Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Some comedians and I reminisced the other night outside of the venerated Comedy Cellar about a New York City comedy club that closed back in 2011, just before the podcasting wave that could have flooded its showroom with packed audiences every weekend.
Marc Maron played to half houses at Comix in NYC before his WTF podcast finally found him millions of loyal fans.
And since the start of his own semi-autobiographical TV series on IFC, Maron has released a new stand-up comedy special every other year, from 2013’s Thinky Pain on Comedy Central, to 2015’s More Later on EPIX, and now Marc Maron: Too Real on Netflix.
Each hour finds the comedian slightly more assured, definitely tighter in his writing and performance, and a little bit happier to boot. He’s still the guy who prefers to sit onstage on the stool in a crouch, only with a more regular smile across his face. The change is most evident from one particular camera angle positioned in about the third row, looking up at the comedian. It’s also quite visible as Maron enjoys more physical act-outs of his material onstage.
At 53, Maron is happier, nimbler, and stronger as a comedian.
Not all comedians get better with age and experience. Some lose the hunger. Some lose touch with the audience. Some get sidetracked by other pursuits, personally or professionally. That’s not the case with Maron, who has delivered his best hour of stand-up to date.
Whether that’s a side effect of his better acting gigs on series such as GLOW, getting to interview President Barack Obama and just about anyone else he could dream of speaking to in his actual garage, or the confidence that comes from steadier and larger paychecks, it all shows here in Too Real. Even when Maron takes the stage to talk about our collective frustration about someone who acts like an abusive stepfather (without having to mention who’s he’s talking about by name). “I could say things to you that would never make sense previous…but now you’re like, right.” Eventually he capitulates and says the Trump word, wondering who his supporters may still be a year after the election, and how Americans can bridge the divide between us. Loving Tom Petty, apparently, is not enough of a common denominator to unite us once more. Although he’s more popular than ever now. Maron; not Petty. If Trump voters can apologize, even if it’s in the minute before the world ends, that may be enough. At least for him.
Maron jokingly calls himself an “alpha pussy” who’s not about to make fun of alpha males or Trump voters to their faces, but knows we’re all going to need to summon up some courage to support each other. At his age, though, he also uses self-deprecation about his own mortality as an excuse to not learn new things or find new bands, movies or friends to become fans of. He even can include himself in that calculus, asking at one point: “How do you have fun? How do you guys do it? Like, I don’t think I would have come to this show.”
“Some people think that comedy takes courage. I don’t know if that’s true,” he says. “I don’t even know if what I’m doing is comedy anymore, but I certainly don’t have a lot of fear.”
That’s for certain.
As he gets older, Maron doesn’t want to turn into his father. However, he does acknowledge not only his genetic links, but also his frustrations and exhaustion with the surplus of content and options available to us now online and in real life. And he has no shame about beating the crowd out of a Rolling Stones concert. In fact, he’s so convincing about it that you feel bad for the suckers who stayed til the end.
Which, of course, he turns on its head 63 minutes into his performance, following an exploration of dying and whether anyone has to truly be alone at the end, acknowledging: “I could’ve ended there. That felt like a good ending.”
But Maron knows his fans want more, expect more now out of him. They’ve come to know everything about him through his podcast, so much that his live performances are bonus episodes, containing even more information about the current occupancy at his Cat Ranch. The guy who once “Scorched the Earth” with an hour pre-WTF that burned bridges and everything else has now reseeded the world around him, turned his garage into an intimate sanctuary and found the ability to get as real as we need him to be without turning anyone away.
And we’re all better for it.
Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.
