Lawrence Kasdan is the most influential screenwriter of the last 50 years for mainstream, American commercial entertainment. There’s not a single blockbuster or franchise vehicle that became a phenomenon and didn’t draw from the character parings, roundabout structure, or quippy dialogue that Kasdan developed with The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark. As a director, Kasdan cracked the erotic thriller formula with Body Heat several years before the genre exploded with Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct. With The Big Chill, Kasdan modernized the star-studded dramedy for the Boomer generation, and he predated the 1990s Western renaissance with his 1985 gunslinger adventure Silverado. The Accidental Tourist provided a blueprint for what “Oscar bait” would look like; even a relatively forgotten Kasdan script like Continental Divide showed what a slightly more refined star vehicle could look like for an A-list comedian, because it gave John Belushi a more grounded role where he put his zaniness aside.
Kasdan’s run in the 1980s was so legendary because he managed to perfect multiple genres before he became a writer-for-hire. The embarrassing box office collapse of his 2003 Stephen King adaptation Dreamcatcher may have been what officially landed him in “director’s jail,” but the warning signs were there from the moment that his (pretty funny) 1990 black comedy I Love You To Death didn’t catch audiences on the right wavelength. Instead an innovator, Kasdan became a reactor. His bold Western epic Wyatt Earp collapsed because audiences had been treated to a much more fun version of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral just a year earlier with Tombstone. The 1990s indicated that Kasdan was out of touch, even when he brushed up against success. He scored a major payday as the writer of The Bodyguard, one of the decade’s biggest hits, but most critics agreed that the script was the worst part of the melodramatic romantic thriller.
Kasdan’s attempted comeback came when he realized that nostalgia sells. Kasdan’s first serious writing gig since Dreamcatcher (outside of the micro-budget vanity project Darling Companion) was as the screenwriter of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which worked because no one knew how to write for Harrison Ford’s Han Solo better than he did. While reins for the sequel, The Last Jedi, were handed over to a more ambitious writer/director in Rian Johnson, Kasdan was given the opportunity to play the hits when he penned the prequel Solo: A Star Wars Story. The waxing poetic didn’t stop there; Kasdan directed six episodes of the Disney+ docuseries Light & Magic, which highlighted the achievements of Lucasfilm’s ILM when he was involved with the production company in the 1980s.
Kasdan’s latest project isn’t related to his own legacy, but to that of one of his closest collaborators. Although Kasdan directed Martin Short only once, in the forgotten dramedy Mumford, the two shared a close relationship. Part of Kasdan’s attachment to the film is merely a formality because Short’s personal archive of home videos does much of the hard work. It’s fascinating that so many actors from Short’s generation willingly recorded intimate moments of their family and friends; there’s no impression that Short kept this material for any reason other than to share it with those closest to him. However, it’s important in proving the thesis that Kasdan has about what makes Short so unique, even within the generation of SCTV artists that included Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, John Candy and Rick Moranis. Short explains early on in the film that he doesn’t really make jokes; his talent is in creating characters, and his collaborators just have to trust that the performance will work itself out.
It’s striking to compare Marty, Life is Short to Morgan Neville’s Steve Martin documentary from 2024, especially when considering that the two comedians have shared a lifelong friendship that has only gone stronger thanks to their ongoing collaboration on Only Murders in the Building. Martin framed himself as uneasy with success, and implied that he was always anxious that fame was unwarranted; comparatively, Short doesn’t say much about his career highs and lows, and Kasdan doesn’t pressure him to. The content of Marty, Life of Short is about the art of a joke and the community that formed out of young, carefree comedians who didn’t realize what they were doing had reshaped sketch-based humor. The genius of Short, which many of his colleagues spell out, is that his schtick would be unbearably obnoxious if anyone else was doing it.
Marty, Life is Short isn’t a hagiography, and there isn’t much time dedicated to lionizing Short’s most famous roles. The discussions about SCTV and Saturday Night Live are only included for the sake of having more talking heads, including Catherine O’Hara in some of her last filmed material. It’s a refreshing change-of-pace from most celebrity documentaries, and the decision that would most suggest that Kasdan was fully ambitious about the project, and not simply doing a favor for a friend. Short doesn’t have anything to prove, and Kasdan is more interested in the dissection of his persona than he is dedicated to encompassing the most obscure entries in his filmography.
Marty, Life is Short is designed as a feel-good supplement for those that already have an obsession with the subject, but it has unexpected poignance given recent tragedies. Short’s daughter, Katherine, died by suicide earlier this year, and the death of his wife in 2010 was kept under wraps. Kasdan’s grace is shown through the room that he’s given Short to say as much as he wants about the subject. Family is seemingly the only real “work” that he has ever done; everything else is just fun and games.