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Martin, Ephron mix it up for 'Mixed Nuts' release

Star, screenwriter discuss negative bias directed at comedy

By Mike Horowitz

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

Nora Ephron and the star of her soon-to-be-unveiled film Mixed Nuts, Steve Martin, are in town to talk about their proud collaboration. And though they would make a pretty lousy comedy team based on the banter in their talk with the Bruin, they do team up for a side-splitting dance in the new film.

Martin plays Philip, manager of a barely successful suicide hotline in Venice Beach who creates and endures crises on this Christmas Eve. He breaks a rule and gives out the center's address to a caller and ends up forgetting their immenent arrival. When Chris (Liev Schreiber), a depressed cross-dresser walks in, Philip has no idea how to react, but soon falls back upon unhelpful anecdotes and plentiful platitudes.

Soon they're slowdancing.

"I went home after the day we shot the dancing scene," says Martin, "and told a friend, 'I think we filmed the funniest scene I have ever done.'" Although he is a poorer dancer than Schreiber, the scene belies any weakness on his feet due to the fact that Martin leads. He says Schreiber struggled to adjust.

"That's the way half the population dances," reminds Ephron, misinterpreting Martin's remark as sexist, "and some of us still dance that way."

Yet the chance to dance was far from Martin's only motivation to act in Nuts. "Many things attracted me to it," he says, "starting with Nora, and the cast, and the script and it's a place to call home for three months too. I just trust Nora and I know that when we get to the set, it's going to end up funny."

Ephron agrees. "Sometimes you shoot a funny movie and you hope it's funny," she says, "I think we all had a sense that this was funny. It wasn't like we were trying to make Dances with Wolves. Our ambitions were low in the best sense."

Adapting it from the French movie Le Pere Noel est une Ordure, Ephron and her sister finished the script before Ephron's hit Sleepless in Seattle. She enjoys it's mature angle in a season filled with family fare and cute kids galore. Yet Ephron holds that the original was much darker in tone than she had wanted. "It's not a Christmas movie," she says of Le Pere Noel est une Ordure , "and it's not a love story. No one falls in love though several people do have sex in it."

"Isn't that love?" jokes Martin.

The character of Philip was especially engaging to Martin. "I like my character in this," he says, "he's a little thoughtless, a little bit goofy, naive, and doesn't see what's right in front of him. A bit selfish ­ it gives you something to play rather than Mr. Nice Guy."

"The worst thing you can be given to play in a movie is Mr. Nice Guy, because there's nothing there. When you think about all the nice people you know they all have foibles. All you have to do is play those foibles and let your own personality stay. One of the biggest mistakes in writing screenplays is asking 'Is he likable?' Because then he can't do that, because he's not likable, and yet in Silence of the Lambs, at the end of the movie you kind of like Anthony Hopkins."

Although he's never challenged himself to that extent, and mass-murdering cannibals have been recently suffering low popularity, Martin would probably be a fairly likable villain. He has produced some of the best comedies of the '80s and shows no signs of stopping. Father of the Bride II and Sergeant Bilko lurk in the future and a new play from the creator of Picasso at the Lapin Agile starts in New York this spring. He calls it "a surreal look at a family in the '50s."

Thus it is a thoughtful proposition when this ultra-successful laugh-getter decrys a critical bias towards comedy. "I remember recently reading a review of Jim Carrey for the Mask," he says, "and the reviewer said 'he also proves he can act in one scene when so and so.' I said, 'What's he doing when he's being funny?' That's not acting? There's a prejudice against comedy as acting and it is acting."

"People say because somebody cries, 'oh look, he can act!' But the fact that Jim Carrey can do a ten minute ad-libbed bit walking across a roof that's just comedy."

"What is that expression?" asks Ephron. "'Tragedy is easy, comedy is hard?'"

"No," corrects Martin. "Dying is easy."

"Ohhh!" she blasts out and then thinks for a second before embarassing herself again. "But is it true?"

Martin laughs, "I don't know yet."

He believes, and he should know, that the responses garnered from great comedy are just as difficult to gain as they are in acting. "When you're doing a play and it's dramatic, the audience sits there going," he crosses his arms and looks intense, "and the actor's going 'Yeah, I'm really getting to them.'"

"But if you're doing a comedy, if they don't go 'Hahahaha,' you're dead!"

Martin sums up what he calls "the fun art" that is comedy: "You've got to get that to win. And people don't just give it up. They have to be made to laugh."

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