by Steve Martin (special to The Star)

I WANTED SOME ink. I wanted to grab a few column inches of People. I needed a power story, something that shoved it to the public and gave them something to chaw on. I was tired of being known as a fool, and I wanted to change that image. Yes, I could have tried for an interview, but that meant getting a drug habit and going into the Betty Ford Clinic, or getting a divorce. Fine, if it got me what I wanted, but interviews are in the entertainment section; news is what's on page 1. I wanted to be news.

I knew how things worked - careers are made on the back porches of America, in the barber shops, on the streets and in dentists' offices. I couldn't think story. I had to think bigger, something a little naughty, something that made the public hold you up and turn you around in its hand like an egg in front of a candle, a story that burst through - out of the pages of People and into the public's consciousness. I knew you didn't just walk into People magazine's offices and demand a story. I had to create it. I had to move Princess Diana off the newsstand and get in Steve.

I also knew that, if I did come up with a story, I was going to need a photo of me leaping into the air. Just a casual glimpse into the pages of People shows an incredible number of people leap whenever they are the subject of a story. In fact, so many people leap on these providential occasions in their life that the poor photographer must have a difficult time getting them not to leap. I had a perverse but sound logic: if a person is important enough to be in People, he seems to leap. Therefore, if a person is leaping, he must be important. I wanted the picture to be already shot; it had to be in the editors' hands minutes after I created the news story. I snapped three quick leaping shots - bedroom, back yard and driveway - and blew them up to four-by-fives.

Fellow flier

I guessed the reporter would be traveling incognito, as a "fellow flier" probably. A People reporter has to go wherever the news is happening - New York, Los Angeles, New York, Los Angeles and sometimes back again to New York. With my film Roxanne just starting to be shown on the transcontinental flights, it seemed as if fate were playing right into my hands. "What if," I thought, "what if I'm on the plane when Roxanne is being shown? What if a People reporter is on that flight? What if he asks me if I'm going to watch the movie? What will I say?" These what-ifs swirled in my head. I felt a dizzying power - the ability to make news.

I booked 17 transcontinental flights. All of them were showing Roxanne. I took along a lap-top computer; I thought that it would be a good tool to help feign my lack of interest. I picked out a good hat, nice and goofy. I was careful never to look up at the screen ("That'll drive 'em crazy," I thought).

I will spare the reader the saga of the first seven flights. Let it suffice to say that in every tale of adventure, someone left out the boring parts. I was growing fat from sitting the 12 hours a day necessary for the round trip and was wondering if I would even be recognizable. Then, on flight 8 it happened. The "stranger" approached me. His friendly face mocked his single-mindedness. I could almost hear what had to be pulsing through his veins: "Get the story, get the story." If he only knew the irony of my desire to give him one.

"Aren't you gonna watch?" he asked.

Performing debut

I thought of 1964. That was the year I made my professional performing debut. It was a small club in Balboa, Calif., called the Prison of Socrates. There were six people in the audience. I thought of the years of travelling this country, working every kind of club, convention or "recess with tables" imaginable. I thought of the dark nightclubs, thick with smoke and gooey from the sweet stickiness of the cheap red wine. I remembered those morbid nights in graffitied dressing rooms, or sometimes closets, where I waited in the clutch of dreaded anticipation. I thought of the number of times I had taken abuse from the drunken patrons. I thought of the countless people who told me that I wasn't funny. "Stick to writing," they said. I had faced every conceivable kind of adversity in my profession, and I had come a long way. Now I sat face to face with my future, and I wasn't going to blow it. I laid out the line like a Bulgari salesman laying out a diamond bracelet: "Nah, I've seen it."

The expression on his face told me I was news.

The satisfaction in manipulating the press is both emotional (control of non-ego objects in space-time) and financial (power base increased logarithmically per column inch). It's been eight months since the story broke. My movie offers have trebled in number, and there has been a curious increase in the number of directing offers, along with tempting inquiries from TV-commercial producers. I hear many shouts on the street: "Hey, mister, I've seen it . . . Ha, ha ha, what a nut."

At dinner parties people seek out my table, expecting my particular brand of wit. My humor used to be described as off the wall. Now, not only is it off the wall, it's on the floor and coming after you with a carving knife. When my name is dropped, it drops with the thundering sound of 100 garbage-can lids crashing onto the pavement.

The leaping photo never appeared, but I'm not bothered.

I'm Steve.

I make news.

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This article appeared in the Toronto Star on Saturday, August 27, 1988, in the second edition entertainment section, page J2.