Steve Martin walked away from an incredibly successful stand-up career, and from the outside, it's easy to wonder why on earth someone would give that up. In his memoir, "Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life," he shared stories of grueling schedules on the road, room-service dinners, and some shocking numbers, including performing in 85 different cities in just 90 days.
He explained there was a lot going on, including the exhaustion. The material was always the same, and there was no room for changing it when he had 40,000 people in an audience, all waiting for laughs. Now that he'd made it, everyone knew him — and that meant he suddenly found himself needing a security team and escorts when he went from hotel to theater to hotel ... and back again. "I experienced a concomitant depression caused by exhaustion, isolation, and creative ennui," he wrote. "I no longer had normal access to civilized life."
He was booked out years in advance, and then there was the show that made him realize that he was done. When his heart started beating erratically during a 120-degree show, he headed to the hospital. "Confident that I was dying, a nurse asked me to autograph the printout of my erratic heartbeat," he wrote. "I was becoming, like the Weinermobile, a commercial artifact."
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