ON LOCATION

     Steve Martin made Novocaine on location in the Chicago area in the spring of 2000. On shoots, the privacy of the stars is jealously guarded. Here is an instance where you get a behind the scenes peek complete with pictures. There is a link to Bill Fisher's post on the Banjo Page, but I'm copying the text here because it explains the pictures below. Bill kindly gave permission to post these here, and I believe this is the only place that has them. Look at the pics... the text is below them. And thank you, Bill.

Jamming with Steve Martin

From: Bill and Ann Fisher ([email protected])

Date: Mon Apr 17 2000 - 15:15:42 PDT

     I got to jam with Steve Martin last Wednesday in my living room here in Oak Park, Illinois. Here's what happened. About three weeks ago the people hired to find sites for the movie Novocaine (with Steve Martin as a dentist, Laura Dern as his girlfriend, and Helena Bonham Carter) chose my neighbor's house for its exterior and first floor to be used as Laura Dern's house. However, their bedroom was too small for the bedroom scene so they went looking elsewhere on the block for a bigger one and chose mine. Wednesday was filming day.

     About noon, there was a break in the action and Steve Martin came downstairs, I assumed to go to his trailer out on the street. He stopped when he saw my banjos on stands in the living room. "Banjos" he says, "Who plays banjo?" My wife told him I did and he asked if he could play one. (Duh, that was sure a hard question to answer). So he sat down and started playing and my wife ran and got me. When I came in he saw me and asked if they were my banjos. When I said yes he said, "Sit down and let's play." And so we did. We didn't know a lot of the same tunes so we traded off playing. He was a little disappointed that I didn't have a set of finger picks he could use but did a fine job playing clawhammer, up-picking and a little quiet bluegrass. He tried my new Bart Reiter Regent but preferred my old Gibson RB-170 openback since that's what he uses for frailing. (For BG he has a Gibson Florentine)

     One of the props in the movie was a picture of him at age 17 playing his RB-170. He says he learned to play banjo in high school about the time the photo was taken. He went to high school with John McEuen (Nitty Gritty Dirt Band) and I got the impression they learned together. He learned mostly from books (Mel Bay, etc.) and by slowing down records. He also said sadly that he doesn't get much chance to play anymore but he did play "The Cuckoo" which he had "just learned"

     Besides Cuckoo he (or we) played Green Corn, Blue Skies, Auld Lang Syne, Foggy Mountain Breakdown, Old Joe Clark, Waterbound, Cripple Creek and many, many more. (I was too stunned to think straight, so have forgotten a lot) Pretty soon he had to go back to shooting but the rest of the day and night whenever there was a break he'd be the first one down the stairs and say "Let's play." In all we had seven sessions lasting from 10 minutes to half an hour. At one time we were playing Old Joe Clark together and I looked up and there was Helena Bonham Carter sitting cross-legged on the floor watching us. I just about lost it there.

     We only got a couple of photos (we weren't supposed to take any) no video or tapes. If anyone is interested in seeing them they should contact me by e-mail since we're not supposed to send attachments to the list.

     By the way, are my Gibson RB-170 and my Bart Reiter Regent worth more now that Steve Martin has autographed them? Just curious, I'm not planning to sell them.

Bill Fisher