The studio that denied Steve Martin his big break: “They will see his star quality”
In an industry where 15 minutes of fame is considered a success, Steve Martin has been at the top of his game for six decades.
His career is littered with classic comedy movies, with each new generation finding something new to love about him. Alongside his acting career, he’s also a talented musician, writer, philanthropist, and all-around nice guy. He’s also best friends with Martin Short, which is something we can all aspire to.
Prior to his glorious movie career, Martin cut his teeth on the stand-up circuit. He first exploded in the mid-1970s, appearing on the likes of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and Saturday Night Live. A series of successful tours and comedy albums followed as his popularity swelled. It was getting to the point where he was playing stadiums usually reserved for major musical acts. He was the Elvis Presley of the comedy world, and a lot of people wanted a slice of the action.
One of them was David Picker, an executive at Paramount. After seeing Martin live in 1977, he decided that the comic had limitless potential as a movie star – he got in touch with Carl Gottlieb, the Golden Globe-nominated screenwriter of Jaws, and came up with a plan… They were going to cast Martin in a short film called The Absent-Minded Waiter, with the idea being that they would gradually introduce a moviegoing audience to his brilliance.
“We do it as a short, we attach it to one of our big pictures, we give it to our exhibitors for nothing,” Gottlieb explained to Consequence of Sound. “The film audience gets to see Steve Martin on the big screen, and they will see his star quality, and that will build an audience for him.”
Unfortunately for everyone involved, fate had other ideas. Around the same time that The Absent-Minded Waiter was being made, Paramount brought in Barry Diller and Mike Eisner, who weren’t as keen on the project. “They kind of decided that they didn’t want to be in the Steve Martin business,” Gottlieb continued. Luckily, he had previous experience with troublesome executives, so a new strategy was hatched.
Martin had already signed a two-picture deal with Paramount when Picker was in charge, so his management put pressure on the studio to let them use The Absent-Minded Waiter for their own purposes. They took this proof of concept to Universal – the studio Picker just so happened to be working for now – and convinced them to greenlight Martin’s first major film project. That turned out to be The Jerk.
The Jerk is still regarded as one of Martin’s greatest ever movies, as well as one of the funniest films ever made. It transformed its leading man from a stand-up star to a bona fide movie star and laid the groundwork for the phenomenal success that the funnyman would experience over the next several decades.
Hollywood history is full of examples of promising careers cut short due to backstage meddling. Thankfully, this wasn’t one of them.
