| PRODUCT DETAILS | | Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life |  | |
Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
The Emmy and Grammy Award-winner's candid, spectacularly amusing memoir of his years in stand-upIn the mid-seventies, Steve Martin exploded onto the comedy scene. By 1978 he was the biggest concert draw in the history of stand-up. In 1981 he quit forever. Born Standing Up is, in his own words, the story of "why I did stand-up and why I walked away." At age ten Martin started his career at Disneyland, selling guidebooks in the newly opened theme park. In the decade that followed, he worked in the Disney magic shop and the Bird Cage Theatre at Knott's Berry Farm, performing his first magic/comedy act a dozen times a week. The story of these years, during which he practiced and honed his craft, is moving and revelatory. Martin illuminates the sacrifice, discipline and originality that made him an icon and informs his work to this day. To be this good, to perform so frequently, was isolating and lonely. It took Martin decades to reconnect with his parents and sister, and he tells that story with great tenderness. Martin also paints a portrait of his times: the era of free love and protests against the war in Vietnam, the heady irreverence of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in the late sixties, and the transformative new voice of Saturday Night Live in the seventies.
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster Audio
Price: $5.00
 Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
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| User Reviews |  | Good Read!!
rating: 5
I've been a fan of Steve Martin's since I was a little girl. My mom had the extreme pleasure of seeing him perform his stand up at Universal Studios in the 70's. (opening act was the Blues Brothers) He has always been, to me, full of wonderful humor and as an author is absolutley superb. He is definatley a man of many talents and it shows in his acting, writing, banjo playing, etc. This book was a very intersting peek into the great mind of Mr. Martin's.
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Boring
rating: 1
I will agree with others that Steve Martin knows how to write. But, I am sorry, I thought this book was painfully boring.
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Big Laughs, Big Heart
rating: 5
I adore Steve Martin's work. I grew up watching his brilliantly nonsensical movies informed by classic literature and art. I revel in his physical comedy, and I had a good time watching Picasso at the Lapin Agile. Don't tell anyone, but as kids, my brother and I watched Three Amigos more than Sesame Street, and Lucky Day was our favorite.
I didn't know why until I read this book.
If you want to know more about the history of American stand up comedy and its transition from stages to screen, or Disneyland, or magic shops, or Orange County, California, there's plenty for you in this book. And there's so much more. Martin shares his journey to stardom - which turns out to be a series of peaks and valleys, gaining elevation with each iteration.
Of course, his self-deprecating humor is where it all starts: "persistence is a great substitute for talent" he tells us. And I enjoyed the stories about how he developed and tested material. The real message of the book comes through in Martin's own self-awareness. He writes about his anxiety attacks, his brilliant strategy for handling hecklers (which I will be using in a meeting tomorrow!), his rocky relationship with his father, the healing powers of Carl Reiner, and what is was like to be with each of his parents as they died.
If you only read a few pages (come on, read the whole book!), read the first and last chapters. In the first chapter, you'll hear a clearly-defined writer's voice that is recognizably Steve Martin's, distilling the details of the book into refined, compact punches of truth. In the final chapter, you'll read a little about his resolution with his parents. And if you read the chapters in between, you'll know a little more about how a person makes the journey from an isolating childhood to exchanging words of love with his father as a man.
If he's willing to share, I hope to learn more about the post-stand up years in the next book.
I couldn't put this book down. It was an easy read - I bought it yesterday morning and am writing this review tonight. I think I continue to delight in Steve Martin's work because it exemplifies something he said of Carl Reiner in the book: "He had an entrenched sense of glee."
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The Road to Comic Genius
rating: 4
"I DID STAND-UP COMEDY for eighteen years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four were spend in wild success." So begins Steve Martin's biography of himself as he explains it because he feels as if he is writing about someone else 30 to 40 years removed from the time and place. Although I was a fan of Steve Martin's comedy and movies mainly via SNL and his early movies I never appreciated the dedication, hard work, and intellectual underpinnings that guided his rise to superstardom. He covers the early dysfunctional family experience that seems to come with later greatness in enough detail to make the ending very touching where there is reconciliation. Throughout the book you get a flavor for the times (sixties/seventies) from an observer/participant perspective rather than partisan/ideologue. Finally I enjoyed reading it because Steve Martin is a complex and interesting character who can be completely zany and stupid but also recite poetry, discuss art, and find the philosophical underpinnings in making a fool of yourself in front of thousands.
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From a serious Steve Martin fan. I loved it. I really, really loved it.
rating: 5
I became a Steve Martin fan in college when my roomates and I saw him on Johnny Carson trying to make people laugh by reading names out of a phone book (the way great actors can supposedly make people cry by doing the same thing). Of course, no one was laughing so he resorted to his standard balloon hat, bunny ears, arrow through the head and Groucho Marx glasses. It was so bizarre and crazy, we were in stitches. Of course, we were also pharmaceutically challenged at the time so that helped.
When reading this book, it also helps if you lived through the 60s and 70s. Steve makes many references to those times as he was growing up and his comedy career morphed. If you also grew up during those times, you can relate to so much more of what he's talking about. But regardless, it's really quite entertaining as he pulls you through the 60s and his time as a writer on the Smothers Brothers show and his early attempts at comedy in the 70s.
If you followed Steve's stand-up career, I think you will really like this book. You really get to know the man and his struggles with his comedy career, his family and his love life. This is the first book of his that I've read and I never realized what a good writer he is. I breezed through the book as he has a way of painting a picture and and scene in a very visual way. So many times through the book, I read a sentence and stopped and thought, "You know, that's true. It really is". A few of my favorites were "Thankfully, perseverance is a great substitute for talent", and "Despite a lack of natural ability, I did have the one element necessary to all early creativity: naivete, that fabulous quality that keeps you from knowing just how unsuited you are for what you are about to do".
Every young performer should read this book, whether you're a Steve Martin fan or not. It is inspiring as well as entertaining. If you were born after the Steve Martin phenomenon of the 70s, go to YouTube.com and find some old Steve Martin stand-up clips. You will not regret it.
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Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
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