Steve Martin is one of my all-time favorite creative people. What makes him so special is that he somehow managed to rebel against a group of comedians who were themselves in a rebellion. He became the most financially successful stand-up comedian of all time, selling out arenas years in advance. He was one of the first rock starts of comedy. In the process, he developed an entirely new genre of stand-up comedy, known today as anti-comedy. Anti-comedy is the art of being so unfunny, that you’re funny. It’s telling a corny, awful pun, but selling it as if it were pure genius.
To understand his story, we have to go back to time before the Golden Age of Comedy. In the 1950’s, comedy, like the rest of the country, was very polite. As people become tired of the Vietnam War, there was more and more political unrest. Stand-up comedy, which has always been an excellent weathervane for the general feelings of the country, followed suit. The polite comedians of the old era, comedians like Bob Hope, were no longer the hottest ticket in town. Comedians like Richard Pryor and George Carlin lead a comedy coup against the old order. The rebellion picked up steam. Soon, comedians were always angry on stage. They were always raging against the government and the war. Comedy was angry.

In the 1960’s a young comedian named Steve Martin wasn’t feeling it. Martin was more interested in doing magic tricks and playing the banjo. In fact, early on he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to be a comedian or a philosopher.
It was in one of his philosophy books that he found 2 logic equations that planted the first seeds of anti-comedy. A logic equation is used to prove a point by first proving smaller pieces, called premises. Here is one of the logic equations that inspired Steve Martin early on: 1) No interesting poems are unpopular among people of real taste. 2)  No modern poetry is free from affectation. 3)  All of your poems are on the subject of soap bubbles. 4)  No affected poetry is popular among people of taste. 5)  Only a modern poem would be on the subject of soap bubbles. Conclusion: Therefore, all your poems are uninteresting.”

The logic equation fascinated Martin in a way that others hadn’t. They were funny, but they were funny in a way that Martin hadn’t ever seen before.

Martin’s early career was often disastrous. He was so different from other comedians that the audience wasn’t sure what to do with him. Every other comedian told easily identifiable jokes. Martin was working from the belief that if he told enough bad jokes, he could get the audience to feel so much tension that they’d eventually have to let it out as laughter. And so he let the bad jokes fly, one after the other.

Over time, Martin started having more successes on stage then failures, but his uniqueness was always an issue early on. Audiences either got it and loved it, or they had no idea what was going on.

Martin’s extremely unique approach to comedy caught the eye of producers for Saturday Night Live. His performance was a major success. He became a rockstar practically overnight. In his autobiography, he talks about his first show after SNL. When he took the stage, the audience shouted and cheered so loudly that it frighten and shocked him. This wasn’t how comedy audience normally behave, but then again, this wasn’t a normal comedy show.

Martin’s extremely consistent approach to maximizing uniqueness was his biggest barrier to success early on, but it was what made him so incredibly unique later. Steve Martin was the only comedian willing to pursue anti-comedy. He was willing to learn what works and what doesn’t. The original idea of using anti-comedy made him incredibly unique. But it was his determination in learning the rules of anti-comedy that made him the success he is today.

I love watching old videos of Steve Martin because you can see this idea of anti-comedy developing over time. His TV appearances in the 1960’s had elements of anti-comedy in it. You can clearly see what he was try to do… but his idea wasn’t yet mature. He was still trying to figure out the rules himself. Little by little, he figured out how to take something incredibly unique and make it effective as well. Once that happened, he was unstoppable. He was so unique that it no longer mattered what anybody else was doing. There was only one of him. He got so effective at using anti-comedy that all the look-a-likes weren’t able to compete. How could they possibly figure out the rules of anti-comedy better than the guy who had already spent 10 years perfecting it?

So often as artists, we’re afraid of having our unique ideas stolen. History tells a different story though. People only steal safe ideas that are easy bets. They don’t steal wildly original and unique ideas. Any comedian could have stolen Steve Martin’s style any time over his first 10 years. But they didn’t. It was only after he was already successful that the copy-cats came out. And at that point, he was so good at what you did that they didn’t matter.

Of course we should do what we can to guard our ideas from being stolen, but we shouldn’t live in fear of it. We should be more afraid of never tapping our creative potential. Don’t be afraid to trust yourself and what makes you unique.