\n<\/p>\n
To be a longtime listener of Marc Maron\u2019s WTF podcast is to have a poorer sense of the guests who sign up for his revealing conversations than for the self-confessed \u201cangry comic\u2019s\u201d own biography.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s taken us from his drug-fueled apprenticeship under the shrill standup Sam Kinison to the thwarted SNL audition that deepened his resentment for the entertainment industry to his daily struggles in addiction recovery to that seminal 2015 interview with Barack Obama. When Maron and longtime producer Brendan McDonald announced in June that they would be winding down WTF after 16 years and more than 1,600 episodes, the news came as somewhat of a shock to many of fans who assumed \u2013 naively, selfishly \u2013 that the 62-year-old would just keep threatening retirement before he actually followed through. (Maron declared himself \u201cburnt out\u201d in the pod\u2019s retirement statement.) Coincidentally, a 90-minute documentary has arrived to help with the letting go ahead of WTF\u2019s final installment next Monday.<\/p>\n
Are We Good?, which premiered at SXSW earlier this year, retraces the peaks and valleys of Maron\u2019s singular show business career as the comedian processes the loss of his partner, the actor and film-maker Lynn Shelton. A former WTF pod guest who wound up directing Maron in his biographical cable sitcom, the Netflix wrestling dramedy Glow and two standup comedy specials, Shelton died suddenly from acute myeloid leukemia in 2020, during Covid. Director Steven Feinartz and producer Julie Seabaugh spent five years following Maron around as he puzzles through living and working around his grief. They watch Maron fumble through early standup sets and wallow in emotional anguish. During one visit to LA\u2019s Comedy Store, where Maron got his start in show business as a doorman, he stares at the headshots on the wall and dryly picks out the dead faces.<\/p>\n
Years earlier Maron considers walking away from show business altogether, to deadpan reactions from his cohorts who make a running joke of Maron\u2019s acute exasperation. \u201c[Marc] said the other day, \u2018I don\u2019t know, who said we have to do this forever?\u201d recalled the comedian Caroline Rhea. \u201cAnd I was like, we do! We all do. If you\u2019re a real comedian, you have to do it forever. There\u2019s no retiring.\u201d<\/p>\n
David Cross likens Maron to The Who as a poster for Maron\u2019s latest tour, This May Be the Last Time, flashes on screen. \u201cDidn\u2019t they have like 11 last tours ever?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat? He\u2019s going to get a boat and sail around Corsica or some shit?\u201d John Mulaney quips. \u201cAs if he\u2019s going to move to Vancouver and just be Marc Maron. That\u2019s an insane idea.\u201d<\/p>\n
Significantly, Maron dismisses Joe Rogan and his \u201carmy of meatheads\u201d as \u201chacks\u201d for punching down on trans people and other marginalized groups \u2013 a line of attack he returned to recently as a lead-up to denouncing the comedians who signed on to perform at this month\u2019s Riyadh comedy festival. \u201cFull disclosure: I was not asked to perform,\u201d he cracked, with trademark ironic detachment. \u201cSo it\u2019s kinda easy for me to take the high road on this one, easy to maintain your integrity when no one\u2019s offering to buy it out.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the doc, Maron falls back into the habit of measuring himself against his comedian peers he views as \u201cmore successful\u201d than himself: Jon Stewart (whom Maron replaced as host of Comedy Central\u2019s Short Attention Theater) and Boston standup scene partner Louis CK (whom Maron fell out with after CK confirmed the sexual misconduct allegations made against him in 2017). Maron\u2019s retreat into self-loathing is a too-familiar exercise \u2013 and even harder to take on board as he currently stars opposite Owen Wilson in Apple TV\u2019s Stick. But Maron\u2019s parade of noteworthy friends (progressive commentator Sam Seder, the novelist Sam Lipsyte, SNL alumna Michaela Watkins) and Feinartz\u2019s steely focus keep the subject from throwing the doc off its core story, a remarkable study in perseverance for restless late bloomers.<\/p>\n
One would be hard pressed to name another standup comedian over the past 40 years who has proven to be as adaptable or as resilient as Maron, who could\u2019ve easily crashed and burned after the apprenticeship with Kinison and wound up another Comedy Store cautionary tale. Instead, he slinked back home to New Mexico, got clean and moved to Boston, building his standup career in earnest on the way to becoming a regular on the Late Show with David Letterman and the most-featured standup comic ever on Late Night with Conan O\u2019Brien. When flyover country club owners bristled at Maron\u2019s abrasive style, he sharpened his voice at LA\u2019s Largo theater \u2013 the bohemian laboratory that launched Jack Black, set the stage for Larry David\u2019s Curb Your Enthusiasm and partly midwifed the US alt-comedy movement.<\/p>\n
Most notably, as Maron\u2019s second marriage was breaking apart, his addiction had come roaring back and his comedy acting career seemed like it had peaked with two episodes of Dr Katz and a memorable turn in Almost Famous (\u201cLock the gates!\u201d). He then parlayed his star-crossed stint on the liberal talk radio network Air America into the foundation for WTF. With McDonald egging him on, Maron snuck into Air America\u2019s LA studios to record the pod\u2019s first episodes before moving the production into his garage, compelling celebrities and the president himself to make the pilgrimage. But even as his rogue operation turned out to be a total game-changer, not just for his career but the podcast boom that followed, Maron still struggled to see the forest for the trees.<\/p>\n
At one point in the doc, he beats himself up for not being as good at playing the Hollywood game as O\u2019Brien, Mulaney or Bill Hader \u2013 discounting the innate rebelliousness and stubborn determination that inspires such deep loyalty among his fans. When the New York Times profiled Maron in 2011, as WTF was emerging as a rival to Terry Gross\u2019s Fresh Air, the breakthrough article wasn\u2019t just an excuse to indulge in some thirdhand satisfaction for those of us who have been riding with Maron since his Short Attention Span Theater days. (He really doesn\u2019t get enough credit for shaping millennials\u2019 comedic sensibilities\u2026) It was a stark reminder for us to carry on pursuing our passions until the resistance wears out.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Marc Maron and Barack Obama.<\/span> Photograph: Pete Souza\/The White House<\/p>\n However, the thing that the doc captures so beautifully from its fly on the wall perspective (which the chronically neurotic comic can\u2019t help second guessing along with Feinartz\u2019s use of reconstructive animation) is Maron\u2019s steadfast commitment to becoming a better human, no matter how much it breaks down him down or exposes him in the process. He could have quite easily become an angrier, more closed-off person after losing Shelton, the soulmate that followed so many bad romances. But he actually works through the grief against an ever-shifting minefield of Shelton artefacts: her cowboy boots, a bombshell journal entry wondering if Maron would love her \u201cif I could just get Marc to love himself\u201d. He savors their good times and funnels the most poignant excerpts into his best special yet (HBO\u2019s From Bleak to Dark). Maron takes his reward when Shelton\u2019s friends track him down to confirm that she definitely <\/em>would\u2019ve loved the jokes.<\/p>\n Movingly, Maron dotes on his father, a lifelong foil who was recently diagnosed with dementia, and lovingly skewers his old man on stage as he beams with pride from the audience. Even simpler moments like Maron noticing how jumpy his cats are when he calls them leads to the realization that \u201cI don\u2019t talk to cats right.\u201d He throws himself<\/em> a 60th birthday bash! For comedy\u2019s dyspeptic high priest, this is commendable progress.<\/p>\n In the end, WTF is survived by a welter of podcasts that feature hosts yammering on about their particular craft and the wider state of culture \u2013 all of them pale imitations of Maron\u2019s persistently untidy effort at investigating human connection. Are We Good? not only makes a noble case for Maron as the George Carlin of his day; it shows how honest self-reflection (often mistaken for oversharing) can bring about genuine healing while changing a person for the better, strengthening their integrity and <\/em>keeping them true to themselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" To be a longtime listener of Marc Maron\u2019s WTF podcast is to have a poorer sense of the guests who sign up for his revealing conversations than for the self-confessed \u201cangry comic\u2019s\u201d own biography. He\u2019s taken us from his drug-fueled apprenticeship under the shrill standup Sam Kinison to the thwarted SNL audition that deepened his<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26587,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[10812,2512,3768,15943,485,871],"class_list":{"0":"post-26586","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-comedian","9":"tag-comedy","10":"tag-marc","11":"tag-maron","12":"tag-rare","13":"tag-shows"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}