have something thrown at you onstage. I had to leave the stage for that. The guy thought he was being nice, but it really freaks you out--your heart's pounding and you're flipped out. You can't see; all you know is that you're a target. It makes me afraid. The more it happens, the more you've got it in the back of your mind. Audiences are insane; it's like a new kind of weird mass hysteria.

[Q] Playboy: We've talked about audiences on the coasts, but what about your impressions of Middle America?

[A] Martin: I remember when we did those long-stretch tours in the Midwest, we'd say, Thank God we don't have a day off. Because what do you do in Podunk for a night? You get more depressed. The worst time is when you're sick--and you always get sick on the road. Or when you're nowhere. Nowhere is worse. There's not a movie, there's not a TV, or it's off at ten. There're no people in town.

[Q] Playboy: What's the most nowhere place in America for you?

[A] Martin: Terre Haute, Indiana. Very little main street. And literally not a restaurant with any good food. You'd go into whole towns where it's completely made of fast food. If you were looking for something to buy, just looking to amuse yourself by buying something, you'd walk down the street, there was nothing for sale. There was nothing of anything you'd want. They say you can always tell that you're somewhere when they have manure ads on TV. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: Talking about those days now, are the memories amusing to you? Are they the "good old days"?

[A] Martin: No. Because it was so hard and depressing and dreary. There's a real loneliness out there. That's why you meet waitresses. It's depressing at night. You feel so shitty in the morning and you can't figure it out. I couldn't put two and two together. Why am I depressed? I used to go home and I'd stink. It took me a month to figure out it was cigarette smoke. In my hair, my clothes. Your suitcase stinks and reeks and you don't have any money and you're living in the sleaziest hotel.

[Q] Playboy: Is there anything going for you when you're on the road trying to make it?

[A] Martin: The most thrilling thing is when the audience is not laughing but you've got the waitresses and the sound man and your manager laughing. Bill Cosby said once, "I was onstage and I wasn't getting laughs, but I saw the waitress laughing, so I knew I was going to make it." They've seen you several nights, now you're starting to make them laugh. A lot of comedy is that--getting used to someone.

[Q] Playboy: Which is what people obviously did with you.

[A] Martin: But when I was 29, 30, I said, "Well, this is it, it's not going to happen, I'm not growing." Then I went to the Boarding House and it was sold out on a weekend. That was enough to keep me going.

[Q] Playboy: What would have happened to you had you not gotten the laughs?

[A] Martin: I was going to go further out. Become an artist totally. Not be concerned with show business at all. There's nothing I really can do except this.

[Q] Playboy: Besides the laughs, what's the greatest rush you get when performing?

[A] Martin: There's a real thrill of timing. That's the greatest fun of all. When you're resting, waiting; you've got the next line in your head and you're just waiting for that little intimate moment. And you know it's right to say it. you know it's right to do this, to move your hands this way. Really flowing. Charged. Like a ballet. Only you're using everything. It's not just dance, it's words.

[Q] Playboy: Have drugs ever aided your sense of timing and control?

[A] Martin: I created a lot of my material when I was out of my mind. I learned how to play the banjo when I was stoned, because you can sit there for six hours and listen to shit and you think it's great. I wish it had an effect on me now like it did then, but it doesn't. It was making me lethargic.

[Q] Playboy: Are fans always trying to lay drugs on you?

[A] Martin: I'm really offended by people who come up and assume that you use cocaine or smoke dope and they're offering it to you. First, they're idiots, they're out of their minds. And I got so turned off from the audiences at the rock concerts that I said, "I can't be this stupid. I'm never going to end up like that idiot." I'm against the symptoms of the drug overdose, when a guy is totally stupid. It's like the same hostility that I feel toward an absolute drunk. I know there are mature users of drugs that are aids to them, and sometimes I envy that. It would be great to get stoned, but I'm afraid of it, for one thing. It's like LSD. I'd love to take LSD when I'm 60. When you've got nothing to lose.

[Q] Playboy: In the days when you did get stoned, what kind of material were you writing?

[A] Martin: A lot of sketches for television.

[Q] Playboy: Did you find TV writing hazardous to your mental health?

[A] Martin: Yes and no. Television was a great discipline for me. You didn't have time to say one piece of poetry, it had to be a joke. The greatest thing I learned was take out the crap. It's the greatest advice you can give anybody. Lose it. Take it out. X it. And I learned the structure; it was my own structure for writing jokes.

[Q] Playboy: Was what you wrote often what actually appeared on the tube?

[A] Martin: Once you write a piece and think it's funny, you hand it to a producer and he changes it. Then you hand it to the star and he changes it or doesn't rehearse it and fucks it up so badly. Then the director shoots it and he misses the joke. I can remember standing there, going, "Boy, are they screwing that." Then it goes to postproduction and they sweeten it till there's no jokes left, no humor, no spontaneity, no charm, no mystery. Sometimes the distance from the printed page to what you see on the screen is so far that the joke's been homogenized and disappeared.

[Q] Playboy: You started writing for the Smothers Brothers at a very young age, didn't you?

[A] Martin: I was 21 years old and suddenly somebody said, "Write for television." I'd never written anything. The Smothers Brothers decided that year to get rid of all their old writers, meaning old in years, and hire all young people, so they got me and Carl Gottlieb, Bob Einstein, John Hartford, Mason Williams and Rob Reiner, who was younger than I was. But I wasn't prepared emotionally to handle that challenge.

[Q] Playboy: What do you mean?

[A] Martin: I teamed up with Bob Einstein the first day. He is a great comedy writer for television. He played Officer Judy on the show. He used to make me laugh so hard I thought I was dying. I was going through my anxiety stage and I'd be having these anxiety attacks laughing, he was so funny.

[Q] Playboy: What do you mean by anxiety attacks?

[A] Martin: I was a little overwhelmed at that whole scene, being expected to write these hysterically funny bits. You never know if you're a good writer, you always have the next thing to write. It's like you're only as funny as your last joke. That was always the feeling on the Smothers Brothers Show. You wrote a great sketch this week, now what's next? I didn't know if I was capable. Even though it was proved, I didn't know what proof was then.

[Q] Playboy: Did you finally crack from the pressure?

[A] Martin: Yeah.

[Q] Playboy: And that's when you went to a psychiatrist?

[A] Martin: I was already seeing a shrink for the draft. I'm very practical about those things. I go, All right, I've got something, which was anxiety, so you read about it, find out what it is and what causes it, and once you understand it, it's not as fearful. And eventually, it leaves because you understand it.

[Q] Playboy: Has anxiety left you?

[A] Martin: That kind of anxiety--intense, don't know what's happening, physical reactions--that's pretty much gone.

[Q] Playboy: Did you stop working when that happened?

[A] Martin: No, I kept working. It bothered me for a long time, a couple of years. Like, I couldn't stay in a restaurant for more than five minutes or I couldn't go into public places. I couldn't go into a movie theater. I had to get out. I was fearful. The definition of anxiety is fear without an object. Fear without something threatening you. Or whatever is threatening you is so buried in your subconscious, you don't know what it is and you just have to escape. It's exactly the symptom you have that someone's charging you with a knife. Increased heartbeat. You're nervous. You don't know what you're going to do. Only someone's not charging you with a knife.

[Q] Playboy: Did you take anything for that?

[A] Martin: I used mild tranquilizers.

[Q] Playboy: Do the symptoms return occasionally?

[A] Martin: The only thing that bothers me now is when people look at me. It's just a matter of figuring out what the problem is now. Before, I was so optimistic all my life that I didn't realize I had a problem. And that's what causes it--you're dismissing these little intimations that you have. What's more fearful with anxiety is fear of the symptoms' striking you again. That's the most frightening thing. Once you realize that the attack is harmless, you've made a big step. It's not a unique set of symptoms. I prepare myself: I say, "This is never going to work." That way, I've already failed. And if it succeeds, then it's a bonus.

[Q] Playboy: You mentioned that you were already seeing a shrink because of the draft. Did your anxiety attacks keep you out of the Army?

[A] Martin: Let's put it this way: I had migraine headaches about the time I was about to be drafted. I went to the library and found out the symptoms for migraines. I was making enough money at the time to go to a shrink for two years to establish it. But it so happens I never could have gone into the Army, anyway.

[Q] Playboy: Why not?

[A] Martin: Because of my antiwar stance, my inability to kill someone and my lust for life.

[Q] Playboy: A lot of us felt that. None of those would have kept you out.

[A] Martin: Let's put it this way: I would never have gone to Vietnam. I was prepared to leave the country.

[Q] Playboy: Did you ever participate in any antiwar protests?

[A] Martin: I don't like to go out in crowds, so I never showed up at marches. As a writer for the Smothers Brothers, we were doing a lot of antiwar commentary on TV. I felt I was serving through that show.

[Q] Playboy: What happened to that show?

[A] Martin: The Smothers Brothers were politically axed off CBS. I believe the Government put pressure on CBS to get them off the air. Because the ratings were good, the show was good. They came up with a phony excuse; they said a show wasn't delivered on time.

[Q] Playboy: One show?

[A] Martin: Yeah. Like, two days late. And they canceled it. The Smothers Brothers were giving the Government a lot of shit.

[Q] Playboy: How did you react?

[A] Martin: It confirmed my distrust of the Government and of bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is the worst evil.

[Q] Playboy: After The Smothers Brothers, you wrote for a number of other shows, including Sonny & Cher and Glen Campbell. That didn't last long, did it?

[A] Martin: Bob Einstein and I wrote a lot of funny sketches for Sonny & Cher, and a lot of those monologs, which you always tried to get out of writing.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Martin: Because you're always stuck with the same thing, you always go out on the same short joke: a nose joke. The reason I went to that show is they told me I could perform. I was really determined to be a performer. I said, "As long as I'm going to be there, I may as well write, too." I started writing and never appeared. Oh, I played a head one time, served on a silver tray, that did one-liners.

[Q] Playboy: And how long did you last with Glen Campbell?

[A] Martin: I quit after 13 weeks. I realized I was wasting my time, I was making $1500 a week, which was a lot of money, but after The Smothers Brothers, where you were really encouraged to write hard-hitting satire, to then go and simply write comedy, it didn't appeal to me anymore. I wanted to perform.

[Q] Playboy: Which you did soon after. How many shows did you do on TV?

[A] Martin: I did a lot of Steve Allen shows. Probably 35 of those. I did Della Reese, Joey Bishop, Merv Griffin. I've been on TV a lot, probably 500 times. The Tonight Show at least 35 or 40 times. When I first did The Tonight Show, I thought, That's it. But it wasn't. I realized after I'd done the show 15 times, I got recognized only once in the street. Then the next ten times they were going, "Oh, this guy." Then the next ten times, it was "Steve something."

[Q] Playboy: What's the craziest thing you've ever done on The Tonight Show?

[A] Martin: I had a couple of bits I rather liked, a long time ago. One was a comedy act for dogs.

[Q] Playboy: You told jokes for dogs?

[A] Martin: Yeah. The other bit was reading the phone book to make people laugh. You always hear that Olivier could read the phone book and make people cry, so I figured without any props or gimmicks, I could make them laugh by reading the phone book. So I'd pick up a book and go: "Aaron Adams, 612 North Frederick Street." There wouldn't be a laugh. "Bill Bosack, 647 North Atlantic." No laughs. I took out my arrow and put it on. Then I'd read a sillier name. "Mary Ann Pinball, 62... ." By the end of the thing, I was waving toothpicks from my head and holding up rubber chickens and then, finally, I'd say, "Don't look at me, I didn't write this shit." I thought it was hysterical. But it was the last time I appeared with Johnny for a long while.

[Q] Playboy: Because he didn't think you were funny?

[A] Martin: Maybe my skills weren't developed enough to warrant a reappearance. Which may have been true. Because I'd sit on the panel and I'd be uncomfortable and he'd be uncomfortable. So why should he waste time talking to me? But Carson has respect for the agony of comedy. Whatever his ego is, it's not egomania. Whatever he feels about you, if he hates you or likes you, he will always give you the break as a comedian. He also saves your ass. Sometimes my mind will sit there completely blank and he'll have something to talk about and you're going, "Thank you thank you thank you thank you."

[Q] Playboy: Carson has commented on your comedy: "He has a likable comedic style... that's well done, but it can be limiting. He's been doing it for a while." What flashes through your mind when you hear Carson say that?

[A] Martin: The thing that instantly comes to mind is: Is he right? I read that comment, and at the time, I had coming out a book, a movie and a record. All expansive material. It's not remaining the same. So I answered the question in my own head.

[Q] Playboy: You don't fear becoming a cliché?

[A] Martin: I fear so much becoming a cliché that I don't think it will happen to me. When my act started, I was a left turn from everything that was going on, and I had the courage then to do it. Cruel Shoes was a left turn from what I'd been doing. The third album was a left turn. And The Jerk is not so much a left turn, but it's me in a completely different environment. I intend to make more left turns.

[Q] Playboy: Could one of them possibly be taking over The Tonight Show when Carson leaves?

[A] Martin: No. It would put an end to what my goals are in show business, and that's to make funny movies. You can't make funny movies if you're working five days a week. Also, I could never host The Tonight Show, because I'd always be doing my own version of what Carson does, and anyone who does that is an imitator, which is so wrong it's unbelievable. The real thrill of hosting The Tonight Show is getting to go out and act like Johnny Carson. You sit at the panel and you try to come up with a witticism like Johnny would have, you try to make a look like Johnny would. That's the real truth. It's like a goal, somehow, in show business is to be able to do what Johnny Carson does, as just sort of your catalog of things you do.

[Q] Playboy: What about a TV series? Has that ever been a temptation?

[A] Martin: About three years ago, I turned down an appearance on somebody's show. There was an option in there for a series. Whoah! I'd be fucked right now if I had an option for a series.

[Q] Playboy: What if it turned into something like Mork & Mindy?

[A] Martin: I'm not taking anything away from Robin Williams, because I think he's outstanding on that show. If I'd been in Robin Williams' position, I would have taken that show. Because he was less along at that time than I was at this other time. That's a way in. But now I just wouldn't want to do that weekly piece of shit. And it doesn't necessarily have to be a piece of shit, but the odds are it will be a piece of shit.

[Q] Playboy: How do you feel about Saturday Night Live?

[A] Martin: Oh, I love that. Saturday Night reaches my people. I work real well with Gilda [Radner] and with Aykroyd; the chemistry oncamera works. I haven't done that much with [John] Belushi. I love Murray.

[Q] Playboy: Are they friends or is it strictly professional?

[A] Martin: I feel some of them are friends. We get along real well, with mutual respect. They have their own lives that I'll never be a part of. It's hard to get to know Belushi. I get along with Aykroyd real well, but I know there's a point where I stop in his realm, his world. He's like I was ten years ago. He's tuned in to certain things that you really can't share. I'm not going to take Danny to "21"--although I've never been to "21"--but he wouldn't enjoy that. One time I said to Danny, "Let's go to Saks Fifth Avenue and get some clothes." He said, "I'm not into clothes."

[Q] Playboy: Who thought up the two Czech brothers routine?

[A] Martin: My character was in my act, but he wasn't Czechoslovakian. Then Danny saw the act and he said, "Let's do Czechoslovakian, two Middle-European brothers." It was essentially his idea to put them together as brothers.

[Q] Playboy: How long did it take to get the routine working?

[A] Martin: Instant. We just started talking. We were laughing at rehearsal, we were laughing when we read it, we thought it was hysterical. Repetition sold it, I think.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think you could put that kind of comedy into a film?

[A] Martin: I'd like to do me, Belushi and Aykroyd as The Three Caballeros [Sings]. "We are three caballeros, three gay caballeros."

[Q] Playboy: Could you get them to agree?

[A] Martin: Nah. That's a long way off. I don't think we could ever get the three of us on mutual deals. You've got to commit yourself so totally--it's a year. Then you start thinking, Do I want to work with Belushi for a year?

[Q] Playboy: When you first appeared on Saturday Night Live, your father wrote in a local newsletter that that show set back your career five years. Did that bother you?

[A] Martin: Frankly, it irritated me. Instead of encouragement, you get an insult. They would have liked it if I had been an entertainer they could take home to Texas and show around, one who didn't say fuck. As it turns out, I do say fuck, so they can't take me completely back to Texas.

[Q] Playboy: Your mother told a reporter that you should get some new writers. Does she know, now, that you write your own material?

[A] Martin: I think she does. I don't bother to explain most of the time. It makes you a little angry or hurt sometimes. I keep telling them, "Don't do articles in the paper and don't publicize who you are." I fear that.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Martin: They got an obscene phone call one time about me. Some girl called them and said I was a faggot. That's evil. I was really upset. A sick person, to call someone's mother. And tell her all these lies. Just pure lies, and hate.

[Q] Playboy: In some of your routines, you make jokes about your mother--borrowing ten dollars, making her carry your bar bells to the attic--but you've never joked about your father. How come?

[A] Martin: I guess it's because the mother is so vulnerable. Like, the attitude of those routines is that I was so sick that I would do that to my mother. And you wouldn't do that to your father, because he was stronger.

[Q] Playboy: Would you say you've always wanted to win your father's approval more than anyone else's?

[A] Martin: Absolutely. You know, you're always trying to please your dad, to get approval from Daddy. Which is OK, because it motivates me. There's the symbolic father that I'm working for when I write a screenplay. I may want approval from Carl Reiner or from the producer. The symbolic father is my own knowledge of the greatness that exists in the world and in art, so maybe when I'm finished, I'm thinking, OK, T. S. Eliot, is this OK? That's why I'm always slightly ashamed of certain things that I do. I know they don't live up to the standard that's been set.

[Q] Playboy: Getting back to your real father, do you think you've got his approval by now?

[A] Martin: Oh, yeah, I have his approval now. My parents have become closer since I've been successful. Success has vindicated me, in a way. I can go back to them with pride and they can be proud.

[Q] Playboy: Do they comprehend what's happened to you?

[A] Martin: They don't understand the evil side of people. They haven't been at a concert when somebody grabs you and won't let go or you feel a little bit of that terror. They're oblivious to it. We'll go for a drive and my mother will say, "Let's stop here and get out. You walk on the street and we'll watch the people look at you." [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: What else have you given them, besides pride?

[A] Martin: They have a house and I'm making the payments. But I want to throw them out and raise the rent.

[Q] Playboy: How did they feel about you when you were a kid?

[A] Martin: I think my parents would agree there wasn't much camaraderie in my family. Discipline was part of my growing up.

[Q] Playboy: Did you and your family fight much?

[A] Martin: Not fighting, no. Just kind of Orange County blasé.

[Q] Playboy: Orange County and Disneyland apparently had a big influence on you, especially since you worked at the Magic Kingdom from your tenth to your 18th year. Is Disneyland where you learned to hate people?

[A] Martin: I hated waiting on people. It drove me nuts. The stupidity. They used to ask me, "How much is that 25-cent thing?" I just made a vow that I was never going to work with the public on that kind of level again. Boy, I hated it!

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever gone back there?

[A] Martin: Yeah, and I've never forgiven Disneyland for what happened. I had really felt like a part of Disneyland from 1955 till I quit in 1963; it was a real part of my youth. I went back there one time with long hair and they wouldn't let me in. 1 felt like, "You assholes, you're really Fascists." After Walt Disney died, everything started changing.

[Q] Playboy: When Cruel Shoes was published, Putnam put out a press release that said, "The Disneyland style of entertainment--clean, unbitter and somehow very free--influenced Martin throughout his development as an artist." Do you agree with that?

[A] Martin: I don't think my comedy is totally unbitter. There's a lot of bitter cynicism in it.

[Q] Playboy: What about one critic's remark that you're the John Denver of comedy?

[A] Martin: I think they're implying that that's an insult. I'm not into est.

[Q] Playboy: Do you consider yourself an Orange County conservative?

[A] Martin: What does that mean? When I grew up, I was never taught racial prejudice. We never discussed "Jewish," "nigger." That never came up. So I walked out when I was 21 and I didn't know you weren't supposed to like Jews or blacks. It was news to me.

[Q] Playboy: You've been described as the Great WASP Hope. Why do you suppose comedy has been dominated by minorities?

[A] Martin: Jews are very smart people and comedy takes smartness. They are more outgoing people. WASPs are traditionally barbecues. Richard Pryor does it perfectly. Maybe that's why there have been two great black stand-up comedians: Cosby and Pryor. Their whole lifestyle was outgoing. They're always talking. The traditional WASP dinner table is everyone sits and eats and you're real quiet. But the WASPs in the country need a WASP. Let me rephrase that. I don't call myself a WASP, because that implies that I'm a Protestant. Or was. [Laughs] I don't take any racial pride in my WASPness. I don't even consider myself a WASP. That term is derogatory. It implies simplicity and propriety, and I don't think of myself like that. Do you know how many WASPs it takes to screw in a light bulb?

[Q] Playboy: How many?

[A] Martin: Three. One to screw in the light bulb, one to mix the martinis and one to turn on the SC game.

[Q] Playboy: You commented before about Richard Pryor's doing the WASP perfectly. Are you that white man?

[A] Martin: Yeah. But it doesn't inhibit me. My comedy is definitely linked to the white man.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't you, your manager and a sound engineer take a train from L.A. to New Orleans, recording ad-lib bits for some future record called White Man's Vacation?

[A] Martin: Yeah. We were nuts. It was never for a record, we had an idea to do documentary comedy, like a documentary film, only we were trying to make it funny. Some of it worked. Like, I had one idea to go to Juarez, to the shops, where if something's $20, you end up buying it for two. We actually recorded this. I said to a shop owner, "Tell me the price for that hat." "Four dollars." I said, "I'll give you six." The guy said, "No." I said, "I'll give you eight." He was lost. Finally, after ten dollars, he goes, "OK." I gave him ten dollars. We did it a couple more times and then he had me: "Do you want to buy a comb? Do you want to buy... ?" It went on and on. The mikes were hidden, but the piece never came off on tape, we had some technical problems. White Man's Vacation is a five-minute piece we recorded on the train. We had a young black porter who was a little militant and it inspired us to do this piece one night. We turned out all the lights in this compartment and we sat there and drank wine and I ad-libbed the whole piece, where I played a militant black porter and Bill played the innocent white man on vacation. It was going to be on Comedy Is Not Pretty, but we decided to cut it from that record.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Martin: A lot of reasons. I've always been nervous about the language at the end--the way it was delivered. It is very hard. We just made a decision that we were going to make a record that is all dirty, put it all on one record. Besides, the piece didn't fit on the album. Would you like to hear it?

[Q] Playboy: Why not?

[In his bedroom, Martin puts a tape on his stereo set. The sound of a train can be heard. Martin sets up the routine by talking of how wonderful it is to have an opportunity to talk to some of the porters who have worked on the trains for so long. Bill McEuen's voice comes in, asking straight questions. Martin's voice changes to a high-pitched, twangy militant black man's. Questioning the service, McEuen asks if it's a first-class-service car. Martin, in character, answers: "That's right. Then we got the superfirst class and the ultrasupersonic first class. In other words, you's in the shits. You have got the shits service.... It is 36 hours between New Orleans and L.A.... and in your room, you can't flush a toilet that whole time. That is the kind of service you got, white boy." McEuen, as the white vacationer, asks what he's supposed to do. The porter answers, "You just got to sit there and dig it." McEuen asks if he can get off. The porter says, "No way, man, you is in prison. Once you pay your money, we have got you. You may even die on this trip. If you don't die... you are going to get scurvy, because we ain't giving you any oranges or apples." The porter then tries to excuse himself, because, "I have to go up to the superdeluxe ultra-first-class and clean out their toilets with my tongue." McEuen laughs. The porter says, "You better laugh now, 'cause in about two hours, you aren't going to have any lips... we are going to serve them to the white people up in the front cars." As a last request, McEuen asks if the porter can unlock the bunk bed, to which the porter responds, "You can take this and shove it in your goddamn motherfuckin' white ass, you shithole white man. I will come in there and take that bed, you asshole mutha." McEuen says to forget it. The routine ends with the porter saying, "No, man, listen, I want to serve you."]

[Q] Playboy: We can see why you're a little nervous about releasing that. It seems to get racist.

[A] Martin: I don't think it's racist at all. It is just funny. Thin-skinned people are going to get uptight about it. The truth is, it puts down white people. It takes a militant black point of view. I guess I will have to take some shit for it, though. But Richard Pryor does white people.

[Q] Playboy: Do you see any similarities between you and Pryor?

[A] Martin: Richard Pryor and I do two completely different things. He is a great stand-up comedian, a true artistic personality and the smoothest stand-up thinker. His performance is more stunning when you consider that he laid off for a long time, then came back with a completely new show. I mean, not one word from his old stuff. Pryor has consciously reduced the size of his theaters to 3500-, 5000-seaters. He came to me one time after he saw me in Chicago and he said, "I used to work at these big places, but it was like stealing. Half the people can't see you." He's right. I said, "Well, I'm just going to steal for another couple of months." I used to mention Richard Pryor and Lily Tomlin in the same breath and say, "That's it, that's comedy today." But now I tend to say Richard Pryor.

[Q] Playboy: What happened to Lily?

[A] Martin: Lily has the artist mentality, she'll always be in show business and her career will rise and fall, depending on how good her project is. She's the female Richard Pryor, although Richard's talent is more impetuous, more forceful, more satirical.

[Q] Playboy: That's how you once felt about Lenny Bruce, isn't it?

[A] Martin: I used to go to sleep listening to Bruce's records. I remember I first heard the name Lenny Bruce and they said he was dirty. I said, "Aw, it's just a trick, some comedian's out being dirty and it's a gag, it's a hook." Then I saw him on the news. He was speaking at Long Beach State, doing his bit about defending his act. He was being prosecuted at the time and he had to cop. He wrote down his act and had to go to the judge and do it. I thought, That's not dirty. Then I started listening to his records and I realized how great he was. He was a funny person, not a political person. Most of his records are just good, funny bits. A master, undisciplined. A dialectician. Bruce is like Richard Pryor to me. His punch line isn't motherfucker. He was firing this chorus girl: "All right, you're fired, pack up your cunt and get out of here." That's a good joke. That's not profane. He was talking like people talk. He naturally used language, naturally used profanity. Then, suddenly, he's put in a position to defend it. It's like wearing Bermuda shorts. You walk in and somebody goes, "What are those?" And you didn't even think about it. You go, "It's OK to wear Bermuda shorts, because it's hot out." You have to make up a reason. It's like me being in a position to have to defend not being political in my act. Huh? You know, just a minute, let me think up a reason.

[Q] Playboy: Who are some of the comedians who tickle your funny bone?

[A] Martin: Well, I grew up listening to Bruce, Nichols and May, Jack Benny, Red Skelton. Steve Allen was my great love, he was the fastest ad-libber in the West; there's nobody faster. I like Rodney Dangerfield. Andy Kaufman. Robin Williams on Mork & Mindy makes me laugh. Bill Cosby made me laugh. David Brenner, Henny Youngman. Don Rickles is funny. He's like Scotch, it's an acquired taste. Sid Caesar makes me laugh. And Soupy Sales.

[Q] Playboy: Soupy Sales?

[A] Martin: I love him. I think the format of his show is fantastic. You don't see anybody, you see a hand, a puppet. It just strikes me as clever. The jokes are stupid and every 20th joke you laugh. And he doesn't care. I love the background of the crew laughing.

[Q] Playboy: What about Monty Python?

[A] Martin: Makes me fall down and laugh. I think that's the greatest comedy of our time.

[Q] Playboy: Is there a West Coast and East Coast brand of comedy? Newsweek, for instance, called you the "ultimate West Coast wacko," as opposed to the "archetypal East Coast neurotic, Woody Allen."

[A] Martin: I think my comedy's West Coast, whatever that means. If we were to define East Coast comedy, it's more psychoanalytical. We're all starting at the same point: We're all depressed. Now, the East Coast approach is to show your depression, investigate it, learn about it, talk about it. The West Coast's approach is to say, "We're not depressed." It's to be depressed and to cover it up and go along and act as though you're not depressed.

[Q] Playboy: We asked you before about possible similarities to Pryor; what about similarities to Chevy Chase?

[A] Martin: Yeah, we have similarities. But I don't think it's one guy stealing from another. It's coincidental, we're reacting to similar times. I liked to watch Chevy on Saturday Night, he was real likable, a charmer, very funny. In Foul Play, he was totally underdirected. He wasn't Chevy Chase, he was an actor. He was being kind to the director and playing his script, rather than being what Chevy is capable of doing.

[Q] Playboy: Did you audition for that role?

[A] Martin: I read for Foul Play.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you say no?

[A] Martin: I didn't say no. They said no.

[Q] Playboy: Do you feel lucky?

[A] Martin: Made me realize I don't want to do murder mysteries. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: Back to some of your peers. What about George Carlin?

[A] Martin: You have to give Carlin a lot of credit. He came along as the hip comedian, but he still made people laugh. He never lost his sense of humor. He is real funny. I started out when there were no comedians, except Carlin. But I was still working before Carlin came along, too, around '66, that's when I really started working, and there was nobody to aspire to. Looking back, I'm proud of that. I want to stand alone. It's a matter of pride. There's also a lot of ego in that opinion.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think Andy Kaufman could have made it without your having paved the way, in a sense?

[A] Martin: Kaufman's real funny, but he's not for everybody. When he read The Great Gatsby on Saturday Night, it had me on the floor. I feel like I am the link for the normal audience to understand Andy Kaufman. Andy is where I may have gone if this never worked. I feel like I made a step in the direction of that comedy. A contributor. Kaufman's got enough entertainment value to make his art watchable.

[Q] Playboy: What about Martin Mull?

[A] Martin: I love Martin Mull. He's a real talented cynic. He influenced me a lot. I worked with him in Atlanta and he was wearing business suits and Pierre Cardin shoes and I was wearing a suit with tennis shoes. I thought, Why do it half-assed? Then I got into the white suit, because I thought it was new and different. I realize now it was just another of those things that John Lennon did five years earlier.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think that men are funnier than women?

[A] Martin: Not necessarily. Lily Tomlin proved that women can be funny. The problem is that the women comedians are emulating men, and it doesn't work that way. Someone is going to come along and be a woman comedian. There've been as many funny women in movies as there have been men, or even more. Like Judy Holliday, Marilyn Monroe.

[Q] Playboy: Rodney Dangerfield thinks it's more acceptable for a man to be a comedian than a woman.

[A] Martin: It's true. The tradition of being a comedian is being hard sell. Having to really sell the material. And the female tradition is being soft and vulnerable. The two haven't met. Pretty soon they will. Because the tradition of women being soft and vulnerable will become less significant in people's minds once the old people die off. Also, someone will figure out they don't have to have the hard sell. It's now permissible for a woman to be a comedian.

[Q] Playboy: But could a woman do your act? Could a woman be outrageous and dumb and get away with it?

[A] Martin: Elaine May pulled it off. She played dumb and she played smart and she played pseudosophisticated in a style that really worked all the way. So it's already been done, it's just a matter of being done on a large scale.

[Q] Playboy: What do you think of Carol Burnett?

[A] Martin: Carl Reiner says she's the best sketch player who ever lived. I said, "Even better than Lucille Ball?" But Lucille Ball wasn't really a sketch player, she was working in one sketch every week.

[Q] Playboy: So who's the queen of comedy to you?

[A] Martin: Gilda Radner is the queen of the female comedians to me. Gilda has the future. Her talent is so deep. She should do movies. She made a great comment about comedy one time. She said comedy was having your pants down around your ankles.

[Q] Playboy: One comic whom we haven't touched upon but who might be considered a predecessor of your brand of humor is Jerry Lewis. What do you think of him?

[A] Martin: I think Jerry Lewis is a real comedy genius. The movies of the Fifties with Jerry Lewis are 90 percent masterpieces of comedy. He always got a little sentimental at some point, which always turned me off, but there were great jokes and he was really in control. I'm talking about the movies he did by himself, like The Bellboy, The Errand Boy and The Nutty Professor. Funny movies. Sometimes I'm onstage and I feel myself doing someone. It's that little moment when you say, "I got that from a Jerry Lewis movie. Or from Jack Benny."

[Q] Playboy: What do you think happened to Lewis?

[A] Martin: From what I hear, he got very difficult to work with. He was the lord and master of comedy. I can't speak against him, because his accomplishments affected me and what stopped his accomplishments didn't affect me. Jerry Lewis always greased his hair back. What would have happened if, when the Sixties came along, Jerry Lewis grew his hair long, combed it over with the dry look? Maybe he'd still be funny. Who knows?

[Q] Playboy: Since you're speculating, we'd like to ask you about Freddie Prinze. Do you think you could have handled success at the age he had to, 22?

[A] Martin: I'm so glad it didn't happen to me then, because I wouldn't have had the experience to back up the demands that have been made on me. If I had to go to Vegas, like he did, when I was 21, shit... I'd kill myself. That would have been a terrible pressure. I think the reason Freddie Prinze killed himself was because he had a gun in his hand. He never should have had a gun. That kind of thing should be outlawed. That's why I won't have a gun around here. Because I get depressed.

[Q] Playboy: Would you say that the pressures of being a stand-up comedian are greater than most other areas of show business?

[A] Martin: Stand-up comedy is the hardest job in show business. There's no music, you can't sing for three minutes, there's no room for failure. Missing a joke or a mistimed joke or a failed laugh reduces the audience's confidence in you. Now, they have to evaluate whether something is funny. That's why it's so difficult, because there's never a chance to fail. You're literally hanging on every word. Or being hung on every word.

[Q] Playboy: What do you feel when you're out there performing?

[A] Martin: Fear is the biggest thing I feel out there. There's no fun, it's all work onstage. And you are always in danger of losing control. Every second you're on, you're on trial. I think of it as an enemy. As a challenge.

[Q] Playboy: Does that mean you don't want to perform live anymore?

[A] Martin: Stand-up comedy is transient. History shows that you can stand up for so long; after that, you're asked to sit down. To me, the object was to get out of stand-up and go into movies. A movie, a record, television, they're always new. The stand-up is such a tough thing, there's a tendency to leave it the same because it works. I just can't leave it the same anymore, for my own head.

[Q] Playboy: On the tour you recently completed, how much material was new?

[A] Martin: About 75 percent, but people still think they have heard it before, which I knew would happen. Why should I make up a new act? It doesn't prove anything; it's going to be more of the same. I can't change it. I can't make it 100 percent different. It's impossible. So why even do it? After one show, I started getting very depressed. I could tell the show was slipping away. At points, I thought, This is ridiculous. Toward the end of the act, I thought, I can't believe I'm out here. I felt like the worst amateur in the world.

[Q] Playboy: What has that taught you about success and failure?

[A] Martin: That if you're struggling to do the best you possibly can all the time, you'll fail 50 percent of the time. See, success in comedy has to do with something other than how good you are.

[Q] Playboy: When did you feel you'd finally made it?

[A] Martin: To us comedians, the proof of when you're big is when you start drawing. My manager and I have in our heads the date when I first played the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. It was 1976 or '77. I thought they were crazy to book me there. It seated 3500 and the most I had played was 500. But it sold out. I had done Saturday Night Live, hosted The Tonight Show and then did the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. But in terms of fame, Abe Vigoda is as famous as I am. He was seen by 20,000,000 people every week for however long his series lasted. No one's more famous than TV stars. We're not talking about quality now, we're just talking about fame. There's still a lot of audience out there for me to reach yet. I think a lot of people never heard of me, because I haven't been on prime-time TV that much. Kids come up to me, their parents send them over, they say, "That's Steve Martin, get his autograph." The kid doesn't know, he comes over to the table and he asks Bill McEuen for his autograph. [Laughs] I know John Lennon couldn't walk down the street. I can walk down the street. I don't think I'm at the height of my career yet.

[Q] Playboy: Still, there are things about being famous that you resent, such as people staring at you or telephoning you.

[A] Martin: It's the loss of your mental privacy. Your last privacy. The biggest loss is that you can't go anywhere and be an observer. Or have fun like everybody else. You can't go to Disneyland. You can't go to a park. You can't go to the zoo, which I love. When you start to do this, you're not thinking about, Wait, I better not write this joke, because I might get so famous that I won't be able to walk down the street. All you're thinking about is writing the joke and getting a laugh. Even if I got out of the business now, it's with me for the rest of my life. Think of the people who are famous and who are bothered just as much as I am who aren't making money. Like Nixon. I mean, he's not making $100,000 a day. Or some minor political figure. Ralph Nader. He's got people coming and bothering him, and he's not making $100,000 a day. Think if I had to go through this for no reason.

[Q] Playboy: But for a price, you're willing to put up with the hazards of fame.

[A] Martin: Sure, I'll be famous for that kind of money.

[Q] Playboy: What kind of money are we talking about?

[A] Martin: I don't work on a guarantee, I work on a percentage. For a while, I was really pulling in a lot of money per night. There was a time when I earned $1,000,000 in two weeks. I did two days at the Nassau Coliseum in New York and made about $840,000.

[Q] Playboy: That is a lot of money. What did you do with it?

[A] Martin: Started lighting it up. [Laughs] You can only get what you're going to draw. It's like Albert Brooks's joke about Neil Diamond, who'd do a concert and they'd give him the building. Recording stars are the richest people in show business. Think of Barry Manilow; he must be incredibly rich. The money never stops. Every half year, they must be sending him $3,000,000, $5,000,000.

[Q] Playboy: Did your sudden wealth sour old relationships?

[A] Martin: Yes. Money gets people more than anything. I know people who genuinely were disturbed by my success. And not exclusively show-business people. I mean old friends.

[Q] Playboy: At least you've been up front about it--you've even incorporated your love of money into your act.

[A] Martin: I had one joke where I say, "I love bread." All it was was a lead in to a routine. Then I read it quoted, "Steve loves money, loves bread." It was just a joke. It's like saying, "Steve gives his cat a bath with his tongue."

[Q] Playboy: Are you saying you don't love money?

[A] Martin: I don't love it, no. It's a sales tool. My manager may say that to somebody to get more money.

[Q] Playboy: How are your record and movie deals constructed?

[A] Martin: Bill's biggest contribution to my career was that when we made it, we were totally independent, with not one contract signed to anybody. Not record companies, not agencies, not anything. Bill made the Warner Bros, deal, the record deal, the movie deal, all the big deals. Marty Klein, my agent, was really responsible for personal appearances, a lot of top television. He got me on The Tonight Show, on Saturday Night. Those were his critical contributions.

[Q] Playboy: And didn't you and McEuen buy Klein a Rolls-Royce?

[A] Martin: Marty had always kidded that "Someday you'll buy me a Rolls-Royce." So, since he had really helped our careers, we did. That was our joke.

[Q] Playboy: Do you give money to any charities?

[A] Martin: I don't believe in organized charity. I mistrust them. I always think the (continued on page 190)Steve Martin(continued from page 115) funds are being misspent. I like the small kind of charity. I think it's the best value for your dollar. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: You own five cars, three houses, an apartment... for a guy who tells jokes, you're not hurting. What's the most extravagant thing you've ever done?

[A] Martin: In '72, I was in London and I bought a $1000 watch. I was probably making $30,000 a year, but it didn't matter if I was making $1,000,000, it was overcoming the psychology of buying a $1000 watch. Another extravagant moment was when I bought my first painting. I think it was $800. The greatest thing with money for me is paintings. And relief from the phone bill. Carl Gottlieb told me you can never have enough money if you collect art. People like me are an art dealer's dream.

[Q] Playboy: How many Early American paintings do you own?

[A] Martin: More than 40. I'm buying rapidly with caution. I can't be fooled. I always have the pictures looked at by experts.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you choose Early American paintings to collect?

[A] Martin: To learn that language. There was a Doonesbury cartoon that was fantastic, it really related. He's a rich kid, collecting stamps, and he says, "I've found this new hobby, collecting stamps. It's really thrilling." He picks up the phone and he calls the stamp shop. "Send me all the stamps from Nicaragua." Hangs up and says, "This is great."

[Q] Playboy: Do you mind talking about your collection?

[A] Martin: I'll talk about it, but let me preface it with saying I don't want to talk about it. I mean, I'm criticized for performing, for making records, for making movies, and I know one day I'm going to be criticized for my art collection. That's the one thing I feel I don't have to stick out. I don't have to have somebody write that this is a piece of shit, that this artist is lousy. So with that in mind, after I said "Fuck you" to all the people who are going to talk about it, I'll talk about it.

[Q] Playboy: Why do you collect?

[A] Martin: It occupies my time, my spare time, my energy. It's like going to the Bahamas.

[Q] Playboy: Are you collecting as an investment?

[A] Martin: I haven't made a fortune on these pictures. I look at it as a luxury, not an investment. People are very unfamiliar with the language of paintings.

[Q] Playboy: What's the most you ever paid for a painting?

[A] Martin: I don't like to talk about that stuff, because what seems reasonable to me, to most people is going to seem insane.

[Q] Playboy: Would $150,000 be a good guess?

[A] Martin: There're none that are more. But there are a lot that are less.

[Q] Playboy: Could you pay $1,000,000 for a painting?

[A] Martin: It's not against my nature to do it. The price of paintings is the biggest example of existentialism there is. There's almost no explaining it. I mean, can a work on canvas be worth that much money? But they are, because people pay it. That's the only explanation. A painting is worth $1,000,000 because someone will pay $1,000,000.

[Q] Playboy: Do you have a favorite painting?

[A] Martin: One of my favorites is the Rembrandt at the L.A. County Museum of Art: Raising of Lazarus. It's a pretty somber picture. You can see Lazarus sitting up, he's just been risen. And Christ is there, he's got his hand up and a look of surprise on his face, like he really did it. And Lazarus is amazed, he doesn't know where he is. It's just the most dramatic, beautiful thing I've ever seen.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't you, around ten years ago, actually have a show in a Los Angeles art gallery?

[A] Martin: I did a whole show in '68 at a gallery in Los Angeles. It was essentially good jokes. I was intense about it, I meant it. I had an empty framed mirror on one side of the wall and the other side was blank and it was titled: Infinite Reflections. Two Mirrors, One Invisible. Then I had a rose in a vase: Invisible Rose, Unfinished. A lot of little puns and jokes.

[Q] Playboy: You studied philosophy in college but came to the conclusion that performing was the better choice. How did you reach that decision?

[A] Martin: After studying Wittgenstein and Sartre, I realized that the creative process is the only thing that can't totally be torn apart in philosophy. That it exists without rules, without problems of language and semantics. So I left philosophy for that reason. See, there are certain rules--you can't walk through a wall, you can't fly. Everything else is what you create. So the creation of your life is what it's all about. That's when I said I'll be an artist, I'll be in theater. It was the time to build my catalog of actions and accomplishments and creations.

[Q] Playboy: Would you say that your studies in philosophy left you pretty cynical?

[A] Martin: I would think so. Pretty cynical. Man is no better by nature than an animal until you do something to elevate yourself above that level. Honestly, I would rather save some animals' lives than some people's lives.

[Q] Playboy: Speaking of animals, you're a cat man, aren't you?

[A] Martin: I like cats because I don't have to take care of them that much. Dogs are like having a kid.

[Q] Playboy: Someone once observed that you never show emotion, which is why you like cats.

[A] Martin: It's false to say I've never shown my emotions toward anything. But I do like cats for that quality. Their ability to take it or leave it.

[Q] Playboy: Do they protect you from burglars?

[A] Martin: Yeah. Killer cats.

[Q] Playboy: What's your biggest argument with the human race?

[A] Martin: That people don't take pride in what they do. Businessmen and executives put out shit. They make shit. They sell shit. It's all crap. There's no pride in it.

[Q] Playboy: Like junk food?

[A] Martin: Those Saturday-morning commercials drive me nuts. "Wholesome goodness." You look at it and it's all sugar. Followed by corn sugar, vanilla sugar and every kind of sugar. Then it goes into chemicals.

[Q] Playboy: Enough to turn one into a vegetarian, which you are, aren't you?

[A] Martin: I once went on this Atkins diet, which is pure protein, pure meat. I got to hate meat so much that I thought, What do I really love? What I really love is cheese and vegetables and grilled-cheese sandwiches. That's what I turned to. I just cut meat out. I eat fish. I hate killing animals, but I love to kill fish.

[Q] Playboy: Is it true you stopped taking vitamins because they started turning your hair brown?

[A] Martin: Yeah. But since then, I reconsidered and I take some vitamins again.

[Q] Playboy: When did your hair turn gray?

[A] Martin: I got my first one when I was 15. It runs in the family. I've given two minutes of thought to my gray hair.

[Q] Playboy: You gave a lot more thought to Somerset Maugham's book The Razor's Edge, which had a big influence on you when you read it. What was it that reached you?

[A] Martin: The questioning of everything sacred. That was the first time I had ever heard that kind of thought.

[Q] Playboy: Any other books really help you lately?

[A] Martin: I'll tell you the best self-help (concluded on page 243)Steve Martin(continued from page 190) book I've ever read: How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World, by Harry Browne. His tenets are complete honesty at all times, which is almost impossible. His point is that the only person who feels guilty in saying no is you.

[Q] Playboy: Do you still have a lot of guilt to work out?

[A] Martin: I think there are several years' worth of things to work out. I'm working out things constantly now. Finally getting off the road for a while and getting into a normal situation, where you're in the same bed every night and around the same friends all the time. I was working out a lot of things: the question of numbers, how they determine your validity; charts; how reviews affect you. How to regard your privacy. What to say in an interview. What I want to reveal about myself.

[Q] Playboy: How do you think you've done so far?

[A] Martin: I think I've said more than I wanted to say. I don't know if I'll even read this. I'll just get depressed, no matter how good it is. I feel like some asshole who's been asked questions of sophistication.

[Q] Playboy: How shaky is your mental balance?

[A] Martin: I feel very fragile mentally, sensitive to everything.

[Q] Playboy: What makes you cry?

[A] Martin: I was on the road about three years ago, making about $1000 a night. I was in New York at the St. Regis, watching TV, and this old comedy came on. It was, like, W. C. Fields. It was a shock to me, watching him be the buffoon. I just sat there and suddenly I started crying. I was all by myself in this room, weeping. I could've stopped myself, but there was no one around, so I didn't. This had never happened to me before. The next time, I was talking to my mother, recently, on the phone. It was just something like, "We really appreciate what you've done." That kind of thing. We were both sort of weeping. Two years ago, I was driving to Aspen and I'd made cassette tapes of e. e. cummings' six records, called Six Nonlectures. He speaks very hypnotically, talking about the artist's responsibility, the artist's life, and his dedication was so strong and so beautiful and moving that it made me weep.

[Q] Playboy: You're a very romantic person, aren't you?

[A] Martin: I think so. Romantic in the capital-R, classical sense. In your youth, you are so romantic and your emotions are so strong about certain things that when they're finally crushed, like in your childhood love affairs, it's very hard to go back to being overtly romantic in your own life. Maybe that's why you turn to painting and music and literature instead of sailing to Tahiti on the pirates' boat.

[Q] Playboy: How happy are you, even if you haven't gotten on that boat?

[A] Martin: Happiness is so hard to define and foolish to define. Am I acting? That's the worst thing you can ask yourself. You can be happy suddenly. It can spring on you, not when you reach a plateau. You can be happy going backward or going down. You can be happy at the loss of something.

[Q] Playboy: That's a pretty serious happiness.

[A] Martin: If I could correct one thing about myself, it would be to exploit my creativity in a more jubilant way; to take everything with the old "Fuck you" attitude. It's the idea of not taking yourself seriously.

[Q] Playboy: Not being afraid to blow it?

[A] Martin: The only fear I have is of blowing it all. It's the old show-business story. You make it and you're a flash, and then you're sitting there with nothing left. I've always kidded I'd be a bum in the gutter. But that's not going to happen to me.

[Q] Playboy: You said that low.

[A] Martin: I'll say it high. It's not going to happen to me!

[Q] Playboy: Well... excu-u-use me!

[A] Martin: One thing I'd like to clear up about people imitating me. I read in reviews or interviews that I created these clichés or catch phrases. But no one sets out and says, "I think I'll think up a cliché." I never wanted to encourage it. It just started happening. I had to drop the "Excuse me" routine, because people knew it too well. Sometimes I still do it, but I try to twist it around a little. For a while, I was saying, "I don't say 'Excuse me' anymore. And if you don't like it, well, excuuuse me." It's like singing a hit song over and over. But I'm not premising my act on it anymore. I don't want to be identified with "Excuse me," because once "Excuse me" dies, then I go with it.

[Q] Playboy: You don't want to go the way of the Hula Hoop or pet rocks?

[A] Martin: I realize I'm a fad, so I don't get too excited. It's interesting to have made up a fad or to make up a saying.

[Q] Playboy: Like the license plate in California that says Get Small?

[A] Martin: I used to get pictures of people with their birth announcements and pictures of their kids with nose glasses announcing the birth of a wild and crazy guy. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: Do you feel funny just before you go onstage? Lenny Bruce said that he threw up three times before he could go out there.

[A] Martin: I don't feel funny until I hit the stage and get my first laugh. In fact, I only feel funny onstage. A person's work and who he is are two different things.

[Q] Playboy: Many people don't know that about you.

[A] Martin: They told me about a guy up in Philadelphia who has my personality to the point of psychopathy. He can't get out of it. He is in the hospital, he goes to a shrink. He talks like me.

[Q] Playboy: It might help him to know what you're like offstage.

[A] Martin: I really am two people!

[Q] Playboy: The comedian and the quiet depressive. Actually, three: the musician. Where did you learn to play the banjo?

[A] Martin: I was at a friend's house and I heard a record and said, I'm going to learn how to play that. As I said, I was stoned. It just slayed me. I used to slow records down to 16 and pick up the notes.

[Q] Playboy: What's your favorite music?

[A] Martin: I like classical guitar, bluegrass and Irish music. I'm eclectic when it comes to music. I don't have one pop record.

[Q] Playboy: Now that you've become an actor, will you study acting?

[A] Martin: No, I don't have the time or the inclination to practice. I say earn while you learn. [Laughs] I think I have enough natural experience to get by. I'm a beginning actor; experience will make me better.

[Q] Playboy: What would you consider your greatest accomplishment to date?

[A] Martin:The Absent-Minded Waiter. And the position I achieved in stand-up comedy. To me, that's a true accomplishment. I can look back on last summer and say, "I did the impossible. I did what one in a million do. Or one in 10,000,000 do." Even for a moment, to be on top. That's all on top is, a moment, no matter who you are, even if you're Elvis, you're on top momentarily in terms of time. That's the thrill, to say, "Yeah, I was the biggest comedian in the world."

[Q] Playboy: Earlier, you said you're not at the height of your career; now you're putting yourself in the past tense.

[A] Martin: I never expected it to last a long time, because that kind of frenzy can't. It's almost like breathing a sigh of relief. Bob Newhart told me when he was the biggest comedian he kept wondering, Who's going to be next? And when Cosby came along, he said he went, Uhhh, thank God. That's the way I feel. It's like I can level out and let my talent come out rather than my ability to manipulate.

[Q] Playboy: And where would you like that talent to lead?

[A] Martin: I will be very happy if, when I'm 60, I can look back, having made 40 comedies, and say, "I was a funny person in this world."

[Q] Playboy: And what would you say to young comedians from that vantage point?

[A] Martin: Always take your wallet onstage with you.

"I'm reluctant to talk about sex or my girlfriends, because that's really your private life."

"I'm proud that I made something that is funny. Not any other reason, just funny."

"I think I'm probably most sensitive to the criticism that my comedy is brainless, when I know it's not."

"I'm really offended by people who come up and assume that you use cocaine or smoke dope."

"The East Coast approach is to show your depression. The West Coast's is to be depressed and to cover it up."

"The greatest thing with money for me is paintings. And relief from the phone bill."