“Neil Simon had a great line,” Steve Martin told Vanity Fair last month. “‘When it’s 15 degrees in New York, it’s 72 in L.A. When it’s 110 in New York, it’s 72 in L.A. There are 6 million interesting people in New York—there are 72 in L.A.’”
It’s a good joke about Los Angeles. But the concept of L.A. being a superficial place is not one that Martin, who grew up in the city, ever believed himself. “There’s superficiality in everything,” pointed out Martin. “My producer Danny Melnick had a permanent Champagne bucket on the side of his bed. But he was also an extremely talented producer who gave me good hints and pointers.”
Martin has fond memories of attending school beneath the LAX flight path and working at nearby Disneyland, where he fostered a love of magic at the Main Street Magic Shop. But in 1990, after successfully crossing into film from stand-up—and following a string of hits like The Jerk, Roxanne, and Three Amigos!—Martin looked at his native town from an outsider’s perspective. That’s when he realized that, to a foreigner, it did seem kind of odd.
People endured nervous breakdown-inducing traffic jams and manic power lunches at the Polo Lounge. High colonics were a health craze. Restaurant reservation waits were absurd. And breast implants abounded.
“I talked to English people, and they remarked how unusual L.A. was, and that it was a land of mysteries,” said Martin. He’d poke fun at the city’s strange charms via L.A. Story’s rat-a-tat dialogue. “Well, I was thinking of taking you on a cultural tour of L.A.,” Martin’s character tells his English love interest, played by Victoria Tennant. “That’s the first 15 minutes,” she spits back. “Then what?”
Martin was inspired by other idiosyncrasies too—like blinking-message signs on freeways that seemed almost eerily personalized to the person driving past. After seeing one, Martin thought, “What if it started talking to me? And then I pictured this underground network of electronic freeway signs that were interconnected, and trying to help you.”
The idea sounds a little out there in retrospect. But, said Martin, “At the time I was emboldened, because I’d had a lot of successes, and some good screenwriting accomplishments.” And Melnick, the producer with the Champagne bucket on the side of his bed, “was encouraging.”
The film stars Martin as a weatherman who falls for Tennant’s British journalist, after a relationship with Marilu Henner’s social climber and a fling with Sarah Jessica Parker’s bouncy bimbo fizzle out. In real life, Martin was married to Tennant while writing L.A. Story, but the comedian said that he didn’t write the rom-com as any kind of valentine. “It would be romantic if I did,” acknowledged Martin, “but it really was just a screenplay.”
Martin’s real-life romantic inspiration, he revealed, was an Irish folk song, “The Maid of Coolmore.”
The lyrics are written from the perspective of a man who falls for a woman only for her to get on a ship and sail away. Heartbroken, he sings that he would turn the winds around to return her if he could.
“I thought it was so beautiful,” said Martin. “I tried to incorporate it into L.A. Story. Where L.A., the signs, and the weather conspire to save a romance.”