Jack Handey
(Excerpt from Jack Handey interview)
How did you first meet Steve Martin?
I was living in a 150-year-old adobe house on Upper Canyon Road in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I think I was twenty-three or twenty-four. This was in the early seventies, when I was working as a reporter for the New Mexican. The house had been cut in half. I lived on one side, and Steve Martin lived on the other side. He would come over and play his banjo.
What was Steve Martin doing in Sante Fe? I thought he was raised in California.
I think he was looking to get out of L.A. for a while, and he liked using Santa Fe as a base. He was traveling a lot, performing at Playboy Clubs and other clubs around the country. He wasn’t famous yet.
He had already been a television writer for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour [CBS, 1967–69], but he was now focusing on his stand-up act.
Was his stand-up persona already firmly in place, or was it still evolving at this point?
I told him, “Instead of a spear through the head, Steve, what about an arrow? It’s lighter and not as unwieldy.” No, I’m guessing his comedy character was pretty much developed by then. A few years after I met him, I moved to San Antonio, Texas, and one night I saw Steve performing on The Tonight Show. I said, “Hey, my neighbor!”
I sent Steve some samples of my humor column and asked if I could write for him. He liked my material and said yes. Later, when he got his first NBC television special, Steve Martin: A Wild and Crazy Guy [November 22, 1978], he called me out to L.A. to work on it. It was the proverbial “lucky break.”
Steve’s material was brilliantly funny and a true breakthrough. It was silly and stupid, which a lot of comedy people are afraid of. They’d rather do satire, with a capital S. I’ve never liked that sort of humor.
Did you contribute jokes to any of Steve Martin’s albums?
The only album I contributed to was Steve’s last, The Steve Martin Brothers [Warner Bros., 1981]. One of the jokes I wrote was “I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, and wholesome things that money can buy.”
How would you define Steve Martin’s sensibility? It’s aged very well and, to this day, seems quite modern. I’m thinking not just of his stand-up act but his first book, 1979’s Cruel Shoes. One sees the influences from that book on, among other publications, McSweeney’s.
What’s great about Steve’s sensibility is that it appeals to smart people and dumb people alike. That, to me, is the best comedy.
I think Cruel Shoes is hilarious. Seeing very short, almost cryptic comedy bits like that probably influenced me to write “Deep Thoughts.”
How did “Deep Thoughts” get started in 1991?
Originally, it started in print, as a kind of parody of sensitive, diary-type writings. I had several published in the eighties in a college magazine called Ampersand, and also in National Lampoon and George Meyer’s Army Man magazine. Later, they began to appear on Saturday Night Live.
Did you feel that you had a backlog of jokes that needed an outlet and “Deep Thoughts” could be it?
No, it was always its own thing. And I tried and tried to get them published as a book, with no luck. I have a folder full of rejection slips. I realized that a way to have them seen—and subsequently published—was to put them on TV. I worked on SNL, so why not?
How do you know when a Deep Thought works? Do you show it to anyone else? Or does it just ring true for you, and you’re confident it’ll work?
It’s weird, but I’m not a very good judge of “Deep Thoughts.” The ones I think are great usually turn out to be not very good. And the ones that I think are okay—or pretty good—are usually the ones that people really enjoy.
What are some of the ones you think work?
One I’ve always liked is: “Anytime I see something screech across a room and latch onto someone’s neck, and the guy screams and tries to get it off, I have to laugh, because what is that thing?!”
Or: “Consider the daffodil. And while you’re doing that, I’ll be over here, looking through your stuff.”
There are others, but I’m forgetting them. I’ll e-mail them to you…*
* Jack Handey’s Favorite Deep Thoughts:
If you define cowardice as running away at the first sign of danger, screaming and tripping and begging for mercy, then yes, Mister Brave Man, I guess I am a coward.
To me, it’s a good idea to always carry two sacks of something when you walk around. That way, if anybody says, “Hey, can you give me a hand?” you can say, “Sorry, got these sacks.”
You know what would make a good story? Something about a clown who makes people happy, but inside he’s really sad. Also, he has severe diarrhea.
