My love for Steve Martin

"Well I'm gonna to go then. And I don't need any of this. I don't need this stuff, and I don't need you. I don't need anything except this [ashtray]. And that's it and that's the only thing I need, is this. I don't need this or this. Just this ashtray. And this paddle game, the ashtray and the paddle game and that's all I need. And this remote control. The ashtray, the paddle game, and the remote control, and that's all I need. And these matches. The ashtray, and these matches, and the remote control and the paddle ball. And this lamp. The ashtray, this paddle game and the remote control and the lamp and that's all I need. And that's all I need too. I don't need one other thing, not one - I need this. The paddle game, and the chair, and the remote control, and the matches, for sure. And this. And that's all I need. The ashtray, the remote control, the paddle game, this magazine and the chair. And I don't need one other thing, except my dog...I don't need my dog."
-Navin R. Johnson (Steve Martin), The Jerk

The quote above is--obviously--the namesake of this blog, and it come from one of my favorite movies of all time. In The Jerk, Steve Martin plays the exaggeratedly "slow" but kind-hearted Navin R. Johnson, who (though clearly white, and an adult) believes himself to be the natural child of a family of black sharecroppers. One of Martin's first lines--"I was born a poor black child"---sets the ridiculous tone of the film, as Navin moves away from his family to (kinda-sorta) live out his own life. The movie is surreal and over-the-top: think Zoolander, but thirty years ahead of its time.

I have always adored Steve Martin and found him hysterical. There is something about his spastic, non-sensical, stupid-but-wait-was-that-actually-smart? brand of humor that appeals to me. I was raised by a father who punned endlessly, embraced subtle slapstick and occasionally sang and danced around the house with complete disregard for social graces. My father ingrained this silliness in me, while playing The Jerk and Martin's old stand-up and SNL skits on the family TV--until recently, though, I never made the connection between the two. It's an infantile sense of humor, sure, but it can also be intelligent and calculated. Martin's recent book, Born Standing Up (which I would recommend for anyone remotely fond of Steve Marin) explains just how smart, calculated and reflective his humor is.

That is not to say that I've loved (or even seen) every Steve Martin movie. Many of the films he has made since his "peak" in the 1980s have made me smack my forehead in dismay. Shopgirl was painfully slow and lacked wit. Hillary Duff was in Cheaper by the Dozen (enough said). His small role in Baby Mama, however, and this scene in Pink Panther give me hope; and, of course, he is much more than an actor--he is an excellent writer with a surprisingly serious side.

Speaking of which, I'm not sure why I decided to take myself so seriously with this first blog post. Thanks for reading if you did...more random posts to come!