So he's content with a career that seems to grow a bit each year. In the last two years, though, he's goosed it some: "My kids grew up, so I could leave town." Rodney also admits to laziness: "I was rather lax, 'cause I had nowhere to go, so I didn't work on my act at all. And that goes for The Tonight Show, too. I was in show business, but I wasn't in show business."
Rodney decided to get to work. He found an agency he was comfortable with (the Agency for the Performing Arts) and took on a new manager. Estelle Endler, who'd been his press agent on and off for ten years. Then, "The last six to eight Carson shows, I tried to make them as funny as I could get them. Make all the jokes killers."
Next to Rodney, on a dressing-room chair, is a large sheet of paper with tiny handwriting in six vertical rows. It's a list of possible new material for the next Tonight spot. As he writes a gag (or, on occasion, buys one for fifty dollars), he adds it under one of these headings:
OPEN GIRLS OLD WIFE DOCTOR MISC.
I ask about the sex and drug jokes. Rodney has a decidedly old-world view of sex: he sees himself as a frustrated, dirty old man who gets refused by hookers ("She told me she had a headache") and whose wife either uses him to time eggs or parties with every other man in town ("I have good-looking kids; thank God my wife cheats on me").
Rodney agrees that his sex gags aren't exactly liberated. "But still," he says, "there are plenty of women around who're frigid, and people who think sex is for the man. You'd be surprised how the world don't change. A lot of the young people aren't that hip."
The drug jokes are mostly innocent-as in naive: "I tried sniffing coke, but I couldn't get the bottle up my nose." One of his best lines in this category isn't even a joke, but an offhand remark: "It's tough to be funny when you're coming off drugs." The way he looks and sweats, it's a perfect line. And Dangerfield himself is far from innocent or naive.
"If I knew you better, I'd tell you how young I am," he says, laughing heartily, "tell you all my bad ways." Later, he admits to having smoked dope. "I used to get drunk every other night in the club, wipe out Chinese restaurants, have fun." He's since cut down on drinking, and makes occasional attempts at diets and health foods.
"I'm getting old. I'm at the age now, if I squeeze into a parking place, I'm sexually satisfied."
As FOR LOVE IN HIS LIFE, Rodney is sober and reflective. "I have people who I know..." he begins, then states, "I'm not too active socially with girls. Perhaps it's difficult to find a mental rapport with someone who's in show business." He mentions an involvement with "a young lady, a very, very lovely girl," that has waned. "People seldom project into another human being," he says, seemingly out of the blue. "They're only concerned with what's in their head, you know? I called her up one time, long distance...." He drops the story, shaking his head. "It's something that makes me look good." Finally, he resorts to a prefab reply to questions about his sex life: "I have fond memories."
It comes down to laughs. To Rodney, sex and drug jokes are no different from the others. "You do whatever you feel will get the biggest response. I wanna get as many laughs as I can."
And the bottom line on Rodney is that he is funny, from his standard opening"I'm all right now, but last week I was really in rough shape"-to the wonderfully terse closing statement at Dangerfield's-"That's it, show's over, get out."
After all, when love is gone, and the kids are grown up and ready to split, and there's no interest in making more money, and you're 58 and wondering how much longer you've got anyway, what's there left to go for?
Rodney was wondering that one day a few years back. "I asked my old man-he was 76; he died when he was 78-I said, `What's the answer to life? You're an old codger. You lived through vaudeville for twenty-five years. And after that, you were a customs man, in the stock market. You did very well. So what's the answer to this whole thing?'
"He looked at me, and he said, `It's all bullshit."'
-September 18, 1980
Rolling Stone
The story-especially with Annie Leibovitz's hilarious and perfect cover photo-was a hit. Thousands and thousands of others had felt the way I did. There was something beneath the surface of this joke machine. He seemed like a nice enough guy. Was he?
Soon after the publication of the article, I got an offer to write a book about Rodney. I let him know about the interest, but he begged off. He had said a lot, he said, and he didn't want to say much more, It would hurt his kids, he said. "You understand, right?"
For months and years, as Dangerfield's star continued to soar, I'd get the occasional inquiry, and, on his behalf, I demurred. I understood.
THE ROLLING STONE INTERVIEW
cannot write funny. I couldn't do it to save my wife. Emceeing film festivals, moderating panels, making speeches, singing karaoke, teaching classes, and working on radio and television, I can come up with stand-up comedy stuff. On the phone, I get into riffs-"shpritzing," as Rodney Dangerfield's pal, Joe Ancis, calls it-that send friends into hysterics.
But on paper? Nothing, and I marveled at David Felton's pieces in Rolling Stone, in which he matched the comedians he profiled, laugh for laugh. Hunter Thompson's fearful, loathing dispatches from Las Vegas had me in tears. I've loved humorists from childhood, from Ring Lardner and Max Shulman (Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys) to Jack Douglas, author of such books as Never Trust a Naked Bus Driver. I was also mad about MAD.
And so, while at Rolling Stone, I would profile comedians at every opportunity, ranging from the pioneer improvisation troupe, The Committee, to their offspring, Firesign Theater and Cheech and Chong. I covered Saturday Night Live stunts like producer Lorne Michael's 1976 offer to the Beatles for an on-air reunion ($3,000, later sweetened to $3,200), and the Joe Cocker-John Belushi duet.
Steve Martin came into the mix sometime in 1972. I'd caught his opening act at The Boarding House, a nightclub particularly friendly to folk, country, and cabaret acts. Knowing nothing of his background as a comedy writer and occasional performer on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, I approached him about coming onto my Sunday DJ show on KSAN. He accepted, and would pop in, whenever he came to town, doing his highly visual bits on the radio. It was theater of the mind, whether you minded it or not. When, in 1977, I became a contributor to a new TV show, Evening Magazine, I did a piece on Martin. On the spur of the moment he choreographed an elaborate bit for the two of us. Whatever I'd ask, he'd ignore it and riff, instead, on his life story. As he spoke, he'd start to sit down, then stand back up, then sit, then stand. By segment's end, I was wearing a pair of his prop bunny ears. It felt good. I'd experienced a little of what Martin would bring to his television appearances in the years to come. He never wanted to do an ordinary interview.
By the time I got the assignment to conduct a Rolling Stone interview with Steve, he'd exploded into superstardom. He was selling out arenas, had three gold albums, and was a television sensation. After establishing himself as a favorite guest host on Saturday Night Live and doing fill-in work for Johnny Carson, he got a production deal with NBC. He became a movie star with his first project, The Jerk. In addition, he'd published a best-selling book, Cruel Shoes.
Yet through all his successes, he struck me as the same Steve Martin who'd opened at the Boarding House. Offstage, in a nonperforming situation, he was almost painfully shy and withdrawn. But once the switch was flipped to "on," he was magic.
"SO I WANTED EVERYTHING TO CEASE, and I wanted to throw the dice."
Steve Martin, overdosed on success, threw his dice, and what a number he rolled: the lead in Pennies from Heaven. In this MGM tragi-musical, which zigzags from doomed darkness to dreamy fantasies, Martin plays Arthur Parker, a song-sheet salesman, who lies and cheats, sings and dances-who does just about everything, in fact, but act funny. For a man who rose to stardom through comedy, he was clearly taking the biggest risk of his career.
It was a role Martin worked hard to get. He had to learn dramatic acting-from the director, Herbert Ross-and take tap-dancing lessons for m
onths, well into the production of the film. He had to accept what amounted to a year's retirement from, to put it mildly, a wildly successful comedy career. And he even had to butt up against his own friend and manager, Bill McEuen. "I just think he shouldn't be doing a dramatic role at this point," McEuen said, a few weeks before the movie opened. "I would've been happier if he'd done a couple more comedies first, then tried something different."
But Steve would not be stopped. Martin had seen Pennies in its original form, as a six-part, nine-hour television series produced by the BBC in 1976 and shown later in the United States on various PBS stations. "I couldn't believe it," he said. "I'd sit there and go, 'This is the greatest thing I've ever seen.' What the movie's about is so common to everything. Arthur's desire to be like what the songs told him. I saw this great parallel to when I was growing up in the fifties. The rock and roll songs were so simple, everything was so simple. You loved her, you got her, you lost her. Pop music now, or in the sixties, was complicated, but these songs were just, 'Here's what life is gonna be.' And that promise has been made to people of our generation as well as to people of Arthur's generation."
Ten days after Pennies opened, Martin's mood was a reflection of the film's business-a mixture of disappointment, optimism, and caution. Backed by rave reviews, it did well in New York City, but elsewhere, reviews were mixed and business was so-so. "I'm disappointed that it didn't open as a blockbuster," said Martin, "and I don't know what to blame, other than it's me and not a comedy." About the critics? "I must say that the people who get the movie, in general, have been wise and intelligent; the people who don't get it are ignorant scum."
When Martin got the role in Pennies, he was 3 6 years old and the hottest comedian in the country. His concerts competed with large rock shows, drawing audiences of twenty-five thousand people. Two albums sold more than a million copies each, and a third had the million-selling single "King Tut." He played Vegas and published a bestselling book, Cruel Shoes. All four of his NBC specials have given that beleaguered network something to smile about. And his first full-length feature film, The jerk, grossed $100 million on an investment of some $4.5 million. In fact, it was on the strength of The jerk that Martin was mentioned as a possible Arthur Parker when Herbert Ross began casting Pennies. Several other actors, among them Al Pacino and Richard Dreyfuss, were sent scripts. But Rick McCallum, executive producer of Pennies, says most of the actors were put off by the "unsympathetic" nature of the Parker character and by the work the part required.
When Martin met with Ross and writer Dennis Potter at Martin's home in Beverly Hills, Potter recalls: "Steve started talking about Arthur, what he felt about the part. As he talked-he actually put on a hat and did a tentative dance-he instinctively understood Arthur, and from that moment on, I had no doubt." Ross, who got into film as a choreographer and has directed a few dancers (The Turning Point and Nijinsky being among his credits), calls Martin "literally the only actor in Hollywood who is equipped to do a musical. There is not one actor who has the skills that he does."
We are at Martin's house in Beverly Hills. From the outside, it looks like a forbidding fortress. But inside, it's sunlit, wide-open spaces, all white walls (or, more often, half walls or columns with rectangular cutouts) and gray carpeting, with careful, tasteful and clearly professional decorating. Furnishings are mostly contemporary, in greens, roses, and maroons. Bookshelves are filled with a substantial library of histories and collections of American art (there are two dozen books on James McNeill Whistler alone), along with leather-bound scripts from Martin's films and TV specials. It is a house with no clutter, no magazines on the coffee table, no records strewn about (in a cabinet, though, one finds albums by Steely Dan, Kraftwerk, Devo, Mozart, and tapes of thirties music). On the walls hang artwork, both modern and Nineteenth Century, including a John Henry Twachtman. Martin has been a serious "looker" since college days and a collector since he could afford to be one.
Offstage, with friends or strangers, Steve is, simply, off. He's a cooperative interview, but he doesn't want to talk about fellow comedians, he says, "because all I'm gonna do is say nice things, and it's gonna be so boring." He wants to keep his relationship with Bernadette Peters (costar of Pennies) private. And the same goes for his art collection. Agonizing over whether to even talk about it, he explains: 'As a comedi an, I'm willing to trade out my private thoughts about things that are personal to me for space in the magazine, and I'm willing to say dumb things that, six months later, I go, `Why did I say that?' But when it comes to art, which is so personal-and I'm not trying to make it part of my personality-I'm not willing to say dumb things about it. I want the freedom to be stupid about it, to learn about it, to think about something I still don't understand. It's like why I'm a vegetarian, I don't know. I can't defend myself, and I don't have to defend myself. It's like the artist doesn't have to explain or justify anything about it. And I think it's important for me to keep that position, for my own personal health."
But on occasion, Martin the comedian emerges. He notices my scribbling into a notebook. "What're you writing down?" he asks.
I tell him, "Striped dress shirt, black slacks...."
"Well," he volunteers, "my shoes are mauve. They're dress shoes, but I want to break them in, so I'm wearing them two hours a day." He chuckles.
And the socks?
"Oh, I'm breaking in these socks, too."
Why did you decide to take such a risk with your career?
I was asked about that before I went into the project, and there was no hesitation. When I first started doing my act, it was not.. .normal. It was not what was expected. That's why the public caught onto it. And I said, "If I start getting trapped by my own sameness, I'm not doing what they secretly want, which is for me to do what I want to do."
The last time I saw you, you said this movie would be the biggest challenge of your life. Did your expectations come true,'
More than I thought, I was in such a state. I'd been on the road-about seventeen years. But three years really steady, and it was debilitating. You get physically tired, emotionally tired, and start wondering what you're doing.
It got to the point where when I'd do new material, it sounded like old material even to me [puzzled laugh]. And one thing I didn't understand that frustrated me was, I was doing comedy and the audience was doing an event. They were at an event, and I was going, "Wait a minute. This is my little joke. Why are you waving balloons at me during my joke?"
I needed a break. I wasn't looking for a dramatic role; I didn't know what I was looking for. Then this thing came along, and it was like seeing the perfect circle. You knew you had to enter it.
After the first weeks of shooting, did you feel confident about your acting, or was there fear?
[Laughs] I would not allow myself to be afraid. I thought that would really hurt me. I felt I had been through so much. I'd faced twenty thousand people in concert, and I refused to be intimidated. It was not easy.
What has it been like for you to see the film?
There's something about the movie that overwhelms me, and it's touching and it's different and I love what it's saying, even though I can't express it. When I was in college- one reason I was in show business is I'd read a poem and think, "God, that thing is beautiful." And I would get in my speech class and read the poem. I wanted to pass it along. The thrill for me is when a sympathetic person watches this film and gets the same feeling I had when I saw the BBC version.
Was your goal always to be in movies?
Yeah, stand-up comedy was really just an accident. I was figuring out a way to get onstage. I made up a magic act and, "Hey, I'm in show business," and that led to nightclubs. I felt like a comedian, that was my work. As I got into the movies, I was reminded, "Hey, this is really why I got into show business." I do like the movies. It's so condensed. You get to try and make it right.
But there's nothing more condensed than a one-liner to an audience that laughs right back.
But with movies you've got constantly new material, constant new challenges.
Wasn't it in college [Long Beach State, 1964] that you hit on your particular brand of comedy?
College totally changed my life. It changed what I believe and what I think about everything. I majored in philosophy. Something about non sequiturs appealed to me. In philosophy I started studying logic, and they were talking about cause and effect, and you start to realize, "Hey, there is no cause and effect! There is no logic! There is no anything!" Then it gets real easy to write this stuff, because all you have to do is twist everything hard-you twist the punch line, you twist the non sequitur so hard away from the things that set it up, that it's easy.. .and it's thrilling.
For a while there, you thought about becoming a teacher.
But then I thought, "I can't give up show business." I'd studied philosophy and realized the only true value was accomplishment. So I changed my major, transferred [to UCLA] and went into theater.
You were already doing some comedy. Where did you first perform onstage?
At this club, the Prison of Socrates, on Balboa Island [near Newport Beach]. It was Hoot Night, and I got up and just threw everything in to try and get to fifteen minutes. So I had my magic, and I read poetry and played the banjo, and I juggled. It's exactly what I'm doing now.
What kind of a response did you get?
Gosh, I don't know. Part of the thing, when you're young and naive, is that you think you went over when you didn't, and that's what keeps you going. Your desire's so great to do it, you don't just quit.
Not Fade Away: A Backstage Pass to 20 Years of Rock & Roll Page 46