It is such a confusing series of chapters that Martin has generally only approached his life in a fragmented or schizophrenic manner. Titled an audiobook So Many Steves (Tantos Steves). His autobiography Born Standing Up, covers only his comedy years stand-up. In it he wrote that it was actually a biography: “because I’m writing about someone I used to know.”
“My life has many octopus arms,” says Martin, speaking from his New York apartment.
People participate in documentaries for all kinds of reasons. But Martin may be the only one to make a movie about his life with the instruction: “I hope you can make sense of all THAT.” Morgan Neville, the documentary filmmaker of the Fred Rogers film Won’t You Be My Neighbor and the posthumous portrait of Anthony Bourdain Roadrunner, I accept the challenge.
However, Neville was also doubtful of any holistic view of Martin. The film he produced is actually two. STEVE! (martin) a documentary in 2 pieces opens on Friday in the United States Apple TV+, divides Martin’s story into two halves. One represents the stand-up by Martin, with copious contributions from his diary and old photographs. The other captures Martin’s life as it is today, riding e-bikes with Short, practicing the banjo, with reflections on the stages of his career that followed afterwards.
Retrospective of his rise
It’s an attempt to synthesize all the Steve Martins, or at least line them up side by side. The kind of King Tut with the arrow through the head. The wild and crazy guy. The idiot. The Grammy Award Winner. The novel writer. And the comedian who says in the movie: “I guarantee you he had no talent. None.”
“I’m going to say something very immodest: I’m modest about my career,” Martin says, laughing. “Just because you do a lot of things doesn’t mean they’re good. I know that time evaluates things. So there’s nothing I can rely on to evaluate my efforts. But a stranger can make sense of it.”
Neville, who joined the video call from his home in Pasadena, California, didn’t set out to make two movies about Martin. But six months into the process, it became clear to him that it was the right structure.
“When I look at the things Steve has done in his life, playing the banjo, magic, stand-up, those are things that take a lot of effort to master,” Neville says. “But in a way, it’s the constant work at it. Even when Steve picks up a banjo, he never says, ‘I made it.’ It’s always, ‘I could do it a little better.'”
Looking back doesn’t come naturally to Martin. He has long resisted the kind of movie treatment like STEVE! But Martin, 78, recognizes that he is now at that point in life where he can’t help it, even if doing so shows up things that he doesn’t like so much.
“The first part, that’s what’s really hard for me to watch,” Martin says. “When I’m on a black and white home video, being so unfunny.”
First steps
Martin grew up in Orange County marveling at comedians like Jerry Lewis, Laurel and Hardy, and Nichols and May. His first job, at age 11, was selling guides at Disneyland. He then switched to the magic shop on Main Street. Theatrical artists like Wally Boag became his idols.
When Martin, after studying philosophy at university and writing for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, began doing stand-up, drawing copious inspiration from Boag and others, filtering the showmanship of vaudeville into an avant-garde act, only with balloon animals and an arrow through his head. With his personality, as he says in the film: “a comedian who thinks he’s funny, but he’s not,” his routine moved away from jokes and toward absurd irony with free laughs.
Martin’s act was groundbreaking and, in the 1970s, when most comedians were doing political material, it became very popular. “He’s right up there with the most idolized comedians of all time,” Jerry Seinfeld says in the film. Now, Martín doesn’t see much from those years that makes him laugh.
“Then there are these moments that I consider the glory of the performance, but they last a minute or two. It was all so new. It was exciting because it was new for the audience and for me.”
The perfection
Martin tends to be hard on himself. In a late scene of STEVE!, He and Short are going over potential jokes, but most don’t make the cut for Martin.
It’s tempting to consider something of this nature to be due to Martin’s famously critical father, Glenn, a real estate salesman who had his own unrealized ambitions in show business. At dinner after the premiere of The Jerk, declared that his son was not Charlie Chaplin. But Martin disagrees.
“I don’t think so,” says Martin. “It’s good to be hard on yourself. It’s just the way I do it. I just want to go over it and go over it. I realize it’s all in the details. It’s all in the moment.”
That makes Martin think of a joke he and Short have considered for their act, but which so far has seemed too esoteric.
“I tell him, ‘You know, Marty, some comedians say funny things. And some comedians say funny things. And you just say… things,'” Martin says, laughing. “But there is a truth in saying funny things and saying things in a funny way. You walk the edge. Our lives now are about saying funny things and before it was about saying things in a funny way.”
Return to comedy
It is a dialogue, typically exact in its composition, that perfectly represents the irony of Martin’s own life. In 1981, Martin left stand-up comedy and thought it was for good. He believed his act had fulfilled his life and was happy to make the transition to film. It wasn’t until decades later, when Martin prepared to go on tour as a banjo player, that a friend convinced him that audiences would want a little comedy between songs.
“So I had this terror and started working on the material,” Martin says. “Eventually it became what I grew up with, which is a folk music act with a funny stand-up performer, doing funny intros to the songs.”
That has translated into Martin’s unexpected return to the stand-up. Martin and Short, friends since the 1986 comedy Three Amigos! (Three friends), have become today’s leading double act, starring in the acclaimed Hulu series Only Murders in the Building and performing on tour. In a sharp but affectionate manner, jokes are exchanged with the delicacy of Grand Slam champions.
The irony is not lost on Martin. The comedian without jokes has become a lover of jokes.
“I’ve become a person who really appreciates the joy of telling jokes,” Martin says. “On our show Marty and I are joke after joke after joke.”
Family
It’s not the only change Martin never expected. After spending most of his life not wanting children, Martin and his wife of 17 years, Anne Stringfield, have an 11-year-old daughter. He appears only as a caricature in ¡STEVE! to protect your identity.
Even more disconcerting for Martin: after a life plagued by anxiety, he is strangely content. Maybe even happy. “Yeah, I hate to say it,” Martin says, shaking his head.
Martin likes to say that he now has a relaxed mind. He has let go of many things (competitiveness, people or situations that caused him pain) and has reduced his life to the things that matter most to him.
“I have one thing I’ve noticed,” Martin says. “As we get older, we become our best selves or our worst selves. I’ve seen people become their worst selves and I’ve seen people who were tough, difficult people become better selves.”
In the film, Martin says, “I look back and say, ‘What a strange life.’ My whole life was backwards.”
Source: AP
