Marty, Life Is Short — Movies for the Rest of Us with Bill Newcott

Marty, Life Is Short

Run Time: I hour 39 minutes

Stars: Martin Short, Steve Martin, Tom Hanks, Catherine O’Hara, Andrea Martin

Director: Lawrence Kasdan

Streaming on Netflix

 

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say there are few performers more universally beloved than Martin Short, whose gigawatt energy has illuminated TV, stage, and movies for over five decades, whose insanely wide array of talents, not to mention transparent kindness, make him a guy to whom audiences are instantly, irresistibly drawn.

In this big-hearted, tribute-packed documentary, Oscar-nominated director Lawrence Kasdan (The Big Chill, Body Heat), one of Short’s oldest friends, tenderly guides us through a carefully calibrated account of the comedian’s alternately triumphant and tragic life.

A galaxy of Short’s celebrity friends — among them Tom Hanks, Steve Martin, Andrea Martin, Eugene Levy and Steven Spielberg — stand in line to bestow adoring testimonials regarding his generosity and endless good humor. Abundant home videos testify to his fierce devotion to his family.

And there are performance clips — some dating back to Short’s 1950s childhood in Toronto — to remind us that if ever there was someone born to perform, it was this runt of the litter among five middle-class kids whose father was a steel company executive and whose violinist mother was concertmistress for the Hamilton Symphony Orchestra.

Here’s young Marty costarring in the Toronto stage production of Godspell. Here he is on a Canadian variety show trying to make it as a Sinatra-style crooner. Then, brace yourself for a series of laugh-out-loud clips from his years with Second City Television (SCTV), where Short honed his skill for creating uncannily rendered sketch characters like Vegas hotshot Jackie Rogers Jr., squeamishly inept celebrity interviewer Jiminy Glick, and especially the manic, socially awkward Ed Grimley, who dances like an electrocuted rag doll and ends each sentence with “…I must say.”

“Marty operates at the speed of joy,” says Tom Hanks. But Short’s seeming natural propensity for happiness has been sorely tested all his life: His beloved older brother died in an accident. His mom died when he was in high school. His dad passed away just a few years later.

“We had speed dial to the funeral parlor,” Short jokes to his brother, Emmy-winning writer Michael, who can’t help but chuckle.

“But there were laughs during those years,” Martin adds, “and that’s the point.”

For all its laughs — and there are more in this brisk hour-and-a-half film than you can count — a cloud of melancholy nevertheless hovers just offscreen. Sixteen years after the death of his wife, Nancy Dolman, it’s clear Short still misses the great love of his life. As Short sits down to chat with his old Second City chum Catherine O’Hara, just months before her sudden passing last January, we can’t help but share the ache he must now feel for that loss.

Even more poignant are clips of Short’s daughter, Katherine, who died of suicide in February, after the film wrapped. When Andrea Martin tells the camera “Being a dad; it’s as genuine as his breath,” well, how can any audience member be expected to keep it together? (Marty, Life Is Short is dedicated to both O’Hara and his daughter.)

But don’t paint Martin Short as a proverbial sad clown. He’ll be the first to remind you that while tragedy may be a fact of life, joy is the engine that keeps us going.

On the day his daughter died, Short recently told an interviewer, “I was thinking…what is the point of this?”

Then he visited the home of his son, Oliver, and was greeted by his two young grandsons, waiting to roughhouse with him.

“Oh,” Short reminded himself, “that’s why.”

Life really is short. And, if we let it, sweet.