The movie Steve Martin hated every second of making: “I didn’t like what I was doing”
Steve Martin is an actor, an artist, a playwright, a director, a comedian, and one of the most consistently hilarious talk show guests that any late-night host or podcaster could ever ask for.
You don’t live that type of life if you’re burdened by regrets, but there’s one film so disappointing that it left Martin questioning his entire career.
Steve Martin would have already been considered a legend in the entertainment industry if he had stuck to standup comedy, as he spent the better half of the 1970s selling out stadiums. However, it’s to the benefit of cinema in general that he chose to take a gamble on the big screen, starting with 1979’s The Jerk. Whether it’s a brilliant film about a stupid person, or just dumb in an endearing way, The Jerk was a sign that Martin would be sticking around in Hollywood for a long time.
Even if there’s no shortage of comedians that Martin cited as influences, it’s hard to deny how game-changing it was for Martin to be as silly as possible without ever fearing judgment. Although the ’80s saw a rise in former Saturday Night Live alumni like Bill Murray and Eddie Murphy becoming movie stars, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to say that Martin dwarfed his competition. Who else could play the world’s scariest dentist in Little Shop of Horrors, an uproarious version of Cyrano de Bergerac in Roxanne, and then pop up in heartwarming family classics like Plains, Trains and Automobiles and Parenthood?
Granted, few actors have a spotless filmography, and not all of Martin’s films were runaway successes. However, it’s also easy to understand why some of these projects may have looked good on paper. With the ill-fated family drama Grand Canyon, Martin had the opportunity to work with Lawrence Kasdan. Similarly, no one could blame Martin for wanting to work with his Dirty Rotten Scoundrels director, Frank Oz, again on the comedy Housesitter that was absolutely shredded by critics.
There’s something to be said about making a film that’s truly disastrous; for better or worse, no one would forget when Martin showed up in the all-time Christmas stinker Mixed Nuts. It’s often much trickier to be in films that seem to be forgotten mere moments after they’re released, which happened to Martin when he starred in Sgt Bilko, an adaptation of the 1950s television series The Phil Silver Show.
It seemed like a part he was primed for, as Martin played a con artist who leads a military base, only to discover that he’s been targeted by a vindictive inspector. Despite getting to trade jabs with the late great comedy legend Phil Hartman, Martin faced an existential crisis after Sgt Bilko seemed to break him.
“I didn’t like what I was doing in it, I felt I was going downhill rather than uphill, so I wanted a break,” Martin explained to The Independent. “It’s not a bad movie, it’s a nice movie for kids, but I felt I was somehow letting myself down. I was getting a little lost about what I wanted to do.”
It may be overwhelming to be in a reimagining of a classic property, but Sgt Bilko wasn’t the first or last time that Martin took on a role that had previously been played by another actor. Although the role of Mr Banks had been brought to life by Spencer Tracy in the classic family comedy Father of the Bride, Martin personified paternal anxiety in the 1991 remake, as well as its underrated 1995 sequel.
It’s hard not to empathise with Martin’s frustration with Sgt Bilko, as it was released during a period in which he was attempting to take on more serious roles. The comedy-to-drama pipeline is much more accepted now, but in the ’90s, the idea of casting a funnyman like Martin in a drama would get you laughed out the room by producers who didn’t have a clue about creative potential. He did his best exercising his range, but it seemed like audiences were only interested in generic comedies like Sgt Bilko.
Martin’s suggestion that Sgt Bilko is a decent watch for children and that it shouldn’t be seen as a backhanded compliment, because he would soon be able to work on family-friendly projects where he didn’t feel that he sold out. Say what you will about Cheaper by the Dozen, The Big Year, and Looney Tunes: Back in Action, but they felt true to Martin’s instincts in a way that Sgt Bilko simply did not.
