Marc Maron 3
By Ben Kharakh
Marc Maron's record 38 Conan appearances are a testament to his ability to be consistently funny, intelligent, and engaging. It's this ability that's landed him two Comedy Central Specials, multiple programs on Air America, and appearances in clubs nationwide, including Comix on October 12th and 13th. And while credits and portions of Maron's own quips may hint at his talent, the best way to get a taste of Maron is to visit MarcMaron.com, where you can watch any of his 38 Conan appearances and several uncut and uncensored full-length stand up performances.
How are you?
I'm a little tired, but I'm okay. I gotta read a book. I gotta do homework today.
What sort of homework?
I'm moderating a conversation with Robert Reisch Thursday night. So I gotta read at least a good part of his new book so that I don't look like a fucking moron. I'm no economic wizard, I'll tell you that, but he's a pretty accessible guy.
Are you a quick reader?
Not really. If I read too quick, I don't pay attention. I'm not really a quick reader. I have to digest things relatively slowly so I make sure I understand them.
What will you be moderating this conversation for?
It's just this writer's series. His new book is Super Capitalism. I've talked to him before when I was on the morning show. Whenever the new employment numbers would come out, we'd ask him whether real jobs were being created or not. This book seems to be about the arc of American capitalism and how capitalism has worked with democracy somewhat initially during the boom times, and now has really sort of evolved into something else, and the upsides and downsides of what he calls super capitalism.
Where do you stand on capitalism?
In some ways, it seems to me that the idea of freedom was not meant to be freedom of choice, necessarily. I think that because capitalism seems to be flailing a bit, it seems to more so than not manufacture needs, as opposed to manufacture things that we do need, because that all seems to be taken care of on some level. I don't know. I find that in terms of marketing, it exploits our desires and keeps us occupied and distracted and forever unsatisfied. I don't know if that's solely capitalism's fault, but it just seems that the idea of capitalism and the way it works is that it needs our insecurity, it needs our fear, it needs us to desire to get something between us and our feelings before those feelings lead to questions that might actually lead to some sort of progress in terms of the social fabric of things. Obviously you can't live without it, but there are some things that are kind of demonic. And also I think that competition doesn't always lead to the best things. It seems to a lot of times lead to the worst thing, because it seems like a lot of these people that believe solely in the free market really don't take into mind the power of human greed and selfishness and lack of caring. So that's hilarious. What else you got?
It seems like then you subscribe to more of a Hobbesian view of the inherent nature of man.
I think we're inherently somewhat selfish, but we do possess I think good qualities when it comes to our family or the immediate pain of somebody else. I think it really depends on disposition and social context. I don't think men and women are inherently bad. It's been my experience that when push comes to shove, people show up for each other. That seems to be the reality, that when the shit goes down, and you're on the ground where the shit is, that people do help each other. Unless it's really bad shit, and everybody starts running. But I don't know if they're essentially bad. I think they're essentially selfish, and that can lead to a lot of evil and bad things.
So when you say selfish, do you mean selfish in an Ayn Rand sort of way, or in a greedy sort of way?
I mean selfish in a self-preserving sort of way. The reaction of fear, for whatever it may be, the initiative to preserve one's self, to survive. And I think once you build up from that into Randian ideas, that all you should worry about is your own ambition-- but I just think on a base level, that when the shit gets hairy people want to preserve themselves. But sometimes people in moments of clarity when they're able to assess the situation and how much time they have, moreso than not will try to help other people.
Do you think that people should try to fend off their selfish nature, or is this something they should accept?
It depends on what you believe. If you believe that humility and selfishness will bring you closer to God, or closer to experiencing some sense of purpose or joy in the world, then you should certainly experiment with that, because it seems to have a lot of followers and be somewhat of a basic value in order to maintain a decent society. So I think that you should accept your selfishness but realize that in order to be a decent person, you have some responsibility to your fellows. Some people would disagree with that, but it seems that there's a tremendous amount of actual joy in giving and being able to show up for somebody else. I never would have believed it. I'm just sort of learning that now, and I can vouch for that.
Is there something in particular that's teaching you that?
You get humbled by certain things in your life, and you can either sit around and be angry and full of self-pity and sadness, or you can find yourself in situations where you realize that maybe you're not so special, maybe this is a common problem, maybe this is part of the human condition and you need to share it with other people. I get a sense of this on stage, and recently my life has been a little shattered lately, and also I've been sober for a long time, clean and sober for eight years. Getting out of your own head, like I've been saying lately on stage-- in part of one of my jokes, I talk about David Blaine. Is David Blaine a magician? Is suspending yourself in a box for a week and chewing on a tube, is that magic? Is putting yourself in a block of ice for a few days magic? How come all his tricks end up with him in the hospital eating? That's not magic, that's a cry for help. If that guy's a magician, then I'm a magician. Come to my house any night this week and watch me try to get out of my head for three hours. So I think once you get out of your head and into the real world and try to show up for other people, I don't know. Is there anything teaching you that? Sure, there are some spiritual principles I've been abiding by as of late reluctantly, but I think that's the real struggle. There's something about humility that makes us all human, and it's a hard lesson that I've had to learn in a lot of different ways, because some people think I come off as arrogant. I don't think I am, I think I'm more preoccupied than arrogant.
I had read a review of one of your shows at Edinburgh, and you might have read this one as well. The reviewer was concerned that because of how revealing you are about yourself, that some fans became too concerned or too familiar with you. Do you think that's possible?
Sure. Certainly on the radio it's possible. There isn't much distance between who I am and my audience, and that's the way I choose to play it. It hasn't garnered me a huge fan base, but I've recently been saying during shows that you can leave a performance saying, "That guy's hilarious," or you might leave saying, "I hope that guy's okay." And if I put people in a position where they have to pay attention to me on that level, and have to care, well, maybe they're selfish people. Maybe it will help them out a little bit.
I saw you're doing a show called Power Flailing at UCB LA. What's that about?
Power Flailing is just something I call workshopping. Basically I'd do those hours, it used to be just to try new material. So I look at that as sometimes a difficult process, and sometimes I feel like I'm flailing, so I just give it a name. I just call it Power Flailing, which means that I'm going to throw out the raw goods and see where it takes me.
This material that you did in Edinburgh, is that material that audiences should expect to see when they see you at Comix?
Yeah, some of it.
How would you describe your experience at the Fringe Festival?
Humbling. I had no idea what I was getting into. I was brought out there with a producer and another guy I didn't know that well. We were put on a bill. I had no idea what the festival was. I had no idea that there was going to be a thousand million shows going on at once. I had no idea that there was going to be a fight for audiences. I had no idea that there was a hierarchy and a political universe to the performers and venues out there. Some people have been coming back for twenty years. I had no idea you had to jockey for reviews in order to draw any audience. I had no idea of their real contempt for Americans. So it was difficult. It was twenty-eight days of relatively small audiences who were not very responsive in a lot of ways. And it was humbling to be introduced to an entire continent of performers that I'd never seen. The whole thing was just humbling. But as I said, I'm finding a certain amount of wisdom and release at these.
What I'd been told about the festival is that they see stand-up as much more of an art form than the American press seems to.
I guess that's true. Does America really acknowledge any art form? I guess a small group of Americans does, but by and large, when you speak of America does anything, you're talking about the majority, and most of them don't even know what the fuck art is. So whether or not they'd appreciate anything as that-- when you have a more intimate culture with a sense of its own history, and it has a very long history, you're able to put things into context a little better.
Patton Oswalt does this bit about the KFC bowls. He says that this particular product exemplifies where America is at right now. Do you think there is a particular product or piece of media that does that as well?
I find that right now, the product that seems to be exemplifying whatever it is you're asking me is the Blackberry. I don't think there's very much fun in that. I know Patton was making a joke about fat and consumption and over-indulgence, but it seems to me that the real movement is toward closing the gap between desire and gratification to its smallest possible without much time for processing anything. And it seems to me that all these machines like the Blackberry and the computer-- I'm not sure if we're surrendering too much of our memory and our time to them. The idea that they're making life more convenient is sort of dwarfing the idea that they're making us retarded if we don't have them.
Have you noticed any indications of this retardation?
Of course. There used to be a time when we could remember phone numbers. How many of your friends' phone numbers do you have in your head? If you were to ask me mine on a bad day, I'd be hard pressed to look in my Blackberry for it. I think if some people lost their cell phone or Blackberry, they're just two hours away from wandering the street and digging around through garbage, saying, "What's my name? Where do I live? Do I work someplace?"
One complaint I heard from Andy Kindler when he did his State of the Industry Address-- this is more specifically with comedy-- is that the amount of sitcoms now is at a very low point. Not many sitcoms. Do you think that's a problem?
Well, you've got to blame Joe Rogan for spearheading the movement to kill comedy careers with reality television. I think it is a problem. I don't know what can be done about it. It's a matter of creativity and networks willing to take a risk to do some new comedy. Maybe there's not a lot of people writing good comedies out there. I find that hard to believe. Comedy's so subjective, too. I think it's becoming harder to figure out what the collective pulse of the country is in order to take risks that networks feel comfortable in taking. So I guess comedy is happening elsewhere. I don't know. I don't watch much television. I don't keep up with how many sitcoms there are or aren't. But I think comedy seems very difficult. It's harder to make people laugh, and it's harder to figure out which groups will laugh at what. I don't know, it's just so fucking subjective.
And since comedy is so subjective, what do you think are some indications of good and bad comedy?
Well, it seems to me that in stand up, if whoever's doing the stand up has spent enough time building an efficient clown for themself, if they seem to have some merit as stand ups, I tend to like people who are coming from somewhere or seem to belong on stage. I have certain people that I like more than others and certain styles of comedy that aren't really connected to any specific thing other than that they make me laugh. I can't really completely explain it, which is good. But I don't know. I've been laughing more as I get older for some reason.
Although you didn't touch upon bad comedy so much, do you think bad comedians know that they're bad?
Either these bad comedians are part of a never ending almost monotone monologue of joke telling, or they're not. I go to comedy clubs all the time, I spend my life in comedy clubs, and I've found myself lately seeing, the only real difference between comics is that-- there are some people that could be anyone. They could be anyone. They could be wearing any head. They could be male or female, black or any ethnicity. They have no opinions, no personality necessarily, no point of view, they are just joke telling machines. And the jokes are familiar, and they all work at the same cadence, and there are hundreds of these people. Do people laugh at them? Yeah, some people have the same robotic response to robotic comedy, sort of the laugh of robots, thinking that they're doing their part, no risk, no real depth. And that to me is horrible. And then every once in a while, somebody will get up there like a heartbeat on a cardiogram, that just bangs out. And all of a sudden, hey, there's a person in there. There's an original thought. There's a different approach to that timing. There's an idea. There's a point of view. There's a face, or an effective thing, that someone is authentic. It's authenticity. And even if I don't find it funny, I certainly respect it. With the market as big as it is in all different areas of life, there is just so much shit out there because all the machine cares about is providing content. "Can you provide us with some content? Can you do a ninety second thing? Can you do a little rant that we can put on a phone or a watch? Can you do something like that? Can you just send us some stuff?" So you've got a bunch of talentless people with no real chops sending in shit, telling jokes, showing up for things, occupying the minds of people. And it's horrendous. It's one of the big downsides of what we were talking about before, capitalism and the way it's structured now. Any asshole can do something that only professionals should be allowed to do. We have to tolerate that, and then some people find that charming. "Isn't it great that he doesn't know how to do it, and he makes so much money? Isn't that great?" No, it's not. Because then we're anchorless. The center cannot hold. The falcon cannot see the falconer.
I've got no problem with Joe Rogan. It's just that in the big picture, what he did as a host, which was not even a job, he wasn't even being a comic-- you know, there were always arguments between him and Mencia or whatever. Who's a hack, who's not a hack, who's a thief, who isn't a thief. Despite any of those arguments, what Joe Rogan made his fortune on killed jobs for comedians. He did that. And I'm not saying anything about his comedy. I'm not judging him in any way. It's just that reality television, more so than anything else, because it was cheap, and people like laughing at real people acting stupid not on purpose-- which is shitty-- really killed this infrastructure of the situation comedy, and it really diminished networks' desire to take those kind of risks and put that kind of money in those things. It was a lot easier just to let people laugh at people acting stupid not on purpose.
What do you think of all this talk of joke thievery?
I don't know. If someone stole your joke, it must be an easy joke to do. Write a new joke. The thing about joke stealing is that, again, there's thousands of comedians. Thousands. I don't know when the fuck that happened. We're all living in roughly the same world, unless your perception is different. If your perception is different, then maybe you have an original idea. So you should do those ideas and keep thinking along those lines and produce from that place. If your perception is mundane, because you want to appeal to the mundane, then there's going to be a lot of people doing your perception. There's a difference between being a hack and being a thief. If somebody steals an original idea and calls it their own, I think that's pretty heinous. But that person has to live with themselves, and the person it got stolen from has got to figure out how he wants to handle that. Stealing jokes has been part of this business since the beginning of it. It's a way that the Borscht Belt was set up. Jerry Lewis used to go steal from the black acts in Harlem. All the Jewish comics in that decade were doing roughly the same jokes. But then not unlike in film, you started to get people who had real personalities and real different points of view, and you had sort of the auteur of stand up in the fifties. So if somebody steals from you-- it's happened to me, but generally my jokes are hard to see, and they're not that easy to take because they're so rooted in my life experience. But if someone steals one, a lot of times the ones that get stolen are the ones that just become common fodder anyways. So a lot of times, I think it's on the comic to take responsibility for it. There's a lot of people who think it's their duty, out of their inability to use their creativity any other way, to police the comedy situation, to run around saying, "That guy stole that joke. That guy stole this joke." I think that if that's your job, then you should go tell the person whose joke it is, and then let them handle it. Usually what I've done in the case of that is either I've gone up to the person who I think is doing my joke, and I said, "I've been doing that joke for this amount of time, I've done it on these TV shows, and if we work together, I prefer you not do yours," or you can go, "I'd like you to stop doing it," or you can stop doing it because obviously it's no longer that original.
Right now, there is the whole debate about stealing actual music, the illegal downloading.
You know, people work hard to get to a certain place in their life. Stealing is stealing. I think that if a rock act or a musical act becomes that popular, that they're entitled to make money off of it. I wish there wasn't so many intermediaries parasiting money or skimming off the top. I wish there was a more effective way to make the money they deserve for original or great groups. It seems that Radiohead is doing something sort of interesting with their new record and making it available on their website at a price that the consumer decides. They can either take it for nothing or pay for it, whatever they seem to want to do. And alongside that, they're offering some sort of special edition artistic vinyl and CD box set of the record for people who want to collect or be part of it in that way. That would I guess be the fixed price. But they're a band that fought for their niche and their place in the world, so they can do things like that. I think that all bands should have that kind of freedom. I think stealing music, if it actually denies the artist money they deserve, is a bad thing. We all do it to some degree. Christ, just giving somebody a CD on some level could be called stealing music, and certainly I do that. But I generally buy CDs, and I generally buy things off of iTunes more than I take music from my friends.
How do you feel about your own albums being available for download on these file sharing networks?
It's fine with me. I never expected to make a million dollars on my CDs. I'm just happy that the material is out there. I like it when people buy one of the albums, because I do like to make a living, and I imagine that if I was selling a lot more CDs that I would think differently, but I'm happy to have the fans that I have, and if people are getting off on it, then I don't mind if they share it. Like I said, it's not like there's millions of people rushing to buy my CDs, so I don't feel like I'm actually being screwed out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
It seems like based on the videos available on your website that you're putting more effort into documenting your stand up in general.
I don't know, I think I was putting more effort into getting it all in one place so it doesn't end up in a box fading away. It was important for me to catalog all the TV appearances or the ones that I could find. I think I've got most of the Conan, the Letterman, and the HBO stuff. I just wanted to get it into digital format before the tapes just eroded. Some of that stuff is just gone, disappeared, it's garbage to people. So most of that was about consolidation. I am putting stuff up there, if I remember to get somebody out there to tape me, or somebody does tape me. I'm still not doing a lot of that myself. I'm still not like, "I've got to get everything on tape." Certain performances, I do. But usually it's just so there was some witness to it. I wanted there to be some evidence that I existed.
I personally think that that's terrific, and I'm surprised that more comedians aren't doing the same.
I don't know. You know, with me, the battle has always just been about laziness, organization, getting someone to do it, trying to keep up with it. A lot of us are comedians for a reason, it's because we think a certain way that sort of disables us from getting things done. And it's really just a matter of getting someone to help you out and doing it and just focusing on it and accumulating it. I had a lot of stuff to accumulate over the years, but I was able to do it. A lot of guys only think in terms of how they can make money, so if there's really no money in doing it or putting it up, they don't do it. But if it's their CD or something, or their DVD, then they'll market that somehow. I think it's easily just laziness.
Along similar lines, what are some projects that you're currently involved in or contemplating?
I'm trying to put together a new hour primarily about love and relationships, because I'm in the middle of one falling apart and it's having a profound effect on me. I'm also in a deal with HBO to develop a half hour of pilot script for myself, and I'm writing that with Jerry Stall, and we just got done with a new outline for it after getting notes, so that's moving on. I'd really like to get back in the public view or mind on a regular basis somehow via TV or radio. And I just write my things and share my philosophy and tell my jokes. I'm just trying to be okay with that.
How did you get together with Jerry?
We're kind of friends, and he was on a short list of people they wanted to work with when they wanted to work with me. They wanted to pair me up with a writer. They read me a bunch of names, and I said, "Well, me and Jerry are buddies." And they were like, "Wow, that's great. What a great idea, you two working together," so that's how that happened.
You're going to be in town on the 12th, so I imagine you're going to be doing some radio. How do you feel about the morning zoo experience?
You just start to understand all of these things as a means to an end. I hosted a morning show for a year and half and I liked being funny on the radio, but when it comes to morning zoos, if it's redundant and adolescent I have very little patience for it. Radio is great because it's very intimate. It's just you and whoever's listening. My experience on morning zoos is that if you get into the moment and just talk, it can be great.
A lot of them have a fart fixation.
True. And they've got nicknames like The Gasman, or Jack and the Douchebag, where the sidekick is always making noises.
Do you think farts can be funny if properly employed or are they just hack?
I think it's just a human reality. They're surprising, so I think people will always get a kick out of them. If you're at a yoga class or a public place and someone farts, I've never seen it not get a laugh. It's just a weird, discomforting, vulnerable moment that some people have no control over. I don't think they're never going to not be funny, but that doesn't mean that you should use them for that. If a fart happens in the wild, it's funny. If it happens on purpose it's overused.
Another staple of doing any comedy club is the annoying and unwanted bachelorette party. How do you deal with them?
I don't like them. I don't understand why they go to comedy clubs, so I go out of my way to be fairly abusive and discourage them from marrying whoever they're going to marry. I find it unnerving when you're doing a show and have developed material that you want to share with people who are either like-minded or attentive and instead you have to baby sit a bunch of needy women who are there just to have their friend be made a full of to drain focus from the audience. I just think it's rude and they should go somewhere else.
What do you usually say to them?
I'm just abusive. I ask, "Are you sure that you want the same cock for the rest of your life?" I try to find out who they're marrying, what she does, what he does, de-construct it, and then make her feel bad for even coming to a comedy club and, hopefully, feel bad about the person they're marrying. And then, of course, you try to get them to want you after you abuse them for fifteen minutes, but maybe that's just my approach.
Have you been able to win them over after abusing them for so long?
I guess, but I don't even care. I just don't understand why they're there, so I give them attention, but I resent the fact that I have to, so it's not the good sort of attention, but because they keep going to clubs I have to assume that that's what they want.
Have you ever had a show end with a physical confrontation?
Yeah, some guy once jumped out of the crowd and tackled me because I pissed him off somehow. It was weird because it was an alternative comedy venue. Sometimes I can be pretty irritating and I just got under this guy's skin and said, "That's it," flew out of the audience and came up onstage. I was the last guy and I knew that I couldn't run because that would be no way to close the show. I'm not a fighter, so I just stood there and waited for him to make a move. He didn't seem to know what he'd do, so he just tackled me and we started wrestling, beating on each other, then the crowd dispersed, and finally people pulled him off of me. Thank God I was the last comic because that really would have hurt the follow-up.
Did you smell liquor on his breath?
I think he was hammered. He'd crossed a line, obviously. That's a very aggressive breaking of the fourth wall from the other side.
Was that your worst audience experience?
That show was actually going pretty good up until that point. Many years ago, I was sent home from Australia for bombing badly. This was back when I was just starting out. When you get sent home from a country, you know it's bad.
Have clubs changed at all since you've started performing?
Most comedy clubs are like the land that time forgot. Comix in New York, though, is a very modern and great club. Clubs haven't changed very much, though. It's still just one person with a microphone. I find that it's better in a basement when the ceilings are low and when the crowd is tight up against the stage and a certain level of intimacy can be achieved. If it's like that, then I don't care what it's called or whose pictures are on the wall as long as the sound system's good, the ceilings are low, and the intimacy is there.
You've lived in New York in the past. Was there a particular experience that stands out in your mind as the strangest?
I saw a guy get on the subway with a saxophone and play horribly and very loudly for what seemed like a long time and he was literally playing that way only so people would stop. As soon as he got the money, he stopped and went to the next car.
What would it take to bring you back to living in New York?
I don't know. I spent a lot of years living there. I think it would just take a decent job in show business and a one-bedroom apartment down town?
Given the opportunity, how would you change New York?
I'd bring back the filth and all the working people who made the city interesting. Then I'd push out all the people who own apartments but don't live in them and bring back rent stabilized apartments so the city can have some class diversity so it feels like an organic living thing where people walk their kids around.
Which New Yorker do you most admire?
Lou Reed keeps coming to mind.
What do you consider to be a perfect day of recreation in the city?
Back in the day, in the fall, I used to like to start walking down the lower east side. I'd like to go to The Strand Bookstore and Mojo guitars when it was open. Then maybe go to the west village and have an espresso and then just walk around SoHo. The perfect day is, if the weather's right, to just walk around all the downtown neighborhoods and feel it.
What are some projects that you're currently involved in or contemplating?
I'm trying to put together a new hour about love and relationships because I'm in the middle of one falling apart and it's having a profound affect on me. I'm also in a deal with HBO to develop a half hour pilot script for myself and I'm writing that with Jerry Stahl. I'd really like to get back into the public mind, via TV or radio. I just write my things, share my philosophy, tell my jokes, and I'm just trying to be okay with that.