Manuel here with some Steve Martin news.
Did you all hear? Not content with having been pegged for an Honorary Oscar just last year (and a Kennedy Center Honors back in 2007 as well as an American Cinematheque honor in 2004), our favorite silver-haired comedian slash banjo enthusiast has been named the 43rd recipient of the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award. This past June, they feted Jane Fonda, only the eighth woman to receive the honor, a statistic that would look surprising if it only it weren’t so familiar. Did you know women comprised 16% of all directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors working on the top 250 (domestic) grossing films of 2013 while females accounted for 15% of protagonists, 29% of major characters, and 30% of all speaking characters of said films? No wonder Reese, Gillian, heck even John Cusack, have been so vocal about this issue lately, following Geena Davis’s example.
But I got side-tracked.
We are here to celebrate Martin’s AFI Life Achievement news which will surely be a raucous affair come June 2015, and a well-deserved one at that. From The Jerk (1979) to Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), from Parenthood (1989) to It’s Complicated (2009), Martin has been delighting big screen audiences for decades. His silky smooth sense of humor, which can be quietly self-deprecating or explosively excoriating, is one of a kind. I’m personally attached to the Father of the Bride films, and while lately Martin has been playing it quite broad (Cheaper by the Dozen, Pink Panther), I can’t be the only one who hopes he has another Shopgirl in him, for those furrowed brows can definitely sell pathos as much as they can barter laughs. That wisp of a film is much too fragile (ever since I first saw it and was enamored by it I’ve been afraid to see it again lest it turn to salt) but it’s the type of small-scale human examination that so much of Martin’s humor can seamlessly tap into.
What’s your favorite Martin performance? Who are you hoping will be tapped to host; may it be frequent AFIer Mary Louise Streep? And who would you suggest AFI look into for next year?