"Dentist!" by Steve Martin

Since the definitive video record of Steve Martin's only charted pop hit King Tut was on Saturday Night Live (and is therefore being zealously kept off of YouTube by Lorne Michaels' web-crawling minions) I've decided to go with my second choice of Steve Martin's best performances to fill this video slot; still, as these things go, this is a pretty sensational number to have to settle for.

Dentist! is just one of the many entertaining, Fifties-esque numbers in the 1986 musical Little Shop of Horrors; as funny as the song is, though, Martin's even funnier subsequent scene with Bill Murray is just showing off. In the film Martin plays a sadomasochistic dentist* named Orin Scrivello DDS, whose torment of his girlfriend Audrey (Ellen Greene) spurs Seymour (Rick Moranis) to try to kill him; in the end of course...

Well, I'd hate to ruin the ending for you by providing the spoiler in case you're one of the unlucky few who have yet to see the film, but suffice it to say, the phrase 'die laughing' is entirely apropo on several levels.

*Or is that a rhetorical tautology?
*

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