Which, as you probably know by now, caused something of a shitstorm on the Upper East Side, with angry emails during the event prompting an organizer to interrupt the talk to, basically, demand that the band stop promoting the new album and play "Freebird" already, as Linda Holmes put it:
It is exactly — exactly — like demanding your money back because Elton John didn't play "Rocket Man." Too bad, so sad. Nobody promised you the cookie-cutter experience that every other audience seeing every other similar event has ever seen. When you see an artist perform — and even more so when you hear an artist interviewed — there is no guarantee of the content; that's the exact point of going. Why would you go to hear someone speak if you already knew what he was going to say? If you want to read about how Steve Martin feels about acting and comedy, couldn't you find several looseleaf binders full of that stuff? The guy is not a recluse.Worse, the 92nd Street Y wholly undermined Martin and Solomon by offering refunds to the disgruntled, essentially saying "your talk was worthless." That's just something you don't do -- it's basically a Pander Or Die notice to every future speaker, and a red flag against doing anything challenging or new. Even if the interview in fact wasn't going well, that's just the risk you take as an audience member at a live event. Sometimes Springsteen's going to play the hits; sometimes it's all "Devils & Dust" and "Dream Baby Dream" on the pump organ. You might not love it, but you can't ask for your money back either.
I saw a lot of standup comedians live growing up, and I was always disappointed when they'd just do the same routines from their HBO specials and tv. I didn't want that; I wanted to hear something new. If you want to attend events where you know exactly what you're going to receive, go see Gallagher. Steve Martin is not Gallagher, and he's not going to smash the watermelon every night. Thank goodness.
I don't know, Adam. I agree with Linda's thesis, but it sounds like from every first-person account that the problem wasn't the subject matter, but Deborah Solomon and her insufferable Deborah Solomon-ness. And, yes, that's to an extent the fault of the Y for asking her to moderate, but it still sounds like everyone in the audience got upset over, and the Y apologized for, the style of the moderation rather than its topic. And that's not unreasonable.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. Steve Martin is a comedian, writer, banjo player and probably a dozen other things I don't know about. To be honest, I don't know what I'd expect from a talk from him, but I suspect that I might learn something. It's too bad that some who attended felt this way.
ReplyDeleteBut I will agree with Alan- Deborah Solomon can be a bear!
ReplyDeleteSteve is trying to get some leverage out of this on Twitter but I'm not sure it's working.
Well, then it's up to the 92nd St Y to make their expectations clear in advance. I know that whenever Jen does an event -- and she's done an In Conversation With Candace Bushnell at that very venue -- the advance communications always confirm what Jen's planning on talking about.
ReplyDeleteAs I read it, they didn't just offer refunds to "the disgruntled," but they emailed *everyone* who attended to offer a refund. That's what makes it truly awful - they weren't just responding to those who hated the talk, but they told their entire audience, whether they enjoyed it or not, that what they had seen was boring and not up to the Y's standards. It's an insult to Steve Martin, and I think also to the 92nd Street Y audience.
ReplyDeleteAnd to be reductive, if you see someone who's on tour following the release of their new thing, whatever it is, wouldn't you expect the conversation to concentrate on said new thing? That's always my assumption.
ReplyDeleteI remember years ago seeing Al Franken speak. He was quite entertaining and had some great things to say about comedy and politics, but the Q&A turned into a bunch of college kids wanting to hear Stuart Smalley catch phrases. Franken was visibly irritated but played along gamely for a while before cutting the evening short.
umm, as is true most of the time, I agree with you Adam about how silly this is, and what a bad precedent. Where I disagree though is on Devils and Dust. I'd like to hear a concert of Devils and Dust on the pipe organ. Bruuuuuuuce.
ReplyDeleteTotally agree - when I read the first article about this, I thought there had to be more. I know two things: people at the 92nd St Y are not hostile to art, and Deborah Solomon is weirdly hostile and always annoying.
ReplyDeleteRegarding expectations, I have an expectation that an interviewer should push John Yoo harder than Seth McFarlane on the crimes against humanity committed by each (not violating the no-politics rule here, just musing on their respective roles in society), but my expectations are thwarted every Sunday.
I thought the Y, and its audience, acted horribly. My thinking is that the point of an interview, as opposed to a scripted performance, is that one gets an opportunity to get to know a celebrity (a little anyway) as a person, and not just a performer on a stage. That means that the celebrity is going to talk about things that interest them personally and reveal how they spend their time outside of work. In Steve Martin's case, he's really interested in art. If people just wanted to see the dancing monkey, and not the human being, they should have just watched his standup on YouTube or rented The Jerk. This whole incident is a testament to the fact that we as a society have become incredibly narcissistic and self-centered and expect everything to be tailored to our personal preferences rather than seeing value in learning about something that's not completely comfortable and familiar to us. It's just sad.
ReplyDeleteAfter peeing on the graves of Phil Silvers, and Peter Sellers, whoring for a dollar or two, I'm not sure Mr. Martin gets my sympathy.
ReplyDeleteAt what point did I give up my privilege of asking for a refund? If the packaging says 'two buck chuck' and I open it to find elegant, aged scotch, I still have the privilege of returning the bottle as not what I wanted. And how douche-y of a retailer would then stand there and tell me "You got better than you deserve".
Pander or die indeed.
Did Steve Martin, in fact, show up for a talk as promised? No refund.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't sound anything like this was a case of the audience revolting over Solomon trying to do something challenging and/or interesting (and count me in among the people who find her style insufferable). This was hardly the Playboy riots. She discussed at boring length a novel no one had read; the audience clapped at the note given to her midway through the discussion; Solomon got ample space to claim the audience hated art in the NYT; 92Y offered a refund.
ReplyDeleteAs someone who plans events, some VERY much like what happens at the Y, I've been following this in great detail. I'm very much in agreement with what Linda put in her post. Not every event I work on is successful (although most are, hence my continued employment.) And I have definitely had experiences where the moderators have NOT done a good job. We do our best to find moderators/interviewers who have both experience in front of crowds, are good at engaging a subject and an audience, and have a knowledge of the interviewee and an expertise on the subject matter being discussed. But sometimes they aren't as good as we hoped -- the recommendation we got on the person didn't hold up, they don't prepare appropriately as was agreed upon, we've done practice rounds with them with tips and advice and they go in the opposite direction. Yet once people are on stage it is out of our control.
ReplyDeleteAnd I can tell you NOTHING makes me feel worse than when I've watched one of my events and it doesn't match the expectations we have for them. It feels awful from an event production side. I take pride in what I do and feel TERRIBLE if something I work on goes badly. I have shed tears about these things.
HOWEVER:
Unless we promote the event as one thing and it ends up not matching what we've said it would be, we don't issue refunds to comeone who is unsatisfied. People are ALWAYS unsatisfied. At successful events, if 100 people come, there will always be someone who is unhappy. We suffer the consequences if things don't go well -- we lose customers who think all of our events will have a bad moderator, or someone writes a blog post about their unhappiness that others read, etc. Some people like to complain. You can never make everyone happy. Now from most accounts Solomon did not do a good job moderating. That's a problem, and it sucks. But this was billed as a conversation. A conversation happened. You didn't like it? Fine. And it's your right to ask for a refund. But if we were asked for a refund to this event, a sympathetic response would be given, but no refund. We would say that we were sorry they were displeased with the experience. We would ask for details as to why the customer was unhappy and note that information for evaluation and information on how to improve our events in the future. And we would describe some additonal events that we have in the future, some of which are free, and encourage the patron to give us another shot. Many of them do. Many people who complain, especially if complaints are valid, just want to be heard, and acknowledged. But no refund if we delivered on the event as billed, even if it didn't go as well as we'd hoped. See Adam's Springsteen analogy.
We have issued refunds to unhappy customers before, but that is when something within our control went wrong or we didn't give the customer what was promoted. Part of the excitement of going to a live program is that anything can happen. Sometimes the suprises can be wonderful. Sometimes not. But as a ticket purchaser, those are the chances you are taking. It is up to the event production team to do everything they can in developing the program to ensure it will be a positive experience. It's in everyone's best interest for things to go well. But if you want an assurance that something you're going to see will go exactly the way you want it, then watching something that is taped, not live, and scripted, is probably the way to go.
Sorry for the extremely long post, but this situation (obviously) has gotten me all riled up.
/End rant.
White people problems? White people problems. Steve Martin is a legend, and if you go to see him you should know that A.) he has a wide range of interests and that B.) he likes to show off that he's not just a slapsticky schlockster.
ReplyDeleteI am reminded of the scene in I'm Not There (2007) when "Dylan" (Cate Blanchett in this sequence) and Allan Ginsberg (David Cross) are wandering through a cemetery, and they see a statue of Jesus on the cross, and Dylan, alluding to the reaction of many of his fans now that he's gone electric, mock-heckles the figure with "Do some of your early stuff!"
ReplyDeleteToo bad the rest of the movie wasn't on that level of cleverness (in my opinion).
For the record: I think what the 92Y did in this case is deplorable, even almost unbelievable.
Unrelatedly, this post has given me an idea for a new Hulk Twitter account--GALLAGHERHULK--"HULK SMASH PUNY WATERMELON WITH SLEDGE-O-MATIC! WHY NO ONE LAUGH AT HULK?"
ReplyDeletepaying customers were unhappy with the product they received. isn't this how we want sellers of products or services to behave? if the customer is unhappy, they do something to compensate -- in this case they offered refunds (if customers were happy, then they could refuse the refund of course). regardless of whether they were under a moral or legal obligation to do anything, isn't this exactly how we as customers want to be treated?
ReplyDeleteThe problem is, IMHO, is that the customers were unhappy about something the venue couldn't control. If this had been billed as "Steve Martin discussed his film career" then yes, absolutely, issue a refund. But a refund isn't always warranted every time someone is unhappy. See again, Adam's Springsteen reference, or Linda Holmes Rocket Man reference.
ReplyDeletei don't think they HAD to issue a refund, but they want to keep their constituency happy. apparently, they have a history of this -- “On occasion, when a program clearly has not met our or our patrons’ expectations, we have offered patrons a credit.” so customers had come to expect that if they were unhappy, as clearly much of the audience was (thus the clapping when the note was handed to the interviewer), they would get a refund. purveyors of stuff are responsible for its quality, and if quality is low it's a black eye on the purveyor. they wanted to acknowledge that. i wish that happened more often.
ReplyDeletenot sure if it really matters, but apparently steve martin is the one who asked deborah solomon to do the interview, not the Y itself.
Could the venue give a refund? Sure. Could the venue give feedback during the performance? Sure. These things were surely within the rights of the Y.
ReplyDeleteBut I'd say that an in-demand artist/performer/entertainer/what-have-you would be well within his/her rights to take that sort of policy into account in deciding whether to agree to appear at this venue. One thing that I found fascinating about that blog (which does support the claim that the interview was not enjoyable) was that the blogger seemed to assume that, hey, Steve Martin agreed with me about the crappiness of the interview! But from his tweet (quoted in Linda Holmes' column), Martin seemed to be pretty aggrieved by how the Y handled everything.
Well, those things could both be true.
ReplyDeleteFrom Twitter, Martin was pretty pissed off.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure we won't be seeting Martin back at the Y again, and perhaps other potential guests will indeed take that into consideration. Perhaps it will make both the Y and potential guests more attuned to making sure they each know what they want the event to be about. All of those are good things, right? The Y put their customers' feelings ahead of their guests' feelings.
ReplyDeleteThis whole event seems fully ripe with potential for a rather boring Rashomon rip-off...
ReplyDelete(or a somewhat amusing bit for the NMAWorld Edition youtube page)
An unsatisfied customer asking for a refund is one thing.
ReplyDeleteWhen the company offers <span>everyone</span> who purchase the product a refund, they are admitting that it wasn't worth the price of admission.
Alot of people may have been satisfied (or even happy) with what they saw, but by offering a blanket refund you are effectively telling them that they shouldn't have been.
Add me to the Deborah Solomon haters. I'm not inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt about anything. It's mysterious to me why the New York Times gives her space. She once wasted half of an interview with Umberto Eco to argue about whether Italian fascism predated the Nazis, something that would be unforgivably stupid in a live interview, much less one that was edited for space later.
ReplyDeleteSo should I or should I not have sued Neil Young for Trans?
ReplyDeleteMy parents attended one of the remote simulcasts up in Great Barrington, Mass. They said that they spent almost the whole interview cringing uncomfortably because Deborah Solomon was SO awful -- talking too much, offering inane follow-up comments, failing to read obvious cues from Steve Martin, and generally making the whole even about her. When my parents left the theater, they ran into the woman who'd organized the simulcast, and she agreed that all the blame lay on Solomon (not on Martin or the Y).
ReplyDeleteI had no idea "Isaac Spaceman" was a pseudonym for David Geffen.<span> </span>
ReplyDelete