Steve Martin Audience Gets Refund for his Lecture — Martin Isn’t Happy

This story is too funny not to post.  Steve Martin was interviewed by New York Times Magazine writer Deborah Solomon about his new art book, The Object of Beauty, and the audience found it so boring that the Executive Director of the 92nd Street Y gave them their money back.  Martin wasn’t pleased, and he said that catering an interview to the audience’s wishes is akin to “an actor responding in Act III to an audience’s texts to ‘shorten the soliloquies.’ ”  Before I attack Steve Martin, I’d like to say that I am declaring today’s blog theme to be “The Celebrity Narcissist.”  Here’s what Steve Martin doesn’t understand: It’s not that the audience is too low-brow for a discussion on art.  It’s that everyone and their mother thinks of Steve Martin as an actor and a comedian, so obviously when you sell tickets to an event where he’s being interviewed, the kind of people that attend that event do not want to hear Steve Martin wax-on about his love of art, and if If they were, I imagine they would have gone to a gallery opening instead.  The fact that he doesn’t understand that means he’s been in his celebrity fishbowl way too long.