Martin Short is racking up an unusually varied set of Emmy nominations this season, spread across three different projects. He's nominated for outstanding comedy lead actor for Hulu's "Only Murders in the Building," and the show also earned him a second nod as an executive producer in the outstanding comedy series category. Separately, Short picked up a nomination as host of ABC's "Match Game." And he's the subject of director Lawrence Kasdan's Netflix documentary "Marty, Life Is Short," which scored three nominations this year.
Short won't personally take home a statue if that documentary wins outstanding documentary or nonfiction special, since he says he isn't part of its production team. Still, he threw his full support behind the project and behind Kasdan, whom he's known for 40 years. "[Kasdan] phoned and said that he and Ron Howard and Imagine would love to do this documentary on me, and I kind of went, 'I don't know, I've written a book, I'm Canadian, we're a little more reserved, let me think about it,'" Short recalls. Kasdan followed up with an eight-minute voicemail explaining why he believed Short's story — about celebrating life and using humor to work through grief — deserved to be told.
Kasdan also had a wealth of raw material to draw from. "Through all these years, I've always had a camcorder," Short says. "With all my kids, I would just film. And I'd have them transferred to DVD. Because of my relationship and trust with him, I was able to take these shelves of movies and just say, 'here you go.'" Steven Spielberg also contributed a substantial amount of home movie footage featuring Short. "So Larry had a great little treasure trove of stuff," Short says.
The documentary's path became more complicated after Short's daughter, Katherine, died in February. Kasdan told Short that Netflix would hold back the film's release if he wasn't comfortable moving forward. "We met at his home a few weeks after, and he said, 'Netflix will do whatever you want and I will do whatever you want,'" Short says. "And I thought, this really could be called 'Love, Loss and Survival.' As I've said in the past, my daughter had mental health struggles. And it's a disease. Some diseases are terminal, whether they're cancer or mental health. And so, I said, 'I think we should proceed.' And he said, 'I think we should too.'" The film premiered globally in May, and Short says he has since heard from many people about how they connected with the way he navigated that loss.
Short is also featured in the Amazon documentary "John Candy: I Like Me," about his friend and "SCTV" co-star, which happens to be competing against "Marty, Life Is Short" in this year's Emmy documentary or nonfiction special category. Short credits Candy with sparking his home-video habit: "In 1981, I got a VHS machine, and I went, 'what am I doing? John has Betamax. We can't exchange movies!' So I went back and traded my VHS for Beta. You don't even want to know my LaserDisc collection."
As for what's next, Short says there are no future "Match Game" seasons currently planned, though he adds, "never say never." He's staying quiet on details for the next season of "Only Murders in the Building," revealing only that the show is moving to London with a new lineup of A-list guest stars.
Short will be back in Los Angeles next month for the Emmys. "Let's do the cliché, it's a tremendous honor to be recognized by your peers," he says, before adding with a smile, "I am Mr. Emmy this year!"
Photo: Library of Congress Life, CC0, http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en, via Wikimedia Commons
