Diving Deep On Steve Martin's Weirdest IMDB Credit
or: Apple TV+ rejected my request for a screener to their new Steve Martin doc so I did this instead!
Howdy folks. Last Friday saw the release of the Apple TV documentary “Steve! (martin) a documentary in two pieces”. Long-time readers will know of my Steve Martin fandom, I wrote about it pretty extensively in a previous newsletter which you can find here.
I enjoyed the doc quite a bit. It didn’t exactly deliver any surprises for a big Steve fan like myself but the extensive archival footage and contemporaneous diary extracts in part one, and the candid talking head portions of part two, were delightful fodder for me to chew on.
My favourite thing about Steve Martin is his ability to transcend mediums and reimagine himself. It’s the quality that most attracts me to artists, whether they be Martin, David Byrne, Mike Mills or many others. The documentary touches on this aspect of Martin’s personality somewhat, the two parts are largely divided into Martin’s stand-up comedy and movie star eras with other diversions touching on his work as a playwright, art collector, memoirist and novelist.
But it doesn’t address perhaps the strangest excursion in Martin’s career. The credit which sticks out like a sore thumb on his impressive and very long C.V. I’m talking about Traitor.
It’s ok if you haven’t heard of it. Or confuse it with the hit reality series, The Traitors. Traitor was just your run of the mill 2008 political conspiracy thriller. It starred Don Cheadle as Samir, a Sudanese-American soldier who supplies bombs to Islamic terrorists whilst working as a double-agent on behalf of the US government. His undercover mission sees him spend time in a Yemeni jail, orchestrate an attack on a US Consulate in France and traveling through North America organising an attack with dispersed sleeper agents.
It’s all a little boilerplate. And trust me, having watched the film, it is replete with on the nose “middle eastern music” needle drops and severely orange and faux-grungy cinematography. It’s the kind of film that wouldn’t warrant much further discussion or reappraisal nearly 20 years after its release if it weren’t for a bizarre inclusion in its end credits.
That’s right. Steve Martin (and it is that Steve Martin) has a story by credit on the film along with the director and writer Jeffrey Nachmanoff. You’d think Martin was too busy in the noughties starring in Cheaper By The Dozen movies, writing New Yorker essays and mispronouncing “hamburger” to write up a story treatment for a drab terror thriller but clearly not. As a proud Steve Martin fanatic, I took it on myself to figure out the story behind this credit and try to makes sense of the film alongside Martin’s larger oeuvre. The results are as follows.
Reportedly it all started on the set of Bringing Down The House (as a brief aside, Queen Latifah—man, what a queen, we need her to guest on Only Murders In The Building). During some downtime between set ups, Martin got in the ear of producer David Hoberman and pitched him a loose idea that would ultimately become Traitor. The idea’s real selling point was its clever twist ending, it’s unclear just how fleshed out the rest of the story was at that point.
Hoberman was all in however and quickly commissioned Martin to write up a five page treatment laying out the barebones of the film. The outline was then shopped around to a number of screenwriters before landing with Nachmanoff. Martin’s outline is not available publicly so I am hesitant to ascribe much of the film’s particulars to him beyond the twist and the general premise of a conflicted Muslim American working as an undercover arms dealer.
I’ll get to the twist in a bit, trust me there’s a lot to talk about, but before I do let me fill you in a bit on the film itself.
In better hands the story would have had some real potential. On the surface it’s a pretty tricky thriller with lots of red herrings, rumination on the nature of religion (criticising both Christian and Islamic fundamentalism), and biting commentary on the US’s floundering War On Terror campaign (the plot largely hinges on the CIA and FBI’s inability to communicate with each other and the US’s incompetence is directly responsible for at least one innocent person’s death).
But the film is pretty dull and lifeless, never building up the necessary momentum to put the viewer on the edge of their seat. And while the religious stuff seems well intentioned it comes off as sophomoric, seemingly the result of a white guy skim reading the Bible and Quran, instead of really taking the time to fully understand the subject he’s writing about. Cheadle is the stand out performer with co-stars Guy Pearce and Jeff Daniels unfortunately not given all that much to do.
It’s just seriously lacking in characters and strong POV. It goes through the motions and hits all the beats you expect but there’s never any real heart put into it.
But let’s now talk about Steve Martin’s twist. The third act hinges on a terror plot to put 50 suicide bombers on buses across the United States, all of whom will detonate their devices at the same moment. It’s Samir’s responsibility to coordinate this attack with the 50 bombers. Torn between retaining his cover and orchestrating a vast terrorist attack on American soil, Samir finds a third way. His solution? Put all the bombers on the same bus.
Yep. Now you can see how the film originated in the mind of a comedian, it’s a pretty comical ending. As shown in the film, a nervous man rises from his bus seat and screams “ALLAH AKBAR!” and the rest of the bus all turn to him as if to say “wait, that’s my line.”
It’s a plot point rooted in a comedic premise very specific to the era, similar to Jeff Dunham’s “Achmed The Dead Terrorist” character or Family Guy’s “72 Virgins” bit. In a world defined by the 9/11 Terror Attacks, American comedy writers were preoccupied with the archetype of suicide bombers being deeply disappointed with the results of their ultimate sacrifice. It’s just that while other comedians manifested their ideas through puppetry or animation, Steve Martin, the offbeat intellectual that he is, somehow managed to engineer his spin on the premise into an earnest conspiracy thriller.
It’s an interesting case study on how the same comedic impulse can lead to vastly different results. While Dunham and Family Guy earned cheap, juvenile laughs with their takes on the premise, Martin was not content with stopping there and developed his idea into something serious. It ultimately wasn’t all that successful, Traitor hardly lit up the box office and wasn’t in any awards conversations, but the very fact it exists is a testament to Martin’s chameleonic abilities as an artist.
Traitor will ultimately prove not much more than a footnote in Martin’s lengthy and varied entertainment career. He won’t be remembered for his work originating the film. But Traitor certainty stands as a notable achievement for a man who restlessly reinvents himself. If any other comedian has as incongruous a film credit to their name, I want to hear about it!
Thanks for reading! If you follow me on Twitter you might have seen that I’m planning to attend the Cannes Film Festival this year as part of the Three Days In Cannes program! I’m very excited and super nervous but I’ll be sure to keep you all informed on my journey and so, please expect more regular newsletters and even some YouTube activity in the lead up to the big festival. As always, if you have any feedback you dm on Twitter or hit me up anonymously though NGL. Bye for now!