While linking to my Steve Martin interview in my previous post, I ended up listening to the whole thing again for the first time since I posted it on Amazon last fall, and thought I'd post it here as well. For a long time my memory of the interview was overshadowed by the cringey memory of a time-zone screwup on my part (the first and I hope last time that's happened to me), which led to a series of increasingly urgent messages on my phone from a publicist, a sales rep, and Mr. Martin himself. All involved were very gracious about my error and we were able to talk later that day, and now that I listen again, I think the interview turned out pretty well (and not only because I managed to work in a discussion of Cruel Shoes):
As you can tell, he plays it pretty serious when he wants to (as the infamous 92nd St Y audience found out, to their displeasure). It's funny to me that of the two remarkably durable '70s icons I interviewed that month, Martin and Jimmy Carter, it was Carter who was the goofier and funnier of the two (at least once we got to talking about Hamilton Jordan).
Or maybe the reason for a Steve Martin post is so I could embed this, which I link to in my Paris Review Culture Diary this week, and which I could watch a hundred times more just for the pleasure of seeing him say "Uumellmahaye" again and again:
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