Martin, Short say show always new

Steve Martin and Martin Short first worked together more than three decades ago, on the movie Three Amigos. (Fellow Saturday Night Live alumnus Chevy Chase was the third.)

"That was only 32 years ago. A mere 32," Short says.

"Were we funny way back then?" Martin asks.

They reunited this year for a four-Emmy-nominated Netflix special titled An Evening You Will Forget for the Rest of Your Life. It spawned a tour that brings them Friday to North Little Rock's Verizon Arena.

The show will include a madcap mix of stand-up comedy, musical numbers, film clips and conversations about their show-business experiences.

"We mix it all up," Martin says. "We do stuff together, we do stuff alone; we end with a long series of stuff we do together."

The musical ensemble that has been accompanying them on the tour has been Martin's frequent collaborators, the Steep Canyon Rangers, "but they were unable to work that weekend," he says. "So we poked around and asked I'm With Her [singers Aoife O'Donovan, Sara Watkins and Sarah Jarosz] to work with us. They're wonderful musicians."

It's officially the tail end of the current tour, Martin says, but that's only because they'll take time off through the holidays. As of 2019, the tour title will change to "Now You See Them, Soon You Won't." But the show has been transforming itself all along.

"This is our new show -- well, a lot of it is new; at least 60 percent of it is new," Martin explains. "What we do, is we've changed a lot of material out from the Netflix show, as much material as we can. But we've retained stuff that the audience seems to want to see again. The show is always in flux; we're always adding material, taking out material, so what the audience sees [this week] will be different from last week.

"We try to give the best show possible every night. We love our show, we like doing our show, and audiences seem to respond."

"What's interesting for Steve and [me] both," Short says, "is, we've created a show where if something doesn't get a big laugh, we take it out. We like to think of the show as kind of a wall-to-wall laugh, where people are laughing from the opening montage to the end of the show."

Martin has five Grammys, an Emmy, a Mark Twain Award and the Kennedy Center Honor -- oh, and the honorary Oscar he received in 2014. His early career involved writing for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (1967-69); in the mid-1970s, he parlayed a successful stand-up act that included the catch phrase "Well, excu-u-u-u-se me!" into appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and NBC's Saturday Night Live. He has had about 40 starring film roles, in, most memorably, The Jerk; Planes, Trains & Automobiles; Roxanne; Father of the Bride (in which Short played Franck the wedding planner) and The Pink Panther.

He's also a bluegrass banjo player and composer -- his 2013 album Love Has Come for You was a collaboration with songwriter Edie Brickell that resulted in a Broadway musical called Bright Star -- as well as a novelist, playwright and memoirist.

Short first achieved public notice on the Canadian sketch show SCTV Comedy Network, which earned him his first Emmy in 1982. That brought him to the attention of the producers of Saturday Night Live, where he created off-the-wall characters including Ed Grimley, lawyer Nathan Thurm and "legendary songwriter" Irving Cohen. Short's film credits include Innerspace, Three Fugitives, Clifford, Pure Luck and Mars Attacks. His voice-over work includes the animated movies Madagascar 3, Frankenweenie and the coming Elliot: The Littlest Reindeer.

But he's still best known even now for his physical shtick.

"You know, I never termed it in that way," he muses. "I just did a lot of physical comedy. Whatever I was asked to do, I just did it. I never viewed myself as a physical comedian, but I guess others have."

Both Martins have Broadway credits.

"I had a play that I wrote on Broadway" -- Meteor Shower premiered in 2017 -- "[but] I've never actually performed on Broadway," Martin says. "Marty has -- and you have two Tonys, Marty Short."

"One Tony," Short corrects. "I've been nominated a few times, but I was robbed by some hack." He won that Tony, as well as a Theatre World Award and an Outer Critics Circle Award, in the revival of Little Me. He also got a Tony nomination for the musical version of Neil Simon's The Goodbye Girl. And he most recently appeared on Broadway in Terrence McNally's It's Only a Play.

There's little or no chance, however, that we might see this show appear on the Great White Way any time soon.

"We don't really have any plans to go on Broadway -- at least not right now," Martin says.

Among other things, it's a lot more work, maybe, than they want to take on, Short explains.

"If we wanted to make it work, we could," he says. "But what we have is a very ideal show. We do it four, five, six times a month; we have fun, everyone loves each other, the band loves each other; it's kind of perfect. But to do eight shows a week is very, very hard. And you have no life other than that."

"Also," chimes in Martin, "the commute is very bad, because Broadway is almost a mile from my house."

Short says, "And I live in L.A., so that's very tricky."

Style on 11/27/2018