In some respects, it depends how this was billed.

Yeah, I’d be interested to see the promotional materials for this event. Sounds like a fairly big deal: 900 attendees at $50 a head means 45 grand in receipts. Not a bad haul for one person interviewing another at the Y.

I imagine there would be several people who maybe misunderstood the thing as an opportunity to see Steve Martin performing in some sense. Maybe those people were understandably vexed if they felt misled about the planned content of the program. And certainly they’re within their rights to bitch about it via Twitter or email or whatever.

But whether the Y dropped the ball in not giving a clearer description of the nature of the interview to the audience, or in not giving Martin and Solomon clearer guidelines on the expected scope of the interview, where they really screwed up was in attempting a little “damage control” by passing the note up to Solomon and Martin in the middle of the interview. What an incredibly rude, insulting thing to do. You’d think New Yorkers would be a little more sophisticated and save their obnoxiousness for strangers on the crosswalk. Certainly the audience wasn’t hissing or throwing rotten fruit. The Y screwed up big.

Must he wear an arrow through his head his whole life?

Martin Mull too.

http://www.artnet.com/artist/12223/martin-mull.html

And Captain Beefheart.

http://www.artnet.com/artist/17294/don-van-vliet.html

Ha! That’s hilarious. The image in my head was of the New York intelligentsia sitting in folding chairs in a basketball court, with the odor of pool chlorine hanging over everything. I was thinking how cool it was that a YMCA would host such a highbrow event.

So, this YMHA is a place for young Jewish men to cruise for gay sex?

http://www.92y.org/shop/event_detail.asp?productid=T-LC5AE11

Doesn’t give a great overview of what to expect, really, but then to try and change the direction of the evening _during_ the interview? That’s just rude.

“In some respects, it depends how this was billed.”

“Yeah, I’d be interested to see the promotional materials for this event.”

Even sadder – it wasn’t complaints from anyone who actually attended the Y; but rather from emails sent by people who were watching a telecast of the event across the country (who paid substantially less than $50/head)…

The Barrington Stage Company, one of the telecasters, advertised the show in this manner:

“Martin will discuss life, art and writing in his interview on Monday: Live from NY’s 92Y: Steve Martin with Deborah Solomon. As Cultural Pittsfield was kind to point out – tickets in NYC are $50! Watch the interview simulcast live at BSC for just $10!”

I just wrote the 92nd st. Y an email voicing my disappointment in their handling of this situation; Instead of voicing your opinion here, I suggest letting them know directly how you feel (politely, please).

http://www.92y.org

I don’t see anything wrong with actually LISTENING to the audience. Especially one which paid $45,000. If you want to talk about stuff NO ONE but the interviewer cares about, then meet for coffee… and buy the coffee yourself.

Sure Steve’s a tad annoyed at the interruption, but he should also be grateful that, having not realized it himself, someone had the balls to tell him he was boring his audience to death. That at least gave him the opportunity (and the article does NOT say whether or not he TOOK that opportunity) to steer the ship away from that really big iceberg.

This strikes me as somewhat of an oversimplification.

I’d rephrase as “Steve Martin has a love/hate relationship with his own career, because his born gifts as an entertainer paid off so well and so early that he was never able to become the intellectual he wanted to be.”

The resulting high/low tension runs through the whole body of work (Plimpton in “LA Story”, for god’s sake), and even powers it… at least for those who see such things.

There was no indication of what type of interview it would be. They didn’t give any direction, either. If anyone would be to blame, it would be the 92nd St. Y.

On the NPR show he could barley get a word in as the host returned from every break with a long-winded list of accolades from Mr. Martins past, barely asking about his new book, or art, or anything interesting at all.. And every caller seemed compelled to introduce themselves as some kind awesomely multi-talented renaissance person, desperately seeking THE RIGHT DIRECTION; or some sort of guidance/blessing from Mr. Martin. It was all very strange, and I imagine that after dozens of such interviews he is at a loss for how to respond to the same stupid questions…

As far as a refund for attendees of a $50 lecture in NYC, I say if you have decided to spend $50 on an event like that you don’t need that money back. I’ve got friends in NYC that I’ve seen spend $50 on 2 mediocre cocktails before dinner. How about if the Y donates that night’s proceeds to an art out-reach program or some other suitable charitable cause?

Also, I suggest reading “Born Standing Up”, Mr. Martin’s autobiography, for those of you who might need a more balanced opinion of the man.

Personally, I would have very much been interested in the interview, Steve Martin’s opinions about art, and all that. I wouldn’t have paid $50 to attend, though – but I would pay $50 (or more) to see a show by him.

To be cynical, I suspect the Y promoted this in a deliberately confusing way. It probably wasn’t necessary – in NYC I bet you could fill all the seats with people who genuinely wanted to hear him speak about his book and about art, no tricks required. But they might not have been able to get away with charging $50 for it. So they banked on Steve Martin’s name and hoped people would think he was doing comedy, or an “Inside the Actor’s Studio” style interview.

Something tells me Steve Martin himself wouldn’t be happy knowing people paid $50 to watch an interview with him. I suppose he must have known, though.

1) This is being done in connection with a NON-COMEDY BOOK Steve Martin wrote.
2) He is an art collector. A serious one. And has great taste.

And now here is the big one:
3) Somehow—in the great scheme of things—if you identify yourself as “comedian” and then dare to do something “non-comedy” the world lashes back at you. This has happened to Woody Allen, Dave Chapelle, Richard Belzer, Bill Murray, Adam Sandler and others: Comedy has the unique distinction of being such a degrading position in the world of creative arts that ANY attempt to show/do anything beyond being funny is treated with pariah-like disdain.

The 92nd Street Y really comes off like a bunch of a-holes here. And FWIW, they have been on some tear in recent years to be “edgier” and book folks for odd reasons. Odd-ball comedy shows mixed with high-brow. Not a bad idea, but this incident just is pathetic.

TEAM STEVE! HE WON!

(God bless the local repertory theater back in the early eighties.)

(Have these people never read “Cruel Shoes”?)

I’d like to type more opinions on the internal characteristics of others based on chance meetings, physiognomy, etc., but the dude next to me at this internet cafe just turned the back of his shoulder toward me and now I have to kill him.

Can I call you Steve? Just remember what I always say, “There are no second acts in American life as long as the 92nd Street Y has anything to say about it.” Usually, that last bit gets left out of the quotation books for some reason. The current state of my own career is a good example of this. I currently reside in small plot in Rockville, Maryland and am kept from pursuing a second act by a large slab of granite (probably put there by audience members from the 92nd Street Y) that says:

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”

I had the 92nd Street Y in mind when I wrote that. True story.

Affectionately yours,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The audience at the Y picked up on that on one level or another. They didn’t NEED comedy, though that would have been nice, they needed genuine respect and engagement — and you don’t get that from Steve Martin.

http://twitter.com/jdgalarneau/status/9429556813373440
http://twitter.com/jdgalarneau/status/10254228341657600
http://twitter.com/jdgalarneau/status/10258690904956928

Why Martin is defending Solomon is beyond me. If they have a history and she was making attempts at “humor” then it was lost on the audience and it LOOKED lost on Martin too. I wish the 92nd St Y would post video of the event. It would clear everything up. I cannot state enough that it was Solomon who ruined the evening. Was it too much to offer refunds to everyone? Maybe, but in the history of customer service, it’s unbelievable that a non-profit cultural and community center is being attacked for responding to complaints.

Of course, the Y could have been clearer by saying, at the top of the announcement, something along the lines of: “Deborah Solomon discusses art with Steve Martin, who has recently written a novel about an artist’s struggle in the art world.”