Reviews for someone like me come in three packages. One is justifiable praise, the second is justifiable criticism, and the third is, "This is only published because he's a celebrity."
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the mixed nature of reviews that celebrities receive, highlighting both praise and skepticism.
Steve Martin's quote addresses the complex relationship between celebrity status and critical evaluation. He suggests that reviews often fall into three categories: genuine admiration, legitimate critique, and undue attention simply due to the popularity of the individual. This reveals the challenge of receiving genuine feedback in an industry where fame can overshadow merit.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of resilience in the face of criticism, a speaker might quote Steve Martin.
When I first started doing my comedy act, I just desperately needed material. So I took literally everything I knew how to do on stage with me, which was juggling, magic and banjo and my little comedy routines. I always felt the audience sorta tolerated the serious musical parts while I was doing my comedy.
You want to be a bit compulsive in your art or craft or whatever you do.
I have heard it said that a complicated childhood can lead to a life in the arts. I tell you this story of my father and me to let you know I am qualified to be a comedian.
...it is not the big events that hurt the most but rather the smallest questionable shift in tone at the end of a spoken word that can plow most deeply into the heart.
If he thinks he would harm Mirabelle, he would back away. But he does not yet understand when and how people are hurt. He doesn't understand the subtleties of slights and pains, that it is not the big events that hurt the most but rather the smallest questionable shift in tone at the end of a spoken word that can plow most deeply into the heart.
I was raised with "Laurel and Hardy" and "I Love Lucy" and Jerry Lewis, and I just loved it. And I had a friend in high school and we would just laugh all day and put on skits. You know, it's the Andy Kaufman thing or the Marty Short thing where you're performing in your bedroom for yourself.
To write something, you have to risk making a fool of yourself.
We look at a painting to know the painter; it's his company we are after, not his skill.
A handful of works in history have had a direct impact on social policy: one or two works of Dickens, some of Zola, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' and, in modern drama, Larry Kramer's 'The Normal Heart.'
Long before I started to write in earnest, Lorrie Moore taught me you could have a woman narrator who was funny and complex and even wrongheaded. She opened up a lot of space that me and a million other women rushed into.
I discovered early in my movie work that a movie is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it. There are times when this distinction may be given to the writer or director. Most often it belongs to the producer.
Music lives and breathes to tell us who we are and what we face. It is a path between ourselves and the infinite.
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