

Being Funny: How Steve Martin got his act together - wallflower
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/funny-martin-200802.html

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hoelle
The really interesting thing to me is how much work it took him to earn his
success. In his book "Born Standing Up" he goes more into his adolescence,
where he learned stagecraft, acting, and improvisation. Then as a comedian,
years of refining his odd formula until he became great at it.

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dwwoelfel
Amazon link to _Born Standing Up_ \- <http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/1416553649>

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nkh
A great quote from the article:

 _The consistent work enhanced my act. I learned a lesson: it was easy to be
great. Every entertainer has a night when everything is clicking. These nights
are accidental and statistical: like lucky cards in poker, you can count on
them occurring over time. What was hard was to be good, consistently good,
night after night, no matter what the circumstances._

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jleyank
Is this not another example of the "10,000 hours to be good" meme that's been
floating about for a while? Desire gets you going, and of course it's good to
have talent, but then practice and luck... Doesn't work with everything (no
way I was ever going to play roundball well, but I could nicely handle
soccer), but it's always amazing to see it when it works.

This should be read by everybody thinking an overnight sensation merely took
one night.

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nkh
Steve is a master at making his shows odd yet familiar. His mastery of the
awkward sparks curiosity, which leads to attraction/engagement from the
audience.

This was succinctly outlined in Scott Adams blog post:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1164323>

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nato1138
I actually have had this steve-martin-ism floating around in my head for more
than a couple of years now.. that is truly inspiring (not sure if he ripped it
off from another). It's related to show-biz, but I apply it to my classical
music ambitions and now my entrepreneurial projects, too: "Be so good, that
they _can't_ ignore you." It's quite a zen thing, actually, and it dissolves
perhaps some of the complexity of breaking through to the other side with one
thing to keep in mind.

