Book and Movie Reports by Ed

Book report: Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life, by Steve Martin Steve Martin is a performer whom people either love or can’t stand. I love watching and hearing Steve Martin, from his comedy albums to his appearances on SNL to his movie career. This book is a memoir about his professional life as a performer. It has lessons for performers of all kinds, but also for anyone who tries to be creative and original in their life. This is not a biography or an autobiography. He leaves out important information about his life, because it doesn’t pertain to his life as a performer. But what he does include is fascinating, significant, and well presented. This is a guy who, by his own admission, couldn’t act, couldn’t sing, and couldn’t dance, but who yearned to be a performer, to stand up in front of an audience and entertain them. As he puts it, “obsession is a substitute for talent.” He worked with what he had, which wasn’t much. He came from a financially and emotionally impoverished famil