Okay, I admit it. I’m a sucker for a stud on a stallion.

When it comes to kid flicks, I’ll suspend disbelief for any number of tired old tropes. I’ll endure sinister stepmothers and musical montages wherein fiercely loyal woodland creatures lead plucky-if-impossibly-thin-waisted princesses through whole new worlds of eye-twinkling wonder. Long as the theater’s dark and the popcorn’s crunchy, I’m immoderately tolerant of pixie dust, talking race cars, and other absurd cinematic conceits committed in the name of outright emotional manipulation.

Sure. I’m down with that. But there’s one stunt perpetrated by children’s movies that really cracks my glass slipper, converting me from Happy to Grumpy in a single animated scene: It’s killing off a beloved character — only to revive him miraculously, senselessly, for a happy ending.

I’m not talking about faded fairies who can only be reanimated with our earnest belief, or giant iron robots who self-reassemble after being obliterated by missiles. I’m not whining about lion kings whose voices echo through their offsprings’ ears from beyond the grave. I don’t even take issue with close calls, near deaths, or even seemingly inescapable doom; the trash-incinerator scene in Toy Story 3 was one of the most riveting things I’ve ever seen on the screen, an almost shockingly mature, dialogue-less treatise on friendship and acceptance that left my heart racing, eyes brimming.

Continue reading Grief with a Side of Popcorn

I met Steve Martin when I was a kid. We were at a party, and I shadowed the poor guy all afternoon, waiting for him to crack me up, to slip into character. He never did.

Where was the Wild and Crazy Guy? Where was The Jerk? Where was King Tut?

Years later, he granted me an interview about his play Picasso at the Lapin Agile. In a dumb attempt to catch him off guard, to give my readers the Steve Martin I was sure they really wanted, I asked him if he preferred boxers or briefs. I don’t recall his good-sport answer — only that he uttered it earnestly, artlessly. It seems I’d finally located The Jerk; it was me.

It’s easy to forget that entertainers aren’t always entertaining, and that they’re deeper — and sometimes duller — than their onstage personas.

Though Martin once wore a gag arrow through his head, in real life he’s far more the reticent sophisticate of It’s Complicated than the inane pratfaller of The Pink Panther. But he’s more than those, too: He’s also a successful playwright, Grammy-winning banjo player, and avid art collector who just published a novel, An Object of Beauty, set amid New York’s high-brow art scene.

Continue reading Well, Excuuuuuse Him!