Steve Martin, Chet Baker and David Hockney

Recently watching Only Murders in the Building, my appreciation for Steve Martin was reawakened. Thanks to the internet I was able to watch him in old clips on Johnny Cash, The Tonight Show and especially the Ray Stevens Show. It was fun to glimpse the infancy of the genius that would rocket him to stardom in the 70’s. Being a teenager in the seventies, “Excuse Me” was comfortably ensconced in my contributions to the high school lunch room conversation. Not a huge fan of his movies over all (a little too silly), though, I particularly liked a few — Parenthood and L.A. Story, in particular. With my curiosity piqued, I read Born Standing Up, Steve Marin’s autobiography and discovered he was an L.A. story. Growing up in Garden Grove, California he spent his youth performing magic in a Disneyland Magic Shop and then on to a small theatre at Knotts Berry Farm. After years of struggle, audiences who didn’t get him, rejection by Johnny Carson and dire financial difficulties, the act he eventually became famous for, I found out, was a finely tuned, precisely timed piece of performance art. It all seemed so casual and spontaneous to me as a casual 16 year old observer, like there had been no preparation at all. But this anti-comedy, no punch line strategy was conceived with the understanding of Tension Release Theory. This is Freud’s (and others’) view that humor is derived from a release of pent up energy. Steve Martin’s idea was “What if there was no punchline to release the tension ?” This really impressed me, especially because I am an East Coast snob and I am confident that all great thinking and art comes from our side of the country.

Let’s Get Lost Movie Poster

But recently I have been rethinking my snobbery, especially when I saw Bruce Weber’s Let’s Get Lost documentary about jazz trumpeter Chet Baker. In the movie, Baker is described to be as much a product of California as the Beach Boys later would become. “A lot of people were obsessed with Chet,” says one old friend. “He was bad, he was trouble, he was beautiful,” observes one of his many ex-wives early in the film. We can’t over estimate Baker’s cultural influence during the rise of James Dean and Marlon Brando type anti-heroes in America during the fifties. Chet Baker was also supremely gifted and maybe a genius as well. Living in Glendale, California, his mother said that he had begun to memorize tunes on the radio before he was given an instrument. At 11 years old, after “falling in love” with the trumpet, he improved noticeably in two weeks. Peers called Baker a natural musician to whom playing came effortlessly. By 21 years old he had played with Stan Getz and was in Charlie Parker’s band. As an east coaster I fell for the fable that cool jazz artist couldn’t handle the hard swing of bebop, they couldn’t keep up, they just couldn’t play as fast and as hard. But ultimately, to the west coast jazz musician, it wasn’t so much about the amount; but the quality of each note. It’s not that they couldn’t play as fast…they just didn’t want to; they had all the time in the world. It was a state of mind. Like Steve Martin, they had the space to think differently. Which brings me to David Hockney.

Bigger Splash by David Hockney

When considering California artists, David Hockney came up immediately. The acrylic paintings he did in the 60s like “Bigger Splash” went on to to define LA for decades. But I really became a Hockney fan after seeing his documentary “Secret Knowledge” about renaissance artists using lenses and mirrors to create their masterpieces. You immediately notice Hockney thinks and sees the world differently. But alas, David Hockney is not from California but from Britain, though, when he does arrive, it opens something up in him, in the same way the world opens up for Steve Martin and Chet Baker. When Hockney came to LA in the early 1960’s, he goes on to describes the experience as “…when I went to Los Angles… It was… really 3 times better than I thought it would be.” L.A. was his bigger splash and unlike his New York contemporaries Warhol and Liechtenstein, Hockney didn’t wear the mundane around his neck like a burdensome yoke but a colorful scarf to be celebrated.

I’m looking forward to the second season of Only Murders in the Building, it’s inspiring to see Steve Martin creating fresh, relevant work. The truth is, I‘m native of the Golden State, though I grew up in Chicago and now live in New York, but I don’t give my inner Californian much room these days. Today I think I will take a trip up the Pacific Coast highway.