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Two Steves
Steve Martin’s life is split into distinct halves in Morgan Neville’s refreshing new documentary about the comedy legend.
Neville, an Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated documentarian with a reputation for well-made meat-and-potato biodocs like 2018’s Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, directs Then with a bit of distance.Consisting entirely of archival footage and a mix of interview and archival audio, it traces Martin’s rise from childhood magic enthusiast to superstar comedian, focusing closely on his emotionally cold home life, comedy philosophies, and all-consuming anxieties about translating his style to audiences. Using flashes of his journal entries and personal correspondence, it paints a picture of Martin as a performer tortured by his art, more able to fixate on setbacks than he is to celebrate wins, even as he’s increasingly isolated by his unprecedented success. It spends time documenting his work post-stand-up — his movie career, banjo success, cartooning, playwriting, and art-collecting — but it’s less interested in chronicling any of these pursuits individually than in his personal growth outside them.
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