Why Morgan Neville’s Steve Martin Documentary Is Two Films in One

Morgan Neville has made documentaries about musicians (“20 Feet From Stardom,” “The Music of Stranger’s”), TV personalities (“Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain,” “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”) and writers (“Best of Enemies: Buckley vs. Vidal”), so it makes sense he’d make a doc about Steve Martin, who has been all those things as well as a superstar stand-up comedian and an actor who received an Honorary Academy Award in 2013.

But Apple TV’s “STEVE! (martin)” is really two separate films: one that uses archival footage and voiceovers to chart Martin’s formative years as perhaps the first stand-up to reach true rock star status, the second a fly-on-the-wall look at a more contented man with a hit TV show (“Only Murders In the Building”) and a young family.