Catherine O'Hara deserved better than 'also starring'

Okay so the Marty, Life Is Short trailer dropped on Netflix and I was not prepared. It's a doc about Martin Short — directed by Lawrence Kasdan, premieres May 12 — and it's already everything. Rare archival footage, Steve Martin, Eugene Levy, Tom Hanks saying "Marty operates at the speed of joy." There's a clip of Short capsizing a canoe. There's a clip of him grabbing Catherine O'Hara's face and yelling "I loved you in Home Alone!" like a complete fan.

But here's the thing. Catherine O'Hara died January 30th. She was 71. And her voice is in this trailer — previously recorded, a line that goes "I feel like he could improvise to eternity." And I sat with that for a while. Because O'Hara is one of the most consistently brilliant comic performers of the last fifty years and the way she gets discussed is always as an addendum. She's listed in the supporting credits of her own legacy. The Home Alone mom. The SCTV one. The Christopher Guest one. She is not the one. She is the also.

That's a choices-made situation. O'Hara and Short first met in Toronto's improv scene in the early seventies. They danced together in home footage. They built something together. And this doc — a doc about someone else — might end up being the most complete tribute she gets. No but actually watch the trailer. The grief and the joy are the same thing, and she's right there in the middle of it.