TORONTO – With a long list of projects in development, Martin Short has no interest in becoming the latest celebrity to spend his days chit-chatting on Twitter.
While so many of the Emmy-winning actor’s Hollywood peers document the minutiae of their daily lives on the social networking site, Short says he isn’t tempted to join them – even when enjoying a rare bit of downtime at his lakefront place in southern Ontario.
“No, I don’t need more people coming up to me or asking me questions. I have 725 unanswered email as we speak – and that’s from children,” the personable 61-year-old Hamilton-native said in a telephone interview Monday, after happily bidding farewell to the Canada Day revellers who crowded cottage country over the weekend.
“I mean, it’s ‘Judge not lest ye be judged,’ but I think that for me, the idea of waking up and now, as opposed to reading the paper and going for a swim, thinking: ‘Oh, what will I Twitter today?’ would be like, just take a gun.
“That’s not my thing.”
And it’s not as though Short needs anything else to occupy his time.
He’s booked recurring roles on two big American TV series (the drug-dealing dramedy “Weeds” and the inventive sitcom “How I Met Your Mother”), he landed a voice role in the upcoming Tim Burton animated film “Frankenweenie,” he’s touring Australia this summer, and he’s set to film a new CBC special in the fall.
Whew. And before all that, he’ll travel down to Toronto on Saturday to take part in “The Very, Very Best of Broadway,” a star-studded celebration of the Great White Way organized as part of the inaugural BlackCreek Music Festival, held at the Rexall Centre.
He’ll be part of an esteemed ensemble, led by decorated New York composer Marvin Hamlisch. There’s nary a name in the show’s lineup – including Broadway vets Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell and “30 Rock” star Jane Krakowski – that hasn’t been celebrated by the Tony Awards.
“They’ve just assembled the … most Tony-winning, vocally astounding group of people imaginable,” Short said.
“I was shocked when I saw this list, you know? Shocked and apprehensive. You know: ‘What am I doing here?'”
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Well, to be exact, Short will serve as master of ceremonies, he’ll sing songs (“Once in a Lifetime,” “Applause,” “She Loves Me” and “Agony” from Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods,” to name a few) and he’ll tell jokes, all while sticking to a simple mandate: “Keep it moving, keep it light.”
“It’s a jam-packed show,” he said.
“People are getting their money’s worth of Broadway, I’ll tell ya. And it’s amazing, because they’re all showstoppers that they’re presenting: the best of Sondheim, the best of Cy Coleman, and the best of Marvin Hamlisch.”
Short’s career has been similarly diverse of late.
On “How I Met Your Mother,” Short says he’s been cast as the boss for Jason Segel’s environmental activist lawyer – though he hasn’t seen a script yet so he doesn’t know much more about his character, or the length of his arc on the show. He’s also featured in six episodes of the seventh season of “Weeds,” which premieres in Canada on Showcase this Wednesday.
Those short-term commitments suit Short just fine.
“You get kind of the best of both worlds,” he said.
“You’re bopping in and out. So at the end of the year you can say: ‘Well, yeah, I did six episodes of “Weeds,” and I did “How I Met Your Mother,” and I did the concert at BlackCreek, I did a few concerts, I did a film with Tim Burton, and oh, I wrote a special,’ and then it’s a very eclectic, interesting year by the end of the year.”
He’s also devoting time to planning his CBC special, which will shoot in September. It’s entirely separate from the one-man show he’s toured recently, and will actually take the shape of a “love letter to Hamilton.”
The plot for the show will find Short returning to Canada to organize a “Concert for George”-type event to honour a fictitious local TV personality who has fallen on hard times. But the show – which Short calls “ambitious” – will really look to “explore Hamilton and my history with Hamilton,” Short said.
Of course, if it seems the “Father of the Bride” star is wandering in several creative directions at once, well, that’s nothing new.
Since breaking through as a kinetic comedic talent on the homegrown sketch comedy series “SCTV” (and soon afterward spending one season alongside Billy Crystal and Christopher Guest in the cast of “Saturday Night Live”), Short has refused to stay confined to a single format, journeying from stage to cinema to the small screen over and over.
He says that as his career goes on, selecting projects isn’t necessarily any easier.
“At a certain point, you’re not working to pay the rent anymore, and it becomes even more complicated, because then you have to keep working to keep yourself interested.
“I mean, I know many people who have been doing all this for 40 years, and they’re saying: ‘I’m bored. I’m just bored.’
“And I think if you keep it moving, A) they can’t catch you, and B) the boredom level will probably be less of an issue.”
Still, one thing that’s remained fairly consistent with Short is his commitment to being funny.
Though he earned an Emmy nomination for his turn as a duplicitous lawyer on the twisty legal thriller “Damages,” he says he’s not necessarily eager to pursue more dramatic roles.
“I like doing comedy,” he said.
“I kind of think that you make a deal with the audience and say, ‘You know, not a lot of people can actually make you laugh – I might be one of them.’ And so we are happy to see our comedians stretch, but when it gets too much that they’re not doing what they do, we tend to lose interest.”
Not that Short makes career choices based on the approval of his fans.
“I mean, you do what you want to do – the admiration of strangers can’t fuel your decisions, because you never meet them. And maybe you wouldn’t like them.”
However, there’s one medium Short isn’t planning on exploring.
Recent newspaper reports and Internet rumours have suggested that the comedian was planning on writing a memoir, but he flatly denies that there’s any truth to it.
“There’s too much to tell,” he says, laughing. “If I could write a memoir where I was allowed to tell every story that I would tell friends over drinks at dinner – oh, I’d write that in a second. It would write itself. I’d have it out this weekend,” he said.
“But the problem is, all the great stories can’t be told. You have to wait till you’re 90 or something.”
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