<\/p>\n
Martin Short and Bill Murray are both comedy icons, but the \u201cOnly Murders in the Building\u201d star almost gave it all up when he couldn\u2019t contend with Murray\u2019s early success.<\/p>\n
Short recalled the moment in his upcoming documentary, \u201cMarty, Life is Short,\u201d saying that one night Murray and musician Paul Shaffer, who were both working on \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d at the time, were visiting him in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
Murray was experiencing breakout success on \u201cSNL,\u201d and Short admitted he was feeling jealous and despondent about his own prospects, as he only had a credits to his name, one of them being the famous 1972 Toronto production of \u201cGodspell.\u201d<\/p>\n
“Nancy [Dolman, Short\u2019s late wife] and I were walking there,” Short said, per Entertainment Weekly<\/a> “and I just was overwhelmed with, ‘I can’t. I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I can’t.’ I’m out of work now. Hadn’t worked in a couple months. Had no prospects and didn’t really know where I was going. And I said, ‘I can’t go and pretend to be happy for Bill, because I don’t know what I’m doing. I need to sit down.'”<\/p>\n The comedian called the moment his \u201cbreakdown corner.”<\/p>\n “We sat there for about 10 minutes and didn’t speak,” Short recalled. “Finally, Nancy said, ‘How long are we going to stay here?\u2019 I said, \u2018I don’t know.\u2019”<\/p>\n Short and his wife eventually returned home, and he remembered he \u201cwoke up in a funk.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then we saw War Babies, who were an improvisational group. It was so funny. It was fresh. It was inspiring. I felt inspired just witnessing it. It was like the lightbulbs went off. ‘Of course, this is what I should do.'”<\/p>\n Short reached out to Second City Improv, said he wanted to join, and he did. That\u2019s where he worked with other future comedy greats like Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, and the late Catherine O\u2019Hara and John Candy.<\/p>\n He later worked on \u201cSNL\u201d as well during the show\u2019s tenth season, though Murray was long gone by then.<\/p>\n “Show business is talent, luck, and endurance. But you can have talent, you can have tenacity. You can take the hits, but if you don’t have the confidence to get up there and fail, then you can’t do it,\u201d Short said.<\/p>\n \u201cMarty, Life is Short,\u201d debuts on Netflix May 12.<\/p>\n Follow us on Instagram @WeArePauseRewind<\/a> for all your pop culture obsessions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n