Critics and casual readers have long suspected Steve Martin was waxing autobiographical when he wrote Shopgirl, his bittersweet novella about the short-lived romance between Ray Porter, a fiftysomething dot-com millionaire, and Mirabelle, a twentysomething department store clerk. And those suspicions may turn into certainties now that Martin can be seen as the male lead in the movie version of his book (based on his own adapted screenplay).
Even now, though, Martin insists that his art shouldn’t be read as autobiography. And he gracefully evades most skeptical questions on the subject. Never mind that 36-year-old artist Allyson Hollingsworth recently admitted to the New York Times that Shopgirl was “inspired” by her relationship with Martin. (The novella, it should be noted, is dedicated “For Allyson.”) The 60-year-old Martin will never be pinned down so easily.
Q: Weren’t you just a little worried that if you played Ray Porter yourself, that would only intensify the perception that Shopgirl is autobiographical?
A: Not really. I always think of it like Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter. I don’t look at him and think, “Hmmm. He’s probably a serial killer.”
Q: Maybe so. Still, you must know many people assume Shopgirl is at least partially drawn from your own experiences.
A: But who really knows what of this is me, or them, or the others? Or where this or that from the book came from? I mean, I don’t know. To me, it’s all an artistic process of interpreting one’s own life – and other people’s lives that you’ve encountered, experiences you’ve had and experiences you’ve heard about. So there’s no way to answer the question of how much is autobiographical. I mean, who knows? Maybe a little bit of it is me. But there’s a little bit of me in Father of the Bride, too.
Q: Have you ever worried that, like Ray Porter, you have kept people at arm’s length?
A: In a personal way?
Q: Yes.
A: Um, no. I have a lot of good friends, I’ve been married, I’m in a relationship. I have my transition periods – but only like anyone else, I think.
Q: Like the book, the movie is mostly nonjudgmental about Ray’s relationship with Mirabelle. What’s you’re personal take on it?
A: In a way, for Ray, it’s like a teen-age affair that takes place later in life. With a teen-age affair, it’s all going on, going on – but at the same time, you know it’s finite somehow. Or maybe you don’t, but everybody else knows it’s going to be finite. And I think Ray Porter was still doing a teen-age affair – almost like a business deal, finite – and assumed that everybody involved understood finite. I think one of the lessons – well, if not a lesson, one of the comments in the book is, nobody understands finite. You can say it a million times, but people still believe they’re in a relationship. At some point, it’s always going to be painful. Except maybe for the proverbial one-night stand, you know? Because that is a real mutual agreement. In my old days – in my really old days, I would say – that would happen completely like a handshake. And nobody really cared. That was in the late ‘60s, by the way.
Q: In Shopgirl – the book and the movie – Los Angeles is so vividly defined that it almost becomes a major supporting character. Is there any other place on earth that could inspire you as writer in the same way?
A: A good question. I wrote a lot of Shopgirl while traveling around, but L.A. certainly was on my mind. You see, L.A. is where I grew up. I first thought of writing Shopgirl set in New York. But this voice in my head kept saying: “You know L.A.” And I knew what was going to be important in the book was incredible detail. Very specific detail. And I just didn’t have that for New York, that kind of insight. I mean, I haven’t been on a subway since I was 20, you know what I mean? But in L.A., I know the routine.
Q: The book and the movie appear to suggest that Los Angeles can be a sad and lonely place.
A: I don’t know about that. I’ve written a lot about L.A., and I always describe it as beautiful. To me, human relationships can be sad, can be exhilarating – but it’s not a product of the city. And it takes different forms. Like, in New York, you’re always with people. You can’t go outdoors, you can’t go into the subway, you can’t go anywhere without running into people you don’t know. But in L.A., you really have to work a bit to be exposed. You have to be standing in a shop, you have to join a club, or join a community service thing, or go to a nightclub in order to meet people. Because there’s not the same transitory proximity to other people.
Q: Shopgirl reads like a deeply personal story. Maybe that’s why people assume it is your story.
A: But remember, I’ve written two novels. Both are very personal in the sense that you really get into them — you get into the sentences and you get into the characters – but certainly my second book, The Pleasure of My Company, has no autobiography in it at all. So that intimacy comes whether the book is autobiographical or not.
