Waiting for the Punch Read online

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  Table of Contents

  About the Authors

  Copyright Page

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  For our listeners

  FOREWORD

  We have a lot to thank garages for.

  Sure, they can protect your car from the elements and act as a halfway house for objects not yet ready to be sent to the actual trash, but big things have famously started in garages too. Google and Apple each began in one. Even the Yankee Candle Company was apparently formed in a garage, and if that hadn’t happened, you wouldn’t currently be able to buy a Mango Peach Salsa candle for $27.99. They also make one called Cream Colored Ponies. Seriously. Cream Colored Ponies. Same price. They’re actively just fucking with people now. I can’t even begin to imagine what a Cream Colored Pony smells like in candle form, but I’m already getting a headache thinking about it. Oh, and one more thing you should know; in 2013 the Yankee Candle Company was apparently sold for $1.75 billion, so you’re not laughing so hard at Yankee Candles now, are you?

  The point is, huge things happen in garages.

  That brings us to Highland Park, California, in 2009, when an unremarkable garage took a very funny, very broken man into its wooden womb and helped him create one of the most recognizable podcasts in the world. That podcast has featured conversations with everyone from comedians, actors, musicians, and writers to an actual sitting president.

  In hindsight, Marc was always going to be extremely good at interviewing people. He’s smart, constantly curious, and has an almost pathological desire to connect to people. For a man who has experimented with multiple forms of facial hair, it’s perhaps surprising that there is absolutely no artifice to his conversation. His ludicrous levels of honesty act as a kind of emotional wrecking ball to even the most guarded human being. I’m British, so I’m medically dead inside, but even I can’t help opening up whenever I talk to him. He uses his honesty like a scalpel, cutting himself open in front of anyone he’s talking to, and in doing so, invites you to do the same.

  It turns out that the format of podcasting and Marc were made for each other. The complete lack of restrictions means he can have unedited, uncensored, long-form conversations that can be comedic, cathartic, and occasionally claustrophobic. And eight years after it began, here is that perfect podcast in book form. I’ll admit that I didn’t see the point of this at first. When you have something that is already in its ideal form, why insist on making it something else? It’s like that Mitch Hedberg joke about comedians constantly being asked to write other things:

  When you’re a comedian, everyone wants you to do other things besides comedy.… That’s not fair. That’s like if I worked hard to become a cook, and I’m a really good cook, they’d say, “All right, you’re a cook. Can you farm?”

  But you know what? I’ve really enjoyed this book. It’s reminded me of conversations that had a big impact on me at the time, and I’ve gone back to listen to those conversations in full again. Louis CK and Marc in a raw conversation about friendship. Marc and Todd Hanson navigating a brutal powwow about wanting to die. Norm Macdonald being so funny while talking about drinking and gambling everything away that he almost makes it sound appealing. It’s worth dipping into the discussions on these pages again to remember how truly remarkable they were. Plus, the beauty of this book over the podcast itself is that you don’t need to skip the first seven pages where Marc plugs his stand-up dates and reads ads for butt plugs from Adam and Eve.

  I do hope you enjoy it.

  Viva Boomer.

  —John Oliver

  IN MEMORIAM

  Four of the contributors to this book passed away in the years following their appearances on WTF with Marc Maron. They are Robin Williams, Garry Shandling, Sam Simon, and Mike DeStefano. Their contributions are invaluable, and they are incredibly missed.

  INTRODUCTION

  When I was a kid I loved to talk to people.

  Whether it was when I was very young, listening to the old men who hung out at my grandfather’s appliance store in Haskell, New Jersey. Or in my twenties, talking to my mentor Gus Blaisdel at his bookstore. Or even to Pete, the schizophrenic who hung around the bagel place I worked at when I was in high school. Or any guy at any record or guitar store anywhere.

  I wanted to hear stories. I wanted to be engaged by people who had interesting lives, thoughts, ideas, and information. I needed it. I think part of my compulsion was because I didn’t feel whole. My dad wasn’t around much and my mother was into herself. I didn’t feel like I fit in. I was an overly sensitive, creative kid. I didn’t feel comfortable in my body, and I was angry. I was painfully insecure, and being part of someone else’s life for a while always felt like a relief. As long as I was talking to people I wasn’t lost in my own fear, pain, and dark thoughts. It was like I was using them as a battery for my soul.

  I started the WTF podcast out of complete desperation. I think if you listen to the first one hundred episodes they can be heard as me having celebrities over to my house to help me with my problems. They did.

  Over the years it has evolved into a massive and amazing catalog of conversations with hundreds of people. They are mostly creative types: comics, actors, musicians, writers, graphic novelists, producers, playwrights, and directors. There’s even a soap maker and a president. I had no idea when I became a comedian back in the mid-1980s that I would cocreate and host a hugely popular show out of the garage behind my house.

  I think the pastime of chatting or candidly talking to people about anything or nothing is fading away. People don’t even want to leave voice messages anymore, let alone talk. We keep a distance from each other because we can. It’s odd and sad. Because just by talking to each other, we can put all the aspects and challenges and joys and horrors of life into perspective, even if that is not what we are talking about. It’s relieving, comforting, and enjoyable.

  Most of the people I talk to have public lives. That means they probably have a well-worn personal narrative that they churn out for interviews. Conversely, many of us may have a one-sided relationship with these public people based on that narrative or their work. We often create assumptions about a public persona that are based on either fantasy or preconceived judgments. I have them about most of my guests too. I am a fan and I am also judgmental. I go into the conversation with those assumptions and judgments and very quickly realize how limited they are. I am almost always wrong and almost always pleasantly surprised and excited that I am wrong. They are just people. We are just people.

  When I interviewed Lorne Michaels, I went into it thinking he was some kind of all-powerful gatekeeper of show business. I came away thinking he’s a good guy who works in a building and loves what he does. I thought Kristen Wiig might be difficult to interview because she’s intensely private and had not spoken about her personal life in much detail. We had one of the more insightful conversations I can remember about fear and anxiety. When I interviewed Paul Thomas Anderson I was convinced he was some kind of mysterious, dark, brooding genius. Turns out he’s extremel
y friendly and laid-back, almost a goofball. When I interviewed President Barack Obama I thought it would be like interviewing a president, but he’s just a guy who happens to be a president.

  When guests come into the garage with their narrative, I have to find a way around it. I wait until it falls away or I find something else engaging to talk about. If this doesn’t happen immediately, it almost always happens around twenty minutes in. When they forget that they are talking into a microphone.

  I have no idea what is going to happen when I talk to a guest. I’m not sure where the conversation will go. I don’t have a plan other than to talk, to connect. I know I don’t want to be talked at or through. I don’t prepare in the same way other interviewers prepare because I don’t see myself as an interviewer. I am a conversationalist and a somewhat needy one at that. I obviously know a bit about my guests, but other than what they have accomplished and where they come from, I keep myself in the dark. All I want out of any talk is for it to find its own groove. I want something to come up that enables us to engage authentically in that moment. Then I like to chase that moment, use it as a portal into who they are. Who anyone is in a moment isn’t always about information or what’s being said. It’s about feelings, memory, spontaneously thinking aloud, finding common ground, being surprised because of new revelations, and being open. I listen. It took me a long time to learn how to do that. I make myself available and open in the moment.

  It’s always nerve-racking to talk to people and I almost always think it will be difficult. I am intimidated by some of my guests, sometimes because I’m a big fan and sometimes because they are just intimidating. When I talked with Judd Apatow, we talked about the feeling of dread we both deal with every day. It’s the feeling of being on guard against some kind of impending doom, waiting for a punch to come from out of nowhere, even though it never comes. That’s how it feels most of the time when I have these conversations. It’s like I’m cornered and my only chance at survival is to talk my way out of it.

  I am not afraid to share and even overshare about myself in conversation. This isn’t something people being “interviewed” are necessarily prepared for. It throws them off. Now it’s not all about them, and they have to engage on a personal level. This isn’t a system I’ve devised or my method. It’s just who I am emotionally. I need to be heard and seen. I need to put myself out there to know I exist. That was really the whole intention of the podcast. There were no expectations. I just knew I had to keep putting myself out there or I would fade away.

  I had no idea the conversations would be so life changing for me and I certainly didn’t anticipate them being that way for other people. I don’t think I even considered what listeners’ reactions would be. There was no way for me to anticipate the range of emotional reactions I’ve received. People from all over the world tell me the podcast helped them through a dark time, made them feel less alone, helped them get sober, helped them identify problems they had, helped them with the people in their lives, inspired them, moved them to tears, saved their lives. The effect of listening to an uninterrupted, long-form conversation with emotional ups and downs, depth and lightness, humor and sadness, is an essentially human experience. Hearing creative people talk about life’s struggles and their creative process not only humanizes them but also makes listeners realize that they are just people trying to do something with their lives and, like the listener, are confronted with every obstacle available in the process. Sharing how they move through those obstacles helps others.

  In a way, WTF is one long, ongoing conversation with many participants, many voices. This book is a thorough representation of that continuing dialogue, with shared viewpoints, differences of opinion, and profound insights about common themes in our lives. To be honest, I don’t listen to my conversations after I have them. My producer does. So, reading these conversations, seeing them intertwined and complementing each other, was not simply like hearing them again. It was like being able to really feel what is being talked about and savor it. When people speak candidly and it is transcribed, the effect is visceral and immediate. When I read these pieces for the first time, it felt like I had never heard them before, and they moved me in a way I couldn’t experience in the moment when I was having the conversations. I hope they hit you the same way.

  Enjoy!

  Boomer lives!

  Love,

  Maron

  GROWING UP

  “The Smaller Place It Came From”

  I had my adventures and misadventures growing up, but it’s the varying mixture of what I did or didn’t get from my parents that really leaves a mark. The relationship we have with our parents explains how we engage with the world and other people.

  Sometimes bad experiences can lead us to a place of self-realization or, at the very least, give us a great story. Sometimes our childhood experiences take a lifetime to process, if ever. These stories define us, they haunt us, but they also can liberate us.

  I am positive I did not grow up properly. Does anyone, really? Something is definitely off. There are obviously many reasons for whatever emotional flaws I have as an adult, and I can trace most of them to my parents. I have grown into a place of gratitude rather than resentment toward them because it is essentially those flaws (and my struggle with them) that make me who I am. It is not really sympathetic or attractive to be actively mad at your parents after a certain age. You have to let it go at some point. It was fifty for me.

  My parents left me hanging in the “Providing the Boundaries Necessary for Me to Take Chances and Succeed and Fail with the Support and Guidance Necessary to Define My Character” department. I had to put my sense of self together from scratch. I spent a good part of my life moving through the world like a kid lost at a mall. Looking to other grown-ups as role models, I learned which cigarettes to smoke from Keith Richards. I dressed like Tom Waits for most of my junior year of high school. I looked to Woody Allen to understand what it meant to be smart and funny.

  My mother was a bit sarcastic and could be a little cutting. She was funny. She was always expressing herself in a creative way. My father was unpredictable and explosive at times. Sometimes that explosion would go in, sometimes out. He thought he was funny, but he wasn’t. They both have a lot of energy. These are the things in the plus column.

  It’s always good to learn about the struggles other people went through while they were growing up. I like that Paul Scheer felt comfortable sharing with me the very difficult situation he found himself in after his parents’ divorce. Same with John Darnielle from the Mountain Goats, who is still dealing with the pain his stepfather put him through. I was able to laugh in disbelief at Molly Shannon’s story of complete parental irresponsibility when she got on a plane without an adult and flew to New York City accompanied only by another child. I’m glad people still tell these stories about their childhoods. It took years of me talking to people in my garage to finally get some perspective on things I went through as a kid and stop them from undermining me as an adult. Well, that and a little therapy and some specific reading and age.

  CONAN O’BRIEN—TALK SHOW HOST, COMEDIAN, WRITER

  I think I was an anxious kid. I was not the class clown. I was funny for my friends, but quiet in the classroom. I worked really hard, and I was kind of grim. I have to say I didn’t really enjoy my childhood. I was not socially uncomfortable. I could make my friends laugh, but I was not easygoing. From fourth grade until, like, now.

  SIR IAN MCKELLEN—ACTOR, ACTIVIST

  The first three years of my life I didn’t sleep in a bed. I slept on a mattress under a metal table in our downstairs room in case a bomb knocked the building over, and blackout material so the light didn’t attract any German bombers that were coming over. Not much to eat, but quite healthy eating, rationing. Of course, when you’re growing up, you know that’s not the norm. I was well looked after. A lot of love in my house.

  KEVIN HART—COMEDIAN, ACTOR

  I grew up in Philadelphia,
PA. My neighborhood is shit. North Philadelphia, Fifteenth area, Crime City. Right now I think we’re third in the world in deaths, probably. New Year’s we opened it up with five murders in my city.

  Marc

  Happy New Year.

  Kevin

  Yeah. It’s not the best place in the world, but I love it. It’s home for me. That’s what I know.

  MEL BROOKS—COMEDIAN, WRITER, DIRECTOR, PRODUCER, ACTOR, MUSICIAN

  My mother, Kitty. Kitty Kaminsky. Raised four boys. You know, those days, diapers, you had to wash them. Yeah, I’ll never forget. One time I wanted to see a movie. She gave me three deposit bottles, each one was three cents apiece. So that was nine cents. You needed a dime. She went next door to Mrs. Miller and borrowed a penny so I could make the dime. I don’t know whether she was typical, but she was a wonderful, loving, caring, beautiful mother.

  RUPAUL CHARLES—ACTOR, DRAG PERFORMER, SINGER, MODEL, WRITER, TELEVISION HOST

  I was watching a kid the other day. He must have been about four years old, and he was so happy to be in a human body. He was just jumping around going upside down, and he was running over there, and he came running. It was like, “Oh my God. It’s great. I’m a human. Look at me. Look, I can do this. I can do…” That’s what I want to do. Just to move your hands, jump around, roll on the ground with an exhausted parent going, “Yes, you can. You can do that.”

  Unfortunately, when I was a kid, my parents were in their own melodrama, and so I really couldn’t do that as much as possible.

  Luckily for me, though, my sister Renee, she was the one who said, “You’re great. You should try this. Why don’t you do that?” I have that in my sister, so that was great.