Episode 1387 - Rob Delaney / Sam Lipsyte
Marc:Lock the gates!
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuck nicks?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:Where are we at?
Marc:How are you feeling after the big long weekend?
Marc:That strange disassociative weekend.
Marc:It just starts on Wednesday or Thursday and it kind of smears on the calendar.
Marc:You do the eating, you do the traveling.
Marc:It's just a very weird time.
Marc:I mean, I lost all sense of personal history, all sense of self-respect from the amount of food I ate, all sense of any kind of temporal.
Marc:Is that the word I want?
Marc:Temporal?
Marc:Is that time?
Marc:I just, you know, on top of the general weirdness post-COVID of time and the cultural malaise and shit show and just, you know, the climate weirdness, it just everything becomes strange.
Marc:And it's stranger when you just you're floating in this Thanksgiving zone.
Marc:of long weekendness and this thing goes on through christmas it's just this is the weird time usually just mildly weird because it's kind of vacation but it's kind of sad and it's kind of winter i'm in la but still now with it's just compounded by just a maelstrom of anti-semitism and weirdness and just the general kind of like what when did the sky stop working
Marc:But let's not make it negative.
Marc:How was your thing?
Marc:Did you do a thing?
Marc:I was very fortunate to bring food to another place so it didn't stay in my house.
Marc:I'm very fortunate not to have to look at a carcass and a pot of potatoes and way too much gravy and two different kinds of cranberry stuff and just wonder, like, how do we eat this all?
Marc:How many days are going to take us to eat it?
Marc:And should we throw it out?
Marc:When can we throw it out?
Marc:But I hope it went well for you.
Marc:I hope everything worked out.
Marc:Look, today on the show, I talk with Rob Delaney.
Marc:I recorded it in London, as you remember, when I was there.
Marc:You know Rob from the show Catastrophe and also his comedy and Deadpool and being one of the first big Twitter stars back in the day.
Marc:Rob was on the show back in 2010, episode 55, one of our great early episodes.
Marc:It was heavy, man.
Marc:A lot has happened for Rob since then.
Marc:He moved to London with his wife and his two young boys.
Marc:And while they were living there, they had a third kid, Henry.
Marc:But Henry passed away.
Marc:And Rob just wrote a book called The Heart That Works about Henry's diagnosis of a brain tumor, the two years leading up to his death and how Rob and his family dealt with their grief.
Marc:Also, I've got a short talk with my friend Sam Lipsight to talk about his new novel, No One Left to Come Looking for You.
Marc:Very funny.
Marc:Well, let's get back to the Thanksgiving business.
Marc:Yeah, I cooked a brisket.
Marc:I did a 10-hour smoke in the Traeger.
Marc:And it came out pretty fucking good.
Marc:I baked a chess pie, brought that over with the stuffing, the amazing philosophy professor stuffing, the yeah, the loaded stuffing, the stuffing full of baggage, the slightly traumatic, perhaps sexually inappropriate cost of that stuffing is something that I have stuck in my memory, but I've framed it and processed it and I'm left with stuffing.
Marc:And he's dead.
Marc:But I did have a nice time.
Marc:But I think that...
Marc:I'm a little tweaked.
Marc:I'm a little tweaked.
Marc:I've been pretty detached from social media.
Marc:The Twitter thing, it's odd.
Marc:It didn't affect me that much.
Marc:I don't use Twitter that much, and I'm not that upset about it.
Marc:I'd be more than happy for it to go.
Marc:Instagram, I'm barely on that anymore.
Marc:I check it occasionally.
Marc:I'm limiting the email intake to mostly just my personal emails, and I'm just trying to clear my head
Marc:to get into this special.
Marc:I got to shoot the special on the 8th.
Marc:And I've only got three more shows to prepare for it.
Marc:And this happens every time.
Marc:I'm still not sure of how it's going to be structured.
Marc:I need it to be fresh in my head.
Marc:I need something new to happen.
Marc:I'd like to think...
Marc:That I'm not nervous about it.
Marc:But look, man, I'm sucking down cigars.
Marc:I'm eating everything in sight.
Marc:I'm losing my fucking mind.
Marc:I'm jacked up on caffeine.
Marc:It feels like that I just need to kind of rev up my brain in a sort of mania slash shame driven depression business.
Marc:Just this mishmash of emotions and feelings to avoid anxiety.
Marc:any sort of anxiety about the actual task at hand, which would cause anybody anxiety.
Marc:But I just choose to fill in that world of possibilities of dread with a lot of other things so I can be like, no, I feel I'm pretty relaxed about the special.
Marc:Look, you know, we've all been going through this in terms of with me.
Marc:You know, I've been doing this material for a year and a half and now we're going to do it.
Marc:And I can only be an hour.
Marc:And I'm sort of in this zone where it's like I really need this cultural stuff to be in there.
Marc:And I need this personal stuff to be in there.
Marc:And it's just a matter of like finding the redundancies, trimming it down, weaving it together.
Marc:And you would have thought I'd be working on that.
Marc:for the last year but no it really comes down to the wire with me it's just the way i do it so i've got these couple of shows coming up in asheville and i've got the one in nashville and then i'm i'm doing the thing gotta figure out what shoes to wear i gotta figure out how to not wear clothing that i'll only wear that one day and regret wearing for the rest of my life
Marc:I cannot seem to land in an outfit on television that I like ever, ever.
Marc:The last special, I don't know what I was thinking.
Marc:At the last special, I wore a vest and I wore a collarless shirt and these pants.
Marc:It looked okay, but I was a little too skinny and I never wore the vest again because I don't know what I was thinking.
Marc:The special before that, I wore some old ass chamois shirt, this red one that was like that was very comfortable.
Marc:And I'm like, I'm just going to wear stuff that I wear every day.
Marc:It's like, no, no, it's a special.
Marc:It's going to be around forever.
Marc:Wear special things, but not new.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I'll be honest with you.
Marc:I got a stylist for this one to advise me.
Marc:But I just bought these new pants, black jeans at Ship John, and these new T-shirts that he set me up with.
Marc:And they look pretty fucking good.
Marc:Maybe a Western-style shirt.
Marc:I don't know, dude.
Marc:I think really what's going on is I just need to do this special.
Marc:And I need a long break from hammering out the stand-up.
Marc:And it's coming.
Marc:And I've got plans.
Marc:I don't know what you guys are doing for Christmas, but I'm going to go spend time with my father.
Marc:I'm going to see my mother in between my Nashville show and my New York show, do some family stuff and just sort of do the life thing.
Marc:It's so weird, man.
Marc:You know, just talking, getting older, talking to people.
Marc:I was talking to Tom Dreesen last night.
Marc:He's been on the show.
Marc:He's telling stories about old timey show business.
Marc:I'm hanging out with Tom Rhodes, who I hadn't seen in a while.
Marc:You start to realize this is like we're kind of the new older guys.
Marc:And Dreesen's like the way older guy used to open for Sinatra.
Marc:Told an amazing story.
Marc:about Sinatra saving Johnny Carson's life.
Marc:And I don't remember him telling me that story, but apparently it's in his book.
Marc:Still Standing, I think it's called.
Marc:But it was just so funny.
Marc:It was me, Mo Mandel, my buddy Jerry Stahl, who had gone with me to the comedy store, and we're just standing around Tom, and he's telling these straight-up fucking mob stories and all this Chicago stuff and this Vegas stuff.
Marc:And it's just there's not many of them left.
Marc:When show business was glorious and all the clubs were mob-owned back in the day, you know, and I just, I found myself at the comedy store the last couple nights doing a lot of parking lot time.
Marc:Just hanging out in the lot, talking to the young guys, talking to the old guys, getting ready to do my special, being a comic.
Marc:So look, Sam Whipsight is really one of my closest friends.
Marc:And I have to be honest with you, this new book, No One Left to Come Looking for You, is a great, funny book.
Marc:And it's a quick read because it just moves.
Marc:And it's set...
Marc:on the Lower East Side, in the music scene.
Marc:And it's just so funny and so tight.
Marc:And there's a sort of a whodunit at the core of it.
Marc:It's great.
Marc:And it comes out.
Marc:No one left to come looking for you.
Marc:It comes out next Tuesday, December 6th.
Marc:But you can pre-order it now wherever you get books.
Guest:And this is me and Sam catching up.
Marc:No one left to come looking for me.
Guest:For you.
Guest:No one left to come looking for you.
Marc:Oh, I blew it?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Damn it.
Marc:No one left to come looking for you.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Is that a riff on the Hillel thing or no?
Marc:It's actually not Hillel.
Guest:It's quoted.
Guest:It's a lyric from a song by the band Come.
Marc:Oh.
Marc:If you remember Come.
Marc:I don't remember cum, but it is a good window into the world we're talking about.
Marc:No, you know the one that's like when they came for the hoo-hoos.
Marc:You know, I said I'm not a hoo-hoo when they came for the ya-yas.
Marc:Right, yeah, exactly.
Marc:And they said I'm not a ya-yas.
Marc:And then when they came for me, there was no one left.
Guest:No one left.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That used to be, I think, wrongly attributed to Einstein or something.
Marc:No, it was a philosopher.
Marc:Was it Popper?
Marc:Not Hofstetter?
Marc:No, no, no.
Guest:Is it Hopper?
Guest:No, it was...
Guest:I know who you mean.
Guest:It was the theologian philosopher, right?
Marc:Niebuhr.
Marc:Was it Niebuhr?
Marc:What was his name?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Was it him, though?
Marc:I don't think so.
Guest:No, I think it was always wrongly attributed.
Marc:No, it's that guy Hoffer, I think.
Marc:We have the technology just to look it up, right?
Guest:I've seen it attributed to 20 different people is what I'm saying.
Guest:What?
Marc:What do you want?
Guest:House cleaning?
Marc:What do you got?
Marc:We're good.
Marc:So, okay, so by Martin Niemöller, a German Lutheran pastor.
Marc:But that's not Neuber.
Marc:What's his name?
Marc:What's that guy?
Marc:Yeah, that was a thing.
Marc:Different guy.
Marc:Doesn't matter.
Marc:Doesn't matter.
Marc:This is from the come lyric.
Guest:We should move past.
Marc:This is the come lyric.
Guest:We should, yeah.
Marc:From the band come.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That has nothing to do with when they came for it.
Marc:Nothing to do with the Jews or anybody else.
Guest:Although I think, although the leader of that band or one of them, a woman named Talia Zedek.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Was it you?
Guest:I think she is.
Guest:I think so.
Guest:Oh, is it you?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I'm not sure.
Marc:But the thing is, in terms of like this book is and I've read a lot of your books and I will say that I've read, I think, all of them except the one that you sent me.
Marc:And I got to read the short one.
Marc:But I feel that the pace of this, you can't put it down.
Marc:A lot of great characters.
Marc:Good.
Marc:There's a little bit of a detective story.
Marc:There's there's points of reference in reality.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That was an interesting curveball about halfway through.
Marc:And also, I feel like you live part of this life.
Marc:And I know that it's not you.
Marc:Honestly, dude, this time I didn't even picture you.
Marc:I almost always picture you as the main guy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, usually the main guy is, you know, this kind of dumpy middle-aged guy.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Who's feeling like, you know, the pressures of.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So it's easier to picture you like that.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:But I didn't even picture a young Sam.
Marc:I didn't picture a mulleted Sam.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:From his rock days.
Guest:A young husky mulleted Sam.
Marc:But not a mullet because of the mullet.
Marc:I think it was just overcompensating for what you were losing, right?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:It's a party in the back and nothing in front.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:It's like, I still got something.
Marc:Go fuck yourself.
Guest:Defunct business in front.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It takes place very specific.
Marc:It's 1993.
Guest:It's the East Village.
Guest:I was in a band then.
Guest:And this main character, his name is Jonathan Liptack, but he decides that he's going to be called Jack Shit because he's in a band called The Shits.
Guest:And the novel begins.
Guest:He wakes up one day.
Guest:and his roommate who is the lead singer of the band and has a terrible drug problem yeah has disappeared with jack shit's bass yeah jack shit is the bass player and he's pretty convinced that he's taken the bass to sell for drugs right and so the the
Guest:The novel takes place over a few days as he's searching for his lead singer and his base.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it takes him deeper and deeper into some mysteries and some murder.
Guest:And so it becomes a kind of like detective novel of sorts that also includes sort of.
Guest:figures of the time, some of whom became even more powerful as time went on.
Marc:Yes, it involved the New York machine, the political machine.
Guest:There's the New York political machine.
Guest:There's the police of that neighborhood.
Guest:The drugs of that neighborhood.
Guest:There are the drugs and the drug dealers.
Guest:So there's a lot going on.
Guest:And he sort of jack shit is our guide through it.
Marc:But it's hilarious because you have to really sort of construct
Guest:music scene out of what was sort of like you know just I guess like no wave was probably about that time or was it everything was shifting everything was shifting it was just well just before Nirvana hit right and then right after Nirvana so everything was straddling that that period of time yeah that they're there in that that's when I was there yeah and
Guest:The thing that was interesting that, I mean, I think about this a lot about living there and living in any kind of congested area like that is there are probably, you know, a hundred music scenes happening on top of each other, unaware of each other.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:So like you're in your little circuit with, you're in your little circuit with your bands, your friends, the clubs you play on certain nights, where you practice, the bars you hang out in, the apartments you hang out in.
Guest:And, you know, then you like are walking down the street and you see flyers for some other bands and,
Guest:And, you know, they're in the same neighborhood you are playing the same places.
Guest:But you're kind of like, I don't know anything about that.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And like, I have my world.
Marc:It's true.
Marc:But there was only a certain there's only a few cities that that could happen.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And this was one of this was one of them.
Marc:And also, you just have the crashing waves of everything that came before in New York.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, like, you know, the original punks, performance art, you know, new wave, no wave, art, music.
Guest:Well, that these, these, these characters in this book are very much aware of how they're, I think the Yiddish word is knock schleppers.
Guest:They're the, you know, the ones who've come after they're sort of there.
Guest:It's, they're too late in some ways, you know, punk came and went, you know, they're, they're in a kind of post-punk age, but what does that mean?
Guest:And, and then there's, and it's new New York, you know, what does it mean to be in New York?
Guest:And now they're kind of almost the first wave of these gentrifying people.
Guest:And they're like, there are people in the novel talking about that a lot.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And also about like, you know, the band that sold out in there, getting all the attention.
Guest:And then there's the band that like signs together.
Guest:And like our narrator is very, he's both incredibly, you know, bitter about them.
Guest:He also kind of secretly thinks they're good.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:He doesn't want to admit that to anyone.
Marc:But one of the best details of it is the guy who has the band that almost everyone has been in.
Marc:yeah right that that to me is such a detail of a music scene of any music right that everybody has passed through yeah that guy's band yeah and it still exists in some form yeah it's his band at this point and um that's so funny that band is called the annihilation of the soft left a lot of good names a lot of good funny but uh but so with this book though
Marc:Like, what were the decisions you made?
Marc:Like, how is it different?
Marc:Because, like, do you think it's because it is such familiar terrain that it just, like, the pace of it is different?
Guest:But you're, you know, you... No, well, my last book was pretty... It was a long book, and there were a lot of different voices.
Guest:Hark.
Guest:And there were different...
Guest:different POVs in it I would switch characters and it was you know Polly you know it it was multi-voiced let's write that way in this book I just knew I wanted it to be this one narrator and take place in a few days and just be very contained yeah and be and be
Guest:and really i was thinking about that time it was i wrote most of this during the pandemic yeah and i i just decided i actually bought a couple of notebooks and i had this like cheap fountain pen and i just wrote it that way and like didn't even look at the computer for a long time and just said i wrote it by hand i said i have to write a whole draft by hand before i put anything into the computer that was your idea
Guest:That, yeah, and I just wanted to, like, get down to... That was the ritual?
Guest:That was the ritual.
Guest:I wanted to get to the real physicality of writing this book and staying in this book.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so, yeah, it's all in, like, a couple notebooks and the first draft.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And...
Guest:And I was really – those memories, you know, it all changes in the book.
Guest:And it's not – the book is not my story or the story of my band.
Guest:But the feel of being alive in that time and place, I was very connected to it while I was writing the book.
Guest:And each day I would just, you know, find myself just descending into that sense of being like 24.
Guest:And I was having to channel my, you know, really kind of both –
Marc:you know very alive and very dumb 24 year old yeah head yeah to like to get there it's so funny too that like descriptions of everything and the drugs and his like you know the bodega thing it's such a it's such a like it's a type of it's a new york novel but it's not the kind you really you know i've never seen one like this and you wrote it all on paper do you think that
Marc:The idea of writing in notebooks connects you to something more personal because it is sort of a way of journaling in a sense.
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:I mean, I also it's also connects me to like to me writing is is even though we don't think of it this way is a very physical act.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And the more sometimes I can, at least for me, I can get in touch with the physicality of, you know, using ink to put, to make these symbols on a page in a certain order to evoke feeling in other people.
Guest:Like that's, you know...
Guest:That's the thing I'm doing with my body as well as my mind.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Or their one thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's sort of one process.
Guest:And so that was very useful for me to just get this draft, that first draft done and to feel that I could just tap into this one flow for the whole.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But isn't that sort of like a, like almost like this weird Kerouacian trip where you like, but you don't have access to.
Marc:Well, he was, he was writing on this.
Marc:I get it.
Guest:But like, but I'm just saying editorially like that, that,
Guest:i i wasn't i wasn't i was editing as i went i wasn't right but you weren't but things weren't going in the trash you like in the sense of like when you're editing as you go along on a computer you can literally excise things and they disappear forever yeah exactly no here you just have to cross it out yeah it still exists as this crossed out page yeah absolutely
Marc:But that's good.
Marc:That means you're completely responsible for your train of thought without the access of computer-enabled decision-making, which takes you out of a flow.
Marc:You can make decisions on the computer which completely upend whatever your real train of thought was because you can just move shit around.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, one of my favorite writers, who I know you like a lot, Stanley Elkin, he was middle-aged by the time the word processor really became something people could use.
Guest:And he said, oh, well, everyone should be able to write a perfect novel at this point.
Guest:With that thing.
Guest:With that thing.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That's the way he saw it.
Guest:I wonder if he, did he use one?
Guest:Yeah, he did.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:He called it his bubble machine.
Marc:Well, yeah.
Marc:I honestly thought this book ended solid.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The third act was great.
Marc:It's satisfying.
Guest:Oh, thank you.
Guest:I'm glad.
Marc:Yeah, because that's a hard one, right?
Marc:How do you land this thing?
Guest:That landing it is really hard sometimes.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Because you got all this stuff like building up to it.
Marc:How do you make those kind of decisions?
Marc:Like, because, you know, it's a very weird thing about endings in novels.
Marc:I can't imagine the struggle of that.
Guest:Well, it's it's it's funny because I knew, you know, I threw these things into motion in the beginning that they had, you know, the show coming up.
Marc:You also had to solve a caper.
Guest:I had to solve a caper.
Guest:I mean, it's very Scooby-Doo in a way.
Guest:They solved the caper, they have a show, and then they have a show to play.
Guest:But then I knew that couldn't be the end.
Guest:There had to be this other little coda.
Guest:I always sometimes think of this as a...
Guest:it's a circle yeah but it doesn't meet yeah the two ends don't meet yeah they one kind of goes off right right right right and that that's sort of how you want to think about your ending so like just veering off a little bit but but on some level the circle completes but it doesn't it doesn't become a whole circle exactly there's some other thing that shoots over here exactly like where's that going yeah to try another circle right exactly
Marc:It's going over to bleak to start a new circle.
Marc:Yeah, to start over again.
Marc:But when you were like, because I thought it was all very, I guess, visceral is the word, because I can picture all these people from down there on the Lower East Side, because I lived there on second between A and B. So I was like, I could see all of it.
Marc:right yeah but that's where you were hanging out too right yeah that's exactly where i lived you lived where'd you what street you lived a couple different places but yeah avenue b yeah ninth street wow geez man so what happens is it going to be a movie
Guest:Oh, not that I know of, unless... Well, it has to come out first, I guess.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think it would be a very good movie.
Marc:It'd be great.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It'd be a great movie.
Marc:Okay, so do you want to pitch it?
Marc:You don't need me, though.
Marc:You can do it on your own.
Marc:Just call your agent.
Marc:It's not a TV show.
Marc:You don't need me.
Guest:You already wrote it.
Guest:I think it's a TV show.
Guest:You do?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, maybe a limited... Miniseries?
Guest:Miniseries, yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it's a movie.
Guest:You're on a roll, dude.
Guest:Yeah, you know.
Marc:Yeah, you're thinking ahead.
Marc:Sam Lipsight, people.
Marc:No One Left to Come Looking for You comes out next Tuesday, December 6th.
Marc:Pre-order it now.
Marc:Funny book, good book, tight book, beautifully written book.
Marc:We'll have more of me and Sam posting this week for full Marin subscribers.
Marc:Plenty left.
Marc:Go to the link in the episode description to subscribe to WTF Plus or go to WTFPod.com and click on WTF Plus to get all that stuff.
Marc:Now, let's go back to England.
Marc:I did a few interviews in England.
Marc:I interviewed Rob Delaney, Armando Iannucci, Courtney Love, Tommy Tiernan.
Marc:And I guess this is the second of the UK conversations.
Marc:I was actually in Ireland when I interviewed Tommy.
Marc:But me and Rob caught up.
Marc:Me and Rob go back.
Marc:the difference between Rob's life now and Rob's life when I first talked to him is profound and a beautiful success story, but also a tragic, horrible event occurred that he had to process, which we talk about it, the loss of his son.
Marc:And the book, A Heart That Works, comes out tomorrow, November 29th.
Marc:You can get it wherever you get books.
Marc:And this is me catching up and really...
Marc:talking about grief and loss, among other things, with Rob Delaney.
Marc:Yeah, we might as well just get on the mics and regroup.
Guest:What do you think of that?
Guest:Okay, terrific.
Guest:Yeah, very happy to.
Guest:You feel good about it?
Guest:Yeah, nice to be holding a mic, too, like an American.
Marc:When was the last time you fucking held a mic?
Guest:Well, I haven't done much stand-up post-pandemic because I've been fortunate to be doing a lot of acting work, and I have young kids, and after Henry's death, I don't...
Guest:you know, I massively prioritize family time.
Guest:So I would love to be doing more stand-up, but now with the book and acting, haven't done much.
Guest:But I was doing a shitload up until the pandemic.
Guest:Really?
Guest:But I've only been on stage.
Guest:Yeah, no, the reason I specified I'm happy to be holding a mic is because I've been doing things where projection was necessary for the last few months, but it's always like a British head mic where, come on, I want to hold my gun, you know what I mean?
Marc:So...
Marc:I didn't know there was a thing, a British head mic.
Marc:You mean the TED Talk mic?
Marc:Yeah, the TED Talk mic.
Marc:The wraparound mic?
Marc:Yeah, Brits love that.
Marc:They'll do stand-up in one of those.
Marc:It always looks odd to me.
Marc:I always feel like you're sort of expected to do magic or something.
Marc:Yeah, a little trick.
Marc:Pull a rabbit out of your hat.
Marc:But I was looking at the... I haven't talked to you... No, it's been a long time.
Marc:2010.
Marc:2010.
Marc:Is that true?
Marc:Is that fucking nuts?
Marc:That's distressing.
Marc:That's when that podcast, when we did that podcast.
Marc:My lord.
Guest:But I don't feel like distant from you.
Guest:No, I'm very abreast of all that you do.
Guest:In fact.
Guest:You're familiar to me.
Guest:Yeah, the bad guys is on heavy rotation in our house.
Guest:You're so good in that.
Guest:Thank Christ Mark Maron is doing cartoons because your voice is so just glorious.
Marc:Oh, good.
Marc:So good.
Marc:I was funny because with that, I was the only I've drinking nine Americanos.
Marc:I have no sense.
Marc:I have no sense of four.
Marc:You have just four.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I miss dripped coffee.
Marc:It starts to depress me.
Marc:When I get here, I'm like, I can't take any more espresso.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's funny.
Guest:So I've lived here for eight years now, and people, sometimes if you go somewhere, whatever, some holding room or whatever, and they're like, oh, apologies, the coffee's not that good.
Guest:I'm like, oh, it's fine.
Guest:I'm American.
Guest:I'll drink garbage.
Guest:Is it brown?
Guest:Let's have it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But it's still espresso.
Marc:Sometimes, yeah.
Marc:I can't find a drip coffee.
Marc:But yeah, so I'm sweating because I have no way to calibrate how much of this I need.
Marc:Yeah, well, you're among brethren.
Marc:2010, yeah, I mean, you hadn't done anything, really.
Marc:No, nobody knew who I was, certainly.
Marc:And you were brooding and weird a little bit, were you?
Marc:I mean, I remember we talked about the horrendous alcoholic bottom hitting.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And driving the car.
Marc:But, I mean, you were doing stand-up.
Marc:You were doing the Twitter thing.
Marc:I guess you weren't depressed, but it was a heavy talk, and it resonated forever.
Guest:Yeah, well, I didn't have a nickel.
Guest:Is that what it was?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I was sharing a car with my wife, and she was teaching.
Guest:She was the breadwinner at Culver City Middle School as an English teacher.
Guest:And I'm taking the bus or her car to go do stand-up, making less than unemployment.
Guest:During UCB.
Marc:oh certainly that was like it wasn't like you weren't you weren't doing the big clubs no no we were just doing that was when alternative comedy was a thing yeah but it didn't go anywhere it's all gone now oh god all of it all the bringer shows everything's gone i think i don't know i am old yeah i have no idea what people are doing
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, I mean, well, that's interesting, you know, and then because now that I like I had even had two kids before anybody really knew who I was because of catastrophe.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And which is great.
Guest:I mean, how great to only have people learn who you are after you've been sober for some time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you don't go bananas.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like I just bought some plane tickets to go home to Boston and you go.
Guest:I've been going a lot lately.
Guest:Who's there still?
Guest:Everybody.
Guest:You folks are still alive?
Guest:My dad is dying.
Guest:He's got leukemia and is on his way out.
Guest:So I've been there a lot lately.
Guest:And we've been having a really good time.
Guest:I think about death, talk about death, and lately witness it a lot lately.
Guest:But with my dad, it's sort of different because he...
Guest:The amount of quality time that we have spent together lately has been amazing.
Guest:He was a huge part of my son Henry's life.
Guest:He became proficient and certified in taking care of a little tiny kid, one and then two, with a complex tracheostomy.
Guest:So he could do emergency care and airway maintenance.
Guest:Was he here?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he came here a lot.
Guest:He was the only one of...
Guest:of the four grandparents who was retired.
Guest:So they were all amazing and came when they could, but my dad would come for months.
Guest:And got certified as a caregiver for a child with cancer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so he was so great.
Guest:So I don't want him to die because I love him and I love spending time with him, but God damn it.
Guest:His final innings were glorious and I'm so proud of him and so grateful for him.
Guest:So he,
Guest:he i'm gonna go there and get in bed with him and hug him and put my head on his chest and it's weird you know because i've had a son die yeah i don't as i said i don't want my dad to die yeah but i'll pull through you know what i mean and and i've just been able to focus on loving him yeah well that's i mean well i well the title of the book
Marc:A heart that works, it seems like a fine metaphor for a life that eventually lands in the right place.
Guest:Let us also, Marc Maron, acknowledge that that's from a lyric by Julianna Hatfield from Boston.
Guest:And yeah, the full lyric being a heart that hurts is a heart that works.
Guest:And the second I heard that on WFNX in Boston, I was like, oh, look, my life mantra has arrived.
Guest:It's amazing.
Guest:So that was always part of the rotation of songs in your head since you were a kid?
Guest:For sure.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I mean, I wonder how old I was.
Guest:I should look up how old I was when that came out.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I probably had pubic hair.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, it's just like, I mean, I was trying to kind of wrap my brain around...
Marc:The trajectory, because I guess when I first talked to you, I mean, how sober were you, really?
Guest:If it was 2010, then I would have been sober for eight years.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And now it's 20.
Marc:And you also had problems with darkness, right?
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Serious depression, because, you know...
Guest:I don't have a medical degree.
Guest:I'll never get one.
Guest:But I think I was one of those self-medicators.
Guest:And after my fairly climactic getting sober, which I drove a car into a building and then was in jail.
Guest:So I was quite busy in early sobriety between surgeries, court dates, rehab.
Guest:And so I had a lot to do.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And as soon as the smoke started to clear and I remained sober for a calendar year.
Guest:And your wife stuck with you through like she hadn't met yet.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:We hadn't met.
Guest:We met.
Guest:I got sober in 2002.
Guest:We met in 2004.
Guest:The new guy.
Guest:She met the new guy.
Guest:Big time.
Guest:And so I...
Guest:My brain was like, wait a minute.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Now that your arms have been surgically knit, now that you're employable just about, you're going to start getting loaded again, right?
Guest:And I was like, no, I'm not.
Guest:And my brain was like, oh, well, then fuck off.
Guest:It just absolutely stopped working.
Guest:So real serious depression, you know, with physical components, you know, thrumming pain, diarrhea, vomiting.
Guest:I mean, like...
Guest:just from the mental thing yeah it was really bad and so uh but talk therapy and antidepressants worked for me thank god yeah and do you can do you continue both of those i do yeah i think maybe one day when my kids are adults i might you know
Guest:see about maybe reducing it, but I'm in no rush.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Marc:I mean, if it works, it works, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So because I kind of lost track of you, but I mean, I just know there was a point
Marc:where you know you were here yeah yeah and and you were had a hit show and uh and you were just gone you were you were not in america anymore and you were a phenomenon in britain yeah and uh and i was like well good for him yeah crazy right but i mean that show was huge we were really lucky you know catastrophe yeah we were so lucky we because i think um we wrote that pilot yeah and neither of us how did you know her
Guest:I met her on Twitter probably around 2010.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And I had seen a show of Sharon's called Pulling, which I thought was the funniest thing I'd ever seen.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I wrote her and said, hey, crazy about your show.
Guest:And she's like, oh, cool.
Guest:But then we became friends.
Guest:And then a couple years later, we thought, hey, let's write a pilot together.
Guest:We did.
Guest:And we weren't spring chickens.
Guest:We weren't trying to...
Guest:You know, it wasn't pilot season.
Guest:So we weren't like, we need to get out this year's idea.
Guest:We were just like, let's write from our hearts.
Guest:And so we wrote kind of a wild, bare bones, domestic, you know, high octane, tight little thing.
Guest:And it costs nothing to make.
Guest:So I don't think it was like a big risk, you know.
Guest:And then people were like, wow, this is all right, you know.
Guest:This is great.
Marc:And it's cheap.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So...
Guest:Like I tell people in America how much an episode of catastrophe costs to make.
Guest:And they're like, you're kidding.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Right.
Guest:There's no special effects, you know?
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And there's like, I mean, I talked to Armando Iannucci yesterday.
Marc:And I think just the nature of production here is so much different in terms of how many people involved, the infrastructure of the business here.
Marc:I mean, I think everything's different here.
Marc:And this sort of, you know, like it seems that three or four seasons is enough for
Guest:to a british people well you know we sharon and i wrote every episode yeah and we you know i had a child die and but wait was that but that was during the show it was in between the third and fourth season so yeah i didn't know that i would make a fourth
Marc:But he was sick during almost all of it.
Guest:During three.
Guest:During three.
Guest:So we make one and two back to back right after moving here.
Guest:And then he gets sick.
Guest:He was born here, Henry?
Guest:Yeah, he was.
Guest:He was.
Marc:And the other two were born in the States?
Guest:Yeah, the first two were born in the U.S.
Guest:How old are they now?
Guest:11 and 9.
Guest:And then you have another one, too.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who's four.
Guest:And he was also born here.
Guest:So I got two who were born at UCLA, Santa Monica, and then two who were born here in London.
Guest:And they would be British citizens.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, not quite.
Guest:Here's a fun thing.
Guest:America.
Guest:I mean, I know we love to lambaste it as xenophobia headquarters.
Guest:But in fact, if you're born in America, it doesn't matter what you get an American passport.
Guest:You're born here.
Guest:They're like, oh, we don't care.
Guest:So even my son who was born here, they're like, yeah, you're American, buddy.
Guest:And he has to go through all the hoops.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Which we're going through.
Guest:We're almost citizens.
Guest:For what?
Guest:For British citizenship?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So is that going to be a dual citizenship?
Guest:Yeah, we would be dual citizens.
Marc:And it's taken this long to do that?
Marc:Or is it that long a process?
Guest:It is.
Guest:It takes a while, you know.
Guest:Yeah, I mean.
Marc:Can't you just say I had a TV show?
Guest:Well, in fact, yes.
Guest:When we were very lucky and we won BAFTAs for comedy writing for catastrophe, then that kicked my visa up to like what they call an exceptional talent visa.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Which can last longer than your shitty cobbled together six month visas because you came over to do stand up.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So honestly, when we got the BAFTA, I was like, hey, BAFTA is cool, but I also got a big fat visa.
Guest:And that was like awesome.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because then I didn't have to go to the home office in Croydon every six months with a bunch of children and spend the day with bureaucrats.
Marc:So are you happier here?
Guest:No, we tried to leave.
Guest:In fact, I know.
Guest:Don't get me wrong.
Guest:I love it here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it wasn't like, you know, I just feel more comfortable here.
Guest:There's more suited to the United Kingdom.
Guest:No.
Guest:We wanted, after two series of catastrophe, my wife was like, hey, what do you say we move back to Santa Monica, where we can walk from our front door literally into the ocean, turn around, face the shore, and look at the Santa Monica Mountains.
Guest:Wouldn't that be nice?
Guest:They're on fire now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was like, I know, right?
Guest:But at the time they were merely smoldering.
Guest:And, um, and I was like, yeah, so we were going to move back.
Guest:And then the second we made that decision, uh, Henry got diagnosed with a brain tumor.
Guest:So, so we couldn't leave.
Guest:So of course we'll go back through this if you want, but the basic timeline is in between two and three seasons, two and three of catastrophe.
Guest:We, we went to move back.
Guest:Henry got diagnosed and
Guest:And then we couldn't go anywhere because he began care.
Guest:You're not going to fly a kid who's just had his brainstem opened up.
Guest:So time passes.
Guest:We get used to getting care here.
Guest:Our older boys' school is wonderful to them.
Guest:And the people we barely know, many of them are taking great care of us.
Guest:The NHS here was amazing.
Guest:So then he's sick for 21 months, and then he dies.
Guest:And when he died, of course, then we were really sick.
Guest:immobile you know we couldn't do anything yeah and time continued to pass even though we were grieving so by this time years have passed and our older boys who we love just as much as henry uh don't want to move and we're like they're dug in yeah they're like well that makes sense so i guess that's what really what it's about ultimately if you can you know honor the kids yeah then you do it
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, so there's six of us.
Guest:One of them has departed this realm, but we try to make decisions as a, I guess maybe I was going to say a democracy, but I guess my wife and I are the senators.
Guest:So our votes do come for a little bit more, but we very seriously consider what the kids have to say.
Guest:So we do try to think of it as what's best for the six people as a whole.
Marc:So it took you... I mean, you know, the process of grief and the process of sort of reckoning with your own feelings, I mean, it took you a while to embark on a memoir around this stuff.
Marc:And when you're considering the book, I mean, what is your reason?
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So at first... Is this something you've answered many times?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:At first, I...
Guest:Wanted to write something very angry and even hateful.
Guest:And I wanted... Towards who?
Guest:The world who... People who haven't experienced terrible grief.
Guest:People who aren't roiling in pain.
Marc:So you felt that people did not know how to handle it on any level.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And that even loved ones, friends, regular in passing.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So I guess the initial feelings of anger that cannot be explained, having dealt with a bit of tragedy myself that I realized relatively quickly I was not in the same position you were.
Marc:But, you know, somebody, you know, I love died quickly.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it was tragic and it was unnecessary.
Marc:But I mean, even the word unnecessary is ridiculous word because from my experience, you I realized it just in order to keep my sanity that, you know, sadly, this is an unusual.
Marc:It's not unusual.
Marc:You just don't want it to happen to you.
Right.
Marc:yeah so like the the initial anger at god or the injustice or why like what's instead of talk about the incentive and the the inception of the book i mean when he was diagnosed yeah what was what was your what was the feeling was was the first feeling like well we're gonna fix it we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna do everything we can to
Guest:Yeah, so we had some weeks where we couldn't figure out what it was because when you've just turned one and you can't talk, nobody immediately thinks brain tumor, you know?
Guest:The thing that... So terrible.
Marc:I'm so sorry you had to go through this.
Guest:Well, thank you.
Guest:The thing...
Guest:The thing that like made an older doctor, and I think this is important because we knew a lot of, we were meeting wonderful young doctors and nurses, but I think this guy had just been around the block.
Guest:And he said to me, he goes, so he's vomiting a lot.
Guest:And I said, yeah, which is clear, you know.
Guest:it was terrifying because he's a baby who's supposed to be chunking up yeah and he's losing weight and and disappearing so that was awful i used to want to collect his vomit and then pour it in a funnel back down i mean i his vomit was like more precious than gold to me and i i would cry and
Guest:So a doctor says to me, you know, I don't know how many doctors we'd have seen at this point.
Guest:He goes, let me ask you something.
Guest:When he vomits, does he retch?
Guest:You know, does he seem in distress or is it effortless?
Guest:And I was like,
Guest:it's effortless.
Guest:It just comes up and out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Um, you know, there's no retching or, you know, heaving or anything.
Guest:And he goes, okay, then we need to do an MRI of his head.
Guest:And I was like, what, why?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the reason being is that effortless vomiting can be a symptom of a brain tumor because it's,
Guest:what happens is the pressure in your head just presses on the emetic center the vomit button and just up and out with the contents of your stomach so uh so when he said that i was like that's what it's gonna fucking be isn't it and um and it was and so how old are your other kids at this time three and five and you're working your ass off uh
Guest:Luckily, I'm just in between two and three.
Guest:So I do have a little breathing room.
Guest:But all in all, like leading up to this, you know, then I'd been working like a madman.
Marc:And you were feeling, you know, I mean, because I know that, you know, as an alcoholic person, you know, that you're going to find something.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And it seems like, I mean, was your wife working?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:No.
Guest:So it was very difficult because we moved here with a three and a one year old.
Guest:She's pregnant with Henry when we arrive.
Guest:She takes a leave of absence from Culver City Middle School.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we don't know anybody.
Guest:So she's lonely.
Guest:I'm working around the clock.
Guest:And I'm being a bad husband.
Guest:I'm really working crazy hours.
Guest:I think anybody could like look at what I was doing and how I was doing and be like, I get it.
Guest:You know, I thought like, this is my shot.
Guest:This is my opportunity to swing for the fences.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I thought I had to do everything.
Guest:And I don't know that that's ever true, that you have to do everything.
Guest:What I did was after the second series, my wife said to me, so listen, I'm pretty miserable with the amount that you're working and the job.
Guest:dire lack of attention you're giving to me and the kids yeah so i've been looking into how to divorce you while in a foreign country it's not going to be easy but i think i figured out how to do it unless that is you want to change how you work and the amount that you work and then maybe we can work things out yeah and that stopped me in my tracks i wasn't like i hope she said it in that tone yeah right very calmly and um and so
Guest:That immediately, my response really was, okay, I will make those changes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I do love you.
Guest:I do love these kids.
Guest:At risk of losing this show, I will do those things.
Guest:And it wasn't easy.
Guest:I mean, I felt like I was on fire, you know.
Guest:We met.
Yeah.
Guest:There was anger, not really at her, because if you look at, I mean, like, I'll show you a picture of her.
Guest:She's beautiful.
Guest:She's got three beautiful children that look like her, mostly, slightly me, but not really.
Guest:And...
Guest:so she it's a vision you know i look at her it's the hat like there's nothing more beautiful to me than those people and so i want them to be happy i want them to feel good yes i also want people to be clapping for me and saying what a magnificent show you've made and you want to make money and i want to make money um but i realized what do i want more i want them to know peace for a few minutes of each day if possible yeah and uh
Guest:So, so I decided to, to try to learn how to work smarter and not harder.
Guest:And, uh, I realized, yeah, because I realized what do I care about in a TV show?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I'll tell you what I care about.
Guest:I care about that.
Guest:Each script lands with a thump on the table is airtight.
Guest:And that when you read it, you have a full mature nourishing entertainment experience.
Guest:And you were writing it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you can picture it all and you hope it gets made because you think it'll, but if you, if it doesn't, you had a good experience reading it.
Guest:That's what I care about.
Guest:Do I care what the characters are wearing?
Guest:No, no, I don't.
Guest:No, do I care about the locations they're shooting in?
Guest:No, I really don't.
Guest:Can I be funny in that location?
Guest:Then I don't care.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So what I did was I dropped all the other stuff and was like, oh, why don't, why don't I let our amazing heads of department do their job?
Guest:So you surrendered the control freak element.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:i became i remained despotic as did sharon about the scripts right you know beyond that have a blast dop with your lens selection yeah i don't care i don't you know so that's a good uh lesson to learn so that was amazing that freed up a lot of time yeah it's uh to to be able to do that to be able to what's the word that i always forget delegate yeah it's a it's a gift
Guest:Alcoholic, forgetting the word delegate.
Guest:I love it.
Marc:It's one of those words that sticks with me every time.
Marc:I'm like, is it?
Marc:But all right.
Marc:So now this is where you're at before Henry gets it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:These are decisions.
Guest:No joke.
Guest:It isn't even, certainly not a month.
Guest:It might not have even been weeks from that conversation with my wife where I'm like, it's overhaul time.
Guest:Embark on the barest beginnings of that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then Henry is diagnosed.
Guest:Right.
Guest:so he gets he gets a scan yeah and is there any hope yes um because okay i mean honestly now you look at it and you're like i don't know like any any you know doctor would be like wow the tumor is called an ependymoma and he was so young and a boy which are the worst if you're young really young and male ependymoma
Guest:They don't get me wrong.
Guest:They kill little girls, too, but they kill more little boys.
Guest:And so he was like in the worst cohort to get it.
Guest:But it was possible that they could take it all out and he'd be disabled.
Guest:And but it was possible that it wouldn't come back.
Guest:But it did.
Guest:And they took it out.
Guest:Yeah, they took it out.
Guest:They did a good job.
Guest:The surgery was brutal because they had to damage his brainstem.
Guest:They had to damage and even destroy some cranial nerves to get it out.
Guest:Meaning, you know, so half his face was immediately paralyzed.
Guest:His ability to swallow was gone.
Guest:So he had to get a tracheostomy.
Guest:um and that would have been life it would have been he would not had he lived oh uh as you get as your body just increases in size they can give you less horrific tracheostomy tubes ones where you could even put a speech valve on it um and it was possible that he might have regained there are people who've had
Guest:his cancer had a tracheostomy and then gotten older and had the tracheostomy removed.
Guest:So that could have happened.
Marc:It's interesting.
Marc:You know, it seems like I don't have children and it's probably, you know, it doesn't, I don't know why, but I do know why, but cause I can't even handle hearing about this.
Marc:The panic and the worry and the pain that, you know, whatever your love for that kid is at that time, you're willing to accommodate the idea that he's going to live this horrendously compromised life.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And still believe that that life is worth fighting for.
Guest:Oh, big time.
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:So, you know, what's funny is my wife and I met back in 2004 at a camp in Massachusetts.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:For people with disabilities.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Camp Jabberwonky.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And so we met taking care of disabled adolescents through adults with major disabilities and problems.
Guest:And, you know, so we're doing feeding tubes and wiping butts and, you know, lifting, you know, paralyzed adults and all sorts of stuff.
Guest:And so...
Guest:We had a bunch of friends who were quite disabled already and had been around people like that and loved people like that.
Guest:So you met her before you went to Hollywood and then that came back around?
Guest:No.
Guest:I left Los Angeles just for a summer.
Guest:After you got sober.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I met a guy, a sober guy, and he said to me, hey, I'm doing this camp in Venice, California, that is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:For people with disabilities, it's sort of a satellite of a camp I've worked at for years in Massachusetts.
Guest:Do you want to come work at it, volunteer at it?
Guest:And I was like, yeah, I would love to.
Guest:So I did that.
Guest:I had the best time ever.
Guest:So this is like service.
Guest:Yeah, I guess.
Guest:But it's fun.
Guest:That's the dirty secret of volunteering is it's usually fun as hell.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So people who enjoy things like drugs or gambling or watching succession would probably also, if they got off their ass, enjoy volunteering too.
Guest:That's the secret.
Guest:Um, and so, so then I went back to the one in Massachusetts, uh, for just for a couple of weeks, you know, cause I had some time off and so I went and, um, it happens to meet my wife at that time.
Guest:So I, although I grew up in Massachusetts, I wasn't living there when I met my
Guest:wife i was just visiting yeah to volunteer at this camp she was in the process she's from uh ashville north carolina and she was in the process at the time where she had been teaching in mississippi yeah and she was in the process of moving to dc so she was homeless for a few weeks as she uh moved and so she did this camp so we were just both in transient periods met each other and fell in love
Guest:But here's the thing.
Guest:It's almost like you start taking care of your child who's disabled.
Guest:And no, it's not easy.
Guest:Yes, your house becomes like a satellite hospital triage.
Marc:Isn't there a sort of persistent heartbreak?
Guest:Of course there's difficult, but you know what, to be honest, is Henry died before he turned three, right?
Guest:So Henry died before he was cognizant of the fact that he was different and that there were things that he couldn't do or couldn't do as well.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So Henry was like, hey, what's up, man?
Guest:I'm Henry.
Guest:Let's party.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And also, like, I don't know, like, because I'm, you know, selfish and I don't have children, like, I'm speculating.
Marc:And it seems like, you know, in my mind, if we continue how I'm thinking about it, that'd be like, well, we should just let him die.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Well, here's the thing is, like, one thing that I realized from doing this camp is that, uh,
Guest:After you spend a bunch of time, like we're like a bunch of like sleep cycles, wake up, go to sleep with people who are quote disabled and people who are quote not, the line really begins to blur.
Guest:So like if you're literally like, you know, in a camp situation with people, then like, you know, like whatever, like, you know, evening will roll around and you'll be thinking like, I'd really rather hang out with Nancy right now, who's quite disabled, you know, speaks using a board where she points at words.
Guest:than i would with dave who's another counselor fully able-bodied but a bit of a weird asshole yeah so you find yourself like you realize like you kind of forget who's disabled and who isn't the spirit starts to or you not starts to shine through yeah but you get to where you can see it faster in people yeah so so like you look you can have fun and laugh and have a robust emotional experience with somebody with down syndrome just like you can with somebody who doesn't of course
Marc:yeah yeah i i have no doubt about that it's just like the spectrum of it's is that the spectrum of your life you personally was you were already you know somewhat you know open-hearted to to uh at least well human experience on it that's yeah getting sober certainly helped a lot yeah um
Guest:So after the first surgery, what was the hope?
Guest:Uh, that the cancer would not return.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that over a lot of time he would begin to work through and heal from if possible damage to his brainstem.
Guest:And, um,
Guest:And so, yeah, we just hoped cancer wouldn't return and that he would outgrow or heal from a repair stuff that so he could get rid of the tracheostomy.
Marc:And how are the other kids handling it?
Marc:Are they old enough to register?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:They're over.
Guest:They're in the hospital all the time.
Guest:I mean, we have hundreds of pictures of the three of them in the hospital bed, you know, have eaten McDonald's.
Guest:So you had the other kid while he was still sick?
Guest:No.
Guest:Our youngest came after.
Guest:My wife was pregnant when Henry died with our fourth.
Guest:So that little fella did not get to meet Henry in the traditional sense, although he shared a womb with him.
Guest:And then he was in Henry's bedroom.
Guest:It became his room.
Marc:Now, in terms of health care, you had a great experience here.
Guest:Yeah, we really did.
Guest:And, you know, I think it's an important distinction to make, you know, because I love to criticize not American health care, but American private health insurance.
Guest:Obviously, there's amazing nurses and doctors in the United States and you can get great care.
Guest:There's no question about that.
Guest:But the question is, you know, can you access it?
Guest:And in accessing it, are you going to go bankrupt?
Guest:Or insane, you know, more likely from trying to navigate all the labyrinths of private health insurance.
Guest:So the big benefit for us is that we had more time with our son.
Guest:I spent no time in the hallway on the phone with the insurance company saying he needs this MRI.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Please approve it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, or I didn't spend time arguing with a pharmacist because they understandably couldn't understand the crazy new terms of the pharmacy plan that we were on.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, so they're not asking me for $615 for a prescription that he needs to live, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we had less stress than an American would in dealing with this.
Guest:So we had more time and didn't get a perforated ulcer from stress.
Guest:So really beautiful.
Marc:And when do you start...
Marc:to realize, I'm assuming that given what we talked about earlier in terms of what drove you to write the book after the fact, when do you start to feel alone in your dealing with the tragedy in terms of, I mean obviously the family was close and I assume that your family, but when do you start to realize that people have no real emotional sense of how to deal with it or you?
Guest:Well, I must say it's not everybody, as you may have experienced yourself, that you can be surprised by certain people who step up beautifully.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:And then other people who you think would have been there fuck off and do a terrible job.
Marc:Well, I guess I assume nobody would.
Marc:I mean, I didn't really know.
Marc:You know, my parents are not emotionally capable people, so they were not great.
Marc:And also, it happened so quickly.
Marc:But in terms of our community, the comedians, it was kind of stunning.
Marc:That's wonderful.
Marc:That's so great.
Marc:And it was the middle of COVID.
Marc:So it was kind of limited in and of itself.
Marc:So you kind of take what you could get.
Marc:But some people, I mean, it was really amazing.
Marc:So what was your experience?
Guest:So a lot of people were wonderful.
Guest:A lot of people surprised us in beautiful ways.
Guest:Plus, we're in a country where we do not have roots.
Guest:And so a lot of people are great.
Guest:But then some people are afraid of you.
Guest:If you lose a child, I think, as they say, losing a child is people who have children's greatest fear.
Guest:And so I think people were afraid of us.
Guest:That's my guess.
Guest:That's my stab at it is that they were afraid of us, that they might catch us.
Marc:dead kid from us or they'd have to imagine you know right i think that's probably more it the mortality of their own life or their own children yeah that the i i've been trying to talk about grief for a while with people you know and again you know i don't want to you know compare griefs or whatever but you know the feeling is the feeling that that was yeah and it is so human yeah unavoidable unavoidable
Marc:But but I understand what you're saying, because I was thinking back on I know a guy who lost a kid in a car accident and we weren't close or anything.
Marc:But there's that feeling of like, what do you even say?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And I guess that is selfish, because what I learned in talking about this stuff on stage is that sometimes all you got to do is stand there.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:The question, I think, isn't what do I say?
Guest:It's better is what do I do?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because you're, you know, Marc Maron, multiple stand-up specials.
Guest:You know, you're good at talking.
Guest:But nobody is so good at talking that they can heal the pain of death.
Marc:I think that is the crux of it, is that there's no getting away from it.
Guest:No.
Guest:So if you sit there with me, you know, like, you know, it'd be nice, you know, like I'm just imagining like you're on a couch that would fit two adult bums.
Guest:So if I'm sitting on that couch in acute grief after Henry died and you came over and you sat down right next to me.
Guest:And so there's extra space to the right of you and I'm in between and you just sat there and put your arm around me.
Guest:That'd be fucking amazing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that'd be better than you giving me some advice.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I had a friend who lost a kid.
Guest:Great, okay.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Oh, so there's another sad guy out there?
Guest:All right, okay.
Marc:Yeah, it's interesting because that is the thing, is that in order to sort of bear witness or to show up for somebody in that much pain, if you're uncomfortable, or even if you're shut down emotionally,
Marc:That none of that matters in a way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If you just, you know, share the space.
Guest:You know what it's like is like if you ever jump off something high into the water.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's fun to do.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it's scary.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:But you don't really have to do anything.
Guest:You just kind of have to lean forward.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And then in a couple seconds, you'll be in the water.
Guest:It's kind of like that comforting a grieving person.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You just kind of wait till they get done with their crying jack and pat them on the back.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, you know, and it doesn't take long and it helps tremendously.
Guest:You know, a couple seconds of touch or silence is the same thing as like falling into some lovely water for them.
Marc:It helps.
Marc:So like most of this, I would imagine.
Marc:So, you know, when he did pass.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Was that how long did you know that was going to happen?
Guest:We learned in September of 2017 that his cancer had returned and would kill him.
Guest:And then he died in January on my birthday.
Guest:On my 41st birthday, he died.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:yeah which is so wild you know so you're just waiting in a way yeah and trying to maintain some quality of life yeah and and the quality of life is sky high at that point because although the tumor is growing he's not showing any symptoms so we really felt insane because we know he's got a time bomb in his head yeah and it will kill him as sure as you're born and uh
Marc:And what were the conversations that you were having with your wife or with the other kids?
Marc:Because it seems like knowing that you don't know when it's going to happen and you have a certain amount of time, how did you emotionally prepare for what was coming?
Guest:well um you can't prepare right i remember thinking but you can know here's some some things i did um so i i thought so i'll be i'll be damaged by this i'll bear scars from this but how can i protect henry's brothers yeah and because i was worried it would fuck them up irreparably for life
Guest:And I called a couple friends from Boston that I loved dearly and that I grew up with.
Guest:One of them, his dad died when he was one.
Guest:And then his mom remarried a wonderful guy who raised him to the age of six.
Guest:And then he died.
Guest:So he had his two dads die.
Guest:So you're thinking about bringing in another father?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I'm thinking, you know, can I marry your mother to heal?
Guest:Is the right thing for me to do to maybe even try to have a baby with my best?
Guest:But I called him because he's a wonderful, sensitive guy.
Guest:And I wanted to know a child who was struck by very severe tragedy.
Guest:How do I take care of my boys who are about to get walloped?
Guest:And so I called him and I called another friend that I grew up with whose brother had died when he was a child.
Guest:And I said, what do I do to take care of my boys to both of these guys?
Guest:And they were like, listen.
Guest:these things aren't going to define your sons forever.
Guest:And they were both like, you might fuck up your kids and they might get fucked up, but it won't be this, you know, they're like, because both of them were like, you send me pictures of the three of them in Henry's hospital bed.
Guest:You take Henry with all his beeping machines and tubes to the park.
Guest:You are constantly holding and touching and loving.
Guest:So he reassured me.
Guest:They both reassured me that my wife and I were both doing exactly what we should.
Marc:And also, one thing I know just from talking to people and seeing it, that children will become their own people and they're incredibly resilient.
Marc:And part of the emotional language they'll learn will process this.
Marc:And I think ultimately...
Marc:With the amount of love that you're going to give them, this will only make them deeper in a sense.
Guest:Yeah, they're incredibly emotionally astute.
Guest:There's no guarantee of a shiny bright future for anybody, but it won't be this, so I don't have to fear.
Marc:Yeah, that's something.
Marc:And that was really beautiful.
Marc:And so leading up to this, the family intention was just to make however long he was going to be around as...
Guest:fun or as pleasant as possible exactly you know my wife and I even sat down and wrote out like what do we want to do and we asked the boys like what's important for you to do with Henry before he dies and and because they were they knew we told them you know they were with us they were in the next room when we found out that his cancer had come back and we came out crying and so oddly I guess but naturally the grieving starts then in a way
Guest:I suppose so.
Guest:It's sort of weird.
Guest:I might have a little more experience with grief than some, but I don't know.
Guest:Is that grief?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I'll accept that.
Marc:I mean, it's the knowing.
Guest:Pre-grief.
Marc:But it's also like we all know we're going to die, but we're able to really keep it at bay.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:It's really one of the driving forces of our lives as sort of selfish, weird, irrational people is the avoidance of that knowledge.
Marc:I mean, there's very few people that I think have that integrated into
Marc:And there's very few people, I think, that can handle that integration.
Marc:Because it could go either way.
Marc:You could sit around and be like, oh, it's the fucking point.
Marc:I don't want to live.
Marc:What a ripoff.
Marc:How do you start to calibrate why life is worth living?
Marc:And I guess if you have kids, that certainly is one way.
Marc:And I guess I'm just trying to say that it's difficult for me.
Marc:I have no children, and I'm depressed a lot.
Marc:No, but-
Guest:No, but you know what?
Guest:I'm looking behind you on the wall is this like tapestry type thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think about the grief that I feel and let's say that's like a, I don't know, fucking bolt of fabric or a string of yarn or whatever.
Guest:And now that has been, I'm weaving, I'm doing the best to weave that into my tapestry, not to try to burn it or throw it off a bridge, but I've been given this and fuck off my
Guest:for a thousand years if you think I'm not going to weave the death and the life and the spirit of my beautiful son into my tapestry.
Guest:I mean, what am I, Joni Mitchell at this point?
Guest:But do you know what I mean?
Marc:I don't think you have a choice.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:In the sense that, especially if you're a sensitive person, and I think it seems that one of the reasons
Marc:why you wrote the book was was to to to sort of you know to kind of you know say this is what it is yeah and and that you know this is part of life and this and i am angry that so many people you know make me feel uncomfortable because of their discomfort and that you know that a grown person with the heart that works is going to you know understand that this is life and
Marc:There's no, there's no, it's guaranteed you're born and you're going to die.
Marc:And I've had to shoulder this and feel this and it's going to inform every other part of your life.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, that's, that's the proper way to integrate.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, and I guess the, the fuck you of it is it's like, you know, your ability now to say, Oh, it's coming.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:You know, hopefully not for your loved ones, but it's going to come for you.
Marc:I know.
Marc:I know.
Marc:It is.
Marc:I know.
Marc:Well, so how did it change your perception once you got... Like, I imagine the exorcism in writing this book of sort of outside of what we just said in terms of comforting somebody with grief.
Marc:What are the other issues that you find with other people in terms of how they handled grief that you have a problem with?
Guest:Well, I guess it's just...
Guest:Very painful gift to receive.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But my family received some gifts of profound reality.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it allowed us to, you know, appreciate how ephemeral even our bodies are.
Guest:Right.
Guest:No.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I guess I also lament.
Guest:I'm not just frustrated with people who can't hold the grief or feel that they have to babble.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm just frustrated with that, but in some ways, I feel blessed and burdened with knowledge that they don't yet have about how precious all this stuff is.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:So you'll hear them complain about the most pedestrian stuff, and you're like, come on, man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But you can't really do that, you know, because I'm not cruel.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I don't want to, you know...
Marc:drop a bomb in the middle of their day like at every sort of uh you know kind of a passing social interaction just say like yeah my kid died yeah yeah yeah oh interesting oh what was that oh sorry i was looking over your shoulder at the fucking urn that my son is in on the shelf behind your shoulder so tell me about your bad breakfast yeah yeah yeah but i mean but but it's all it's all it's all part of the the spectrum so you have to you have to integrate that spite
Guest:Yeah, and not feel guilty that I feel it.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:If my wife and I laugh about some ridiculous thing that somebody said to one of us, then we're happy and we enjoy the rest of our day and we don't hold onto it hating them.
Guest:I don't wish these people ill.
Guest:No, of course not.
Marc:It's just like- And you have to have sort of, there must be some sort of empathy because the other side of seeing it as, like it's not a gift, but processing it correctly is.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it's not something you would wish on anybody.
Marc:No, no, no, God.
Marc:So so, you know, you have to sort of accept the fact, of course, people don't know how to behave.
Guest:They didn't.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They haven't been granted.
Guest:They haven't been given the code to access that.
Guest:Thank God.
Marc:But but the bigger message is that, you know, someone grieving is almost everybody.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, you know, to somehow integrate that into how you approach somebody would be a beautiful empathetic thing to do collectively.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I'm imagining because people have the urge to be like, you know, oh, my son has a tumor.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Oh, my grandfather had a tumor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It would be a better empathy would be like, Oh my God, your son died.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm going to die too.
Guest:And so are you like that?
Guest:They're great.
Guest:Wouldn't that be great?
Guest:The grandfather thing doesn't work for you.
Guest:No.
Guest:But when, if somebody was like, Oh, your son died.
Guest:And like, instead of trying to compare, they were like, Oh, I'm going to die.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I'll probably be dead in 30 years.
Guest:Maybe a wonderful, I'll be in the same cemetery.
Marc:Then I'm like, yeah, man, maybe.
Marc:But that's also utterly like, you know, selfish.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So like, but I think,
Marc:I think that the real thing that's lacking is it seems empathy around it.
Marc:For whatever it's worth, years of talking to people candidly about whatever, and then having somebody I loved basically die in my house has opened my heart to, along with my grief, which I can tap into, but is integrated,
Marc:That the empathy for it, like I can feel an almost immediate emotional reaction to someone's loss, which I don't know that I could be for.
Guest:Yeah, like I'm having a tough time.
Guest:You're going to know who you're going to be like, we really need to get him an omelet.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:We don't need to tell him it's going to be okay, but let's get him an omelette.
Marc:Come on, man.
Marc:The thing I have to fight is not to just start crying in front of someone who's experiencing the same thing.
Marc:Just sort of like hijack their grief with sort of, but you don't want to commiserate.
Marc:You want to show up for somebody, right?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
Guest:It's tricky, right?
Guest:Well, I'm doing that, you know, I have been doing that with my dad because my dad was there when Henry was dying and after he died and now my dad is dying and I'm always tempted to talk about, oh yeah, I remember, you know, like when the hospice people delivered my dad's morphine, you know, I was like, oh, your morphine's blue.
Guest:Yeah, Henry's was red.
Guest:You know, I want to be like, just let him have his death.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:So I sometimes will, I'll be like, and then I'll be like, you know what?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Let's just let this guy die for the moment.
Marc:I think you seem to have somehow achieved the kind of emotional level of sort of a death doula in a way.
Marc:Maybe.
Marc:Well, just that you've been able to integrate and accept the reality of it and process the feelings of loss.
Marc:You're prepared for it.
Guest:Yeah, and preparing for it.
Guest:I think about my own death.
Guest:You do?
Guest:What do you think about it?
Guest:You know what I try to tell myself is that it'll be fine.
Guest:It's not my job to know what's going to happen next.
Guest:A lot of people think they know.
Marc:It's funny.
Marc:When I think of my own death, it's sort of like, I've had to save some money.
Marc:I should go over the papers.
Guest:oh yeah yeah i mean you have a family so it goes to yeah i don't so i'm sort of like oh yeah i have some gifts to give totally that's awesome i gotta gotta go over the paperwork yeah yeah what comes next i don't know i i think of it like um i'm a glass of water you're a glass of water and then we die we get poured back into the ocean of whatever is out there we all mingle so i'm not me anymore you're not you anymore all our molecules or just
Guest:part of the big frequencies yeah and and which is good for me because i definitely want to be obliterated when i die i don't want to be me anymore yeah no it'd be a relief in a way wouldn't it but you don't want to go too far with that line of thought yeah not just do it now no yeah no no no well i also think yeah i'm pretty anti-suicide because i think it's also our responsibility having been given this life to ride it out you know what i mean like
Guest:I really don't feel like I should decide when life begins or ends, other than having sex with my wife, which I know could result in a life.
Guest:I think I should do that.
Marc:So you conceived the newest kid while Henry was sick?
Marc:We did, yeah.
Guest:Consciously.
Guest:Consciously, we did, yeah.
Marc:What was the conversation around that?
Guest:We wanted a bunch of kids in our house.
Guest:And we'd thought about having a fourth, but we knew we were spread so thin between sometimes it was two hospitals and our home if he was shuttling between the hospital he lived at and the hospital where he got his chemo.
Guest:And three kids.
Guest:So we knew we couldn't do that.
Guest:But when we learned he was going to die, we just decided to have another one.
Guest:It's impossible to replace a child.
Guest:That can't be done.
Guest:But we knew that we had a certain amount of love.
Guest:We wanted to be divided between a bunch of unruly children.
Guest:And so we wanted our house to be full of little people.
Guest:And so, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's interesting, too, like when when you're in that much pain or you're in that much sort of trauma, emotional and mental, you know, I mean, you do things to feel better.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:There's no.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're still allowed to have sex.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And make more kids.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And how's the how's the new kid?
Guest:He's magnificent.
Guest:He's four.
Guest:So you have three boys?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We have three different boys alive.
Guest:Three alive boys.
Marc:It's so funny because your tone around Henry and death and the kid died.
Marc:It's not a flat affect, but there seems to be a sort of constant reaffirmation of knowing he's dead.
Guest:I insist on saying it a lot, mostly for myself.
Guest:I repeat to myself the details of his life and appearance of symptoms.
Guest:Yeah, I tell myself, I'll say like,
Guest:I had a boy named Henry and I loved him so much and he was healthy and beautiful and then he got sick and we didn't know what to do and we took him to the doctors and it took a long time.
Guest:They found out what it was.
Guest:It was very bad and they tried to fix it and they couldn't and it got worse and then he died and now he's dead and I still love him and I still talk to him
Guest:And he's still my son and I'm still his dad.
Guest:And I don't know what our relationship is now.
Guest:I don't know where he is.
Guest:But it's very important for me to repeat those things to myself.
Guest:It grounds me and it makes me feel not insane.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I would imagine that on top of the act of grief, that as an affirmation of life in a way, it keeps you present.
Guest:Yeah, it does.
Guest:Right?
Guest:It does.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Absolutely.
Marc:It's interesting about the, you know, going over that stuff.
Marc:It really helps me.
Marc:But you know in your heart that you did everything possible.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:That's a great, that's a gift.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, look...
Guest:My wife and I aren't doctors or nurses, but we know how to love children, and we sure did that.
Marc:And you got all the best care, and it was great.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:After the book writing and after the processing, is there one thing that you do now that you didn't?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I hold my children and I hold my wife and I know that they'll die.
Guest:And I know that it could happen before I die.
Guest:So I know that our time together is finite and it will end.
Guest:And...
Guest:So I appreciate them so much more.
Guest:I marvel at the fact that these particular collections of cells coalesced around these souls for a temporary period.
Guest:And I'm so lucky to get to be here at the same time as a little collection of cells and whatevers and bones and nostril hairs that I am.
Guest:And so I really make the most of it in a way that I didn't before.
Guest:And I wish that that skill didn't come from something so painful, but it did.
Guest:That was the price tag for me of that gift.
Guest:And now I have it and I appreciate it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, that's good.
Guest:It's beautiful.
Guest:It is good.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And how do you approach work now?
Guest:That's a fantastic question.
Guest:My opinion and feelings about what I do for a living have sort of changed.
Guest:They've become right sized, so to speak.
Guest:As they say in the lingo.
Guest:yeah like i never you know how i used to gravitate between i'm ashamed of what i i'm trying to make people laugh as a job and i think what a piece of shit i am or you know i'd get a paycheck and an award and be like i probably i probably deserve it you know and it'd be those two things and now it's gone like right between the two of those yeah where i now know that all the accolades and stuff are beyond ridiculous but it also
Guest:isn't stupid and useless it's like it's as important as like the table i'm knocking on here yeah you need a table to put your stuff on and you need a show or a stand-up special at the end of the day to unwind so it's not more important than any other job in the world and it isn't less so now i'm like i go to work gratefully and i do the work and i'm so happy that i get to do it you're busy i i saw i had i talked to sigourney weaver
Marc:Oh, wow.
Marc:About the movie.
Marc:The Good House.
Marc:The Good House.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that was kind of a dark, interesting part, but very human.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And oh, what a privilege to get to work with her, you know.
Guest:So she's so amazing, of course, but then kind and sensitive and brilliant.
Guest:And so getting to... But that character was sort of antithetical to where you're at now.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And yeah, what a privilege.
Guest:And they shot it in Nova Scotia, which actually when I was there a lot, I was having the thought like, I'd really like to die here.
Guest:It's so beautiful.
Guest:I was like, I need to figure out how to die in Nova Scotia.
Guest:So that movie was a thrill to work on.
Marc:And you're doing Mission Impossible or you did it?
Guest:Yeah, I did a part in that.
Guest:Was that a big part?
Guest:No, it wasn't.
Guest:But I did get to do a full week of working with Tom Cruise, which was fascinating.
Guest:Was it?
Guest:It really was.
Guest:Good guy?
Guest:To work with, yeah.
Guest:I don't know that I would want to go on a cross-country trip with him.
Guest:I don't think he does things.
Guest:I didn't get the sense he has a social life.
Guest:So, yeah, working with him, amazing, incredibly educational.
Guest:His movies are excellent now all the time, not haphazardly, because he's an unbelievable filmmaker who knows so much.
Guest:And also Christopher McQuarrie wrote and directed that.
Guest:So working with the two of them was very educational and great.
Guest:You've got any plans of doing any creating films?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So I'm finishing a script right now that I'll see if anybody wants to make.
Guest:For a TV show or a movie?
Guest:Probably a movie.
Guest:I started as a TV show, but I think it might actually be a better movie.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Because certain things happen in it where it couldn't have subsequent seasons.
Guest:So why not make it a movie?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And then, yeah, I've got a show coming up probably in the springtime called Bad Monkey that Bill Lawrence made, which is just tremendous.
Guest:Big guy.
Guest:Did you go shoot that?
Guest:Shot it in the States?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Shot it in Miami and the Florida Keys.
Guest:Hot and muggy.
Guest:It was so insanely hot and muggy that it was like, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, he's a good guy.
Marc:I haven't talked to him in a long time.
Guest:He was such a pleasure to work with.
Guest:yeah at first he was like do you want to come shoot a show with me in florida and i'm like well bill lawrence why didn't you have me in your show that you're making in london but uh he's like i don't know ted lasso and uh and uh that's right and so i was like well i'd love to but i don't know you know florida i live in london i try not to and he was like well why don't i make it family friendly for you and you know we'll we'll shoot you efficiently we'll bake in some breaks and i was like well okay thank you so much
Guest:family man, Bill Lawrence.
Guest:So yeah, I... Is that a good part?
Guest:Oh, so much fun.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's based on the book Bad Monkey by Carl Hyasson.
Guest:Yeah, he's good.
Guest:Which was a great book and Bill adapted it beautifully and had an incredible time shooting that.
Guest:So I'm...
Guest:That, like, yeah, I know I'm in it.
Guest:Sometimes you do stuff and you're like, yeah, maybe I'll catch that if I get the chance.
Guest:This one I'm like, can't wait to see.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:Vince Vaughn too, right?
Guest:Vince Vaughn.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:Vince Vaughn, Michelle Monaghan, Jody Turner-Smith, Meredith Hagner, Zach Braff, Scott Glenn.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Myself.
Guest:Scott Glenn's intense.
Guest:I talked to that guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Good talking to you, man.
Guest:Great talking to you and great to see you.
Marc:It's good to see you, buddy.
Yeah.
Marc:That was great to talk to Rob.
Marc:And again, A Heart That Works comes out tomorrow, wherever you get your books.
Marc:And what a good guy.
Marc:So look, can you hang out for a second?
Marc:Just hang out for a minute.
Marc:If you've got a WTF Plus subscription, you can go back and listen to that early episode with Rob Delaney.
Marc:That's episode 55.
Marc:It's really a great talk with a truly harrowing story of what made him get sober.
Marc:Lipsight has been on a bunch of times, old Sammy.
Marc:Episode 10, episode 52, episode 162 are all part of the full Marin.
Marc:And episode 984 is available in the free feed on all podcast apps.
Marc:Here, listen to some.
Guest:i used to sing in a rock band so i'm used to a little bit of this yeah do you feel it coming back i feel back the surge when i did a thing where i put my whole mouth over the mic and scream into it oh really so you made that horrible distorted noise and the sound technicians did not like that at all
Marc:That was back in the days of Dung Beetle.
Marc:Dung Beetle, yeah.
Marc:Was that what it was called?
Guest:It was called Dung Beetle, yeah.
Marc:You were exploring the freedom of the form.
Guest:We were pushing the boundaries a little bit.
Marc:Yeah, for those few people.
Marc:You pushed the boundaries.
Guest:For about 12 people.
Marc:But did Dung Beetle ever record?
Guest:We recorded a few things here and there, never a full record, but we did some singles and we were on a soundtrack for an independent film, things like that.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:What film?
Guest:It was called Half Cocked, and it came out in the 90s.
Marc:Same 12 people enjoyed that movie?
Guest:do you remember the band uh well there are a lot of bands that were on the soundtrack like the grifters i don't know if you remember them kind of yeah what year are we talking i'm trying to figure out when people ask me about music it's sort of like was i even doing anything but wandering around doing i guess it was mid 90s it's like yeah i might have missed the whole i think i missed most of the 90s it's sort of a it's sort of a movie about a fictional band that gets in a van oh and goes and then
Guest:The filmmakers were in bands, too, and they used songs from friends who were also in bands.
Guest:It was kind of a celebration of a certain moment and a sad moment maybe in American indie rock.
Marc:That moment, what is that?
Marc:It was actually really at just a moment.
Guest:It was like about a year.
Guest:It was more like three seconds.
Marc:For some reason in the 90s, I missed everything.
Marc:Like LCD sound system.
Marc:I didn't even know they existed.
Guest:Well, they didn't exist in the 90s.
Guest:They didn't?
Guest:What was that?
Guest:Well, James Murphy.
Marc:He's a friend of yours, right?
Guest:Yeah, he is.
Guest:And he worked with us with Dung Beetle.
Marc:He worked with Dung Beetle?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:James Murphy did?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:See, that's clickbait right there.
Marc:That's going to break the music press.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They're just James Murphy, Dung Beetle connection.
Guest:Well, I was just with him the other night, and we were talking about who do we listen to that music or who even talks about that music.
Marc:Which music?
Marc:Just whatever was going on.
Guest:Dung Beetle?
Guest:Dung Beetle, yeah.
Marc:You can subscribe to WTF Plus for every episode ad free.
Marc:Go to the link in the episode description or go to WTFPod.com and click on WTF Plus.
Marc:Wait, before we wrap up today, I need and want to wish Brendan McDonald, my producer, my business partner, my friend, a happy 43rd birthday, 40 fucking three years old.
Marc:Brendan, Brendan, who I started working with when he was 24.
Marc:We've been working together almost 20 years.
Marc:This guy has had my voice in his head and he's become...
Marc:Obviously, one of my dear friends, a guy I respect his opinion of on almost everything.
Marc:A guy who advises me, a guy who filters me both on the air and off.
Marc:Somebody who one of the smartest guys I know and an inspired person.
Marc:producer, and I would not be able to do what we do here and what I do in my life without him.
Marc:Happy birthday, Brendan.
Marc:You made it another year.
Marc:43.
Marc:You're like a fucking old man now.
Marc:Huh?
Marc:How's that feel?
Marc:All right.
Marc:So my tour dates are winding down.
Marc:Only three more left this year.
Marc:My shows at the Orange Peel in Asheville, North Carolina are sold out.
Marc:Still some tickets for the show in Nashville, Tennessee.
Marc:I'm at the James K. Polk Center on Saturday, December 3rd.
Marc:And my HBO special taping is at Town Hall in New York City on Thursday, December 8th.
Marc:There are a few tickets left for the second show up in the balconies, I think.
Marc:You can go to wtfpod.com slash tour for all dates and ticket info.
Marc:And here's a little John Lee style.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
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.
Thank you.
Marc:Boomer lives.
Marc:Monkey in the Fonda.
Marc:Cat angels everywhere.
Marc:Alright, alright, alright.