BONUS WTF Rarities - Marc's Keynote Address at Just for Laughs
Marc:Hey, what the fuckers, what the fuck buddies, this is Mark Maron, and this is a special little, I don't even know if I'd call it an episode, I wanted to share with you the keynote speech I did at the Montreal Just for Laughs Comedy Festival on July 28th.
Marc:2011, I have never been more nervous about anything in my life than to be doing this speech in front of a lot of my peers in the comedy industry here at the festival.
Marc:But once I got up there, I found it.
Marc:I found a place to be up there.
Marc:And Andy Kindler brought me on stage.
Marc:So I just wanted to share with you.
Marc:From beginning to end, we'll come in with Andy bringing me up on stage.
Marc:And I thought you guys should hear this.
Marc:Enjoy.
Guest:I'm very, very excited to be here to introduce Marc Maron, who I love.
Guest:I love as a man and as a woman.
Guest:I love him as both sexes.
Guest:I love him sexually.
Guest:I love him emotionally.
Guest:I love him spiritually.
Guest:I've known Marc since, well, we're all pushing all comedians our age by our age.
Guest:I mean, he's 10 years younger than me.
Guest:But besides that, oh, it's a moth, ladies and gentlemen.
Guest:For those of you who are wondering, if there are any entomologists in the room or whatever it would be, I would study
Guest:So I'm going to say I've known Mark since 2002?
Guest:No.
Guest:Okay, no, it's fine, Matt.
Guest:No, I've known him for many, many years.
Guest:And we didn't start out together.
Guest:He actually started comedy before me.
Guest:And Mark always frightened me on a certain level.
Guest:Because he could be angry on stage, but he'd also be very, very warm.
Guest:But he was always someone who I thought was incredibly talented.
Guest:And then we were in different circles.
Guest:Neither of us have a circle, really.
Guest:Because comedians are kind of isolated in their own heads.
Guest:So we were in different self-absorbed groups.
Guest:But it was never...
Guest:There was never any time that I ever saw Mark on stage where I didn't say, this guy is genius-like.
Guest:The only person I like more is myself.
Guest:No, I don't say that.
Guest:I don't brag that way.
Guest:But what happened was that Mark and I would do a tour a few years ago called the Stand-Upity Tour.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:And it was...
Guest:Comedy, that makes you feel better about yourself and superior to others.
Guest:That was the tech market.
Guest:And no one reacted to a thing.
Guest:We were both at very, very strange parts of our career, as I say in quotes.
Guest:I'm still on that part, but he's launched past me now.
Guest:So I'm joking, folks, if you're making these too serious.
Guest:So when we got in on this tour, and we were both kind of like a little
Guest:bit depressed.
Guest:I mean, just kind of like all over the map emotionally.
Guest:And we were sitting in a car, and we both have a love for The Grateful Dead.
Guest:So judge us on that level.
Guest:And I remember sitting for like three hours, or at least in my three hours, just listening to The Grateful Dead, and then there was a bonding experience going on.
Guest:And it was kind of a rough tour, and it was a fun tour.
Guest:We got to know each other, and we argued a lot.
Guest:But then after that, Mark got into this podcast thing.
Guest:And
Guest:I emailed Mark about six months ago.
Guest:Email is a way that you communicate with people.
Guest:And I said to him that it kind of had changed my life, his podcast, because it really had.
Guest:You know, I was a lot of time just watching the news on TV and feeling very, very down about things.
Guest:I couldn't get out of my head.
Guest:And then all of a sudden I discovered
Guest:in Mark's podcast, and I've never heard anything like it.
Guest:The way that he's able to both interview people and get to the bottom of what they're thinking, but on the other hand, he's there in the interview.
Guest:It's not just questions.
Guest:And the way he's able to deal with philosophical issues and spiritual issues and emotional issues, you know, there could be a brighter person
Guest:on the planet, but in a lot of ways, I call him an empathetic savant, because when he's on that show, he is so connected to what's going on, and I feel like his show has become a place that everybody can gather, comedians can find out about other comedians, and it just really has been an amazing, amazing experience for me, and I just feel very lucky and blessed that this is in the world.
Guest:And at the same time, Marc Maron is still going out to clubs and more hilarious than ever.
Guest:So I mean, I really am not just not proud of him, but I really like, it's an honor that he asked me to introduce him.
Guest:And I'm just so thrilled to be here today.
Guest:And I'm just so excited about everything that's happening in his life.
Guest:And I'm sure that he's going to strangle me for this introduction.
Guest:But ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the amazing Marc Maron.
Guest:Andy Kinler.
Oh, that's sad.
Marc:Thank you, Andy.
Marc:That got very emotional.
Marc:That trip, he framed it in a nice way, the trip that Andy... It was Andy Kinler, myself, and Eugene Merman driving cross-country in a rental car.
Marc:And I know you know Andy, but traveling with Andy is like traveling with the history of the Jewish people.
LAUGHTER
Marc:And the three of us are Jews, Merman, myself, and Andy, but we're three very specific types of Jews.
Marc:And I don't do many impressions, but I do impressions that are sound-based.
Marc:Andy's like, that's Andy.
Marc:That's Andy.
Marc:Eugene is like, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah.
Marc:Bah, bah, bah, bah.
Marc:And I'm like, ah!
Marc:And we were traveling.
Marc:I guess I'm going to tell this story because I don't know how to fucking do a speech.
Marc:No, I have things prepared.
Marc:But there was a moment on that tour that was so beautiful.
Marc:We had just landed in Cincinnati, and we met at the hotel, and Eugene needed to get some equipment for his act.
Marc:We had to go buy Eugene a screen for his performance, which was a shower curtain that needed to be bought at a Target.
Marc:Now, we had the directions to the Target that were given to us by the hotel, but Andy had just gotten his iPhone, so he wanted to try the GPS.
Marc:So now we're in a car with directions and a GPS.
Marc:And we don't know where the fuck we're going.
Marc:And it kept going on and on.
Marc:We had two GPSs going.
Marc:The target they brought up was 50 miles away.
Marc:The one that the hotel said we were going to was 10 miles away.
Marc:And Andy was like, how does this work?
Marc:I think I'm going somewhere.
Marc:And...
Marc:Somehow or another, we got off of the highway.
Marc:We were on rural roads.
Marc:And the English woman on the GPS was saying, like, 10 left here.
Marc:And we kept turning.
Marc:And I don't know why they don't have a Jewish version of that.
Marc:Like, you missed it!
Marc:So we end up in the woods and I'm screaming and Andy's going, why are you yelling?
Marc:It's fun, right?
Marc:We're in the country.
Marc:I'm like, shut the fuck up.
Marc:And he's like, why are we fighting?
Marc:And this went on for like a half an hour with this English woman going like, turn left here.
Marc:And we're driving like we're in Appalachia.
Marc:I didn't know Ohio had Appalachia, but we're driving past shacks.
Marc:There are bearded men coming out looking confused at the car.
Marc:And I remember it says, turn right.
Marc:And then we turn right and there's water.
Marc:We drive and we're at water.
Marc:And then the GPS says, board ferry now.
Guest:Laughter
Marc:There was no ferry, and none of us Jews were able to make the leap across the water.
Marc:So it seemed to disarm things.
Marc:But I love Andy, and I'm very happy you're all here.
Marc:And I did write some things down, and I think I'll read them.
Marc:I'll read as long as I can without feeling like you're no longer paying attention to me.
Marc:And then I will check in in a panically, slightly insecure way.
Marc:Welcome to the Montreal Comedy Festival, and fuck you.
Marc:Some of you, you know who you are.
Marc:Wait, sorry, that was the old me.
Marc:I'd like to apologize for being a dick just then.
Marc:See, that's progress, the amount of time between action and apology for seconds.
Marc:I'm excited to be here, and I'm now going to proceed to make this speech all about me, and we'll see where that takes us.
Marc:So I don't know if you know me.
Marc:I know a lot of you have.
Marc:Whenever I come to this thing, I feel like I've grown up with some of you people.
Marc:I feel like some of you are my parents.
Marc:I know that this is a community of comics.
Marc:I'm usually wandering around wondering why the festival is not the Montreal Just for Mark festival.
Marc:But I guess for 25 minutes we can make it that way.
Marc:Things are going pretty well for me, and I don't know what kind of person you are, but I'm the kind of person when things are going well for me, there's a little voice inside of my head saying, you're going to fuck it up.
Marc:You're going to fuck it up, Mark.
Marc:And I really just wish that voice were louder than the voice screaming, let's fuck it up!
Guest:Come on, you pussy.
Guest:Fuck it up.
Guest:What happened to you, pussy?
Guest:You used to have balls and heads.
Guest:Look at you doing a speech, you pussy.
Guest:Fuck it up.
Guest:Rune your career.
Guest:Burn some bridges.
Guest:Remember that?
Guest:What happened to your head?
Guest:Break up with your girlfriend.
Guest:Start drinking again.
Guest:This is a good weekend for that.
Guest:Do that.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:Fuck it up.
Marc:So that's happening right now.
Marc:And I wish that were a fucking joke.
Marc:I was up all night fighting with my brain to not fuck this up.
Marc:My poor girlfriend, who, you know, we've been together a little while, but it was a real test to our relationship.
Marc:I don't know if you've ever been in that zone where you're so panicky and angry that you can't sleep, but you know part of you doesn't want to sleep because then if you don't sleep and you fuck it up, you can be like, well, I didn't sleep.
Marc:It was fucked up.
Marc:And she was sitting there going, do you want me to hug you?
Marc:I'm like, no!
Marc:No!
Marc:Yes!
Marc:Okay!
Marc:Can I build a pillow fort?
Marc:So, that's where I'm at.
Marc:I'm a comedian.
Marc:Okay, here we go.
Marc:When they asked me to give this speech months ago, the first thing I said to my manager was, What?
Marc:They can't find anyone else?
Marc:With this much time?
Marc:Really?
Marc:That's fucking ridiculous.
Marc:And then my manager said, No, they want you.
Marc:So I asked, Why me?
Marc:Why ask why me is the question.
Marc:This was obviously a good thing.
Marc:I got the gate.
Marc:But I'm the kind of person who needs to deconstruct even a good thing so I can understand what is expected of me and who is expecting it.
Marc:You would think, well, Mark, they just want you to be funny.
Marc:That isn't good enough.
Marc:In my mind, I needed to know what the angle was.
Marc:Did no one else want to do this?
Marc:Did someone drop out?
Marc:Be honest.
Marc:Who said no already?
Marc:Did Chelsea Hammer say no?
Marc:Be honest.
Marc:Who said no?
Marc:Am I cheap?
Marc:I've been doing comedy for 25 years.
Marc:I've been invited to this festival maybe twice before this, which is weird considering how many new faces I've tried on over the last 25 years.
Marc:To the festival's credit, they did have me on the Sad Old Faces show about six years ago.
Marc:And I appreciate that.
Marc:But let's be honest, all right?
Marc:I have not made anyone in this room any real money.
Marc:I'm currently working out of my fucking garage.
Marc:I'm in constant battle with resentment against many of the people in this room.
Marc:So again, why me?
Marc:So you see what happened right there?
Marc:Within minutes, the opportunity to give this speech became, this is a setup.
Marc:They're fucking me.
Marc:I mean, what kind of bullshit is this?
Marc:That is exactly the kind of thinking that has kept me out of the big time for my entire career.
Marc:Alright, I'm going to try and address both sides here.
Marc:The industry and the comics, it's not really an us against them situation, but to me it feels like it is sometimes.
Marc:As I said, I've been doing comedy for 25 years.
Marc:I've put more than half of my life into building my clown.
Marc:That's how I see it.
Marc:I think that comics keep getting up on stage in time.
Marc:The part of them that lives and thrives up there is their clown.
Marc:My clown was fueled by jealousy and spite for most of my career.
Marc:I'll share this with you.
Marc:I'm the clown who recently read The War for Late Night and thought it was basically about me not being in show business.
Marc:I'm the clown that thought that most of Jon Stewart's success was based on his commitment to a haircut.
Marc:I'm the clown that thought Louis C.K.
Marc:showed Louis should be called Fuck You, Marc Maron.
Marc:Three years ago, my clown was broke on many levels, and according to my former manager, my manager at the time, I was unbookable and without options.
Marc:That's a great talk.
Marc:Let me try to recapture that for you.
Marc:My manager.
Marc:Nobody wants to work with you.
Marc:I can't get you an agent.
Marc:I can't get you any road work.
Marc:I can't get you anything.
Marc:Me.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So what do we do?
Marc:My manager.
Marc:Are you looking at my hair?
Marc:Why are you looking at my hair?
Marc:Does it look bad?
Marc:Me.
Marc:No, no, it's fine.
Marc:What should we do?
Marc:My manager.
Marc:I don't know what we're going to do.
Marc:I mean, stop looking at my hair.
Marc:Am I fat?
Marc:Tell me, am I fat?
Marc:Seriously, am I?
Marc:That was the conversation.
Marc:Paraphrasing, but that was the conversation.
Marc:My first thought after that meeting was, I'm going to kill myself.
Marc:My second thought was, I could get a regular job.
Marc:My third thought was, I need a new manager.
Marc:I think I had the order wrong.
Marc:I'm not taking shots here.
Marc:Let Andy do that.
Marc:I'm incapable of that.
Marc:I'll discuss that in a minute.
Marc:I drove home defeated, all right?
Marc:25 years in, I had nothing.
Marc:I was sitting in a garage in a house I was about to lose because of that bitch, but let's not get into that.
Okay.
Marc:And then I had this weird realization, and I said this out loud to myself.
Marc:You can build a clown, and they might not come.
Marc:I was thinking, it's over.
Marc:It's fucking over.
Marc:Then I thought, you have no kids.
Marc:You have no wife.
Marc:You have no career.
Marc:Certainly no plan B. Why not kill yourself?
Marc:I thought about suicide a lot.
Marc:Now, don't get depressed.
Marc:I have thought about suicide a lot in my life, but it's not because I want to kill myself.
Marc:I just find it relaxing.
Right?
Guest:to know that I can if I have to.
Marc:I don't know what kind of person you are, but you've never had that moment where you're just sitting alone and you're like, why the fuck does my life have to fight?
Marc:Hey.
Marc:I could always kill myself.
Marc:Ah, back to work.
Marc:It's the spiritual reprieve of the faithless.
Marc:I'll let the people that got that take me a little deeper.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Well, then I thought, like, well, maybe I get a regular job.
Marc:That's fucking horrendous.
Marc:Like, even though my last regular job was in a restaurant 25 years ago, I said to myself, I swear to you, I said, I still got it.
Marc:It's like riding a bike.
Right?
Marc:Just get me a spatula, flip some eggs, some burgers or something.
Marc:Then I thought, what are you fucking crazy?
Marc:You think they're going to hire a 47-year-old man whose last restaurant job was a part-time short order cook in 1987?
Marc:How are you going to explain the lost years?
Marc:Are you going to show the bar manager your Conan reel?
Marc:You're a fucking idiot.
Marc:So I was broke.
Marc:I was defeated.
Marc:I was careerless.
Marc:And I started doing this podcast in that very garage where I was planning my own demise.
Marc:And I'm not going to try not to get shoved up with this because this thing has been an emotional thing for me.
Marc:I started talking about myself on the mic with no one telling me what I could do or what I could say.
Marc:I started reaching out to comics immediately.
Marc:I needed help.
Marc:You know, I needed, you know, personal help, professional help.
Marc:I needed to talk to people.
Marc:So I reached out to my peers and I talked to them, you know, and I started feeling better about life, you know, comedy, creativity, community.
Marc:I mean, I was fucking, I was lost.
Marc:You know, and then I started to understand who I was by talking about the comics and then sharing it with everybody else.
Marc:You know, I started to laugh at things again.
Marc:I was excited to be alive.
Marc:Holy fuck.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Doing the podcast and listening to comics literally saved my life.
Marc:And I realized that that is what comedy can do for people.
Marc:And you know what the industry had to do with that?
Marc:Nothing!
Marc:Nothing!
Marc:When I played an early episode from my now former manager in his office, thinking that I'd turned a career corner and we finally had something, he listened to about three minutes of it and said, I don't get it.
Marc:But I don't blame him.
Marc:Why would he get it?
Marc:It wasn't on his radar.
Marc:It wasn't in his wheelhouse.
Marc:There's no package deal.
Marc:There's no episode commitment.
Marc:No theaters to sell out.
Marc:He had no idea what or how to extract money from it.
Marc:And I did it from my fucking garage.
Marc:Perfect.
Marc:It took me 25 years to do the best thing I've ever done, and there was no clear way to monetize it.
Marc:I was winning.
I was winning.
Marc:But I guess I'm ahead of the game.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I don't really look at it that way.
Marc:I don't really pay attention to this.
Marc:It's just, you know.
Marc:All right, so back to the offer of the speech.
Marc:I thought, like, wait.
Marc:All right, that's the reason they want me to do the speech.
Marc:I do a podcast out of my garage that has had over 20 million downloads in less than two years.
Marc:It's critically acclaimed.
Marc:I've interviewed over 200 comics.
Marc:I've created live shows.
Marc:I'm writing a book.
Marc:I have a loyal, borderline-accessive fan base who bring me baked goods and artwork.
LAUGHTER
Marc:I've evolved as a person, as a performer.
Marc:I'm at the top of my game.
Marc:No one can tell me what to do.
Marc:I've built it myself.
Marc:I've worked for myself.
Marc:I have full creative freedom.
Marc:I am the future of show business.
Marc:Not your show business, my show business.
Marc:They want me to do this speech because I'm the future of our industry.
Marc:That's what I thought.
Guest:Like, I really thought that.
Marc:Then my new manager got back to me and said, no, they like the jokes he did when he introduced Kingler a couple years ago.
Marc:That's why they asked him.
Marc:So this moment of like, I was an emperor in my garage for about six minutes.
Marc:So then I thought, fuck, it was the jokes about them, you guys, the industry that got them interested.
Marc:Well, that's fucking ridiculous.
Marc:That was like two jokes.
Marc:I'm not good at insult comedy.
Marc:Anytime I do roast jokes, I go too far, I cut too deep, it gets too real, always gets me in trouble.
Marc:Always.
Marc:I think the president of Comedy Central, Doug Herzog, is still mad at me, actually.
Marc:I'd like to take this opportunity publicly to apologize again to Doug years ago.
Marc:When Doug Herzog and Eileen Katz first moved to Comedy Central from MTV and began retooling it, I performed at a Comedy Central party at the old Catch a Rising Star.
Marc:I remember the joke I did.
Marc:I said, quote, I'm glad Doug and Eileen moved from MTV to Comedy Central because I think that all television should look like a 24-hour round-the-clock pie-eating contest.
Marc:Unquote.
Marc:I don't know if it was the venom I said it with you or what, but two days later, I was in I'm Lee Katz's office with my old manager who was having a great hair day.
Marc:Apologizing for that joke.
Marc:So I'm not the guy to make you industry people laugh at yourselves.
Marc:Kim Lord will do that in a couple days.
Marc:But if I could, in the spirit of making an amends, I'd like to apologize to Doug Herzog again and say, I'm sorry, Doug, since you've been there, Comedy Central has become the best pie-in contest on television.
laughter laughter laughter laughter
Marc:What's he gonna do, fire me from my garage?
Marc:So let's get into comedy.
Marc:You know, I can talk about the podcast.
Marc:Look, I've been bitter in my life.
Marc:I felt slighted by the industry and misunderstood.
Marc:I've made mistakes.
Marc:I've fucked things up.
Marc:That's the kind of comic I am.
Marc:It isn't unusual.
Marc:I will admit and accept my faults and mistakes, but it bothers me that the industry takes comics for granted and makes us jump through stupid hoops and lies to us constantly.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:You think it's part of your job.
Marc:But how about a little respect for us, the commodity,
Marc:the clown.
Marc:When I was a kid watching comedians on TV and listening to their records, they were the only ones that could make it all seem okay.
Marc:They seemed to cut through the bullshit and disarm fears and horror by being clever and funny.
Marc:I don't think I would have survived my childhood without watching stand-up comics.
Marc:When I started doing comedy, I didn't understand show business.
Marc:I just wanted to be a comedian.
Marc:Now, after 25 years of doing stand-up and the last two years of having long conversations with over 200 comics, I can honestly say that they are some of the most thoughtful, philosophical, open-minded, sensitive, insightful, talented, self-centered, neurotic, compulsive, angry, fucked up, sweet, creative people in the world.
Thank you.
Marc:I love comedians.
Marc:I respect anyone who goes all in to do what I consider a noble profession in art form.
Marc:Despite whatever drives us towards this profession, i.e., insecurity, need for attention, megalomania, poor parenting, anger, a mixture of all the above, whatever it is, we comics are out there on the front lines of our sanity.
Marc:We risk all sense of security and the possibility of living stable lives to do comedy.
Marc:We are out there in B rooms, dive bars, coffee shops, bookstores, and comedy clubs trying to find the funny, trying to connect, trying to interpret our problems in the world around us and make it into jokes.
Marc:We are out there dragging our friends and co-workers to comedy clubs at hot hours so we can get on stage.
Marc:We are out there desperately tweeting, updating statuses,
Marc:shooting silly videos.
Marc:We are out there driving 10 hours straight to feature in Phil in the Blank City here.
Marc:We are out there acting excited on local morning radio programs with hosts whose malignant egos are as big as their regional popularity.
Marc:We are out there pretending like we like club owners and listening to their input.
Marc:You fucking comics better laugh at this shit.
Marc:I don't care who you're sitting next to.
Marc:We are out there pretending... No, we already did that.
Marc:We are out there fighting the good fight against our own weaknesses, battling courageously with internet porn.
LAUGHTER
Marc:Boobs, pills, weed, blow, hookers, hangers-on, sad, angry girls we can't get out of our room.
Marc:Twitter trolls, broken relationships.
Marc:We are out there on treadmills at Holiday Inn Expresses and Marriott Suite Hotels, trying to balance out our self-destructive compulsions, sadness, and fat.
Marc:We are up making our own waffles at 9.58 a.m., two minutes before the free buffet closes.
Marc:I'm thrilled about it.
Marc:Do not underestimate the power of a lobby waffle to change your outlook.
Marc:All this for what?
Marc:For the opportunity to be funny in front of as many people as possible and share our point of view, entertain, tell some jokes, crunch some truths, release some of the tension that builds up in people, in the culture, and ourselves.
Marc:So if I could, I would like to help out some of the younger comics here with some things that I've learned from the experience in show business.
Marc:Most of these only refer to those of us that have remained heatless for most of our careers.
Marc:I can't speak to heat.
Marc:I do know that symbiosis with the industry is necessary.
Marc:After a certain point, there are great agents and managers and executives who want to make great product.
Marc:But for the most part, it's about money.
Marc:To quote a promoter who was quoting an older promoter in relation to his involvement with the Charlie Sheen tour, quote, don't smell it, sell it.
Guest:Unquote.
Marc:True story.
Marc:Okay, here's the list.
Marc:One, show business is not your parents.
Marc:When you get to Hollywood, you should have something more than, hey, I'm here, when do we go on the rides?
Marc:Two, try to tap into your authentic voice, your genuine, funny, and build from there.
Marc:Three, try to find a manager that gets you.
Marc:Four, nurturing and developing talent is no longer relevant.
Marc:Don't expect it.
Marc:If you want to hear about that, though, you can talk to an agent or manager or comic from back in the day.
Marc:But don't get sucked in.
Marc:They'll pay for the meal, but they'll feed on your naivete to fuel their diminishing relevance, and that can be a soul suck.
Marc:Seems to be.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:There's nothing good about that joke.
Marc:It was true, but it was hurtful.
Marc:It felt good to do it, and I'm sorry.
Marc:If you have a manager, there's a language spoken by them and their assistants that you should begin to understand.
Marc:For example, when an assistant says, he's on a call, or I'll try to get her in the car, or he just stepped out, or I don't have her right now, or they're in a meeting, or he's at lunch, or she's on set, or all of these mean they've got no time for you, you have nothing going on, go make something happen so that you can take credit for it.
Laughter
Marc:Anybody else can do this?
Marc:Six, sometimes a general meeting just means that executives had an open day, need to fill out their schedule, and want to be entertained.
Marc:Don't get your hopes up.
Marc:Seven, if your manager says any of these, we're trading calls, or I have a call in to them, or they said she killed it, or they love you, or they're having a meeting about you, or we're waiting to hear back, or they're big fans.
Marc:These usually mean, you didn't get it, and someone will tell you secondhand.
Marc:Eight, there is really no business like show business, except maybe prostitution.
Marc:There's a bit of an overlap there.
Marc:Nine, this is not a meritocracy.
Marc:Get over yourself.
Marc:And ten, Dave Rath will be your manager.
Marc:All right, let's land this thing.
Marc:The amazing thing about being a comedian is that no one can tell us to stop, even if we should.
Marc:I know this.
Marc:Delusion is necessary to do this.
Marc:Some of you aren't that great.
Marc:Some of you may get better.
Marc:Some of you aren't great now.
Marc:Some of you may get opportunities even when you're not that great.
Marc:Some of you will get them and they will go nowhere and then you'll have to figure out how to buffer that disappointment and because of that get funnier or fade away.
Marc:Some of you may be perfectly happy with mediocrity.
Marc:Some of you will get nothing but heartbreak.
Marc:Some of you will be heralded as geniuses and become huge.
Marc:Of course, all of you think that one describes you.
Marc:Hence the delusion necessary to push on.
Marc:Occasionally, everything will sync up and you will find your place in this racket.
Marc:There is a good chance it will be completely surprising and not anything like you expected.
Marc:I'm not a hustled name.
Marc:I'm not a huge comic.
Marc:I've not made millions of dollars, but I'm okay.
Marc:I'm making a living.
Marc:I'm good with that, finally.
Marc:Comedy saved my life, but also destroyed it in many ways.
Marc:It's a precarious balance of our craft, and some of us don't survive it.
Marc:We lost a few really great comics this year.
Marc:Greg drawed those in here, which is weird, because he was always here.
Marc:Greg was a friend of mine, many of you.
Marc:He wasn't a close friend, but we were connected by the unspoken bond between comics.
Marc:After talking to hundreds of comics, I know that bond runs deeper than just friendship and is more honest than most relationships.
Marc:He certainly was a kindred spirit.
Marc:I battle demons every day, and as of today, I'm winning, or at least have some sort of detente.
Marc:Greg lost that fight.
Marc:He was a brilliant comedian, but in a way that is rare.
Marc:He was not a dark, angry cloud.
Marc:He was smart, current, honest, courageous.
Marc:He did it with humility and light.
Marc:He was a comedic force of nature that is profoundly missed.
Marc:He was just a guy that always seemed so fucking alive that accepting that he isn't is hard and sad.
Marc:He's survived by his ex-wife, his kids, and his YouTube videos, and we miss him.
Marc:Also, in an interesting twist this year, Robert Schimmel did not die of cancer, but he did pass.
Marc:Bob was a class act, a legacy to True Blue, Lounge Comedy, and an impeccable craftsman of the story and the joke.
Marc:He battled the horrible disease for over a decade and brought a lot of laughs and hope.
Marc:to people affected by cancer.
Marc:He made me laugh a lot.
Marc:I listen to his CDs now if I want to laugh and that is as honest a tribute as I can give to a comedian.
Marc:I miss him and I'm sad I didn't get to talk to him more.
Marc:Mike DiStefano, as a person, went through more shit than I can even imagine.
Marc:Some of it self-generated, all of it tragic and mind-blowing.
Marc:He overcame it.
Marc:How?
Marc:With fucking comedy.
Marc:I literally talked to his brother last week, Joe, and he said, quote, Mike had a tough time living until he found comedy, and then it was the opposite.
Marc:Doing comedy is what saved him.
Marc:His comedy helped a lot of people and it helped him."
Marc:I never met a guy more at peace with his past and present and more excited about the future that sadly isn't going to happen.
Marc:But he knew in his heart he was living on borrowed time and every day was a gift.
Marc:All these guys should have had many more years of life between them, but they didn't.
Marc:These guys were unique in that they were real comics.
Marc:Hilarious, deep, hardcore, risk-taking, envelope-pushing artists that made a profound impact on people and changed minds and lives with their funny.
Marc:I know that to be true.
Marc:I'm not sure if there is a point to this speech or at one point or any point really.
Marc:All I know is that if you're a comic, hang in there if you can because you never know what's going to happen or how it is going to happen and there are a lot more ways and places for it to happen.
Marc:I know my place in show business now, it's in my garage.
Marc:But who knows where yours is?
Marc:But there is truly nothing more important than comedy.
Marc:Okay, well that might be an overstay.
Marc:There are a few things more important than comedy, but they aren't funny.
Marc:Until we made them funny.
Marc:Godspeed.
Marc:Have a good festival.
Marc:Are we good?
Marc:Are we okay?
Marc:Thank you.