A geyser of sticky-sweet, carbonated brown liquid spews forth from the floor. The man who was supposed to be commanding the very stage that just insulted him with Diet Coke—a gift from a fan, no less, which he had dropped while showing it to the crowd—looks shocked, unsure of how, exactly, to handle such a startling moment. Marc Maron is uncharacteristically speechless.
“I had no control over it,” Maron tells Paste the day following the cola explosion at Atlanta’s Laughing Skull Lounge. “I don’t mind things that aren’t planned, but things that you don’t have control over can be kind of daunting in the moment they happen. It was an embarrassing moment, but it wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t like I shit myself or somebody threw something at me. I just sort of rode it out and do what I usually do: You play the straight man in this situation that’s out of your control and you hope it works.”
Maron and I are sitting in the food court of the world headquarters of Cable News Network. Previous to finding our seats in the bustling, shopping-mall-esque dining portion of the CNN Center, we stop for a coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts and the comedian muses aloud a thought he’ll tweet as soon as we sit down: “This place is like a metaphor for the kind of news they cover.”
Maron is no stranger to political news. In fact, he hosted a pair of radio shows for the now-defunct, left-leaning radio network, Air America, both of which were canceled. “I am first and foremost a stand-up comic,” the bio section on his official website reads, and indeed, going up on stage to tell jokes in front of strangers has tied together his myriad activities since the mid-’90s, though chances are, you’re familiar with some portion of his lengthy and varied career, even if his name doesn’t instantly set off bells. He’s lent his voice to Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, performed stand-up specials on HBO and Comedy Central, and has visited Late Night with Conan O’Brien more than any other comedian—an impressive 44 times. He even played a one-scene role in Almost Famous; as “angry promoter,” Maron argues with Stillwater manager Dick Roswell upon the band’s decision to abandon a show before chasing the tour bus as it drives away.
But it was his time at Air America that would ultimately lead to a career resurgence and his most successful endeavor to date, WTF with Marc Maron, the podcast usually taped in his Los Angeles garage. Before WTF was a known humor commodity, a deep-delving go-to source for comedy fanatics, amassing more than 170 episodes in a year and half and featuring a wide swath of stand ups who matter, it was a covert operation. “I was up against the wall,” Maron says. “I was broke, I was losing this job at Air America. I didn’t know what else to do. My producer at the time knew that this was an option, to try podcasting, and that it was a good medium for me. We also wanted to do it on our own terms. I wanted to get away from political talk. We had all the equipment [at Air America], so breaking into the studio—because we still had our pass cards—was really easy, because it wasn’t even breaking in. We were just using them. When no one was around. To have that kind of freedom to feel it out was a great luxury.”
Much like the spraying can of soda, his podcast is also full of surprises. If you have a favorite comedian, they’ve likely been featured on WTF. From Dane Cook to David Cross, Robin Williams to Maria Bamford, Janeane Garofalo to Louis C.K., Bob Saget to Zach Galifianakis, Maron’s ever-increasing guest list—he somehow finds time to produce and publish two episodes per week—is long, formidable and known for the emotional depth he frequently plumbs from its denizens. It makes for a pretty arresting listening experience. “[WTF] became a means by which I could talk to people I find interesting and entertaining but also talk about what I’m going through with them and relate on certain levels and everybody sort of puts it out there and everybody grows a little bit,” Maron says, effectively stating the show’s modus operandi. “I think people who listen to it find a lot of solace in it as well.”
Averaging 230,000 downloads a week, it’s a lot of solace indeed, though perhaps that’s to be expected from a podcast that’s earned a certain reputation as one that’s brought Louis C.K. to tears, incited Gallagher to storm out of the studio and convinced Robin Williams to talk openly about fear and insecurity. “People say stuff to him that you can’t imagine them saying to anyone else,” This American Life host Ira Glass, another of Maron’s past WTF guests, told The New York Times in January. “And they offer it. They want to give it to him. Because he is so bare, he calls it forward.”
It’s not hyperbolic to say that WTF has changed everything for Maron. At 47 years old, he’s doing more shows now than he’s ever done in his career, and selling more tickets than usual to those shows. He has a deal with a division of Random House for a book of “memoir-y essays, [his] thoughts and things,” due in early 2012, a forthcoming album on Comedy Central Records, and he’s in development talks with Fox Studios for a single-camera comedy based around the fact that he interviews celebrities in his garage. For a guy whose success has largely been predicated on his own neuroses and failures and the ability to work through them aloud, both on his own and with others, in front of a listening audience of thousands, the fact that things are starting to look up for Maron could potentially prove a stumbling block to the continued creation of his most excellent art. Then again, at the end of the day, Maron will always be Maron.
“I don’t know if I necessarily feel happy,” he says. “I feel validated. I feel grateful. I don’t fundamentally, on an emotional level, know how to feel joy. But if I can get to a place where I can get some self-acceptance, that would be good. I don’t know if it will make me any less compelling. It seems to me that a lot of people are listening because they’re engaged in my process of growing self-awareness and perhaps some change. So my empathy will only broaden. It’s a new thing to me to be able to sense my own struggle and the struggle of others. I think my brain will always work a certain way.”