by Martin Short
“But I thought you wanted to talk to me about ¡Three Amigos!” I said. “How would I be able to do both?”
“Well, you know, Marty,” Lorne said, in that wry tone I would come to know well, “I’ve heard tell that occasionally schedules can, in fact, actually be sorted out in show business.”
In retrospect, I think I could have managed it. My career might have benefitted from pulling double duty and doing Lorne’s rebooted SNL and ¡Three Amigos! at the same time. But it probably would have been at the expense of my sanity. So I told Lorne, “I’m not sure SNL is in my future. But you say you’re producing a Western-type movie?”
¡Three Amigos! is an anomaly in Lorne’s long and illustrious résumé: his only screenwriting credit on a feature film, shared with Steve Martin and Randy Newman. It was your basic Old West bandito musical comedy of mistaken identity, featuring three dopey silent-film stars who happen to perform in mariachi costumes and get themselves mixed up in a Mexican turf war with the villagers in a small, gangster-besieged town, who mistake them for real crime fighters.
I think that at one point it was going to be Danny Aykroyd and John Belushi as the other two amigos alongside Steve. At another point, it was going to be Bill Murray and Robin Williams. Then it became Chevy Chase and John Candy, but Candy was too busy by the time the production schedule finally snapped into place, and that’s when it became Chevy Chase and Martin Short, with John Landis slated to direct.
The very day after the meeting with Lorne, I was back in L.A., headed to Steve Martin’s house in Beverly Hills to meet him and pick up the script. I have this philosophy around people I don’t know but am excited to meet that I call “immediate intimacy”: I do an impersonation of someone who is relaxed, loose, and not at all intimidated, in the hope that this impersonation will ultimately become reality. Because I was intimidated by Steve. We’re the best of friends now, but at that point I was this mere sketch-comedy guy and he was Steve Martin, the most innovative stand-up comic of the 1970s, who had done so many great comedy films. The latest to date, All of Me, had blown me away, not to mention The Jerk and the ambitious musical Pennies from Heaven and all the TV specials, and then there was his groundbreaking “white suit” era.
I was immediately overwhelmed upon arriving at Steve’s house. I’m pretty certain that everyone who has ever visited his home for the first time and gone from room to room has been struck by the very same thought: How many portraits can one man possibly sit for? In all seriousness, I was astounded by what I saw. In one direction, there was a Picasso. In another direction, there was an Edward Hopper. And in a third direction, there was . . . Steve himself. That’s when I blurted out, “How did you get so rich? Because I’ve seen the work.”
Steve burst out laughing. Wow, I thought, I just made Steve Martin laugh. Pretty damn cool. My heart jumped an extra beat of joy. As it turned out, my icebreaker was more perfect than I could have known. Steve, I would soon learn, is an inherently shy and unrelentingly self-critical person. A joke that is both at his expense and makes him laugh is the ideal combination.
Still, it took a while for me to feel like I belonged in his and Chevy’s world. Nancy and I were invited that autumn to the premiere of Spies Like Us, the movie John Landis did before ¡Three Amigos!, which starred Chevy and Danny Aykroyd. It was my first Hollywood premiere, and the first time I underwent the experience of walking a red carpet, having my name announced, and hearing a crowd of strangers on the street cheer for me. I’d been in such a bubble while doing SCTV and Saturday Night Live that this was the first moment when it became real that I had connected with the public, and not just people in entertainment. The following day, I joined Chevy and Steve for lunch at the Grill, the consummate Beverly Hills industry lunch spot. Chevy was smarting from the reviews for Spies Like Us, yet still voicing his confidence in Landis. Steve was fretting about his level of preparedness and telling me, “It’s different for you, because you have real talent.” I couldn’t help but step out of myself for a moment. You’re sitting here with Chevy Chase and Steve Martin, and you’re one of the Three Amigos. Gee, I hope you don’t blow this! Just pretend you’re someone who wouldn’t.
In fact, in this period, when I had agreed to do the movie but we hadn’t yet begun shooting it, I suggested to John Landis that I do my amigo, Ned Nederlander, as another one of my bizarre and dim-witted creations, in the same world as Ed and Jackie and Lawrence Orbach. I just didn’t believe that my own face could be as comedically rewarding as the tic-laden, makeup-heavy characters of my last four years on television.
But when I pitched this to Landis, he shot it down immediately. “Absolutely not,” he declared. “Do you know the problem with you people from SCTV? You overanalyze. You’re cute, and you’re going to look cute. Period!”
I don’t know about John’s macro point about us people from SCTV, but he was right in one important regard. If I was going to make it in the movies, I’d have to be brave enough to be me, and to find the comedy in the character’s sweet-faced innocence, without hiding behind prosthetics, bald pates, and the like.
And was I ever an innocent. On the first day, on the film’s first set, I went into my first trailer. I went to the sink, filled a glass with water, drank the water, and nearly retched. Nobody had told me that you don’t drink the trailer water, because trailer water is just for washing your hands. Then I opened the toilet, and there was a giant turd in it. I was never certain if it belonged to Chevy or some teamster who was trying to break me in—I didn’t have it sent to the lab. Knowing how his mind works, though, my money’s still on Chevy.
But I adapted quickly. It was my “immediate intimacy” philosophy put into practice: I needed to feel as if my two established-movie-star costars were my real buddies, so mentally, I fast-forwarded three years ahead in our relationship. When we first started filming ¡Three Amigos! on a Hollywood backlot, Nancy came by the set, and Chevy was completely discombobulated by her; “I feel like I’m cheating on my wife by just looking at your wife,” he told me. (Nancy had this effect on men. She underestimated her own beauty, and therefore carried herself nonchalantly, which only made her more attractive.) In our downtime Chevy loved nothing more than to play Scrabble. To my frustration, he and Steve were much better at it than me. I got sick of losing. So during one game, while Steve was deliberating on his next move, to make Chevy laugh, I very classily passed Steve a handwritten note that read, “I will let you ball my wife Nancy for an E or a Q.”
My first experience shooting a movie was a relatively happy one, even though Chevy and John Landis had a testy, somewhat combative relationship, a carryover from their collaboration on Spies Like Us. I saw them butt heads more than a few times. But in a way, I think, my presence helped defuse the tension. I’d had a similar effect as the new guy in the cast of SCTV. Though the SCTV-ers were all old friends, by 1982 they were getting on each other’s nerves more frequently. (What’s that old expression about what familiarity breeds?) Yet all it took was the presence of a new person—“Mr. Litmus Paper,” Andrea Martin called me—to put them on their best behavior. Same deal with Chevy and John—neither guy wanted to be seen as the jerk in front of Impressionable Li’l Marty on his first picture.
And I have to give John credit for fighting for me when the studio behind the film, Orion, resisted some of my more unusual flights of unscripted fancy. Whereas Steve and Chevy’s characters, Lucky Day and Dusty Bottoms, were confident in their stardom, my former child star character, Little Neddie Nederlander, was still stumbling on his adult legs like a wobbly foal. I improvised a scene in which, in a misguided attempt to impress the village children, Ned tells how, as a boy, he met the great silent-screen actress Dorothy Gish: “And she looked me in the eyes, and she said, ‘Young man, you have got it!’ Dorothy Gish! It’s a true story!”
The Orion people definitely didn’t want this scene in the movie. They felt it was too improvisational and too far over people’s heads—and granted, there was some deliberate SC
TV-style insider silliness going on. Ned wouldn’t have been big enough to meet the more famous Gish sister, Lillian, I thought; he’d only have met Dorothy. But John put his foot down, and the scene stayed. Another of my favorite lines in that movie was “Sew, very old one! Sew like the wind!”—Ned’s rallying cry to an elderly Mexican woman in the movie’s climactic scene, where the whole town uses its sewing skills to vanquish the villain, El Guapo.
Chevy was someone who loved to push his comedy as far as he could. Three years after ¡Three Amigos!, he and I were seated next to each other at an American Film Institute tribute to Gregory Peck. At one point Charlton Heston stood up at his table and delivered a characteristically windy, bombastic toast that concluded with the words, “I guess you could say, Greg, that I’ve been one lucky guy.” To which Chevy boomed out at high volume, still looking down and cutting his steak, “I’ll say!”
No one knew where the crack had come from, including Heston, who glanced around the room, rattled, while Chevy calmly went on cutting his meat. That same evening, Chevy spotted Mary Hart of Entertainment Tonight way off in a corner of the room interviewing Zsa Zsa Gabor. Palming a roll in his hand like a baseball, he asked me sincerely, “I wonder how far a human can actually hurl a baguette?” He then stood up, threw it with all his might, and, with jaw-dropping accuracy, beaned Hart square on the noggin. Even the generally unflappable Chevy was stunned. He quickly lowered himself back into his seat like a naughty schoolkid hoping not to be caught by the teacher.
I was the target of Chevy’s penchant for mischief on the night of the ¡Three Amigos! premiere in December 1986, with Steve complicit in his scheme. Chevy told me that the studio wanted us to show up for the big gala in our complete mariachi costumes: a great red-carpet visual, to be sure. So, that night, Nancy was all dolled up, looking fantastic, and I was compliantly dressed in my amigo outfit, my bedazzled sombrero tucked under my arm. The limo had just arrived at our house, and we were about to get in, when I heard the phone in our house ring. It was Chevy: “Marty! Don’t wear the costume! Wear a tuxedo! I’m so sorry, it was a joke.” I hung up, and a second later the phone rang again. It was Steve: “Marty, thank God you’re home! Please don’t wear the mariachi outfit. Get into a tux. I’m so sorry. Chevy and I . . .”
Well before that premiere, I’d already wrapped movie number two, Innerspace. That’s where I met another person with whom I would develop a lasting and close friendship, Steven Spielberg, the picture’s executive producer. He paid me a sort of gestural compliment right off the bat. Though I was something of a hot property at the time, Warner Brothers still wanted me to read for the part. Some actors take this as an affront, believing that once they reach a certain phase of their careers, they should never have to read again. I never saw it that way and still don’t. No matter who you are, you should read for a role, because maybe you’re not right for the material, or maybe the material is not right for you. It’s a pragmatic thing, not a personal one.
Anyway, I went to Amblin, Steven’s production company, to audition for Steven, Joe Dante, the movie’s director, and Mike Finnell, its producer. Shortly after we were introduced, and before I read, Steven got up and said, “We’re good here, I was just leaving,” making it clear he didn’t need to see me audition.
I got the part, and then I got a phone call from Dennis Quaid. He was playing the macho navy pilot who volunteers for a secret government miniaturization project and ends up getting injected into the body of my nerdy grocery-clerk character, Jack Putter. “Hey, dude,” Dennis said, “this is going to be a blast!” It was 1986, and it is embossed upon my brain: the first time anyone had ever called me “dude.” As a Texan, Dennis was way ahead of his time.
Dennis was so right: Innerspace was a blast to make, and it’s also where he met Meg Ryan, who was gangly and nervous and heartbreakingly adorable. She called everyone “Mister”: Mister Spielberg, Mister Dante. And though she was playing Dennis’s love interest, Dennis’s character was stuck inside my body, so I got to kiss her.
When we started that film, Dennis was going out with Lea Thompson and Meg was with Anthony Edwards, but from the very beginning you could tell that Meg and Dennis were infatuated with each other. Then again, every guy on the set was infatuated with Meg, so irresistibly cute was she. Thank heavens for Nan’s wise words, which forever echoed in my head: “If I ever find out that you’ve cheated on me, I won’t say anything during the day, but at night, when you are asleep, so help me God, I will take an empty wine bottle and smash it over your head.” That certainly can get a fella thinking.
So, as of December 1986, I’d completed two major motion pictures in which I had a leading role. Chevy, Steve, and I flew together to New York to triple-host Saturday Night Live, with Randy Newman as the musical guest. (This is what Lorne would call synergy.)
It was far preferable to be on SNL as a conquering hero than as a beleaguered cast member, though it seemed that things had definitely stabilized on the show that season, with Lorne having recruited the talented likes of Dana Carvey, Jan Hooks, and Phil Hartman for the cast. I reprised Ed Grimley and got a huge cheer just making my entrance, in a strong sketch in which Jon Lovitz, as the devil, tries to steal Ed’s soul.
I wasn’t just hot, I was ’80s hot: always welcome on Dave Letterman’s couch, my calendar chockablock with movie work, my hair tousled and poufy, my wardrobe a succession of boxy, big-shouldered blazers and dress shirts worn with the top button buttoned—what scholars of ’80s fashion call the “air tie.” (See also Winwood, Steve, and Bolton, Michael.) And in my next movie, I was playing the handsome romantic lead!
The year 1987 began with me filming Cross My Heart, a romantic comedy centered around a third date, the one in which, if all goes well, a couple is supposed to have sex. JoBeth Williams was originally supposed to play opposite me, but she got pregnant, so Annette O’Toole was recast in the role. Talk about ’80s hot: Annette was ravishingly beautiful, and the script called for nude scenes. I was determined to get in shape for my role, so I enlisted the services of Dan Isaacson, the Hollywood trainer who had whipped John Travolta into glisteningly chiseled perfection for Staying Alive, the sequel to Saturday Night Fever.
I was still filming Innerspace when I started training for Cross My Heart. Nancy would walk into the living room at night to find me working up a sweat on the exercise bike I’d installed there. “God forbid you’d have done this for me!” she joked. “All these years I’ve had to live with a shell-less turtle, and they get Buffed Boy.”
Cross My Heart marked the only time I had the articulated abs and sexily hollowed cheeks of the truly pumped up. Dennis Miller ran into me and said, “Heeey, Marty, I hear you’ve gone all Piscopo on us!” I wouldn’t go that far, but I got as buff as this particular five-foot-seven frame will ever allow.
Cross My Heart was also the closest I would ever get to knowing what it is like to shoot a porno. There were days when I would literally wake up, shower, have my coffee, kiss my wife and kids good-bye, drive to the set, and then take off all of my clothes to spend hours naked in bed with Annette. Then I’d come home and want to talk about work. I’d say, “Jesus, Nan, it was so weird, I had to tweak Annette’s nipples in a scene today, and then—”
Nancy would cut me off. “Okay. You know what?” she’d say, hands up in front of her face. “We’re not doing this. I can’t hear about your workday and the hardships of you having to tweak Annette’s nipples.”
“But baby . . . ,” I’d plead as she got up and stormed out of the room. Point taken.
Believe it or not, I had a nudity clause in my contract. In my Canadian modesty, I did not want the world to see the Marty member. Lawrence Kasdan, who wrote and directed Body Heat and The Big Chill, was the producer of Cross My Heart, and there came a point when he and I got into a heated discussion in my trailer, because they’d added a scene in which my butt would be shown. That I didn’t mind, but I minded that, of necessity, the crew positioned on the other side of me would ge
t an unobstructed view of my penis.
Larry tried to reason with me. “We have no intention of showing your penis. After all, we’d like the film to make money,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, “but people like Jan, my hairdresser—she’s gonna see my dick.”
“Fine,” Larry said. “We can rig it.”
And we amicably reached a compromise wherein they rigged up some kind of sock that kept my genitalia covered while the rest of me was exposed. A big sock, I might add. Really big, as the late Ed Sullivan used to say. Like, the kind you hang on the mantel on Christmas Eve.
Filmmaking is a strange kind of work, in that for two or three months, you’re very intensively and intimately working with a group of people over long, long hours, and you get to know everything about everybody—and then, once the filming’s over, you never see most of these people again. This serves the libidinous and affair-minded well, but it’s hard on friendships. After working with Larry Kasdan, and successfully navigating this ridiculous situation with him, I made a mental note to myself that I never wanted to lose this guy from my life. Happily, he and I have been close friends ever since. And he has still never seen my penis.
My awesome ’80s hotness did not, alas, translate into boffo box office. None of those three films, ¡Three Amigos!, Innerspace, and Cross My Heart, did particularly well financially. I think Innerspace was the biggest surprise in this regard. It had tested through the roof, as they say in the trades, and it got strong advance reviews. For heaven’s sake, Gene Shalit declared unequivocally on Today that “Inner . . . is a winner!”
On the eve of Innerspace’s release, I was called in on short notice to appear in a video with Rod Stewart for his cover of Sam Cooke’s “Twistin’ the Night Away,” which appeared on the movie’s sound track. It was then—on the set of that video, flanked by Rod and some beautiful models, in as ’80s a tableau as I’d ever inhabit—that I allowed myself a little moment of excitement: This is going to be fun, to be in a colossal hit.