Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life

I thoroughly enjoyed Steve Martin's memoir of his early years as a performer and his eventual breakthrough as a stand-up comedian. Martin writes well, with just enough detail and introspection to keep the reader interested, but without becoming ponderous or self-important. As a fan of his since childhood, I was very interested to learn the way his notions of comedy slowly emerged during years of effort as a performer and comedy writer. It's easy to forget how much more imbued the popular culture is now with people striving for original and inventive comedic expression. Martin was breaking ground in a world without comedy clubs, frequent cable specials, ubiquitous sitcom vehicles for every new talent, and a dedicated comedy cable show more network.

And if you *have* read this but have missed his works of comedic writings (Cruel Shoes and Pure Drivel), go and get them now. There. I have just done you a favor. Your heeding my words is thanks enough for me. show less

How did a shy guy become the world's most popular "wild and crazy guy," while remaining an introvert? Steven Martin tells us in his remarkable memoir “Born Standing Up” (2007).

Martin got his start when Disneyland opened in Anaheim, just a bicycle ride from his home. He started working there as a 10-year-old, passing out brochures. Already fascinated by magic, he hung out in the magic shops in the park and eventually got a job at one of them, demonstrating tricks and learning the comic patter.

He traces the real start to his show business career to the Bird Cage Theatre at Knott's Berry Farm, where as a teenager he performed regularly in a variety of acts for park visitors, including solo performances incorporating magic, banjo show more picking and comedy, most of the latter borrowed from others. Then came the long, lonely road of trying to make it as a standup comic traveling across the country from one small club to another, sometimes performing for, quite literally, an empty house.

Success came gradually, thanks to television appearances and a comedy record. He says it took years for Johnny Carson to get his act, scheduling him only when his show had a guest host. Martin clicked with Carson about the same time he clicked with everyone else, and almost overnight he was performing to crowds of thousands of people. Martin calls this success "the loneliest period of my life." It was a life lived mostly on stage and in hotel rooms, his sudden fame making it impossible for him to walk down the street or eat in a restaurant.

Martin tells about his appearances on “Saturday Night Live” and the beginning of his movie career, both of which multiplied his income, fame and loneliness. He quit stand-up after a performance in Atlantic City. "I went to my dressing room, opened my travel-weary black prop case, and stowed away my magic act, thinking that one day I would open it and look at it sentimentally, which for no particular reason, I haven't."

Yet Martin does get sentimental about the Bird Cage Theatre, which he returned to refresh the memories it holds, and about his family. He says he never felt loved by his father and never got close to his older sister, yet once his days on the road ended he was able to connect meaningfully with both of them.

Martin, the author of several books, is a terrific writer. His memoir moves along spritely, full of humor and grace. And lots of photos. show less

Who doesn’t like Steve Martin? You definitely won’t like him any less after reading this book, and you’ll have more appreciation for what makes him tick.

It’s an autobiography but it really only carries through to the end of his standup career and the beginning of his movie career. And it reads like something of a focused account of his development as a standup comedian, beginning with his early family life, his attraction to magic tricks and performance, and those early jobs at Disneyland where he got his first taste of performance.

As a teenager, he was already practicing, selling and demonstrating magic tricks in a Disneyland magic shop. He was learning what it was to have an audience, how to keep their attention, and the show more payoff of entertaining them. He learned from everybody he met and worked with.

And he didn’t succeed right away. It’s the almost trite story of the overnight success that took eighteen years. He performed before empty clubs, silent audiences, and he almost gave up several times.

And of course he made his living for much of this time as a writer for others to tell his jokes, notably on The Smothers Brothers show.

Really what seems to have turned the corner for him (although it was a very long turn) was realizing how funny comedy about comedy could be. We forget sometimes that Steve Martin was one of the pioneers of that kind of meta-comedy that features a comedian playing a comedian onstage. The kind of thing that Andy Kaufman took to a painful extreme. Martin hit the sweet spot.

The book is kind of a backstage pass. He doesn’t just tell us what he did, he tells us how what he did developed over time.

It seems as though many if not most of his signature gags just happened, whether improvised during a performance or just suddenly occurring to him somewhere — the arrow through his head, the “happy feet,” “Well excu-u-use me!” . . .

During what he describes as his funniest years, everything just seemed to be raw material for comedy. The “happy feet” sign in the shop at Disneyland, even his studies of formal logic in college.

When he hit his stride, he got big. Really big. And that seems to have been the greatest thing and the worst thing. The greatest because he really did become the number one comedian in America, commanding crowds in the tens of thousands.

And his humor was certainly influential on his and following generations of comedians, something he doesn’t really talk about here.

But it was the worst because his success turned back to bite what had made him successful and really funny. He couldn’t just go out and be Steve Martin, that guy who was always coming up with new, funny, and kind of mind-twisting stuff. He had expectations to fulfill.

He went from a live, experimental, creative act to a high-priced product with no room for error, or improvisation. He recounts a woman in Texas, coming up to him and asking, “Are you that Steve Martin thang?”

And he was too famous to feed as he always had on the material of everyday life. He didn’t have an everyday life. He recounts a panic attack during a show and then a trip to the ER, where after his EKG showed no serious problems, he accepted a request from a nurse to autograph the printout of his EKG. Maybe a funny story in itself, but only as an illustration of that kind of cage of fame that built up around him.

Much to his credit, he found a way out. Movies. And he tells a little here about how he made the transition. His writeup of the idea for The Jerk is a great story. That signature line at the beginning is transitioned directly from his standup act — “It wasn’t always easy for me; I was born a poor black child.” That was the germ of the movie.

There are some things you aren’t going to get here. Although he talks about girlfriends and relationships up through his early years, and he tells a little about his relationship with Bernadette Peters, I noticed only one mention of Victoria Tennant and their marriage.

There are no tell-alls, no stories about drugs, alcohol, all the rest of it. For that matter, Steve Martin himself seems, at least by contrast to a lot of his peers, kind of a clean liver.

Those are certainly not faults of the book. It’s a book about how his career happened, how he developed the unique comedy that made him “Steve Martin.” And you’ll still like him as much or more after you’ve read the story. show less

Way back in the late 70s, around when I hit double digits, Steve Martin was the funniest person I'd ever heard. His act, unlike say Richard Pryor, wasn't too blue for someone my age to listen to. Or at least that's how my parents felt. I listened to Let's Get Small and Wild and Crazy Guy and died laughing. When I got older, I snatched them (vinyl) from my parents for my own collection, where they still are today (Sorry Mom and Dad!). I would then try to relate his act to my friends, mercilessly butchering it of course. I roared at his appearances on Saturday Night Live and I think I may have even caught his HBO special. Steve Martin was the comic hero of my pre-teens and his transition to movies (The Jerk, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, The show more Man With Two Brains) kept it going (except for that horrendous drama Pennies From Heaven) for several more years. But by the late 80s/early 90s, his sense of humor and mine had diverged. His films were no longer "must see" but rather a coin toss as to whether or not they were cringe-worthy. I've passed on all but two (Bowfinger and Novocaine) of Martin's two dozen or so works since 1991's L.A. Story. Cheaper by the Dozen? Don't think so.

While visiting my parents this month (April 2008), my mother loaned me a copy of Born Standing Up. It's a memoir about why Martin got into stand-up comedy and why he left it.

The book opens with his early performances as the opening act at the "Coffee and Confusion" club in San Francisco in 1965. Unfortunately, the club was typically empty when he went on stage and, despite his protests, he had to perform anyway.

From there, we're introduced to his unhappy childhood, salvation at Disneyland, mixing magic and comedy, getting caught up in the 60s, paying his dues on Berry Farm, the impressionable young man he was while dating Mitzi Trumbo (the daughter of Dalton Trumbo), writing for the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, appearing on the Tonight Show, the meteoric rise of his popularity, the loneliness of touring, and the absurd benefits of fame. And when the man is at his peak, he recognizes it for what it is and stops.

Sprinkled throughout the book are pieces of his act and how they originated. Poetry reading got tossed once he realized flower power had run out of gas. The banjo appeared early and not always for humor. "Grandmother's Song" and "flair pens" go way back. Stage props were always there. His look even changed. He started out clean cut, grew a beard and his hair to blend in with the times (pictures provided), and went back to clean cut and put on a suit all by 1972. The white suit didn't come about until years later when his success had gathered him audiences of 2,000+. He was worried about being visible from the back as so much of his act was visual.

All along the way, Martin shares humorous and humbling anecdotes from his life. He relates advice he received that he stuck with ("look better than they do") and some he ignored ("Lose the arrow through the head"). During the darker memories, he doesn't wallow around in self-pity. It's more like he brings us to these nadirs not because he wants to, but because he has to. It's part of the story. His story. But he doesn't dwell there. He shows us and moves on.

This is a book that I highly recommend for all fans of Steve Martin's stand-up years. I really enjoyed reading about how it all came together. I might even see if the turntable still works and throw on one of his old albums. If you still have fond memories of him from that time, then check it out. show less

A friend once said to me, "You know who's a brilliant writer but you'd never guess? Steve Martin." Turns out she was right. Maybe this isn't a surprise for those in the know. However, it was a pleasant one for me. This book is both highly entertaining and elegantly nuanced.

Born Standing Up is Steve Martin's account of his journey from his youth in nostalgic southern California to world famous performer. Specifically, it's all the dreams, goals and unplanned circumstances that guided him towards becoming a stand-out stand-up comedian. As with most other autobiographies, the early chapters are superior, because I'm of the mind that origin stories always are, but Born Standing Up still manages to sustain itself all the way to the present show more day. The lessons Steve Martin gleans as a nearly burnt out performer later in his career are no less potent that when he's working on his own showman style as a part-time magic shop clerk in Disneyland as a teen. You'll laugh throughout, I guarantee it, but you'll also be moved. A successful comic's life is often tragic, but not always in overt ways.

Although there were many to choose from, this is my favorite quote from the whole book: "Despite a lack of natural ability, I did have the one element necessary to all early creativity: naïveté, that fabulous quality that keeps you from knowing just how unsuited you are for what you are about to do." show less

In the best of ways, this book is not what I expected it to be, as it’s more memoir and reflection than comedy book. It winds up a delightful, poignant read, interspersed with Steve Martin’s trademark wit and humor. In this book, Martin recounts his early life, his early efforts as a magician, performer, and writer, and eventually, as an incredibly successful stand up comedian. The book also details Martin’s strained relationships with his family and eventual reconciliation with them. That leads to many surprisingly poignant and touching moments.

Parts of the book make for a great how-to manual for the development of a great stand-up routine, and all the work and sacrifice that goes into that effort. It also describes the show more loneliness, dark moments and difficulties that Martin—like many other comedians—experienced as he achieved success. His candid acknowledgment of the depression and anxieties he grappled with gives me even more appreciation for Martin as both a person and comedian.

All in all, this is a quick and easy read that is poignant and lovely, alternately bringing smiles, tears, and occasional laughs to the reader. show less

Steve Martin comes across as a sophisticated, but goofy guy who just happens to be a genius at comedy. But in reading his memoir about the years leading up to and during his stand-up comedy career, that’s definitely not the way he sees himself.

Martin comes from a humble mid-twentieth-century family. He got his first job at Disneyland at age 10 and rode his bicycle to and from work every day. While he was obsessed from a young age with show business, it didn’t really come naturally to him. He worked hard for the bits that were to later make him famous. He recounts his life while sharing the inspiration for some of his most famous gags.

As his album title Comedy Isn’t Pretty asserts, his astronomical career was due to a mixed bag of show more luck, dogged hard work, and deep thought. The timing he’s so celebrated for was developed by study and laser focus.

If you’re thinking of reading this book for non-stop laughter, you’d be better off buying one of his albums or watching his old SNL skits or movies. This book is about his actual experiences growing up, both the good and the bad.

While the book is a quick and easy read, it leans more toward musings on what life is really all about in the end. For Martin, it seems to be about relationships and integrity. I’m a bigger fan for having read it. show less