Steve responds to reporters' questions during press junket on July 19, 2001

From the beginning, the press has been fascinated with Steve. He has been dissected, flattered, flagellated, and probed. Some reporters are insightful, some are insipid. But the press reports are about the only way to follow his career. Steve does not give interviews frequently, nor does he seek out publicity except when it benefits one of his projects. Yet the world stays fascinated.

It is interesting that a check of Nexis and other news services reveals that there is hardly a day that goes by without some article somewhere in the world mentioning his name. Steve is an icon for many things. Want to talk about travel hassles? Cite a scene from Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Want to discuss the frustrations of fatherhood? Invoke Father of the Bride. Want to make something immediately understandable? Just use one of his catchphrases. As a cultural phenomenon, Steve is known worldwide. He is a common language.

Steve's catchphrases in particular are hooks for reporters. They cannot resist working at least one pun on "wild and crazy guy" into every article or headline. They rarely can resist mentioning that with them Steve seems aloof or somehow unreachable. They frequently recap his background. But mostly, they feed on each other and their newspaper morgues for information. You must read them carefully because they also include a lot of misinformation.

But I don't want them to stop. Whatever the shortcomings of Steve's press coverage, if you read enough of it, the man shines through.

This section is dedicated to the press coverage Steve gets. It is divided topically, and each page contains the articles grouped by subject matter. There is a lot of carry-over between topics, and I've tried to cross-reference where practical. The links on the top of each page go to an article in the section. But you can just scroll down through the whole thing and ignore the links. Some articles are truncated because I left out the non-Steve related matter. Who cares about the rest :) Where this is the case, I've indicated omissions with asterisks. (***) On some of the articles, I've given the URL where I initially found it. I don't guarantee that they are still available at those sites. But you can check, if you are so inclined. You will find several articles on the same topic, sometimes several versions by the same author. I've done this because sometimes even small differences are telling. If you aren't quite as obsessive as I am, just skip the clones.

As with everything else on this site, this section is a work in progress. There is so much material to be included that it will take a lot of time to get it up. I'm starting with Novocaine because it is about to be released and there is obvious immediate interest. But eventually there will be everything from Steve's visit to the troops in Desert Storm to his art collection. If there are particular areas that you want to find first, let me know at [email protected]. I'll try to prioritize to suit the users.