brief encounters #5: steve martin needs his table

Steve Martin can’t believe his table has been taken

Watching Theresa Rebeck’s I Need That on Broadway earlier this week, in which Danny DeVito portrays a hoarder — more on that in a future post — I couldn’t help but think of Steve Martin’s character in The Jerk.

Getting kicked out of his mansion by his wife (Bernadette Peters), Navin Johnson (Martin) pathetically cries out, “I don’t need this stuff!,” sweeping piles of letters off his desk. “And I don’t need you! I don’t need anything!” Navin, in a ratty bathrobe, pants around his ankles, then notices an ashtray and, picking it up, declares, “Except this.” Soon his arms are full of random objects and he’s heading to the front door. “I don’t need one other thing,” he calls out. “Not one — I need this,” he whimpers, grabbing an ordinary chair.

Earlier that day, at physical therapy, they were playing The Pink Panther 2 on the television, the reboot sequel in which Martin is once again Inspector Jacques Clouseau of the French Sûreté, the role made famous by Peter Sellers.

After the play, my mind hurtled back about twenty years, when I was editor in chief of a free local weekly newsmagazine. I was doing a story on the beloved Italian restaurant San Domenico at 240 Central Park South. (Owned by Tony May, it closed in 2008 over a rent dispute with the landlord.) We had an early reservation, so the place was nearly empty.

We were ushered to a great table and given menus. As we perused the choices, I couldn’t help but notice that Martin and a younger, dark-haired woman had just entered and came to a standstill when they saw us. The maître d’ and Martin exchanged a few words, and then Martin and his guest were led to a table.

As I quietly told my wife that Steve Martin was there, I could feel a pair of beady eyes staring me down. It was Martin, the actor I had loved in All of Me, Roxanne, The Spanish Prisoner, and Murders in the Building as well as on SNL — and who is the voice of God in the Spamalot revival.

He looked angry.

We ordered our food and started to talk, but I was distracted.

“Is he still staring at us?” I asked.

My wife slowly glanced over and said yes.

When the waiter brought us our drinks, I whispered, “This might be a strange question, but why is Steve Martin staring at us?”

Without peeking over at Martin, he answered, “Oh, don’t worry about him. You’re sitting at his table.”

Dismayed, I said, “Should we get up?”

“No, no,” the waiter said. “He didn’t let us know in advance that he was coming, so there’s nothing we can do about it. He’s going to have to learn he can’t just show up and expect his table to be waiting for him.”

A few minutes later, I took a gander over at Martin. He was still giving me the evil eye.

I merely shrugged at him and started eating.

As Navin Johnson says in a French restaurant — after ordering “fresh wine, the freshest you’ve got, this year’s; no more of this old stuff” and before he complains that there are snails on his wife’s plate — he tells her, “He doesn’t realize he’s dealing with sophisticated people here.”

While Navin has to leave his house, DeVito’s hoarder, Sam, faced with possible eviction by the fire department, proclaims, “This is my home, my space, my stuff. I choose.”

Martin merely felt the same about his table.

Don’t get me wrong; I am not trying to say that Steve Martin is a jerk. In addition to being fans of a number of his movies, my wife and I have read several of his books, saw his Broadway play, and followed his hilarious Twitter feed (which has sadly been deleted; he now can be found on Instagram, posting much less frequently).

Maybe he was just having a bad day when we saw him at San Domenico.

Well, excuuuse me. . . .

[You can follow Mark Rifkin and This Week in New York every day here.]