Gern Blanston: Comic Genius

I didn't just read Steve Martin's new book, Born Standing Up; I devoured it. Martin is always a bit restrained these days—as if overcompensating for the "wild and crazy guy" of the '70s—but he offers just enough about his life and comic thinking to make the book an irresistible read.

The insights into Martin's craft are subtle but fascinating: At one point early in his standup career, he read a book about comedy that blandly described a joke as "a setup that builds tension, followed by a punch line that offers release." At that point, Martin thought: What if you provided a series of obvious setups with no obvious punchlines? The tension would have to release itself somehow, sometime…

At another point early in his career, Martin realized that he wasn't so much "doing comedy" as playing a character doing comedy. That ironic distance, combined with his intellectual love of philosophy and logic, which translated into his brilliant use of absurdity, are what allowed him to refine his act and make it work. (Like any groundbreaking craftsman or artist, it took many frustrating years for the audience to catch up with the performer.)

A golden family tidbit: Martin's father was a wannabe performer—a singer who never made it and was bitter for years. A key moment in Martin's childhood was the day his father, at the height of that bitterness, went too far in giving him the belt. Their relationship was never the same. Martin claims not to have known about his father's desire to be a performer until long after he had become famous, but I don't believe him. What better way to get revenge on his father than to become the famous performer he had failed to become? (It reminds me of Joe Eszterhaus, who claims not to have known that his father, Istvan, was a Nazi sympathizer until after he wrote the movie "Music Box," about a lawyer who defends her father against accusations of war crimes.)

P.S. For those of you who don't get the reference in my title, Steve Martin used to "admit" in his old standup act that his real name was Gern Blanston. His real name was actually... Steve Martin.

And now, The Great Flydini.