A late great character actor lamented on his deathbed that “dying is easy … but comedy is hard.”
Comedy has gotten a lot harder in other ways. A lot of comedy is mean or politically radioactive.
If you are one of the 11 people who still watch late-night talk shows, you see a lot of self-important posturing, preaching to a choir of like-minded audience members, and few real jokes.
And then there is Martin Short. He is a true comic talent and a throwback in a lot of ways. He has never been afraid to play the “fool.” He understands his job is to be the object of the joke and not be “in” on the joke. It is such an old concept that it feels new again.
The current Netflix documentary “Marty, Life is Short,” directed by acclaimed writer-director Lawrence Kasdan, gives us the life and times of Martin Short in a big way. There are a lot of “big” people in it. I usually steer clear of this kind of A-list celebrity in the natural habitat, being “special” in their luxury homes, or on their luxury vacations, etc. But despite the plethora of such home movies like this in the documentary, the main subject of the film, Martin Short, makes it worth watching for good reasons.
I came to this film with a bias. Martin Short has always made me laugh. When I first saw him on “Saturday Night Live” during his short stint, when it was not very funny, every sketch with Martin Short was an event. Then, with “SCTV,” a show I always thought far outpaced “SNL” in the comedy department and had a perfect cast, Short more than held his own.
The Netflix film is not about a showbiz career, even though Short’s is not ignored in the documentary. And it is not about a famous comic actor with a lot of famous friends. The film is so much more important than that, as it is about joy and love in their most basic and beautiful ways.
Many comedians, some of them among the greatest comic talents of different generations, emerged from a life filled with trauma and awfulness. Many other comedians publicly display extremely happy and high-energy personas, but in real life are morose and depressed individuals. In my own checkered showbiz-adjacent career, I met several of them. More than a few were funny when a camera was on, but were equally unpleasant when the cameras were off.
That is not the case with Martin Short. He loved his childhood. He loved his mother and father, and they seemed to love Short and his four siblings as well. He is still close to his surviving siblings and their joyful interactions in the film bring us to the reason this is a film worth watching.
Though it has two or three profane words thrown in for no reason, this is a movie about the power of joy. But it is also a life, like all our lives, touched by sorrow. Short lost his mom as a young teen, then his oldest brother in a car accident. By the time Short was 20, his broken-hearted father passed away as well.
Then there was Nancy. They were married for 36 years. She was his wife and his soul mate. A habitual home videographer, the documentary borrows copious amounts of footage Short shot himself of his life. And we see he and his wife go through many stages of marriage in the process. They travel from newlyweds to a couple dealing with infertility to a family with three adoptive children.
Toward the end of those 36 years, we get a look into how a husband copes with the cancer his wife and mother of his children is afflicted with. And like Short himself, Nancy had this sense of joy even in the light (or darkness) of her prognosis.
I have no idea if Martin Short was born and raised a Catholic. That his parents were Irish immigrants living in Canada with five children is kind of a hint. But regardless of his affiliation, he has mastered the art of joy we Catholics are supposed to have and so many times fail to conjure.
The death that Martin Short has experienced in his life could not have been easy, despite that deathbed pronouncement by the old actor. But his joy and comic touch were anything but hard. His joy was an act of will in the face of sadness and through that, he has weathered his tough times. It is a treatise on living joyfully that every Christian should emulate.
