Netflix documentary “Who Is Martin Mull?”, which was released in last week, introduces us to an American entertainer who had an interesting life and career which deserves to be known more to us. Like some of you, I did not know anything about him before watching the documentary, so I was steadily engaged in what it presents with genuine care and respect, and I came to have some admiration toward his multiple talents.
The main subject of the documentary is Martin Mull (1943 ~ 2024), who gladly talks about his life and career during a series of interviews he had before his death. After growing up in a rural town of Ohio during his childhood period, young Mull studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, and then he got an unexpected breakthrough as a songwriter when one of his songs became a fairly successful hit. Since that, he wrote and performed several other satirical and humorous songs during next several years, and that was how he began to show more potential as a comedian. On the surface, he flatly performed his rather naughty songs as being often accompanied with pieces of plain furniture, but he knew how to draw laughs from his audiences with his good comic timing, and he soon started to appear here and there on TV during the 1970s.
One of his early colleagues during that time is none other than Steve Martin, who often performed along with Mull on stage. Like many other notable American comedians ranging from Fred Willard to Patton Oswalt, Martin admires Mull’s comic talent a lot, and he was also willing to support his friend’s painting career. In fact, Martin bought and collected some of Mull’s early artworks, which became more valuable when Mull’s painting career eventually got some considerable boost during the 1990s.
The documentary often shows Mull working on his paintings inside his cozy residence, and it becomes quite apparent to us that he is a fairly talented painter. As shown from the vivid qualities of his early paintings, he had a keen eye on details to observe and then illustrate, and then he went through several artistic turns just for expanding his range of skill and expression more. I must confess that I do not know much about evaluating artworks, but I can tell you instead that many of Mull’s artworks are interesting to observe for their style and detail. In case of several paintings of his, they may initially look a bit absurd to you with a lot of chair figures, but I assure you that their surrealistic images will linger on your mind for a while.
Mull frankly says that he worked as an entertainer simply because he could earn enough money for pursuing his painting career in private, but his show business career lasted much longer than expected. Although he did not get much recognition in public, he was a dependable comic actor who often got cast here and there in a bunch of TV series and movies, and many of you will probably remember some of his notable performances during last several decades. For example, he held his own place well among several more notable comic performers in “Clue” (1985), and he often stole the show in his various guest appearances in several famous TV comedy series such as “Arrested Development”.
Although the documentary does not delve much into Mull’s personal life, Mull and his several family members casually recognize that his childhood years were not so happy to say the least. While his mother was mostly warm and supportive to him, his father was a distant figure who could be quite harsh to his children at times, and Mull is clearly reluctant to talk more about his father in front of the camera.
In case of his adult life, Mull had a serious drinking problem around the peak period of his entertainer career, and he was quite honest about being your typical high-functioning alcoholic during that time. After the end of his disastrous first marriage, he drank a lot more than before, and this certainly became a big issue for him to deal with not long after he married his second wife, who eventually became someone to support and stand by him to the end.
The second half of the documentary focuses on what turned out to be the last chapter of Mull’s life, and that is where it generates some unexpected poignancy. After interviewing Mull during several years, co-director Bob Saget, who made the documentary with Neil Berkeley, unexpectedly died in 2022, and some of Mull’s colleagues also passed away in the meantime. Although becoming more reflective on his approaching mortality, Mull continued to keep going as before, and the mood eventually becomes elegiac as the documentary shifts its focus on Mull’s wife not long after his eventual death in 2024. She certainly misses her husband a lot, and his absence feels more palpable to us as we watch their residence is emptied out bit by bit.
In conclusion, “Who Is Martin Mull?” is a modest but informative documentary which illuminates well Mull’s life and career, and it will certainly make you more curious about his considerable contribution to many different TV series and movies out there. Although he did not get much recognition except the Emmy nomination for his hilarious guest appearance in “Veep”, he was indeed a wonderful comedian to watch, and he was also a fine painter who left behind some nice artworks to be appreciated. He surely contained multitudes, and I think the documentary is a bit too short for his illustrious life and career, but it did its job as well as intended at least.
