Sunday, May 15

Steve Martin is Famous Just Right

Alternet reprints Meghan Daum's interview with Steve Martin which originally appeared in (say it with me: Dave Eggers' magazine) The Believer, a stray old copy of which I found in a Booksale bin, but without the compilation cd, natch.

Martin talks about being famous just right, which translates to a kind of freedom curtailed only if you get recognized and then get mobbed. But otherwise, is all good. Mostly, the interview talks about his writing, his crossover from performance to the written word, the novella Shopgirl that's being turned into a movie. Now that I think about it, Shopgirl's distant "leading man," for lack of a better word, is named Ray Porter, which is also some local radio jock's monicker.

There's also some discussion about his being compared to Woody Allen, on the basis that his earlier New Yorker pieces read like Allen's earlier stories. Now that am rereading his Cruel Shoes, the sheer wry, dry, absurdist wit of it somehow does remind me of Allen. That self-deprecating, geeky tone, which all things considered, rocks my boat a lot. Hehe.

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