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44
SEPTEMBER 2012
•
HEMISPHERESMAGAZINE.COM
culture
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THEMONTHAHEAD
“A MOMENT LATER, [PHIL] VILLAPIANO PULLED HIS
HELMET BACK ON. THERE, BETTER. KNOCKING
HIS FOREHEAD AGAINST THE WALL HAD MADE HIS
HEAD SWELL A LITTLE. NOW THE HELMET FIT.”
From
The Last Headbangers: NFL Football in the Rowdy, Reckless ’70s
,
by award-winning sportswriter Kevin Cook.
sept. 3
I Laughed,
I Cried
This month sees the release of
Steve Martin: The Television Stuff
,
a box set highlightingMartin’s
funniest TVmoments.
He hasn’t always been
a barrel of laughs,
however …
HO-HO STEVE MARTIN
Standup:
The white suits, the cheap
props—on paper, Martin’s early
stage shows wouldn’t look like
much. What made themwork was
his gangly swagger and maniacal
charm. The only comedian
ever, perhaps, to generate
laughs with a fake arrow
through the head.
Skits:
Anyone who saw
Martin’s “Billie Jean” parody
will recall him stamping
on malfunctioning paving
stones, trying to get them to
light up. His “Wild and Crazy
Guy” persona, meanwhile, set the
stage for the cringe comedy of today.
One-Liners:
“I like a woman with
a head on her shoulders,” Martin
once said. “I hate necks.” In a
New
Yorker
piece on how to operate a
sledgehammer, he wrote, “Many
people are surprised to find out that
the sledgehammer has only one
moving part: it.”
SO-SO STEVE MARTIN
Books:
When he started writing
fiction, Martin suppressed his
mirth. The
New York Times
described his 2000 novella
Shopgirl
, about a lonely shop
assistant, as “desolatingly
sad.” Most quoted line:
“It’s pain that changes
our lives.”
Films:
Martin has made
some hilarious movies—
and a few un-hilarious
ones. At times, this has
been by design (
The
Spanish Prisoner
), but the
most depressing examples are
the so-called comedies that came
up short (
The Pink Panther
).
Stage:
Perhaps the low point of
Martin’s comedic career came
in late 2010, when an onstage
conversation with a New York
journalist was deemed so boring
that the venue actually offered
refunds.
SEPT.
18
BACK TO THE FUTURE
Big-screen offerings for fall include
two gangster flicks with an interesting
twist: They’re set in the same decade
but in different centuries
1940s:
The period action-noir
Gangster
Squad
features cops Nick Nolte, Josh Brolin
and Ryan Gosling growling, glowering and
chasing Sean Penn, who plays an East Coast
mobster set on dominating L.A.’s under-
world. It’s a gangster movie in the grand
tradition, complete with epic shoot-outs and
heaps of cash that occasionally burst into
flames.
SEPT. 7
2040s:
In
Looper
,
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
reunites with
Brick
direc-
tor Rian Johnson, this
time playing a hit man
in 2042 whose specialty
is targeting people
from the future. The
fur starts flying when
the hit man is hired to
do in a 30-years-older
version of himself (played by BruceWillis).
Suspension of disbelief—for casting as well
as plot—is a must.
SEPT. 28
MARY ELLEN MATTHEWS/CORBIS OUTLINE (MARTIN)