Steve Martin Breaks Down His Unifying Theory of Comedy
There has always been an indelible quality to Steve Martin’s comedy that is almost impossible to articulate. But in a new two-part documentary premiering next Friday, March 29 on Apple TV+, the legendary comedian attempts to do just that.
As Martin explains in the exclusive clip from the first installment of director Morgan Neville’s STEVE! (martin) a documentary in 2 pieces, it was his fascination with philosophy that led him to what ended up being his own unifying theory of comedy.
“In philosophy, everything is being broken down, everything is being re-thought,” Martin, who majored in philosophy at California State University in Long Beach, says. “Everything. And I liked that. The feeling that you would solve something grand.”
Speaking to The Daily Beast ahead of his film’s premiere, Neville revealed, “I didn’t realize how Steve came to comedy from such a deeply conceptual point of view.” Citing Martin’s “Wild and Crazy Guy” character as an example of something that is more “performance art than stand-up,” the director added, “It might look stupid, but it’s brilliantly so.”
Instead of asking existential questions such as “Does God exist?” Martin started “questioning everything” about comedy and how to “get some better laughs.” He zeroed in on “indicators,” which he describes as something a comedian does to telegraph to an audience that it’s time to laugh.
“So I had this theory,” Martin continues. “What if I took out the indicators but just kept going? I was after that quality that is indefinable where you say, ‘I don’t know why it was funny, but it was.’”
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