At times Sunday night, Steve Martin and Martin Short's "An Evening You Will Never Forget" felt like we'd been invited to Thanksgiving dinner with bickering brothers eager to one-up each other.
Those are the best kind of Thanksgiving gatherings. You sit back while big brother Martin takes aim at his little bro Short β You've done a lot of movies, which all landed in the Walmart clearance bin β and Short retorts that Martin is so white that "in the '80s, I tried to snort you."
Ah, such love.
For two hours on Sunday, with a crowd nearly filling the two-thirds reconfigured Tucson Arena, Martin and Short invited us into their wacky and wonderful 30-plus-year friendship. They reminded themselves and us that it all started in Tucson when they were filming "Three Amigos" at Old Tucson Studios in 1985.
Short recalled that when he went to Martin's Hollywood home that spring to get the script, he was impressed by the notable, expensive artwork on the walls.
He ticked off the names of famous artists including Picasso and threw the punchline: "How did you get so rich? I've seen your movies and ..." You can fill in the blanks where that sentiment landed.
Martin's response: "You know what I love about touring with Martin? No paparazzi."
"You look like Anderson Cooper frozen on New Year's Eve," Short slipped in.
And like any respectable family holiday gathering, there was the trek through the family photo albums: both men as babies; a shot of Short on a beach with his parents who were straining to hide their disappointment in their then chunky son; Martin with a bushy head of dark hair in his early 20s; Short's all-ears geeky high school yearbook photo that Martin said should have come with a tagline: "Most likely to marry a cousin."
Then there was the paparazzi shot of the pair on a beach on a nearly deserted island get-away. The picture shows a paunchy Martin in the water with Short, whose shorts showed his butt crack.
That's a keeper.
Sunday's "An Evening You Will Never Forget" felt every bit like an old-fashioned variety show, with singing, dancing and telling jokes. Early in the night, Martin and Short jumped off the stage and snagged three men in the front row to come up and play the "Three Amigos" when the pair recreated the "My Little Buttercup" scene from the movie. The comedians plopped sombreros on the trio and showed them how to do the Three Amigos' signature move β hands across the shoulders, hip twist and then pelvis thrust.
The men were pretty clunky on the first try; "I know you've heard this before, but you're a little late on your thrust," Short told one of the men. When the man blushed beneath the sombrero that nearly swallowed his head, the audience laughed along.
During the show, Short and Martin each had time alone. Short brought back some of his bits from his one-man show that he brought to Centennial Hall a few years ago including one where he was wearing a nude suit β a skin-colored one-piece that made it appear he was naked.
"Don't pity me," he told the laughing crowd."My rock bottom is still your wildest dream."
Martin brought out his banjo and his longtime collaborators the Steep Canyon Rangers to perform a few songs including his new novelty song "I Can Play the Banjo." Everytime Steep Canyon bajo player Graham Sharp showed him up, Martin shot him a faux angry look and on the big screen at the back of the stage "Starring Steve Martin" flashed in big black letters to remind Sharp who's in charge.
Then they did a ventriloquist skit with Short recreating his popular Jiminy Glick character as a puppet controlled by Martin.
One of the show's most poignant moments came when Short was going through a slide show of celebrity photos and telling Martin how he would impersonate them: Kim Jong-un as "a bouncer in a lesbian bar," Michael Cohen as the man who flipped more positions than Stormy Daniels, Hillary Clinton as the only woman who could testify under oath that she did not have sex with Bill Clinton.
The final slide was a photograph of Arizona Sen. John McCain, who died on Saturday after a year-long battle with brain cancer.
"That man is a hero and the embodiment of class," Short said above thunderous applause.
