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Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life Paperback – Illustrated, September 2, 2008
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In the mid-seventies, Steve Martin exploded onto the comedy scene. By 1978 he was the biggest concert draw in the history of stand-up. In 1981 he quit forever. This book is, in his own words, the story of “why I did stand-up and why I walked away.”
Emmy and Grammy Award–winner, author of the acclaimed New York Times bestsellers Shopgirl and The Pleasure of My Company, and a regular contributor to The New Yorker, Martin has always been a writer. His memoir of his years in stand-up is candid, spectacularly amusing, and beautifully written.
At age ten Martin started his career at Disneyland, selling guidebooks in the newly opened theme park. In the decade that followed, he worked in the Disney magic shop and the Bird Cage Theatre at Knott’s Berry Farm, performing his first magic/comedy act a dozen times a week. The story of these years, during which he practiced and honed his craft, is moving and revelatory. The dedication to excellence and innovation is formed at an astonishingly early age and never wavers or wanes.
Martin illuminates the sacrifice, discipline, and originality that made him an icon and informs his work to this day. To be this good, to perform so frequently, was isolating and lonely. It took Martin decades to reconnect with his parents and sister, and he tells that story with great tenderness. Martin also paints a portrait of his times—the era of free love and protests against the war in Vietnam, the heady irreverence of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in the late sixties, and the transformative new voice of Saturday Night Live in the seventies.
Throughout the text, Martin has placed photographs, many never seen before. Born Standing Up is a superb testament to the sheer tenacity, focus, and daring of one of the greatest and most iconoclastic comedians of all time.
- Print length208 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherScribner
- Publication dateSeptember 2, 2008
- Dimensions5.25 x 0.8 x 8 inches
- ISBN-101416553657
- ISBN-13978-1416553656
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About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Beforehand
I DID STAND-UP COMEDY for eighteen years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four were spent in wild success. My most persistent memory of stand-up is of my mouth being in the present and my mind being in the future: the mouth speaking the line, the body delivering the gesture, while the mind looks back, observing, analyzing, judging, worrying, and then deciding when and what to say next. Enjoyment while performing was rare—enjoyment would have been an indulgent loss of focus that comedy cannot afford. After the shows, however, I experienced long hours of elation or misery depending on how the show went, because doing comedy alone onstage is the ego’s last stand.
My decade is the seventies, with several years extending on either side. Though my general recall of the period is precise, my memory of specific shows is faint. I stood onstage, blinded by lights, looking into blackness, which made every place the same. Darkness is essential: If light is thrown on the audience, they don’t laugh; I might as well have told them to sit still and be quiet. The audience necessarily remained a thing unseen except for a few front rows, where one sourpuss could send me into panic and desperation. The comedian’s slang for a successful show is “I murdered them,” which I’m sure came about because you finally realize that the audience is capable of murdering you.
Stand-up is seldom performed in ideal circumstances. Comedy’s enemy is distraction, and rarely do comedians get a pristine performing environment. I worried about the sound system, ambient noise, hecklers, drunks, lighting, sudden clangs, latecomers, and loud talkers, not to mention the nagging concern “Is this funny?” Yet the seedier the circumstances, the funnier one can be. I suppose these worries keep the mind sharp and the senses active. I can remember instantly retiming a punch line to fit around the crash of a dropped glass of wine, or raising my voice to cover a patron’s ill-timed sneeze, seemingly microseconds before the interruption happened.
I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a by-product. The course was more plodding than heroic: I did not strive valiantly against doubters but took incremental steps studded with a few intuitive leaps. I was not naturally talented—I didn’t sing, dance, or act—though working around that minor detail made me inventive. I was not self-destructive, though I almost destroyed myself. In the end, I turned away from stand-up with a tired swivel of my head and never looked back, until now. A few years ago, I began researching and recalling the details of this crucial part of my professional life—which inevitably touches upon my personal life—and was reminded why I did stand-up and why I walked away.
In a sense, this book is not an autobiography but a biography, because I am writing about someone I used to know. Yes, these events are true, yet sometimes they seemed to have happened to someone else, and I often felt like a curious onlooker or someone trying to remember a dream. I ignored my stand-up career for twenty-five years, but now, having finished this memoir, I view this time with surprising warmth. One can have, it turns out, an affection for the war years.
Product details
- Publisher : Scribner; Reprint edition (September 2, 2008)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 208 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1416553657
- ISBN-13 : 978-1416553656
- Item Weight : 11.7 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.25 x 0.8 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #19,739 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #12 in Comedy (Books)
- #271 in Actor & Entertainer Biographies
- #988 in Memoirs (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Steve Martin is one of today's most talented performers. His huge successes as a film actor include such credits as ROXANNE, FATHER OF THE BRIDE, PARENTHOOD and THE SPANISH PRISONER. He has won Emmys for his television writing and two Grammys for comedy albums. In addition to the bestselling PURE DRIVEL, he has written several plays, including Picasso at the Lapin Agile and a highly acclaimed novel, SHOPGIRL. His work appears in The New Yorker and The New York Times.
Author photo (c) Sandee Oliver
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I grew up watching Steve Martin on Saturday Night Live before they shortened it to just SNL and I even remember him performing on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson Show. I'll even admit to owning the LP A Wild and Crazy Guy. I was a kid back when he was making it big, and as a kid, I liked his outlandish comedy. So when I saw this book, I bit.
I have to say as an adult, I don't find Steve Martin's stand-up as enjoyable as I once did, but I do love the writer he became after his stand-up success. Previously to reading this memoir, I read An Object of Beauty, and loved it! I feel the same about his movies. The earlier stuff doesn't mesh with the person I am now, but his more recent movies like Shopgirl, I loved.
Again, I'll admit, I'm a sucker for pop-culture from the 70s and 80s, the eras I grew up, and this book, like a another book I read a few months ago, Mary, Lou, Rhoda, and Ted, [Check out my Review on Amazon or Goodreads] brought back memories of another time and place when I was much younger and more carefree, so in my opinion, if you don't bring this kind of connection to the table this book might not be for you, I, however, enjoyed the ride.
Steve Martin by his own admission is a bit stand-offish, and his standoffishness comes across in his memoir. If you are looking for The Glass Castle like revelations shared by memoir writer Jeannette Walls this is not the memoir for you. I know Steve Martin thinks he wrote a memoir, but he really didn't reveal the nitty-gritty stuff of memoir writing. What he wrote is an inside look at how he became successful, which is really interesting. Again, I caution the reader, if you are looking for him to let lose a lot of dirt on the cast of SNL forget it. The snarkiest he gets is an anecdote he shares about meeting Dan Aykroyd:
"In Lorne's office later that day, the leather clad Danny Aykroyd told me he had been up all night riding his motorcycle, and when it had stalled at four A.M., he had thumbed a ride. When the car got up to speed, the driver pushed him out of the moving vehicle, and he rolled onto the rainy streets of Manhattan. I pictured Danny bouncing down the wet pavement and then said the only thing that came to mind. I asked him if h wanted to go to Saks and shop for clothes. He said, as friendly as he could, 'Uh, man, that's not my thing,' We liked each other, but we were different."-Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
If you are looking for him to bad mouth anyone famous forget it-it's not happening. He mentions some big names, but nothing of substance is shared. Yes, he walked away from stand-up and you do know why, but he doesn't really share,-like therapy kind of sharing-how he felt about this decision, which is what most readers want in a memoir.
So what is this book? Well, if you are looking for a book that shows how hard it is to make comedy work, and how hard it is to make it in comedy then BINGO this is the book for you. Simply said, in a one sentence summary: Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life is a book about dedication to ones craft at the expense of isolating oneself from the world.
I had the impression that Martin enjoyed researching the book more than writing it. Why? Because he stated, "As much as I enjoyed the writing of this book, researching it was a new thrill for me. Finding s photo that confirmed a dim recollection of days gone by hooked me on the detective work, and the legwork-marching form my desk back and forth to the archival boxes-gave me something to do besides type, think, worry, and cry." Martin was methodical in his casting about for old artifacts from his early career. He states in his acknowledgments, "This book has allowed me to contact old friends and dig through their memories and memorabilia. All contacts have been pleasant and some quite moving. The arrival of a package of photos or copies of letters offered by a friend was like having an archaeological dig brought to my own home." He enlisted archival type help twenty years prior to writing the book and later he added to his collection when he retrieved age-worn boxes of memorabilia his mother had saved and found, "...inside sedimentary layers of collected junk, ephemera, snapshots, and yellowed newspaper clippings. Like a geologist, I [Martin] was sometimes able to date items by their position in the stack." The research he expended on creating the book was that the final product appeared-to someone outside looking in-to be a cathartic or shall we say therapeutic experience for Martin, and what the reader receives in return is the closest look inside the mind of an extremely talented man he will allow you.
I'll be honest, I didn't know what to expect with this book, so before laying down real money for it, I sampled the beginning using the Amazon sampling feature. I liked what I read and ended up purchasing Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life. I mention this because using this feature, if you read with a Kindle, is such a good method to experiment with books you might not try otherwise. The sample is free, and it usually gives you enough to really let you know if you will like the book or not. I did the same thing with the other book I mentioned earlier in this review, Mary, Lou, Rhoda, and Ted, and ended up purchasing both. If you hadn't thought of sampling before buying give it a try.
If you have never seen Steve Martin's early stuff, or you've forgotten his brand of early comedy, checkout YouTube for archived comedy sketches. If you want to know how he came up with each of his signature bits for his act, read the book.
Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
Contents:
Beforehand
Coffee and Confusion
Comedy Through the Airwaves
Disneyland
The Bird Cage Theatre
Television
The Road
Breakthrough
Standing Down
Acknowledgements
Steve Martin has written an excellent memoir of his standup career. From the age of ten, when he got his first job, selling guidebooks at Disneyland, until he walked away from his extremely popular standup act twenty-five years later, Martin takes you on a deeply personal, eye-opening journey. He shares the inspiration for many of his bits, the development of his act, and his rise to the pinnacle of comedy (at one point, he performed in front of 18,000 people at the old Coliseum at Richfield). Honest, Martin reveals details of his home life which made him leave home as soon as he could and not reconnect with his family until many years later, long after he left the grueling life on the road. In the early 1980's, Martin started to work on rebuilding his relationship with his mother, father, and sister,. It took him fifteen years. He does not end this book self-serving accolades towards his film and writing credits, but rather with a visit to where it all started, The Bird Cage Theatre at Knott's Berry Farm.
This is one of the best books I have read in 2008. While there are some laugh out loud moments, Martin spends most of the time providing the reader with insight into the life of a comic. What you see, up on that stage, in front of thousands, did not happen overnight. It is a grueling and arduous road. He relates his anxiety attacks, which nearly derailed him as he was climbing the ladder of success. How difficult it was to create an act without punch lines (he wanted you to laugh, but some of those laughs may come later, after you left the show) and to know that you were creating something totally different. Martin does not attack Johnny Carson or any member of Saturday Night Live, but he does not pull punches with his life or stand up career. He was very uncomfortable with the fame (he is naturally shy and private) but he has come to terms with it. As he says, late in the book, ". . . now I am famous just right." Much like his act, this book will remain with me for a while. I found it very difficult to put it down.
I highly recommend this book. It is one of the best books I have read this year, or any year, and I am very grateful to Steve Martin for sharing this story with me. Not only will you come away with a new appreciation for the comic's life, you will have newfound respect for one of the greatest comic minds.
Top reviews from other countries
It's a good read, no doubt, but no idea what it was doing in that list.
If you are interested in what a stand-up comedian had to go through to "make it" back in the 50-70s then it's for you.













