When Martin Short was 12, his oldest brother died in a car accident. Five years later, his mother died of cancer; three years after that, his father had a stroke and passed away, leaving Short, at 20, the youngest of five, living alone at his family home in Hamilton, Ontario.“That was a rough eight years,” Michael Short, Martin’s brother, says to him in Marty, Life Is Short, the new Netflix documentary that alternates between the star’s raucously funny career in show business and a personal life filled with enduring friendships and unbearable tragedy. In the film, Short responded to his sibling with a revealing take on this period of his life: “There were laughs,” he says, emphasising the next sentence. “That’s the point.”Asked to expand in a recent interview in a Manhattan hotel, with legs crossed, slight and dapper, Short recalled a grim moment right before his mother’s death when both his parents were in the hospital. Short tends to answer questions with anecdotes. He was again with Michael, this time across a breakfast table. “We looked at each other and started laughing,” he said. “It was like, ‘How absurd, how ridiculous, how dark can this be?’ It’s why the phrase ‘dark comedy’ exists.”This particular brand of resiliency – “laughing wild, amid severest woe,” as poet Thomas Gray put it – is an undercurrent of Marty, Life Is Short, which takes its name from Short’s response to a talk-show question about how to cope with the death of parents. He said that you could despair, but that he chose to conclude that life was short and that there were tools developed in disaster. “You became your own therapist,” he told me, adding that this grieving period helped him develop “muscles to survive”.Martin Short is - according to David Letterman - “by almost any definition, description or measurement, maybe the funniest man to appear on television routinely.”NYTHe has needed them. In 2010, the love of his life, his wife, Nancy, died of ovarian cancer. In February, his daughter, Katherine, died by suicide after struggling with mental illness. While Nancy Short is such a focus of the documentary that the comedian told its director, Lawrence Kasdan, “I had no idea you were in love with my wife,” Katherine’s death doesn’t come up until the end, in a dedication to her and Catherine O’Hara, Short’s colleague on the satirical TV show SCTV who died a month earlier and figures prominently in the film. Now reflecting on the loss of his daughter, Short recalled that his wife’s final words, spoken in her bedroom as paramedics rushed in, were “Martin, let me go.” He continued, “Katherine was saying: ‘Dad, let me go,’ ” and explained, “I don’t see any difference between mental illness as a disease and cancer as a disease. In some cases, both are terminal. And in some cases, both are survivable.”Short clarified that this recent tragedy is different. “This is your child,” he said firmly. Adding later in a soft voice, “I am trying to head toward the light.”At 76, Martin Short is more popular than ever, with a long-running touring show with Steve Martin, the hit TV series Only Murders in the Building entering its sixth season, and – because of appearances with Meryl Streep – a regular spot in the tabloid press. No one in Hollywood inspires more gushing. TV host Conan O’Brien has called Short the “funniest person out there”, and David Letterman told me that “by almost any definition, description or measurement, maybe the funniest man to appear on television routinely”.When Slate writer Dan Kois published his case against Short, calling him “unbelievably annoying”, the enraged response on social media – the kind of thing usually reserved for sexual abusers or celebrities saying slurs – was a reflection of the intense public affection for Short.His is a curious legacy, however: as he will be quick to tell you, his career is filled with failure, including sitcoms that didn’t work, movies that came and went (some, like Three Amigos, became cult classics), and talk and variety shows that flopped. Short still sounds as if he wished more people knew about his 1989 HBO special I, Martin Short, Goes Hollywood. (They should.) Despite Short’s stellar sketch-comedy track record at SCTV, then a year at Saturday Night Live, Hollywood has had trouble figuring out a vehicle for him.Selena Gomez, Steve Martin and Martin Short in Only Murders in the Building.The argument for Short’s greatness does not rest on a blockbuster movie or signature role so much as the indelible distinctiveness and range of his comic creations. Whether playing the celebrity interviewer Jiminy Glick or the defensive lawyer Nathan Thurm or the indecipherable wedding planner from the Father of the Bride, he makes bold, often bizarre choices that no one else would. These characters don fat suits and ludicrous haircuts, but they are all undeniably the product of Short’s imagination. And in the internet era, they age well, because underneath his hustling work ethic is the ambition of someone who’s willing to risk coming off as annoying.For an entertainer who has created such wild characters, Short appears remarkably organised, low-key and diligent. “If I hadn’t been an actor,” he said, “I would have been really good as the executive secretary to [US media executive] Ted Sarandos.”Short has no time for psychoanalysing his traumas as the source of his humour. His confidence, he said, comes from a happy childhood, full of love. Short also has no interest in going to therapy, although he said that comedian John Mulaney told him he should go to a mediocre one just to see the look on that person’s face when Short describes all the tragedies that had befallen him. It’s a dark joke that Short clearly enjoys. But he does find peace in an almost rigid commitment to routine.Every Monday, Short reflects on the week and gives himself grades in nine categories of life, including Career, Family and Lifestyle. The fact that Discipline is one of the nine is telling. He’s done this for decades. Originally, it allowed him to feel good about himself during slow professional stretches. When his career wasn’t going well, he raised his score by working harder on something like Family. There’s clearly a bestselling self-help book here. “The more disciplined I am, the better I feel,” he said.The week I saw him, he told me he gave himself excellent marks in Career but not Discipline or Creativity. “Lifestyle is always an A,” he said.When a critic dared call Short “unbelievably annoying”, the social media response was one usually reserved for sexual abusers or celebrities uttering slurs.NYTShort is an honours student in Friendship. Kasdan said he wanted his documentary portrait to feel like hanging out with Short, and in a remarkable amount of home movie footage shot by Short or friends, he shows us a procession of relationships with extremely talented peers. His partnership with Steve Martin is well known. He’s longtime best friends with Eugene Levy. Both are in the movie, as are the cadre of SCTV stars, including Andrea Martin, O’Hara and John Candy, who died in 1994.More surprising perhaps is his family’s tight bond with the families of Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg. Spielberg will probably never direct a remake of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, so a home movie shot by him on a boat with Hanks and Short, performing as Forrest Gump and Ed Grimley [a fictional character created by Short], replaying the scene where the bandits jump off a cliff, is as close as you will get.In his recent interview with Short for his Netflix show, Letterman told him he was jealous of his ability to maintain these friendships. To which Short retorted, “Well, you must be kind.”Short is famously nice, which allows him to get away with more of an edge in his humour without risking losing the affection of the audience. His Jiminy Glick interviews are one of the most enjoyable rabbit holes online, in part because of the complete lack of respect he shows famous people. In recent years, Short has also dug deeper into dramatic roles, playing incredibly unsympathetic characters in The Morning Show (aired as Morning Wars in Australia), Damages and the movie Inherent Vice.In the documentary, he describes a dream his late brother appeared in. Asked if recording a home video of his family, which appears in the movie, is a way to keep them around, he said: “I know that my wife, Nancy, felt she knew my parents intimately through all the tapes.” Short was quick to add he didn’t judge people for finding solace any way they can, and that there is a randomness to happiness.Martin Short is a veteran comedy star, but has also suffered a series of unimaginable losses, including the deaths of his wife and daughter.NYT“Some people are born with a happy gene,” he told me, before dropping the name of another longtime friend. “Goldie Hawn is born with a happy gene. Some people are not born with a happy gene, and so that’s luck. That’s DNA luck, but also, it’s trying to, I think, trying to find, what’s the Python song?”Short looked up, trying to recall a song in Monty Python’s Life of Brian. But he seemed to forget the lyrics after the first word.