Marty Callner, Director of Comedy Specials and Music Videos, Dies at 78

New York Times

23-03-2025

Marty Callner, a pioneering director of comedy specials who set the template for the genre at HBO in the 1970s before going on to make music videos infused with humor during the early heyday of MTV, died on March 17 at his home in Malibu, Calif. He was 78.
His son Jazz Callner said the cause was not yet known.
Over a half-century, Mr. Callner worked with some of the biggest names in popular culture, including Jerry Seinfeld, Madonna, Robin Williams, George Carlin, the Rolling Stones and Chris Rock.
Mr. Callner, who preferred to stay in the background but was far from shy, 'might be the most successful director you have never heard of,' Jason Zinoman of The New York Times wrote in 2022.
One day in the early 1980s, Mr. Callner had an epiphany. While watching television at his home in Beverly Hills, he found himself enraptured by a music video. It was Kim Carnes's 'Bette Davis Eyes' — and he couldn't take his eyes off it.
'I said, 'This is unbelievable,'" he recalled on the 'HawkeTalk' podcast in 2021. He called it 'the most artistic and entertaining thing I've ever seen' and recalled thinking, 'I've got to go do this.'
MTV was then in its early days. But Mr. Callner was willing to give up his lucrative work on comedy specials at HBO for the creative rush of making music videos.
In a meeting with Ahmet Ertegun, the chairman of Atlantic Records, Mr. Callner was given a choice of three bands to make a video with. He chose the heavy metal band Twisted Sister, and in 1984 he turned the group's song 'We're Not Gonna Take It' into a funny cinematic story of teenage rebellion.
In the video, a guitar-playing boy (played by his son Dax) sends his angry father crashing out of a window after he declares — in Mr. Callner's voice-over — 'I want to rock!'
'However much Marty got paid, it wasn't enough,' said Rob Tannenbaum, who wrote 'I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution' (2011) with Craig Marks. 'He made Twisted Sister.'
Mr. Callner spent more than a decade making memorable videos for, among others, Pat Benatar, Bon Jovi, Alice Cooper and ZZ Top. The 18 videos he made for Aerosmith included 'Sweet Emotion' and 'Dream On.'
For the video for her hit song 'If I Could Turn Back Time,' Cher performed on the battleship Missouri amid hundreds of deliriously happy, hat-waving sailors in 1989. Mr. Callner persuaded her to straddle a cannon, a choice he explained by saying, 'We're getting as phallic as you can possibly get.'
For most of the video, Cher wore a body-hugging black catsuit with mesh-filled cutouts, which she designed herself.
During a rehearsal, Mr. Callner said, the Navy's liaison to the production was nervous that if Cher wore the outfit for the shoot, he would be punished by being sent to the Aleutian Islands. He told Mr. Callner that she couldn't wear it.
'I said, 'You go tell her she can't wear it,'' Mr. Callner responded. The liaison backed down.
Martin Henry Callner was born on Aug. 25, 1946, in Chicago, and grew up lower-middle-class in Cincinnati with his mother, Etheljane (Hirsch) Callner, after his father, Barnard, left the family when Marty was 2. Eight years later, after Barnard Callner's death, his family, which had real estate wealth, embraced Marty as the last of the Callner line. He spent his summers with relatives in Chicago, mostly with an aunt and uncle, until he was 18, surrounded by fine art.
He attended three colleges, including the University of Kentucky, but he preferred partying to studying and he did not graduate. He later recalled that his creativity was unlocked when he was 19 or 20 and took a trip on the psychedelic psilocybin.
He did not find an outlet for his newfound creativity until his mother, who worked at TV Guide, suggested that he interview at a television station in Cincinnati in 1969. Hired as a prop man, he was immediately mesmerized by the studio atmosphere. He quickly became the director of several shows.
But he left after a few years when the station manager refused to give him a raise — because, Mr. Callner said, he had left-wing politics and long hair.
After being hired to make commercials in Cleveland, he left to direct Celtics games for the Boston station WBZ-TV. In 1975 he joined HBO, then a new cable channel, and established himself as a director of comedy shows with 'An Evening With Robert Klein,' HBO's first stand-up special.
Mr. Callner's incorporation of backstage footage, and his use of five cameras to capture the feel of Mr. Klein's live performance, were called 'innovative' by the Times critic John O'Connor.
That plaudit led to a lucrative deal with HBO to direct a series of stand-up comedy specials starring, among others, Mr. Williams, Mr. Carlin and Steve Martin. He was also a co-director of 'The Pee-wee Herman Show' (1981), a more adult-oriented early version of the hit children's series 'Pee-wee's Playhouse,' with its star, Paul Reubens.
'I learned that comedy directs me,' Mr. Callner told The Times. 'If a comedian is doing something physical, it better be a head-to-toe shot. If he's making a poignant point, it better be on a close shot. It was reportage.'
At HBO, Mr. Callner also directed coverage of the Wimbledon tennis tournament; concert specials starring Liza Minnelli, Paul Simon, Diana Ross and Stevie Nicks; and a filmed version of the revival of the Broadway musical 'Camelot,' starring Richard Harris, in 1982.
After many more years of directing music and comedy programming, Mr. Callner conceived the HBO football reality show 'Hard Knocks,' which has followed one N.F.L. team during the preseason since 2001.
His idea was to follow rookies during the preseason as they try to make the team. An in-season version of the series was recently added.
'Everyone wants to go inside the locker room and see what happens when guys get cut,' he told the sports and pop culture website The Ringer in 2022.
Ross Greenburg, the former president of HBO Sports, said in an interview that the network and NFL Films quickly expanded the concept so that cameras followed not just the fate of the rookies, but also stories about the development of the upcoming season's team and veterans who are at risk of being told they are not wanted. Mr. Callner did not have an operational role in the series but he was an executive producer who won two Sports Emmys.
In addition to his son Jazz, from his marriage to Aleeza (Zelcer) Callner, who also survives him, Mr. Callner is survived by his daughter Tess Levi, from that marriage; his sons Dax and Chad, from his marriage to Jan Mussara, which ended in divorce; a stepdaughter, Lin Swenson; a stepson, Oriel Zelcer; and eight grandchildren.
In 1998, Mr. Callner directed Mr. Seinfeld in a live HBO special 'I'm Telling You for the Last Time,' from the Broadhurst Theater in New York.
'Once the show starts, I'm taking the lights down to black,' he told The Times before the telecast. He added, 'There's nothing worse than a comedian looking out at a lighted audience.'
He learned that lesson from directing a Steve Martin stand-up show in 1976.
'I had the lights up and cut around,' he said. 'His agent came up behind me and whispered in my ear: 'Cold and dark. Comedy's cold and dark.' I chose not to listen to him. Steve Martin informed me later I had made a mistake.'