Melbourne Arena 15th November 2019

For “Carts”

Steve Martin and Martin Short first met during the making of The 3 Amigos over 30 years ago and have been best friends ever since. What’s so often the case in great partnerships is that they have very different personalities. Martin is introverted and deep thinking, whilst Short is like an energiser bunny and is prone to flying by the seat of his pants.

I didn’t know a lot about Short’s career other than he was Canadian, successful on Saturday Night Live and a very good impressionist. His film career after The 3 Amigos wasn’t overly memorable although the crowd loved seeing some footage of him playing the wedding planner in Father of the Bride which Martin starred in.

Martin’s career was quite the opposite having recently received an honorary Academy Award for his services to film. Many of his movies like Roxanne, LA Story, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Father of the Bride and Planes Trains and Automobiles were box office hits but his influence on me were his first 3 films, all directed by Carl Reiner. They were The Jerk, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid and most significantly, The Man With 2 Brains. 

I discovered all these as a kid just joining the army in 1980 and these movies were a logical extension of Martin’s well developed, anarchic stand up that he had honed since he began learning magic and making balloon animals as a 15YO working at Disneyland. 

The Man with 2 Brains is one of the silliest films ever made and tells the story of naïve brain surgeon Dr Hfuhruhurr played by Martin, who falls in love with the evil femme fatale Dolores, played by the incredibly sexy Kathleen Turner, parodying  her serious role in Body Heat with William Hurt. Dr Hfuhruhurr marries Dolores and wants nothing more than to consummate the marriage, but all Dolores wants is the Doctor dead and his money. The now frustrated beyond belief doctor discovers some live brains (just go with it), one of which talks to him and he falls in love. Now he must kill Dolores, find another beautiful body, and trade brains. There are some memorable lines like when asked how his marriage is going, “I’ll have you know, in the finger sucking department, I’m extremely satisfied.”

Early in my army career (I’m reticent to call it that!) I met a like-minded individual in Mark Carter who sadly has passed away. Mark introduced me to a number of different things including throwing me out of a perfectly serviceable aircraft over Byron Bay, but he also played me Steve Martin’s live stand up album Let’s Get Small from 1976. 

I’d never heard anything like it and even to this day it’s a classic in my eyes. It’s absurdist and truly original and you can hear a confident artist about to embark on a long career. Here are a few short tracks from the album.

Martin and Short deliver tons of one liners and offer lots of self-deprecation to one another. We were taken aback by just how funny Martin Short was. It’s his energy that lifts the 2 hours over the line with plenty to spare. At 69 and Martin at 74 this is no mean effort and the two of them look remarkably fit with no botox..or so they say! There was a part of the show where Short explains that he was ignored by theatre groups in Canada and was only accepted into a play entitled “Jesus’s Stepbrother”, and decided to re-live some of that performance. It was hilarious and the entire crowd was doubled over crying laughing. Worth the price of admission alone.

The surprise packet of the night was the Grammy award winning bluegrass band The Steep Canyon Rangers from North Carolina. They hooked up with Martin, an accomplished banjo player, about 10 years ago and helped him with his recordings. What really was designed to be a toilet break for all us oldies became an utterly compelling 15 minutes or so as Martin left the band to their own devices on stage after playing a couple of tunes with them. Their harmonies are stunning and during the last song the fiddle player did a solo not dissimilar to something Jimi Hendrix would do, minus the fire! It was extraordinary. Here is an example of Martin with the band from 2012 in a small NYC loft.

It’s clear the love these two have for each other and we will be eternally grateful for this tour given they could easily slip into a comfortable retirement. Sadly there is only the one show left in Sydney tomorrow night but you can be rest assured a dvd will be released. If you have Netflix, the show is there somewhere and has been hugely successful already. Long live the Wild and Crazy Guy!