Volume 5, Issue 13: Live Free or Die

"It basically became the same thing every day."

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For Vulture this week, Grierson and I ranked every Steve Martin movie. We actually wrote the piece several years ago but it never ended up running, for mundane scheduling reasons, with the understanding that whenever the next Steve Martin movie came out, we’d publish it then. And then the next Steve Martin movie just never happened: He hasn’t appeared in a film since the 2016 Ang Lee film Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. We finally got our excuse with the release this weekend of the excellent two-part documentary STEVE! (Martin) on Apple TV.

As we noted in our intro to the piece, and as the documentary makes vividly clear, limiting Martin to just “movie actor” does him a tremendous disservice. To quote ourselves: “Plenty of aspiring artists spend their whole lives trying to perfect one discipline. Steve Martin has, arguably, conquered at least six.” Martin studied philosophy in college, started out as a magician, transformed himself into the biggest stand-up comedian on the planet, pivoted into becoming a legitimate movie star, wrote several best-selling novels and hit musicals (as well as multiple screenplays, including the ones to many of his biggest and best movies), was probably the best Oscar host we’ve ever had and has produced six albums of music with his bluegrass band the Steep Canyon Rangers. (He also married his New Yorker fact-checker, which might be his most impressive achievement; the last thing any writer or fact-checker has ever thought after a grueling fact-checking session is “hey, I should marry that person.”) Now, at the age of 78, he travels the country doing variety shows with his best friend Martin Short, with whom he stars in the Hulu show “Only Murders in the Building,” which turned out to be one of the biggest hits of his career and the primary reason anyone under the age of 30 knows him at all.

It’s an incredible American career, and as the documentary makes clear, it turned out the way it did not just because of Martin’s immense talent, but because of his inherent restlessness. Martin wanted to make magic, and he also wanted to make people laugh, and he also wanted to write a great novel, and he also wanted to play the banjo, and he also wanted to go on tour with his best friend. Steve Martin saw a whole universe of things he wanted to do. So he went out and did all of them. Why not? You only get to live this life once.

One of the strangest things about working in a business in which your name sits right next to everything you do is that you can’t create anything without having your identity, or people’s perceptions of it, inextricably wrapped up in it. Your name begins to represent something both bigger than you and smaller than you, conjuring specific expectations for whatever people are about to read or watch or listen to or think about, before they’ve actually consumed a word of it. Some of this is good, obviously, a lot of it: One of the primary reasons you put your name on your work in the first place is to establish a certain reputation with an audience, to hopefully reach the point where they see your name and immediately think, oh, I know who this is, I’m in good hands here, I’ll keep reading/watching/listening. But there are inherent shackles that come with that too. When you become known for one primary attribute, or talent, or even specific launching incident, you are expected to continue delivering whatever that name has come to represent. If you’re known for being a comedian, well, you better make me laugh; if you’re an artist, well, people didn’t come here for your politics; if you became popular making one kind of music, well, you better keep playing the hits. When you deviate from that, or try something different, it can be seen as a betrayal, or even as taking on airs; we know you for doing this so who do you think you are doing that?

In an information and entertainment culture that has a difficult time sometimes holding conflicting ideas in its head, and a depressingly infringing professional consensus that the only thing that matters is establishing your personal brand and then relentlessly feeding that brand, I have found that many people have resigned themselves to the shackles. It becomes professionally beneficial to just say, “OK, I’m the person who makes short funny videos” or “I’ll stick to sports” … to pick one aspect of your personality or your skillset and focus solely on selling it. And I get it. It’s tough enough trying to get anyone to pay attention to you at all, let alone persuade them to accept multiple parts of you. It’s tough to stay committed to diversifying yourself when you’re barely keeping your head above water as is. It’s easier, and certainly simpler, to pick your lane and stick with it.

But I do think there are inherent risks that outweigh the benefits long-term, not just in limiting what you’re capable of, but also in becoming a caricature of yourself. One must always be careful of committing too much to the bit. Some of my favorite writers from 10, 15 years ago have become so intent on giving people what they believe is expected of them that they have stopped growing entirely, that they have entered a feedback loop from which they’ll never escape. This manifests itself most often in Internet culture, which can flatten you into the least interesting, but most easily consumed, version of yourself. People find their voice and then just repeat it, convincing themselves this somehow makes them a unique industry of their own when they’re really just playing the same song over and over. It is easier to make a living this way, or at least to garner attention, but from what I’ve seen, it’s the quickest route to stasis and burnout. It’s exactly how you take all the fun out of all this.

After my friend Grant Wahl died in December 2022, I wrote about a conversation we once had over dinner about the improv comedy principle of “Yes, And,” and how we realized that it was how each of us had constructed our careers:

“Yes, And” is actually a founding ethos in improv comedy, which directs performers to react to whatever their fellow performers are doing with, “Yes, And,” allowing the improv to expand and build, to accept whatever new premise has been introduced and add to it so it might become something even larger. This was our strategy for surviving a constantly shifting media landscape, a tumultuous terrain Grant knew as well as anyone. “Yes, And.” Are magazines going online now? Yes, and I will now start a blog and a podcast and regularly interact with my readers. Is everybody pivoting to video now? Yes, and I will now make a soccer television show and work on my sideline hosting skills. What more can I do? What more can I make? What more can I say? Yes, and, yes, and, yes, and.

And what it really means, for Grant, for Steve Martin, for Tig Notaro, for anybody who feels that need to just constantly keep creating, to keep pushing themselves, to follow their particular muse, or just to keep themselves engaged and excited with whatever surprises life might have in store for them, is to just do what you want—whatever moves you. Just keep saying yes. Not everything you make will work out perfectly. You’ll fail a lot. You’re probably not as good at everything you want to do as you think you are. But you gotta keep trying anyway, not just because you’re drawn to do so, but also because it will keep you honest and vulnerable and hungry. To just be one thing, to wall yourself off in the name of branding or mannered “expertise,” is to silo yourself—it’s to make yourself more boring than you actually are. The world is a great big place full of infinite pleasures, and to deny yourself what you feel compelled to pursue is to deny what being alive is supposed to be about. Go try stuff. Go make some mistakes. Go fail a little bit. That’s to say: Go out there and live. Drink up life in big huge gulps.

Steve Martin could have stayed the world’s most successful comedian. He could have remained a big mainstream movie star. He could have done magic tricks, he could have written novels, he could have played music. He decided to do all of those things. Because if you can, don’t you have to? We only get to live this life once. Say yes, and then say yes and, and then yes and again and again. Write a memoir. Make a movie. Sing a song. Take an archery class. Start playing tennis. Roller skate through a museum. Don’t worry about what other people think about you, or what you think anyone else might want or expect. Just go make stuff. You only have so much time. Make it count.

Here is a numerical breakdown of all the things I wrote this week, in order of what I believe to be their quality.

1. Steve Martin Movies, Ranked and Updated, Vulture. And here’s that piece.

2. 24 Things to Look Forward to in 2024, MLB.com. The wonky curtain raiser …

3. The Emotion of Opening Day, MLB.com. … and the emotional one.

4. The Ten Oldest Players in Baseball, MLB.com. My annual reminder of how old we all are.

5. How Shohei Ohtani’s Unknowability Is Hurting Him, New York. This is probably all I have on this scandal, such as it is.

6. My Opening Day Wrapup, MLB.com. I wrote this after the Illini game on Thursday night, I’m still a little bit tired.

7. One Fun Prediction for Each Division, MLB.com. Thus completing the big season previews. Play ball.

8. Opening Day Starting Pitcher Matchups, Ranked, MLB.com. Some good ones. Other than Miles Mikolas.

PODCASTS

Grierson & Leitch, we discussed “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire,” “Road House” and “Immaculate.”

Seeing Red, Bernie and I did our big season preview. The Illini need to keep winning just so I don’t have to think about the Cardinals.

LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK

“‘Hello From Sunny Moscow’: My Year of Letters with Evan Gershkovich, Linda Kinstler, Politico. This week marked one year of The Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich’s detention in Russia. The WSJ is doing everything it can to keep this front of mind, and I want to do my part as well.

Also, that much-anticipated Washington Post Kim Mulkey story is out and it’s … just a really good piece of feature profile writing. She sure did a good job of making people inherently suspicious of her, though!

ONGOING LETTER-WRITING PROJECT!

This is your reminder that if you write me a letter and put it in the mail, I will respond to it with a letter of my own, and send that letter right to you! It really happens! Hundreds of satisfied customers!

Write me at:

Will Leitch
P.O. Box 48
Athens GA 30603

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO

“Right Back to It,” Waxahatchee. This album really makes want to sit in a front porch, drinking something cold on a spring day. Remember spring? That was a fun season, back when it existed.

Remember to listen to The Official Will Leitch Newsletter Spotify Playlist, featuring every song ever mentioned in this section.

Also, now there is an Official The Time Has Come Spotify Playlist.

So, what’s everybody doing around 6 p.m. ET tonight?

Gooooooooooooo Illini. Let’s do this.

Also: Here are your current leaders in our men’s tournament bracket, which included a newsletter-record 1,193 entries. I’m in 16th place, my best-ever start, but my champion, Houston, alas, lost last night:

And here are the women’s bracket leaders:

Have a great weekend, all. And remember: GO ILLINI. Did I mention that?

Best,
Will