Morgan Neville Approached Two-Part ‘Steve!’ as Separate Movies — Where Different Editors Couldn’t Talk to Each Other

Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Morgan Neville (“Twenty Feet from Stardom”) approached “STEVE! (martin): a documentary in 2 pieces,” his two-part Apple TV+ documentary about Steve Martin now streaming, as separate films.That meant different editors, different composers, different graphics, and a reinvented aesthetic altogether from part one to part two.

The first part more traditionally tackles Steve Martin’s early life and career, from stand-up comedy to beloved films like “The Jerk,” “Roxanne,” “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” and “Little Shop of Horrors” among them, using archival footage and film clips to tell his story. The second part, meanwhile, is a more present-tense talking head documentary — with those heads including Diane Keaton, Martin Short, Tina Fey, and more of Martin’s peers — with Martin musing on life and art and finding a “relaxed brain” after years of anxiety and insecurity.

Neville joins IndieWire “Screen Talk” podcast hosts Anne Thompson and Ryan Lattanzio to discuss the new film and everything else he’s up to at his Los Angeles-based Tremolo Productions, including a LEGO-animated Pharrell Williams biodoc that will mark the “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” director’s first full-length animated documentary.

“That was kind of the experiment that got me really excited,” Neville said of the Steve Martin film. “We started editing with two different editors who weren’t allowed to look at the other films, and we just went further and further down that road, and they started to harmonize with each other in interesting ways. And I liked it, too, because it doesn’t tell you what to think. I think it asks you a lot as a viewer to fill in a lot of those connections and to hear those harmonies between the two. In a way, it was my reflection of the fact that there are two different Steve Martins: There is a Steve then and a Steve now.”

Also on this week’s episode, Anne and Ryan review IndieWire’s Cannes wish list of films we hope to see in France when the festival kicks off this coming May, from Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Kinds of Kindness” to, hopefully, Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis.”

Watch the full episode above or listen to it below.

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