Documentary gets to grips with a veteran entertainer of many parts
Steve Martin has long marvelled at the many phases of his life.
There’s his youth as a Disneyland performer, surrounded by vaudeville performers and magicians. A decade as a stand-up comedian before the sudden onset of stadium-sized popularity. An abrupt shift to films. Later, a new chapter as a banjo player, a father and, a comedy act, again, with Martin Short.
People participate in documentaries for all kinds of reasons. But Martin may be unique in making a film about his life with the instruction of: “See if you can make sense of all that.”
Morgan Neville, the documentary filmmaker,, took up the challenge. Yet Neville, too, was hesitant about any holistic view of Martin.
The resulting film is really two. STEVE! (Martin): A Documentary in 2 Pieces, premiering today on Apple TV+, splits Martin’s story into two halves.
One depicts Martin’s stand-up comedy career as it unfolded, with copious contributions from journal entries and old photographs. The other captures Martin’s life as it is today – riding electric bikes with Short, practising the banjo – with reflections on the career that followed.
Neville did not set out to make two films about Martin. But six months into the process, it crystallised for him as the right structure.
“When I look at the things Steve’s done in his life – playing banjo, magic, stand-up – these are things that take great effort to master,” Neville says. “But in a way, it’s the constant working at it. Even seeing Steve pick up a banjo, it’s never, ‘I nailed it’. It’s always: ‘I could do that a little better’.”
Looking back has not come naturally to Martin. He has long resisted the kind of life-story treatment of a film like STEVE! But Martin, 78, accepts he is now at that time of life where you cannot help it. Even if reliving some things hurts.
“The first part, that’s what I really have a hard time watching,” Martin says. “When I’m on blackand-white home-made video being so not funny.”
Martin grew up in Orange County, California, in awe of Jerry Lewis, Laurel and Hardy and Nichols and May. His first job, as an 11-year-old, was selling guide books at Disneyland. Stage performers like Wally Boag became his idols.
When, after studying philosophy in college and writing for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, he began stand-up, he drew from Boag and others, filtering the showmanship of vaudeville into an avant-garde act, just with balloon animals and an arrow through his head.
Donning the persona of, as he says in the film, “a comedian who thinks he is funny but isn’t”, his routine moved away from punchlines and towards an absurd irony with “free-form laughter”.
In 1981, Martin quit stand-up, he thought for good. It was not until decades later, when he prepared to tour as a banjo player, that a friend convinced him audiences were going to want a little banter in between songs.
“So I had this terror and I started working on material,” Martin says.
“Eventually, I became what I grew up with.”
That has bled into Martin’s return to stand-up. Martin and Short, friends since the 1986 comedy Three Amigos! have become the premier double act of today.
Martin likes to say he has a “relaxed mind” now. He has narrowed his life down to things that matter most to him.
“I have this thing that I have noticed,” Martin says. “As we age, we either become our best selves or our worst selves. I have seen people become their worst selves and I have seen people who were tough, difficult people early on become better selves.”