Why didn't Martin Short have a bigger career?

Needy. You can sense his need for approval. His performance usually lives outside of the story being told.

One of my favorite coworkers was a Martin Short lookalike. Her name was Carol.

Martin Short has had a very successful career. He's not the Steve Martin (equally hilarious but more genial) type who can be the protagonist of a comic film. Short is darker and has a cutting energy. He's a brilliant comedic actor, and his lack for concern for being "likeable" makes him memorable and special.

Loved him as the wedding planner in "Father of the Bride."

Cak, anyone?

Just because he’s not a leading man type doesn’t mean he hasn’t been successful. He’s still here when many have been forgotten.

I liked Ed Grimly

He's worth $25-$30 million.

Crying as I type.

If he should live long enough, I think he'll become greater celebrated, as was the case with George Burns.

He’s fucking Meryl now. He was devoted to his late wife. Seems like an all around good guy and has a legion of young fans.

[quote]He was devoted to his late wife.

Whaaaaaat?

He was never leading man material anyway, but his style of comedy was always esoteric and cutting.

There's a lot of inside baseball jokes in the Jiminy Glick interviews (no one but Martin Short would call Steve Martin a "a kinda Oscar-considered actor") but the actor is also bizarre, from crying over the death of Viv Vance in the Julia Louis-Dreyfuss interview to declaring that he eats Greek food whenever Billy Crystal hosts the Oscars.

The best Glick interviews were Edie Falco (who really was a great sport), Alec Baldwin (who is witty off-the-cuff), Ice Cube (an unexpected delight), Louis-Dreyfuss and Mel Brooks.

You either love him or hate him. And most hate him, though you can't deny he's a comedic genius.

Sweet inspiration.

R9 They're just friends!!

At OP:

“Who would you not have on your show?” Self-answers without a beat but with deranged enthusiasm: “PATTY DUKE!”

R11, thanks for the tips. I’m in tears laughing.

Jiminy Glick crestfallen and then enraged after being gently reminded Viv Vance has passed away.

2:40

At a time, the '80s, when I could count almost daily being told how much I looked like Christopher Reeve, I once ended up driving a court reporter to & from a marathon deposition. Right before dropping her off at her car at night, she told me that she couldn't stop thinking about how much I looked like someone & she just had to tell me. As I anticipated another Reeve mention, she said it was Martin Short. My ego took a major hit.

Ice Cube:

“If Suge Knight hung you out the window, both of y’all would fall out the damn window.”

He’s very quirky and surprisingly bitchy (if you read his autobio.) I don’t know if he would be successful if starting out today. Though I guess John Mulaney is also quirky and bitchy.

Didn’t we just have a thread on Martin? It had a bunch of Glick videos attached, I watched several of them.

Complete narcissist and asshole, makes Steve Martin look like Jimmy Carter.

One of those guys who developed a personality because he was ugly, unfortunately, the personality he developed which he thinks is hysterical, is just mildly amusing. His role in Father of the Bride is vastly overrated, not that it’s really remembered anyway.

I love him and his Nathan Thurm character.

He was too short

I'm DREAMING of a boy, a VERY special guy

[R13] The interviews only work if the participant is funny and is willing to be on Glick's wave-length.

Ice Cube manages to find the right attitude to deal with Glick's nonsense: irritation at being called Vanilla Ice, confusion at the claim that Rex Harrison invented rap and finally abuse whenever Glick gives him an opening.

Cube listens and is reasonably quick-witted in his own responses.

The worst interviews involve a smug prick who has a pre-conceived notion of how they'll respond and gives glib, one-note answers: Bill Maher, Janeane Garofolo.

[quote]The worst interviews involve a smug prick who has a pre-conceived notion of how they'll respond and gives glib, one-note answers: Bill Maher, Janeane Garofolo.

Glick's interview of Maher on Real Time a few weeks ago had me in tears.

I love him in Father of the Bride. He isn’t remotely plausible but if you accept him as being seen through the eyes of the Steve Martin character, for whom the whole godawful ordeal is some sort of fever dream he can’t seem to slow down or awake from, he’s just perfect.

I love that Jiminy Glick has been resurrected from the comedy island junkyard recently.

While I find Short hit or miss, and a little goes a long way with him, Glick is my go-to when I just want to stupid laugh. It's so hilarious to me and, amazingly, doesn't get old.

Other Short highlights:

- Short's famous SNL synchronized swimming skit was genius.

- He also starred as a devil-child (though he was probably 35) in a movie called Clifford. I remember loving it as a teenager.

- He's actually restrained and quite charming in Murders.

The famous Nathan Lane interview. Lane is so likable and charming, even when Jiminy asks him about the famous drunk actor he worked with.

R26, I just watched the Ice Cube episode. That was HILARIOUS!

Clifford was to Short what Norbit was to Eddie Murphy.

R7, how do you know what he’s worth?

Again, these net worth sites are utter nonsense. Can’t believe anyone takes them seriously.

I thought Clifford was hilarious, mostly because he could have been a clone of a cousin I babysat on a regular basis. I can see how anyone else might have hated it.

Short also did a great impression of Pierre E Trudeau (Justin's father) in his SCTV days.

... now I'm thinking about SCTV. Need a few laughs

For fun, I just looked up with a famous friend is worth on those celeb net worth sites.

They say this person has eight figures.

Actually, this person doesn’t have close to that (and they’ve enjoyed a long, successful career).

I fell in love with Short in his “Jackie Rogers Jr” SNL skits. Delightfully, thoroughly weird.

Bill Hader

He was kind of sexy in the 3 amigos.

Short is great on "Only Murders in the Building," but my favorite character on that show is the HOA/co-op president who keeps trying to kick his ass out of the building because he's behind on his monthly HOA/co-op maintenance fees.

Who saw this?

Remember when he attempted to imitate Bette Davis on The Tonight Show, and she wasn't pleased? She found him to be annoying.

He was really great and totally creepy as the friend of Steve Carrell’s Mitch on The Morning Show.

What are you on about, OP? Short is, easily, one of the most beloved figures in the business. There's a reason talk show hosts from Carson to Letterman to Leno to Conan to the Jimmys love to have him on to this very day. The dude's in one of Hulu's biggest hits ever and he continues to book memorable guest appearances on an almost endless stream of shows -- showing off both his dramatic and comedic chops. I don't see how his career is remotely disappointing.

I found his autobiography quite good. He lost his wife to cancer, and seemed very forgiving in an interview with Kathie Lee Gifford when she completely forgot. He seems to have kept the same friends for decades, there was one page that described how he and Steve Martin and two others book their colonoscopies for the same day. They host a party the day before and drink those nasty concoctions together.

Have you ever heard one bad story or rumor about Marty? He seems to be as genuinely nice a guy as he is talented. I wish him many more years of good health and continued late-career success!

[quote]there was one page that described how he and Steve Martin and two others book their colonoscopies for the same day. They host a party the day before and drink those nasty concoctions together.

HACKS!

I loved Jiminy's interview of Eugene Levy & Bob Hope.

He, Billy Crystal and Paul Shaffer relied heavily on 50's Rat Pack Las Vegas type humor and it got old pretty fast

How old is he?

Short, Andrea Martin, Eugene Levy, etc. all met during a production of Godspell in Toronto in the early 1970s.

i was just watching this reunion episode R50 where they speak about it....

r49 In the time it took you to type that, you could have used google, dumbass.

and r41 Here he talks about that night - hilarious

If Marty had been born a decade earlier he would have merited his own variety show in the 1970s - The Martin Short Show on CBS with costumes by Bob Mackie.

r55 nails it. His "humor" has always seemed like it would have been funnier a decade earlier.

R43, I mean why didn't he have a career like Steve Martin, Robin Williams, Jim Carrey or even John Candy? The only movie I remember seeing him in is Three Amigos. He had the talent do be a big Hollywood movie star but he never became one.

I find him very annoying and his career seems big enough.

Because he didn’t wipe back to front!

[quote]If Marty had been born a decade earlier he would have merited his own variety show in the 1970s - The Martin Short Show on CBS with costumes by Bob Mackie.

The one he DID get several decades later was a big flop.

He’s fine in small doses. He does have that 60s showbiz type persona not so much in content but always mugging for the camera, always “on”.

Jiminy Glick HAS to be a Datalounger. His love of Vic Vance, the constant mentioning of George Mahris, and the tendency towards fat whoredom are classic DL.

He was ruthless and relentless with Bill Maher.

Sharper and faster than ever.

After “The Martin Short Show” was canned in 1994, he did a special in 1995 that’s got about everything….a Models Inc spoof, Brett Butler and Lyle Lovett starring in An Affair to Remember and a bunch of little skits about David Letterman’s mother.

It’s worth watching to see Jan Hooks in a prosthetic nose as Brett beating the crap out of Marty’s Tim Burton.

[quote] It’s worth watching to see Jan Hooks in a prosthetic nose as Brett beating the crap out of Marty’s Tim Burton.

Jan played Dixie, Jiminy's long-suffering wife, & mother of Mason, Morgan, Matthew & Modine.

The Bill Hader interview was hilarious. LMAO halfway thru to the end.

The Sean Hayes interview

I love Martin Short, a comedic hero to me. That said, he has a very narrow range as an actor (you'd never believe him in anything that wasn't really broad) and he's not a writer.

Sean Hayes interview is good!

I him. For those of you who don't know, Kathy Gifford asked him about his wife on air. She didn't know wife had died. He gave an innocuous answer, as if she were alive. This was quite touching for me. His comedy is brilliant. Obviously he has enough money to say no to a lot of projects.

i adore him

His autobiography is really good.

R65 ah yes, Dixie Glick!