This is Steve Martin’s Favorite Movie Character
Steve Martin, Selena Gomez and Martin Short sat around for Vogue recently, answering questions about their careers as a sly way to shill for a new season of Only Murders in the Building. Gomez threw out a query that stumped Short, but it was one that Martin didn’t hesitate to answer: “Favorite character you’ve ever played, aside from Only Murders?”
The question was a literal chin-scratcher for Short. “I’ll raise my hand while you’re thinking,” Martin said. “Roxanne. C.D. Bales.”
Roxanne remains one of Martin’s most successful films, both critically and commercially. In the 1980s, he wrote 25 drafts of the screenplay over three years, updating the story of Cyrano de Bergerac so that the big-nosed guy would finally get the girl. The script won Martin a Writers’ Guild Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. In his book, Number One Is Walking, the comic revealed he had two speeches prepared. If he won? “Thank you so much for this great honor.” If he lost? “You idiots. You morons. You wouldn’t know a good screenplay if it vomited on your shoes.”
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“It was a fun character to play,” Martin told his Only Murders costars. “It was alive and kicking, had a lot of energy. Had a big nose.”
Martin spent hours in makeup to apply the prosthetic, but the worst part was walking around town once it was affixed to his face. “By the end of the six-week shoot,” he wrote in Number One Is Walking, “I was getting pretty tired of people saying, ‘Nice nose.”
What role represented Short’s C.D. Bales? Either he didn’t have one or refused to say. “Listen, I’ve played so many characters, and I suppose they’re all my children,” sighed Short, “so I love them all.”
Short’s response was met with disdain by his costars. “That’s not a good answer,” said Martin, offering one of his own. “I would have to say that your favorite character is the most extreme, and the one that to me is the most extreme is the parody of the Wizard of Oz guy bouncing off the fence.”
“Dale O’Day,” confirmed Short. But Martin got one important detail wrong — the character wasn’t bouncing off a fence. He was an actual sentient fence, and Martin might not be wrong about it being Short’s best character.
Considering that the Wizard of Oz goof appeared in Short’s 1989 HBO special, I, Martin Short, Goes Hollywood — two years before Gomez was born — it’s understandable that she had no idea what her coworkers were giggling about.
“Now I feel left out," she complained — without revealing her favorite role either.
