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STEVE! (martin) a documentary in 2 pieces review – intimate portrait of a comedy legend

From his childhood job in Disneyland and huge standup success to movie stardom and later life career as a dry humorist this is a fascinating insight into a wild and crazy career

Part one is conventionally autobiographical, with archive clips and family photos and Martin’s own sonorous, ironic voiceover covering his painful childhood: failing to please his strict dad and then the extraordinary, 15-year battle to make it as a standup, finally becoming a colossal stadium-level success in his mid-30s powered by smash-hit TV appearances on David Letterman and Johnny Carson. The box office disaster of his 1981 film Pennies From Heaven – sadly no mention of the Dennis Potter BBC TV classic it’s based on – was a terrible experience for him, his first brush with the hurtful, arbitrary cruelty of Hollywood: quite unlike the slog of playing disagreeable venues as a young standup, in which you could at least feel you were on an upward path, learning your craft. His live show reached its nirvana when he would lead the audience out of the theatre into the street, improvising wacky alfresco events, taking the crowd into fast-food joints and ordering hundreds of burgers, and on one occasion getting everyone to climb into an empty swimming pool and let him crowd-surf overhead.

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