Learn the Art of Doc Filmmaking with ‘Steve!’ Director Morgan Neville

Steve Martin? Mr. Rogers? Brian Wilson? Orson Welles? Gore Vidal? Anthony Bourdain? Ever heard of them?

Not only has documentary filmmaker Morgan Neville heard of them, he’s studied them ad nauseam and crafted some of the best character documentaries ever made about all the name-droppy figures listed above and then some. His repertoire of work is a thoughtful, constantly evolving bibliography of filmmaking that’s so humanist and artful its only a matter of time until he’s a household name (as I imagine he already ought to be for the doc-heads out there).

Most recently he helmed the (now Emmy nominated) doc STEVE! (martin) a documentary in 2 pieces—a wonderful, characteristically humanist two-part doc profiling one of the greatest comedic performers to grace the world since ever.

Steve! (for short) is, in fact, two parts. The first of which is told entirely through archival narration and footage, the second to follow Steve Martin himself in his modern life as he reflects on his career and offers thoughtful insights on the entertainment industry at large and how he made it where he is today.

BFF Martin Short is there for hangs too!

Below, Neville dives deep into his documentary process, as well as his specific relationship working with Steve Martin to craft this wonderfully creative two-part documentary. Read on for some invaluable thoughts on the documentary creative process.

Editor’s note: the following quotes are edited for length and clarity.

---

The Importance of Journalism in Doc Filmmaking 

“I’ve been making documentaries for 30 years now. For the first 15 years nobody really cared about documentaries.

I’d like to think that it wasn’t that they didn’t care about my documentaries, but they didn’t care about documentaries [in general]. I started making a lot of music documentaries because I’m a music nerd, and because in the days when it was hard to get documentaries made—really hard —I could figure out how to get music films made.

So I did Muddy Waters and Hank Williams and Brian Wilson and these things that I loved working on. And I guess I did end up doing a lot of biographical stuff, and a lot of historical stuff. I like it, but I like other things too. I mean, now we’re at this point where people want these films, even if there are too many of them. I like doing these films, but I also wish it was easier to get smaller, weirder films made too.

Journalism is great training for documentary. I feel like film school is all about trying to harness your voice. What do you want to say? What’s your point of view? And I feel like journalism is, what do you hear? What are you listening to? It’s a very different inclination.

A lot of what my job is is to listen really, really hard. And when I go into projects, I go in with no agenda. I just want to take in everything, talk to as many people as I can, see as much as I can, read as much as I can, and then say, okay, what’s emerging? What patterns am I seeing? How do I start to put it together? This Steve Martin documentary is perfect example of that. A24 started to help me make it in the beginning, and they said, well, just work on it until you figure out what it is.

Is it a theatrical film? Is it a mini series? What is it? And I just felt like the material kept going in two different directions: this great archival story of [Steve Martin’s] whole standup career as a beginning, middle, and end, and then hanging out with Steve and his daily life today. And to that I said, well, what if I just let them be what they are? They can be separate. Rather than trying to ping pong [between the two ideas], which documentaries often do, just trying to let the ideas be truer to their own nature.

I think [documentary subjects] respond to the fact that when I go into a room all I’m trying to all do is understand what I’m seeing. And again, documentary is a broad term, and they’re all different kinds of films, but sometimes I’ve seen people interview people like a hostile witness on the stand. I’m much more about how do I just have a conversation as long as I can.

That’s how I work. That’s my process. It’s just talk, read, absorb, and then start to see what the shape is.”

Finding Steve in ‘Steve!’ 

“I feel like [Steve Martin’s] whole career he was being grilled by people about whatever thing he’s promoting. He kind of says that in the second film, that this is an antidote to that.

So for me the thing that emerged—as he opened up more and more about his own journey, which I was never that aware of—everything he went through emotionally, but also how relatable a lot of what he went through was to me. Both the struggling artist part and the workaholic part.

The lesson of perseverance is impressive because there are so many talented people who would’ve given up long before Steve did. And I’ve heard other comedians say some of the funniest people they know were comedians who just didn’t stick with it because it’s the commitment often that matters. It’s not just, are you talented? It’s all the other stuff you can do.

What I really discovered with Steve was that he was essentially doing performance art more than comedy, and that nobody got it. And then some people got it, and then everybody got it, and the moment everybody got it, he could keep doing new bits.

But what was the point? It was, as he said, it was a dead end, so he had to get out. He could have milked that for years and made a ton of money, but that’s Steve. The moment he feels something cresting he needs to move to the next thing.”

How to Manage Archival Footage and Music in Docs

“I have a full-time archive producer who I’ve worked with for years back since Best of Enemies. There’s a ton of archival work, and so we’re digging, and sometimes the digging is looking for local TV news stories or whatever, which we found. But some of it is literally being in Steve’s basement for two months scanning things, which we did too. Two people in his basement basically for a summer, scanning things—like over 5,000 things.

He had all those journals and all these things. It was like, oh my God, we just have to get everything. And he had all these audio cassettes. He’d record himself when he was doing a show just so he could hear how the crowd was reacting. I love that archival part of it.

We just kept getting more and more. I wasn’t sure that the first film could just be archive [at first]. About six months in, I was like, okay, I think we have enough material to really do the first film without modern footage.

I’d never done that before, but it was a fun challenge.

[For the animated sequences] there were stories [from audio recordings] where there are no visuals, but I had all this photography, so I wanted the animation to be photocollage, all based on real photographs. I also wanted to the handmade tactility of it so it adds a dimensionality to the animation. It almost feels like stop motion, which feels more like the period, too. It’s a little bit of Terry Gilliam or something in there.

The other big ingredient was the music. And to me, Steve is a classic in many ways, a classic California guy. He grew up in Orange County, he worked at Disneyland—so All American in a lot of ways. When we were editing, I started listening to lots of rare Beach Boys stuff. And it’s not just the songs, but the stems from the box sets from the late sixties, early seventies.

I started working with that, and then I knew Darian [Sahanaja], who was Brian Wilson’s music director and has been for 25 years or more. I asked Darian to write the music, which he did, and I used some Beach Boys songs.”

Morgan’s Advice to Doc Filmmakers 

“Documentary can be so many different things, but I feel like a lot of it is, like I said, don’t get in the way of your own subject. Let the subject tell you what you’re doing. And in that way, I feel like I’ve always been a method director. My films are reflective of the subjects, the form is reflective of the subjects.

The Mr. Rogers film (Won’t You Be My Neighbor?) is very slow and deep. But I did a film about Orson Wells (They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead), and that is manic, and it was reflective of Orson at that time. So I know that’s how I’ve approached it. But also I think it took me a long time to just think myself less as a journalist or a historian or artist or anything and just say, okay, I’m making a movie. What’s that movie about?

Tell a good story or find a great character, or ideally both. It’s very simple stuff. I think a lot about my character and my story, and I think a lot of advice I get from both editors and from screenwriters are very informative to the idea of how does each scene affect your character in a way? How does it advance the story or how does it advance the character?

And even in my music documentaries, I feel like I try and use every song to either be a character beat or a story beat. A lot of times people use music kind of as wallpaper. The song needs to reveal something in a way.”

Watch Steve! now on Apple+ via A24