As someone who has been listening on and off to various incarnations of The Howard Stern Show since Stern was a local DJ in Washington, D.C. in the very early ’80s, the idea of a documentary about his longtime head writer Jackie “The Joke Man” Martling (who joined the show once Stern moved from D.C. to New York City) seemed like a no-brainer to watch. Hopefully, it would be a good opportunity to get a clear picture of both how Martling came into Stern’s inner circle and also how the two fell out after an 18-year partnership. The first part of Martling’s life and career actually did come more into focus with the Ian Karr-directed Joke Man, but other parts of his life seem less clear, which maybe is the way the subject prefers it.
Tracing Martling’s life story from being a student athlete, musician, and actor to taking his talent for working a crowd into the thankless life of a stand-up comedian, the film has some great interviews with family members, old comic pals, and of course Martling who spins yarns about his life almost a beautifully as he tells jokes. Apparently from a young age, Martling had the ability to memorize every joke he ever read or heard.
As a result, his stand-up act doesn’t offer observations about his life, the world, pop culture or current events; instead, his entire act consists of polished and reworked versions of jokes that have been passed down through the ages and have been around so long, the original authors have been lost to time. Does that make him a joke stealer? Apparently not. And the success of his live act becomes more about how he told jokes than the type of jokes he told. The footage of his stand-up performances over the years is a testament to his talents as a teller of jokes, not a creator of material. The crowds are screaming with laughter, and when other parts of his life were failing him, his stand-up career appeared to keep him afloat.
Martling used his knowledge of jokes to play a game called “Stump the Joke Man,” in which people in the audience would give him the set up to a joke, and if he couldn’t tell them the punchline, he bought them a beer or awarded them some prize. If Jackie is to be believed, he’s never had to do either in all the decades of his career.
For many who watch this documentary, it’s the Stern years that will be of greatest interest, and this is where Joke Man somehow manages to be both invaluable and at its most frustrating. No one currently on the Stern show is interviewed for the film, nor were any clips of the show (audio or video) available, which means that Martling or others have to tell rather than show exactly what it was that Martling contributed to the show, which is undeniably a great deal. In fact, a great deal of what made Stern appear on the air to be quick-witted and sharp during any segment was due in great part to Martling scribbling out jokes on paper and feeding them to Stern with all haste. For those who know the show, Martling was the one who caught show producer Gary Dell’Abate accidentally calling the animated character Baby Looey (an animation cell of which he had just purchased) "Baba Booey," which has become the catchphrase of prank callers and general disruptors around the world.
Many former Stern regulars and staffers, including “Stuttering” John Melendez, Frank Grillo, and Billy West are interviewed to give some context to both Martling’s personality and the nature of his working relationship with Stern. But it’s Martling’s eventual replacement, comedian Artie Lange, who perhaps give some of the greatest insight into what it means to work for Howard in the capacity of someone who is supposed to make him look funnier without taking credit for it. Depending on the version of the story you believe, Martling wanted more money and left the show when he didn’t get it or had a job lined up to give him some leverage in negotiations.
The film has a number of strange celebrity cameos from the likes of Willie Nelson, Sean Young, Penn Jelette, and Mark Cuban, who have all come into contact with Martling and become friendly enough to be in the film, but anything they have to add to the deepening of his story is minimal. Anyone who heard Martling on Stern’s show knows that his then-wife Nancy was a huge part of Jackie’s story, and she’s featured prominently here because not only are they still friends, but Martling’s current girlfriend and Nancy are very close. But there’s very little about what happened between them in terms of the falling apart of their marriage, and that feels important to the story. That’s the primary issue with the doc: it pulls you in closer in some areas of Martling’s life and pushes you away in others.
I loved being reminded of Jackie’s ever-updated joke hotline; the bountiful number of CDs, t-shirts, and other merchandise that he would send out to anyone he wanted to network with; and his home where he would throw huge weekend parties. It’s easy to tell how close Martling and his Stern show coworkers were at one point, so it’s equally easy to tell it pains him that they are barely on speaking terms today. There was a reunion of sorts in the 2000s, and Martling even had a comedy show on Sirius XM satellite radio for a few years, but he and Stern are not friends today, and he laughs about how strange it is—though it’s clearly not funny to him.
As much as the film attempts to paint a carefree, fairly rosy picture of Martling’s life today—the old hippie living on a beachfront property and making people laugh—emotions and more honest disappointments slip through in places, almost by accident. I wish Joke Man had tried a little less hard to steer the conversation toward the positive and more time admitting that even the best life has its letdowns.
The film is now available digitally on Apple iTunes, Amazon and Google.
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