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Title: Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
ISBN: 0743569725
Author:
Publicate Date: 2007-11-20
Publish: 2007-11-20
List Price: $29.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Audio CD
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $11.66
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $9.99
Amazon Merchant Price: $19.77
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1: From a serious Steve Martin fan. I loved it. I really, really loved it.
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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2: A Funny Man Revealed
I remember watching Steve Martin's seemingly meteoric rise from Tonight Show guest, to Saturday Night Live stalwart, to concert hall blockbuster. He made me laugh. He helped take the edge off the 70's. I remember leaving one of his Nassau Coliseum shows thinking that all in the world was good and it's ok to be goofy - for a little while anyway. It was from that melancholy recollection I read through this book.
While Martin's stand up humor was edgy, innovative, and visual, Born Standing Up is laced with a dry humor that sometimes brings chuckles one or two lines afterward. We can see that as is true for most seemingly overnight success stories there are years of hard work and sacrifice behind the sensation. Though there is only a small window into Steve's creative genius, you can see how his young life contributed to the product he presented on stage. Martin's stand up act was filled with silliness, idiocy, and just plain tomfoolery. In Born Standing Up we see the crafting of that act took an intellectual approach and technical dissection of how comedy works. Laced with stories of his family life, upstart employment, inspirations, encounters and collaborations with familiar performers from the era, and the eventual eruption of his show, Born Standing Up leads down a road of opportunities realized and acted upon.
Tracking the career of Steve Martin can be confusing. The performances of the stand up era are dramatically different from the ones we see in movies today. So different that when I played some of "Let's Get Small" for my kids (who are very familiar with the Cheaper by the Dozen dad) they had a hard time believing it is the same person. Born Standing Up reveals an underlying personality that is constant throughout Martin's career.
I believe this is a 5 star book for anyone who fondly remembers Martin's stand-up. Thanks Steve for making the world a little less serious!
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3: Simply the best
Steve Martin is simply the best and is now copied by all other stand up comics. Great belly laughs.
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4: Laughed all over again
Martin's book is a terrific look at what it took to succeed in comedy during the 60s and 70s. For someone who, as a teenager, lived for Martin's appearances on The Tonight Show or Saturday Night Live, I was able to laugh all over again at the memories of his gags, silliness, and craziness. They were events for us 15-year-olds, gathering around the TV and then carrying our favorite bits forward to reenact in the classroom. Martin is quite honest about his complicated relationship with his father and other family members, but noticeably -- but inconsistently -- discreet when it comes to certain marital or romantic relationships. At one point, he references a divorce he was going through when we, the readers, hadn't yet been apprised that he had married. Here we thought he was still the lonely guy. In any event, overall, this is a wonderful chronicle of a hard-working comedian, as well as how difficult it is to make it within that business. I found this book to be as enjoyable as Harpo Marx's "Harpo Speaks," which also examines a life well lived within a cut-throat industry.
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5: What am I missing?
Having just finished Steve Martin's "Born Standing Up" I can't for the life of me understand the 5 star rating that so many people have given it. His breathless staccato writing style is a far cry from great literature and reads more like a fleshed out resume than an actual autobiography. I found it mildly interesting but kept waiting for it to get better. I'm still waiting. Mercifully, at least it's a slim volume and I bought it used so not much time or money spent. I can neither recommend it nor caution one to stay away. Just don't pay retail.
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