Steve Martin recalls his standup years

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on November 28th, 2007

Earlier this month, USA Today ran an excerpt from Steve Martin‘s autobiography, “Born Standing Up.”

I DID STAND-UP COMEDY for eighteen years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four were spent in wild success. My most persistent memory of stand-up is of my mouth being in the present and my mind being in the future: the mouth speaking the line, the body delivering the gesture, while the mind looks back, observing, analyzing, judging, worrying, and then deciding when and what to say next. Enjoyment while performing was rare– enjoyment would have been an indulgent loss of focus that comedy cannot afford.

There’s more where that came from. Martin says he researched the standup period of his life as if it happened to someone else. And he recalls enjoying himself!

If the portion running in the paper is any indication, Martin’s musings on standup– the technical, the philosophical, the theoretical– are some of most insightful and possibly the most useful ever committed to the page. (Thanks to reader Tom Bickle for the tip!)

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