Greetings and salutations Hivers. Today I thought we'd do another You Should Laugh More post.

Research has shown that laughter is good for us. It has all kinds of health benefits. Despite most of us knowing this, none of us laugh enough. Yeah, I know, being an adult is tough, and furthermore there is a lot of grim stuff happening in the world. These things may be true, but that just is all the more reason for trying to get a little laughter into our lives.

We all love Steve Martin, right? He has a zaniness that is funny without crossing the line into annoying. Whether it is his more mania 70s stuff or his more subdued, but still crazy, comedies since, he never fails to make us laugh. Like many of the Baby Boomer comics, his style of comedy was more a critique of comedy itself, or at least the comedy of his parents' generation. As a result, his standup comedy never had any punchlines and he completely eschewed the standard joke format itself as he tried to reinvent ways to make people laugh. In doing this, he adopted a persona of a wild and crazy but somewhat clueless guy, yet one who was extremely confident. It's a shtick that many other comedians would later borrow and also have success with, but no one did it quite as well as Steve Martin.

I thought today we'd take a look at a few clips from him.

He Hates These Cans

This is from his first major movie, The Jerk. Despite the grey hair, he's only in his early 30s here. His character in this movie is basically his standup persona: the super confident guy who is a complete idiot.

The entire movie is great, but a few scenes just always stick with me. This is one of them.

Look Up Here

Besides The Jerk, I don't think any movie he did is more beloved than The Three Amigos. The reputation of this film has just grown larger and larger over the years until now it is looked at as kind of a golden comedy. Boy, I could fill this post with thoughts on this movie alone. Hmm... in fact, maybe I should make a The Three Amigos post. I'll have to think about that.

Anyway, the context of this scene is that these three were silent movie stars, but they were fired and kicked out of the studio. Don't worry about the why. After being kicked out they got a telegram from a small village in Mexico asking for their help defeating an evil bandit, the people who sent the telegram having mistakingly thought their silent movie characters, The Three Amigos, were in fact real. These three then compound the misunderstanding by misreading the telegram and thinking the evil bandit himself is going to pay them to come perform privately for him. So naturally they need to break into the studio to steal their costumes.

As he gets more and more frustrated, the scene just gets funnier and funnier.

I was only going to do one scene from each place, but I have to include his El Guapo speech. My friends and I used to reference this all the time. Any difficulty can be a personal metaphorical El Guapo!

Steve Martin Has a Headache

He hosted SNL several times and was always very popular. In the early days, a lot of his SNL material was borrowed from his stand-up act. If you've never seen his stand-up, it was exactly this, just more of it.

In this skit, Bill Murray joins him for a few of the jokes. I was always disappointed they never stared in a movie together. I suppose unlike Dan Aykroyd who paired well with other comedians because he was willing to play either the straight man or the less funny sidekick, neither Steve Martin or Bill Murray were willing to play second fiddle to the other. Oh well. But we do have several great SNL bits with the two of them, so that's something.

but another bonus SNL clip. This one from many years later, another classic.

Steve Martin Has to Leave

This is pure Steve Martin. No jokes, just something completely unexpected and the resulting silliness of the situation. No one did this better, especially in the late 70s when he was on top of his game and master of the comedy stage.

Johnny's reaction to that was evidently very real. Usually he faked laughter out of politeness and didn't really find most of his guests very funny, but according to most involved, he would absolutely lose it whenever Steve Martin was on.

So what do you think? Did it make you laugh or was it just stupid? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

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David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku.