Talk about some awfully formidable bumbling shoes to fill.
“I understand they’re firing Peter Sellers,” says Steve Martin, his wit as dry as bleached sandpaper. “He wasn’t doing the publicity.”
Martin claims he turned down the role of “Pink Panther” Inspector Jacques Clouseau twice before “Cheaper by the Dozen” director Shawn Levy came to him to spitball a few ideas.
“He was interested in directing it,” says Martin, who enjoyed his work with Levy on “Cheaper.” “I said, `Well, I do have this one idea,’ and we passed it around and he said, `That sounds sort of funny.’ So I said, `Let me play around with the script a little bit.’ And I went home and started writing the script without anybody really knowing it. I liked what I came up with, and so here I am.”
Currently titled “The Birth of the Pink Panther,” the film–due out in 2005–is Martin’s next project after the film adaptation of his novel “Shopgirl.”
Many of his ideas for Clouseau remain “unformed” says Martin, who was reluctant to give away too many details about the story on which he could get a screenwriting credit. The Internet Movie Database describes “Birth” as a “prequel” that finds Clouseau trying to solve the murder of a famed soccer coach and determine–what else?–the whereabouts of the missing Pink Panther diamond.
“The question was whether this could be sort of revitalized and updated with another actor,” says Martin. “The thing about Peter Sellers is that he was the absolute perfect person for that character he created. So my task is to, within the context of the `Pink Panther,’ create a character that I feel that comfortable in.”