Steve Martin honored at Kennedy Center 30th Anniv.

[Clouseau]

www.zap2it.com/movies/news/zap-30thkennedycenterhonorees,0,7317615.story?coll=zap-news-headlines

Kennedy Center Honors Martin Scorsese, Beach Boy
Diana Ross, Steve Martin and Leon Fleisher also honored

September 11, 2007

For its landmark 30th anniversary, the Kennedy Center has named three musicians and two Hollywood veterans as this year's honorees.

Oscar winner Martin Scorsese, Beach Boys singer/songwriter Brian Wilson, actor Steve Martin, singer Diana Ross and pianist Leon Fleisher will receive the coveted honors at the star-studded ceremony, to be broadcast on Wednesday, Dec. 26 on CBS.

"With their extraordinary talent, creativity and perseverance, the five 2007 Honorees have transformed the way we, as Americans, see, hear and feel the performing arts," says Kennedy Center Chairman Stephen A. Schwarzman. "We will forever be thankful for the great gift they have shared with us.

"Leon Fleisher is a consummate musician whose career is a moving testament to the life-affirming power of art; Steve Martin is a Renaissance comic whose talents wipe out the boundaries between artistic disciplines; Diana Ross's singular, instantly recognizable voice has spread romance and joy throughout the world; Martin Scorsese is a visionary filmmaker and a fearless artist; and Brian Wilson led not only a spectacularly popular rock group, but also an era-defining transformation of the sound of music."

President and Mrs. Bush will attend the celebration held at the Kennedy Center Opera House, taped on Dec. 2. Performers from Hollywood and worldwide will also attend to salute the honorees, whom are recognized for their lifetime of excellence and contributions to American culture through the performing arts.

In the world of film, the oft-nominated Scorsese finally won his Oscar for direcing last year's "The Departed." Among his other achievements are "Taxi Driver," "Raging Bull," "Goodfellas," "Casino" and "The Aviator."

Steve Martin started out his career writing comedy for TV. His film highlights include "The Jerk," "The Man With Two Brains," "All of Me," "Planes, Trains and Automobiles," "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels," "Parenthood," the "Father of the Bride" remakes, the "Cheaper by the Dozen" films and the revival of "The Pink Panther" franchise.

[pinkadilly]

that has to be quite an honro! i thought i saw where steve was honored there a year or two ago, too, wasn't he?!

[Dreyfus]

Thats good he certainly deserves it.

[Clouseau]

www.variety.com/article/VR1117976785.html?categoryid=1&cs=1

Kennedy Center honors Steve Martin
Gifted yet elusive comic walks a unique road

Thurs., Nov. 29, 2007
by Peter Bart

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- IN A BUSINESS STEEPED IN larger-than-life characters, Steve Martin has always been a distinct anomaly. Comics are always born in Brooklyn and learn their craft on the borscht circuit, but Martin grew up in Garden Grove and worked Knotts Berry Farm. Comics work the celebrity roast circuit when they grow older, but Martin writes serious novels and essays for the New Yorker and collects art. When you meet comedians at parties, they display their edgy personalities and say funny things. Martin, however, is a distanced man with a singularly inexpressive face who, when you talk with him, always seems like he'd prefer to be somewhere else.

Given all this, Steve Martin must be both pleased and discomfited by the kudos being heaped on him Dec. 2 at the Kennedy Center Honors in the capital. Surely it took all the skills of George Stevens Jr., a gifted impresario, to effectively dramatize the career of such an undramatic man.

Seated beside Martin at the 30th anniversary Honors program will be fellow honorees Martin Scorsese, Diana Ross, Leon Fleisher and Brian Wilson. The evening is expected to raise some $5 million for the Kennedy Center, which has bravely persevered as a cultural landmark through the Dark Ages of the Bush years.

Indeed, the honorees this weekend will probably look more apprehensive than festive as they are shepherded through the ceremonial visits to the White House and State Dept.-- a pre-show fixture of the Kennedy weekend that, in earlier years, were evenings of celebratory glitz.

The choice of Martin as an honoree was timed coincidentally with the publication of his new book, "Born Standing Up." Like its author, the book is hard to define. It's not quite a memoir and not quite funny, but rather a poignant recounting of a miserable childhood and the beginnings of a bizarre career as a standup.

Growing up in Orange County, working venues like Merlin's Magic Shop, Martin carefully crafted his act. He plucked his banjo, needled his audience ("how many people are here tonight, raise 'em up?") and resisted the temptation to supply conventional punch lines. He was at once "wild and crazy," and hopelessly square, a post-modern comic who would become the star of "Cheaper by the Dozen."

Certainly his debut on "Saturday Night Live" 30 years ago was his big break, but now, at 62, it's hard to know quite what to make of him. Having just shot yet another "Pink Panther" sequel, Martin reveals an inclination to emulate Peter Sellers, who was an earlier brilliant clown with an indistinct persona. I knew Sellers, but I could never quite figure out who he really was. Indeed, Martin's "Inspector Clouseau" has captured much of Sellers' shtick, but not his innate madness.

And that, perhaps, is because Steve Martin, in his acting and his writing, is still the Orange County boy who must ultimately be in control. In his new book, he relates how meticulously he studied tapes of his standup performances, warily cutting out missteps. He wanted to craft "an act without jokes," one that suggested Lewis Carroll as much as Jerry Lewis (he occasionally padded a show by reciting T.S. Eliot). Martin's fiction, like "Shopgirl," also reflects this insistence on control -- a uniquely passionless novel about passion.

In my conversations with Martin, I was always impressed with how eager he was not to make an impression. But at the Kennedy Center this weekend, he'll be seated in his tux, smiling and wincing at the barbs and kudos, and perhaps wondering, "whoever I am, I'm glad I somehow made it here."