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About Steve :: Writer ::
Plays
Picasso at the Lapin Agile
Picasso at the Lapin Agile was Steve's first play. Workshopped in Australia,
it was produced first in Chicago. It subsequently played in New York City
and San Francisco, and has been performed all over the country by small
theater companies.
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Detroit News
Monday, October 27, 1997
'Picasso' draws a picture of a new and improved Steve Martin
Michael McWilliams
STAMFORD, CT. -- Steve Martin doesn't suffer fools gladly, even though he
knows he's something of a fool himself -- a big, fat, wonderful movie star
who got fed up with being just a big, fat, wonderful movie star and set out
to try ... something else.
That something else is Picasso at the Lapin Agile, a funny and thoughtful
play about a fantasy meeting between Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso at a
Paris tavern in 1904, when both were young and foolish and just on the verge
of their century-altering creations: Einstein's Theory of Relativity and
Picasso's Cubist Les Demoiselle d'Avignon.
The play, which premiered at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre in 1993 and
enjoyed successful runs in Los Angeles and New York, is on tour, starting at
the Stamford Center for the Arts and landing at the Fisher Theatre in
Detroit Nov. 4-16.
Martin -- who wrote Picasso, but doesn't appear in it -- would rather submit
to his sadistic-dentist character from The Little Shop of Horrors than face
a roomful of mediaites in leafy Connecticut, but for his baby, he'll do
anything, except answer tired questions with a straight face.
What are the disadvantages of fame?
"The disadvantages are obvious: Money."
Which playwrights do you admire?
"None."
What was the play's auditioning process (which led to stars Mark Nelson as
Einstein and Paul Provenza as Picasso) like?
"One thing we wanted was two lead actors named after saints, and that
eliminated a lot of people."
What are the differences between working in theater and film?
"In theater, everyone's around in one place all day. You eat together. You
sleep together. Whereas in a movie, you just sleep together."
Can you tell us anything about your personal life?
"I'm single. And I'm 106 years old."
But when you ask Martin about the upheavals that transformed his personal
and professional lives -- about withdrawing from Hollywood to the point
where he turned down the Kevin Kline role in In & Out, about becoming an
aspiring playwright at age 52, about being left alone with his work after a
string of broken relationships -- Martin is both candid and tender.
"You know what it was?" he muses in a plushly woolen, charcoal-gray,
three-piece suit, "I was confused about what I should be doing, and what I
wanted to do, and I wanted to just take a long break.
"And I was a little low. I was a little blue, too -- for many reasons. I
just couldn't see myself sitting in a trailer for 12 and 14 hours a day
while I was depressed."
At the height of his depression, for which he didn't take prescription drugs
("Just alcohol," he cracks), Martin floundered.
"I remember -- it's so funny how life works -- I kept thinking, 'It's time
to rethink this, this whole comedy thing' ... I was thinking about having
comedy salons, and having comedians come over and we'll like talk about
this, because I just was lost."
Martin had reason to feel lost, both on and offscreen: Mixed Nuts and the
Father of the Bride serial were inadequate projects for an artist who had
won a New York Film Critics Award as best actor for All of Me (1984) and a
Writers Guild Award of America for his screenplay of Roxanne (1987).
On the intimacy front, things weren't better: Martin's longtime marriage to
actress Victoria Tennant fell apart, an event which is whispered to have
left him with a broken heart. That was followed by a reported relationship
with Anne Heche, who later hooked up with Ellen DeGeneres.
On his computer, jokes Martin, "I had the word 'Depression' as a macro."
Martin found his salvation -- "Now I feel great" -- through writing
"soul-searching plays," four of which are contained in Picasso at the Lapine
Agile and Other Plays (Grove Press, $12).
"It was very helpful," says Martin, "That's the drug I took."
Picasso is clearly the high point of Martin's writing career, which started
with an Emmy for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. The play's primary
appeal is that, for all its audience-friendly whimsy and wisecracking, it's
starkly autobiographical.
Every personal and professional concern of Martin's is reflected, like
sunlight in a Renoir: His love of art (he has quite a collection, but can't
discuss it because of "security problems"); his infatuation with genius (he
got the idea for the play while standing before Picasso's Aux Lapine Agile);
his fear of not being a genius (there's a character who thinks he's one, but
acts like the wild-and-crazy Martin of stand-up yore); his troubled empathy
with women (there's a female character who reads Picasso the riot act); and
his fond recollection of hanging out at the Troubadour with the Eagles and
Linda Ronstadt and Richard Pryor when they were all young and unfamous.
"The great thing is that they're young men when we write about them, and
they're people," says Martin of his two main characters, "and they're smart,
but they're also guys. You get to write about their desires, their hunger.
They're lustful. They're funny."
The funniness reaches one apex when Einstein and Picasso duel with pencils
and paper, each scribbling down what each does best.
Einstein: Done! (Einstein and Picasso switch drawings). It's perfect.
Picasso: Thank you.
Einstein: I'm talking about mine.
Picasso: (studies it) It's a formula.
Einstein: So's yours.
Picasso: It was a little hastily drawn ... yours is letters.
Einstein: Yours is lines.
Picasso: My lines mean something.
Einstein: So do mine.
Picasso: Mine is beautiful.
Einstein: (indicates his own drawing) Men have swooned on seeing that.
Picasso: Mine touches the heart.
Einstein: Mine touches the head.
Picasso: Mine will change the future.
Einstein: (holds his drawing) Oh, and mine won't?
In a way, Picasso plays like Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with
George, with jokes in the place of music and with a more articulated point
of view of a woman drawn to an artist.
In Sunday, of course, the woman is played by Bernadette Peters, an early
love of Martin's, and I can't help but think that Picasso isn't just
Martin's way of reaching back to his own youth -- a literary midlife crisis
-- but a means of coming to terms with all the love that is lost when you
bury your sorrow in your work and try to make something out of it.
"This play really changed my personal life," says Martin. "Without it, I
would be, you know, still reading scripts, maybe writing scripts. I burned
out on that, and the play actually revitalized my interest in screenwriting,
gave me a new perspective on it and a new way to do it in a way.
"And it also kind of renewed my soul. You know, it gave me a kind of boost
in a place where I never thought I would get a boost."
It goes without saying that Martin gave a boost to American comedy, ushering
in the age of irony, now presided over by Jerry Seinfeld, whose sitcom
Martin claims never to have seen: "My best friends tell me it's hilarious."
But he loves Jim Carrey: "I think he's very, very funny. Deeply funny."
Right now, Martin might be deeply funny in a just-finished movie written and
directed by David Mamet, whom he adores, and he has plans to adapt A.R.
Gurney's play, Sylvia, to the screen with Sarah Jessica Parker. But he's
also going to co-star with Goldie Hawn in a "heavily rewritten" remake of
Neil Simon's The Out-of-Towners, and he has completed a script for Eddie
Murphy.
It seems you can take the boy out of Hollywood, but you can't take the
Hollywood out of the boy, no matter how he's feeling.
"I'm out of the blue period," says Steve Martin with a smile, "and I'm going
into the rose period."
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SUNDAY MORNING (9:00 AM ET)
July 14, 1996, Sunday
ENTER PLAYWRIGHT; COMEDIAN STEVE MARTIN WRITES A PLAY; AT 50 HE'S HAPPY
WITH HIS PERSONAL LIFE AND HIS CAREER
ANCHORS: ANTHONY MASON REPORTERS: CHARLES OSGOOD
ANTHONY MASON, host:
Enter Playwright is what the stage directions would say to indicate to the
actor playing the part of the playwright that he is to join the others out
front in the scene being presented at that moment. Well, that's about to
happen here, too, with the big difference being that the actor to whom
Charles Osgood introduces us now is not playing the part of a playwright. He
really has become one.
(Excerpt from "Picasso at the Lapin Agile")
CHARLES OSGOOD reporting:
(Voiceover) The time: 1904. The place: a cafe in Paris. The set up: an
imaginary meeting between a young Pablo Picasso and a young Albert Einstein,
a meeting imagined by actor‑comedian‑writer Steve Martin. The result:
Martin's play, "Picasso at the Lapin Agile," currently on stage in San
Francisco.
(Excerpt from "Picasso at the Lapin Agile")
OSGOOD: (Voiceover) In the play, Einstein is about to publish his theory of
relativity; Picasso about to paint the first Cubist painting.
(Excerpt from "Picasso at the Lapin Agile")
OSGOOD: (Voiceover) The 20th century is beginning and so is the modern age.
(Excerpt from "Picasso at the Lapin Agile")
Mr. STEVE MARTIN (Playwright): (Voiceover) It got me thinking about that
period, and how exciting it is when you're on the verge of something. It's
the most exciting moment of accomplishment.
(Excerpt from "Picasso at the Lapin Agile")
OSGOOD: Tell me the genesis of‑‑of this play.
Mr. MARTIN: I‑‑I've been thinking about the subject of this play for a long
time, and when I say the subject, I mean the deeper subject, which is the
relationship between art and science.
(Excerpt from "Picasso at the Lapin Agile")
OSGOOD: (Voiceover) The play is about art and science.
(Excerpt from "Picasso at the Lapin Agile")
OSGOOD: (Voiceover) But it is also about love and sex, popular taste,
personal envy, success and failure‑‑in short, being human.
(Excerpt from "Picasso at the Lapin Agile")
Mr. MARTIN: I liked the idea of making them human, and I like that
Einstein, whether he was or not, but in our play, can be a little jealous,
and can be a little petty, and can be a little arrogant, and can get angry.
And‑‑and the same for Picasso. So‑‑I'm sure they had those qualities,
because we all do.
(Excerpt from "Picasso at the Lapin Agile")
OSGOOD: (Voiceover) But what set them apart, their genius, is the nature of
their art.
(Excerpt from "Picasso at the Lapin Agile")
OSGOOD: The science of Einstein came out of great creativity, but he also
knew a lot to‑‑to have...
Mr. MARTIN: Oh, absolutely. But he also had to make gigantic leaps that
were not logical. He had to make intuitive leaps.
OSGOOD: Can we learn from that, do you think?
Mr. MARTIN: I‑‑I think we can. If you're in the arts or sciences, just the
idea of being able to let your mind go free, you know, and take all your
knowledge, and just let it float on the surface, and really go down deep,
and let your subconscious mind manipulate it.
OSGOOD: Is that what you try to do as a writer?
Mr. MARTIN: Well, yeah. It's not that ea‑‑you know, it's‑‑like, I don't
sit‑‑and now I'll let my mind manipulate. It's‑‑you know, you just get lucky
when it happens.
OSGOOD: As a writer, how does it feel to sit, say, in‑‑in a theater and see
your‑‑your baby being...
Mr. MARTIN: It's so thrilling and terrifying. It‑‑when it's working, it's
just, you‑‑you‑‑you know, there's something about being in show business, or
being a performer, or a writer, that it's about proving something to
yourself all the time.
OSGOOD: Mm‑hmm.
Mr. MARTIN: And you can always figure out a way to deny your own success.
But when you're sitting in the theater, and the audience is actually
laughing or listening or crying, you really‑‑it's‑‑you have a hard time
denying what you've done.
(Close‑up of a photograph of Martin in disguise)
Mr. MARTIN: (Voiceover) Because I am a wild and crazy guy!
(Photograph of Martin; excerpt from one of Martin's movies; close‑up of
"Picasso at the Lapin Agile" playbill)
OSGOOD: (Voiceover) Out of comedy clubs and on to television's "Saturday
Night Live," and finally at the movies, Steve Martin became a big star. It
is rare‑‑very rare‑‑for someone with movie and television credits like
Martin's to turn to writing for the stage.
Mr. MARTIN: In my mind, I have said to myself, 'I don't really need to do
this for a living, or anything...'
OSGOOD: Mm‑hmm.
Mr. MARTIN: '...but I‑‑I have a need to do it for my heart and soul.' But I
only do it when I'm really, really ready. So I don't‑‑I never punish myself
by writing. I just‑‑I just know‑‑I believe so much in the subconscious mind
and its operation, that I just wait and wait and wait until I can't stop
myself anymore, and it just has to come out.
(Footage of cassette player; woman wearing headphones)
Mr. MARTIN: (Voiceover) On the wall at your right next to the doorway is a
portrait of the writer Gertrude Stein completed around the same time...
(Close‑up of Stein portrait; footage of museum visitors)
OSGOOD: (Voiceover) One of Martin's favorite pastimes and sources of
inspiration is wandering through art museums.
(Footage of museum visitors; close‑up of Picasso painting)
Mr. MARTIN: (Voiceover) ...encounter Picasso's visions of Fernande Olivier,
a young woman he met...
(Footage of man holding cassette player; Picasso artwork; museum visitors)
OSGOOD: (Voiceover) Fitting, then, that Steve Martin's is the voice on the
audio guide to the current Picasso portrait exhibit at New York's Museum of
Modern Art‑‑fitting and funny.
(Footage of Picasso artwork; museum visitors)
Mr. MARTIN: (Voiceover) Let's continue now into the next gallery, and as
you enter, walk straight ahead to the wall facing the doorway. Stop before
you hit the wall.
OSGOOD: I know art is important to you. What‑‑what is that art does
for‑‑for you?
Mr. MARTIN: Well, the arts really affect us, and make our life beautiful,
you know, that‑‑you know, for the rest of our lives in museums and concerts
and music of all forms. I think it's the best thing we do. The best thing
humans do is make this stuff, and write these things. And‑‑and otherwise,
we're just commerce, you know. We're just a‑‑a nation of‑‑or a world of
commerce.
(Footage of Martin; actors)
Mr. MARTIN: (Voiceover) But the finest things we do, and talk about,
manifests itself in‑‑in artistic ways.
So you've got a little show stuff going on.
Unidentified Man: Mm‑hmm. Yeah. Right.
(Footage of Martin; actors)
OSGOOD: (Voiceover) You've had your 50‑‑What?‑‑51st, 52nd birthday?
Mr. MARTIN: Fifty. Fifty.
OSGOOD: Fiftieth.
Mr. MARTIN: Please
OSGOOD: So you're‑‑you're a very young man when I say this, but, I mean,
does‑‑does that milestone mean something for you?
Mr. MARTIN: Yes, that was a si‑‑yeah, it did. It did. I‑‑I‑‑I looked back
and I thought, 'OK, I've worked really, really hard, and it's time to live
life and enjoy life.' And not that work wasn't enjoyable, but it was
enjoyable at that time, and now there's another kind of enjoyment to take
place, and I want to make sure I don't miss it and look back and go,
'Why‑‑why did I just keep, you know, beating myself to death here?'
OSGOOD: Are you happy? Would you describe yourself as happy at this point
in your life?
Mr. MARTIN: Yeah, I‑‑I would say I am. In a very‑‑I've been through a lot
the last couple of years and I've finally, you know, seen who my friends
are. And I love my friends and I have a very nice life‑‑very, very nice.
OSGOOD: What makes you happy?
Mr. MARTIN: It's such a small‑‑so many small things, obviously. It's‑‑it
usually has to do with friends‑‑conversation, talking, dinners. I was
telling you today, as‑‑as‑‑as one gets older, it's amazing how important the
weather is.
OSGOOD: Yeah.
Mr. MARTIN: You know, if it's a nice day, you're, like, so happy‑‑and
pleasant summer evenings and‑‑they really, really count.
(Excerpt from "Picasso at the Lapin Agile")
OSGOOD: (Voiceover) And maybe a good play now and then, especially if it's
one written by that new playwright, a wild and crazy guy named Steve Martin.
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San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, June 16, 1996
Page 34,
Steve Martin Goes Through A New Stage Hollywood actor turns playwright ‑‑
and does it for more than laughs
RUTHE STEIN, CHRONICLE STAFF WRITER
Los Angeles ‑‑ Steve Martin has a reputation for being compulsively
punctual. Sure enough, at precisely 11 a.m., he arrives at an empty
restaurant. It's unfashionably early for lunch, which may be why Martin, who
dislikes being recognized, chose the time.
He brusquely announces he isn't eating and orders herbal mint tea. It is
served with one of those miniature condiment jars. Martin twists it open,
holds it up to his nose and takes a good whiff. Just as he suspected ‑‑
instead of honey, he's been given orange marmalade. ``That's weird, isn't
it? `Marmalade in your tea?' '' he says, impersonating a stuffy headwaiter.
Some other time he might have gone on with more of his Martinesque,
gleefully silly shtick. This morning, though, he isn't trying for laughs; he
seems tense, as he often is when he has to talk about himself.
QUIET ABOUT HIS LOVE LIFE
Now that Martin has the clout in Hollywood to say no to interviews, he
rarely does them ‑‑ at any rate, not for the sake of plugging his
multimillion‑dollar movies. He's particularly leery of being asked about his
divorce two years ago from British actress Victoria Tennant or his love life
since: ``I am dating again,'' is about all he will say.
But there is a project, small by Hollywood standards, that Martin cares so
much about he is willing to put himself in the hot seat: his first play,
``Picasso at the Lapin Agile.'' It opens Wednesday in San Francisco after
successful and enthusiastically reviewed runs in New York, Chicago and Los
Angeles.
Movie people often profess longings to do a play, but they rarely follow
through. Their egos and salaries are too big for the stage. So it is
something for Martin ‑‑ who is said to get more than $6 million to act in a
picture, and considerably more when he also writes the screenplay ‑‑ to have
taken significant chunks of time during the past six years to try his hand
at playwriting.
``There was a certain kind of dissatisfaction that was coming from
movies,'' he explains ‑‑ ``not so much movies, but the routine of what you
have been doing and how you kind of fall into a groove of predictability.
``I felt a kind of emptiness in my comedy heart. I wanted to try something
new.''
EXPENSIVELY DRESSED
Back when Martin was doing stand‑up comedy wearing rabbit ears or an arrow
through his head, or contorting his face and body in ``All of Me'' and ``The
Jerk,'' it wasn't always apparent how good‑looking he is. Almost 6 feet
tall, athletically trim and expensively dressed, he misses being movie‑star
handsome by a nose ‑‑ in his case, the trademark bulbous schnozz that's a
little out of proportion with his other, almost delicate features. At 50, he
has finally grown into his prematurely white hair. And he has sexy eyes,
green like his loden jacket, and a seductive, crooked smile.
He admits feeling held back in some ways when writing for the screen. ``I
like to write monologues, for example, and it's hard to write a monologue
for a movie. Movies are about building structure, and plays seem to be about
poetic drift of words. They kind of come from a deeper place.''
Also, with a play he can keep fiddling with the material, which he did as a
comedian but is almost impossible once a movie has finished shooting. In the
theater, ``I thought I would be using what I do best. I like to rewrite on
my feet. I like to listen to the audience. I thought: Here's a process where
you could actually sit and listen to it night after night after night and
improve it. That was right up my alley.''
Since his play premiered in 1993 at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre, Martin
has put new lines in the mouths of his main characters, Pablo Picasso and
Albert Einstein. Although Martin has onstage experience ‑‑ he co‑starred
with Robin Williams in ``Waiting for Godot'' in 1988 ‑‑ he never considered
playing either role. ``I really wanted my play to get on its feet without
some kind of trickery,'' he says.
The story imagines a meeting between the two men in 1904 at the Lapin Agile
(translation: nimble rabbit), a Parisian cafe Picasso was known to frequent.
His painting of the place, ``Au Lapin Agile,'' now hangs at the Metropolitan
Museum in New York and was one of Martin's inspirations for the play.
Art is also an inspiration in his life. Whenever Martin travels, he stops
off at museums to see the work of his favorite painters ‑‑ the Cezannes at
the Art Institute of Chicago, for instance ‑‑ as if they were old friends.
He hopes to get his first look at the new San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
during the local run of ``Lapin Agile.''
``It gives you a kind of focus,'' he says of his art gazing, which he takes
so seriously he refuses to sign autographs in a museum. ``I sort of like
doing that rather than going to see natural sights, really. It's just a calm
pursuit, and I like the people in the art world.'' They feel the same about
him: Martin has been asked to narrate audiotapes for museum shows, including
the current one on ``Picasso and Portraiture'' at New York's Museum of
Modern Art.
A well‑known collector, he is hesitant to say much about the art that hangs
in his Beverly Hills home, ``for security reasons.'' But Martin's collection
has been described as ``exemplary'' by a New Yorker writer, who said it
contains ``a good Kline, a more than ordinarily good Fischl, and what is
probably the single best picture in Diebenkorn's `Ocean Park' series.'' Gene
Siskel, who also has seen it, wrote about Martin's ``little Picasso.''
Siskel should stick to movies. Martin says he doesn't own a Picasso of any
size, ``but I do have a small Matisse drawing.'' That Picasso would show up
in an art lover's play is understandable. But how did Einstein get into the
picture?
``I didn't plan it,'' Martin says. ``I just started typing and Einstein
walked in and suddenly it made sense to me. The (two men) represent what
most of us think of as diverse arenas ‑‑ art and science ‑‑ but I think
they're very similar, and I wanted to make that point. In thought process
and in the area of creativity, at the highest level, art and science are
about people being very, very intuitive and making gigantic leaps.''
The play depicts Picasso and Einstein being silly as well as artistic and
theoretical. At the time of the story, they're still in their 20s, fighting
over girls and which of their respective endeavors is more important. They
engage in a shoot‑out with pencils over this issue.
While Martin doesn't presume to know what Picasso and Einstein were really
thinking, he can relate to the time of their lives he's describing: right
before they become famous. They think they are on to something, and Picasso,
in particular, is full of himself. But they're poor and don't have much to
show for their genius except bravado.
``When I was younger, I was hanging around in bars with other people who
wanted to make it and be artists,'' Martin recalls. ``The best time of your
life is when you're on the verge of making it. That's when I think I was the
funniest, when you are kind of `bubbling under,' as they say in the
trades.''
Much of his bubbling occurred in San Francisco in the late '60s. Martin,
who started out performing magic acts at Disneyland as a teenager, performed
at North Beach coffeehouses for free, ``doing comedy and my magic act and
reading poetry and passing the hat. There was one (place) where I used to
have to get up to perform when there was nobody in the audience. There was a
window to the street, and the owner thought it would attract passers‑by to
see that something was going on.''
It was at the old Boarding House on Bush Street in 1975 that Martin had the
show business equivalent of the breakthrough that Einstein had with his
theory of relativity or that Picasso had when he painted ``Les Demoiselles
d' Avignon.'' Martin sold out a two‑week run.
``It was a very important point in my career,'' he says. ``It was the first
time I ever sold out any place.''
Four years later, he was starring in a hit movie, ``The Jerk.'' But he has
had as many flops (``Pennies From Heaven,'' ``Leap of Faith,'' ``A Simple
Twist of Fate'') as hits (``L.A. Story,'' ``Roxanne,'' ``Father of the
Bride''). It's particularly hard on him when a movie he wrote doesn't do
well, and he has been quoted as saying he is thinking about giving up
screenplays and only acting in movies ‑‑ he's just replaced John Travolta as
the star of Roman Polanski's ``The Double'' ‑‑ and just writing for the
stage. (He's already followed ``Picasso'' with four one‑acts that were
performed together in New York earlier this year.)
Martin isn't confirming this now. ``I'm not stopping writing screenplays,
I'm just taking a break. I don't know what I'm doing,'' he says.
But there will be at least one more film script ‑‑ he has a deal to adapt
``Picasso at the Lapin Agile'' for the screen.
`PICASSO AT THE LAPIN AGILE' The play written by Steve Martin opens
Wednesday at Theatre on the Square, 450 Post Street, San Francisco. It is
currently in previews. Call (415) 433‑9500, (415) 776‑1999 or (510)
762‑BASS.
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Santa Barbara News-Press
Martin's fantasy Comedy, Theater
By Starshine Roshell
11/24/99
Steve Martin has had about as much of himself as he can take. And it's no
wonder. Martin, 54, recently wrote and starred with Eddie Murphy in the
screwball satire movie "Bowfinger" and published "Pure Drivel," a
critically-acclaimed book containing many of the well-read humor columns he
frequently contributes to New Yorker magazine.
And, if that weren't enough to keep Martin in the public eye, his 1996 play
"Picasso at the Lapin Agile" - a witty salute to two of the century's most
creative geniuses - is enjoying renewed popularity with millennium-minded
theater companies.
"The play kind of lives on," Martin said, sounding grateful but spent. "I
have seen it twice in the last two months." So when the Ensemble Theatre
Company opens its own production of "Picasso" on Dec. 3, the part-time Santa
Barbara resident may show up for a performance - or he may sit this one out.
And we'll forgive him. The creative process takes a lot out of a person, as
Pablo Picasso would surely agree.
Martin's play has Picasso, the father of Cubism, running into Albert
Einstein, perhaps the greatest physicist that ever lived, at a bar in Paris
in 1904.
"It's meant to be a fantasy," Martin said in a telephone interview.
"Einstein and Picasso I don't think ever met."
But both men were in their 20s at that time, and on the brink of their
greatest achievements. For Picasso, it was the abstract and magnetic
painting "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon," the audacity and beauty of which
changed the course of art for all time. For Einstein, it was the brilliant
Special Theory of Relativity, which forever did away with the concept of
absolute truths. In clever conservations between this art-world mover and
science-community shaker, Martin muses about the nature of creation, the
difference between talent and genius, the distinction between good and bad
art and the feeling of imminent inspiration.
"The play addresses art in terms of science," he said, "and the point of the
play is that the creative process, at the highest end of making art and
making science, is the same. There are creative leaps that are taken (in
both)." Martin is an avid art collector who has had a passion for fine art
since college.
"I think that art - and when I say art, I mean making paintings and writing
books and doing dance and writing plays - is the best thing that we humans
do. We're not so good politically," he said. "And it's kind of religious,
art, in a way. It's coming from a very deep place in people and it's
basically good." Martin, who doesn't paint, draw or sculpt, put plays a mean
banjo, got the idea for his play while visiting an art show at New York's
Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he saw a work by Picasso called "Au Lapin
Agile." It was a painting of people in a real Montmartre bar called the
Lapin Agile - translated as the Nimble Rabbit - where Picasso and many other
artists had hung out in the early 1900s.
Martin remembered once seeing an old photo of the bar taken in 1904, with
that very painting hanging on the wall.
"He had just painted it," Martin said. "And I thought of its journey, and
how it came in a sense to represent such an important moment, and that
really prompted me to write the play."
If talk of journeys, science, politics and significant historical moments
doesn't sound like the sort of chit-chat you'd expect to hear from a man who
wore a gag arrow through his head for much of his early career, then you
haven't been paying attention to Martin's more recent work.
The comedian has come to be known for writing and starring in intelligent
comedies like "Roxanne," a modern adaptation of Edmond Rostand's "Cyrano de
Bergerac" for which Martin won a Writers Guild award in 1988, and "L.A.
Story," his quirky 1991 romance set in the shallow but enchanting City of
Angels.
The style that has emerged from Martin's efforts to date is a lovely
juxtaposition of the silly and profound. His characters have an irresistible
innocence, his plots a beguiling inventiveness and his dialogue is both an
un-self-conscious celebration of silliness and a collection of magical, life
affirming moments that pop up unexpectedly.
In "Picasso," for example, yuk-seekers will adore hearing Einstein describe
planetary movement as "way ugly," and listening to the grumblings of an
aging, sex-obsessed barfly with a weak bladder. Who could sit straight-faced
as Freddy the bartender makes his predictions for the 20th century, guessing
everyone will wear wax clothing, dance the "Toad" and revere the Wright
brothers for their invention of a low-calorie fudge?
And yet, arm hairs are likely to stand on end as Picasso
eloquently explains his craft: "I am taking the part of us that cannot be
understood by God and letting it bleed from the wrist onto the canvas."
Try laughing at that. "It's just something that comes out," Martin said. "I
come from comedy, so probably whatever I do is going to be kind of funny,
but some of these ideas are pretty big. I want it to be entertaining, not a
lecture, so I guess it's just the way I write."
The way Martin writes is what led the Ensemble's artistic director Robert
Grande-Weiss to choose "Picasso" as its holiday production.
"He's so contemporary and he has such a great understanding of people and
how they work," Grande-Weiss said. "He weaves highly intelligent schemes
with silliness and it just makes the whole thing spin.
"I think Steve Martin is saying we have the right to be idiotic," he said,
and yet "it's deeper than people probably would admit."
Over and over in interviews, Martin has down-played his role as a performer
and confessed his passion for the pen. Plays, more than films, allow him to
explore topics that might be too cerebral for a movie audience.
"You just couldn't do a movie that dealt with Einstein and Picasso," Martin
said. "People go to plays to listen to the words and they go to movies to
watch the story. You have a whole different audience mentality going in."
Likewise, screenwriters are story-driven, whereas playwrights focus on words
and have more time to stop and make a point, he said. Still, "Picasso"
clocks in at only about 90 minutes, a consideration Martin made to
accommodate society's - and his own - shrinking attention span.
"I don't like to go to plays that are two-and-a-half or three hours," he
confessed. And even if he did enjoy long shows, he wouldn't have time to sit
through one. Martin regularly writes critical essays for art magazines, has
a screenplay in pre-production (an adaptation of A.R. Gurney's "Sylvia") and
has a book called "Shop Girl" coming out next summer.
"It's a fictional novella about an older man's relationship with a young
28-year-old woman," he said, swearing it's not autobiographical.
Unlike the characters in his play, Martin doesn't even want to take a stab
at predicting the future. "I just can't imagine what it's going to bring,"
he said. "The 20th century was such a compressed century. It's like 500
years in 100."
But one thing's for sure. This comedian-playwright-art
collector-screenwriter-philosopher-actor columnist-banjo player won't be
taking on any new roles this millennium.
"I'm doing everything I can possibly do," he said. "Anything I can do is out
there."
("Picasso at the Lapin Agile" opens at 8 p.m. Dec. 3 and continues at 8 p.m.
Tuesdays thourgh Saturdays and 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays through Jan. 2 at the
Alhecama Theatre, 914 Santa Barbara St.. Tickets, which are $20 to $28, may
be purchased by calling 962-8606.)
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Los Angeles Times October 20, 1994, Thursday, Home Edition
Calendar; Part F; Page 1; Column 2; Entertainment Desk
STEVE MARTIN, THE PLAYWRIGHT, ON EINSTEIN, PICASSO AND FRUIT TEA; THEATER:
HIS ONE‑ACT PLAY, WHICH CREATES A CONVERSATION BETWEEN THE ARTIST AND THE
SCIENTIST, IS READY TO OPEN IN L.A. 'IT'S NOW READY TO BE DONE SOMEWHERE
WHERE THERE'S A RISK TO ME,' HE SAYS.
By DIANE HAITHMAN, TIMES STAFF WRITER
Steve Martin greets a visitor politely enough outside the Four Seasons Hotel
dining room before a scheduled 4 o'clock tea ‑‑ but his voice is tinged with
disappointment. You see, it's still 10 minutes to 4, and Martin had planned
to use those 10 minutes to finish the crossword puzzle he carries clutched
under one arm. Partly inked in with tidy black letters, the puzzle does
indeed appear to have a good 10 minutes worth of blank squares to go. But,
once done, running into someone ahead of schedule is difficult to undo. So
Martin gamely heads for his window table to talk about his new comedy,
"Picasso at the Lapin Agile," which opens at the Westwood Playhouse on
Saturday. The one‑act play creates a hypothetical meeting between Pablo
Picasso and Albert Einstein in Paris, 1904, shortly before Einstein
published "The Special Theory of Relativity" and Picasso painted "Les
Demoiselles D'Avignon."
But, before launching into heady discussions of this explosive fictional
meeting, Martin has something else on his mind. He makes a habit of not
watching his old movies and TV appearances ("strange and horrible"), but
happened to catch an old interview with himself on TV the night before and
wondered how that dull, pedantic fellow on the screen could possibly be
Steve Martin.
"I was (studying) quarks ‑‑ you know how, when you look at them, they
change?" Martin said, using the scientific term for the hypothetical
building blocks of subatomic particles (a word that rarely finds its way
into casual conversation). "I know I'm exactly the same doing interviews. I
know I just change." He paused. "And then I looked at myself and said, like,
'Maybe I am this deadly boring, serious person.' " He laughed, then turned
somber again.
Martin is hardly dead serious and boring. However, he exhibits none of the
wild and crazy persona one might expect from a man who first came to
national prominence in the zany laboratory of "Saturday Night Live." As
Martin talks about his most recent incarnation as a playwright, he seems
professorial, intellectual, introspective and maybe just a little . . .
quarky.
If there are any laughs in a conversation with Martin, they are of the kind
described in "Lapin Agile" as "icebox laughs." Einstein: "You don't laugh
now, but an hour later you're at home, standing at the icebox, and you
laugh."
Take tea at the Four Seasons, for example. Martin is presented with a
dizzying array of options. "Orange pekoe. No. Lemon verbena? Black currant,
that sounds cute. But is that caffeinated?" Martin ends up with passion
fruit tea ‑‑ which has caffeine, but about half as much as the other
flavors. Later, back at the icebox, the situation is reminiscent of the
coffee scene from Martin's "L.A. Story," in which a table full of Westsiders,
deep into the designer coffee religion, order such bizarre permutations as
double half‑caf espresso with a twist.
Martin is buoyed today not just by the dose of half‑caf, but by the fact
that his play, to be performed here by the Chicago‑based Steppenwolf Theatre
Company, has enjoyed critical success in Chicago and Boston. He has also
written another play, "Wasp," a surreal comedy about a '50s family much like
Martin's own, which has been performed twice ‑‑ at the Ensemble Studio
Theatre and at Vassar ‑‑ and is slated to open in New York in the fall, at a
yet‑to‑be named venue.
He is happy to be bringing "Lapin" home to Los Angeles, and happy that
critics, so far, have not adopted the stance that a Hollywood comedy star
couldn't possibly write good theater. "New York is a place (where the
critics) would really kill me because I'm in movies, so I'm not really eager
to take ("Lapin") there," he says. "But it's now ready to be done somewhere
where there's a risk to me, and that's L.A.
"I've already been reviewed 20 times with it, so I pretty much know what the
critical position is, or can be. You are always vulnerable to someone's bad
mood, or other vision. But at least it's not a horrible celebrity exercise."
While he has no plans to give up movies ‑‑ he stars in Nora Ephron's "Mixed
Nuts," a black comedy about a suicide hot line slated to open in December ‑‑
right now Martin is happiest as a playwright. When he decided to try writing
a play, in 1991, Martin says, "I was starting to get really interested in
theater. It looked like a real challenge. I thought, 'I wonder if I could do
that, because if I could do that . . .
"I think you go through your career trying to prove to yourself that you can
do something. And even after you've done it, you're still trying to prove
it. So I thought that would prove if I were a writer or not, if I could
write a play."
Martin says he was tempted to take a role in "Lapin Agile" but didn't want
the play to transform into a one‑man show. In "Wasp," he says, there is a
role for him, but thus far he hasn't been able to bring himself to play it
because it hits a little too close to home.
"Lapin Agile," Martin said, was inspired by a Picasso painting, titled "At
the Lapin Agile," painted in about 1904. Martin saw it in a book about
Picasso. "There was a photo of this painting kind of hanging there,
unstretched, unframed on the wall ‑‑ Picasso just kind of did it to decorate
the place," Martin says. "And that year, whenever it was, 1992, the painting
was hanging at the Metropolitan Museum, all stretched out, with a $40,000
frame on it.
"And I knew it had recently sold for $1 million, and it just sent me back to
those days when nothing had any (monetary) value and everything was just
about ideas."
Martin jokes that he's not afraid of going over the heads of his audience
because that group will be self‑selecting. "Going against (the play) already
is the title," he says cheerfully. "People are already going: 'Picasso,
what's this?' And then by the time you get to lapin agile, people are going:
'I'll go see something else.' " He pauses. "But there is no other title. I
suppose I could Anglicize it, but then it would be 'Picasso at the Agile
Rabbit.' "
Martin's interest in Picasso stems from a longtime devotion to art; he sits
on the board at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, whose galleries he
roller‑skated through in "L.A. Story." He has in some past interviews
refused to discuss his art collecting, but says he's more than willing to
talk about art.
"(Collecting) is what I don't want to talk about ‑‑ that's just numbers and
greed and values," he says. "Especially in Hollywood." Martin, who started
collecting in the mid‑'70s before the activity became an '80s symbol of
Hollywood chic, notes happily that the prestige collecting has slipped out
of vogue in the entertainment industry.
About LACMA, recently troubled by financial and personnel problems, Martin
says he has not been directly involved but notes that most of the Hollywood
money has gone to downtown's Museum of Contemporary Art. "Everyone was
interested in contemporary art, or 'modern,' so‑called," Martin says. "I
think LACMA is fantastic, beautiful. I mean, there are Rembrandts there.
Rembrandts and Picassos and major collections of Indian art. . . . At LACMA,
they have a great collection of American paintings from the 19th Century.
That's rare, very few museums have that. They have German Expressionist
stuff. In Los Angeles."
* "Picasso at the Lapin Agile," Saturday‑Dec. 4, Tues.‑Fri. 8 p.m. Saturdays
5 and 9 p.m., Sundays 3 and 7 p.m., no performance Nov. 24 (Thanksgiving)
with added Nov. 25 matinee at 2 p.m. Westwood Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte
Ave., Westwood. (310) 208‑5454.
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Deutsche Presse‑Agentur
April 21, 1996, Sunday, BC Cycle
15:43 Central European Time
Entertainment, Television and Culture
HOLLYWOOD BRIEFS: Whoopi's dinosaur movie goes extinct
****
Steve Martin pulls Picasso's leg
New York (dpa) ‑ TV and movie comic‑turned‑playwright Steve Martin pulled
the combined legs of a New York
audience at the end of a performance of his play, "Picasso At The Lapin
Agile", last week by climbing onstage and
saying, "We just got a letter bomb, but we spotted it right away ‑ it was
attached to a postcard."
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