BONUS WTF Origins - Break Room Live
Guest:So yeah, Break Room Live.
Guest:That's what we're here to talk about.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:Actually, if you're feeling the anxiety and the PTSD of Break Room Live just rushing toward you, let's pause first.
Guest:Because actually, there's something that we need to talk about before that.
Guest:Because it's really kind of something I can't fill in the gaps on.
Guest:A lot of times when we do these WTF origins, I have a pretty good memory of things that we've done and things in our careers.
Guest:And where I need to fill things in, I have lots of emails.
Guest:I have lots of records of things.
Guest:So it's very easy for me to kind of construct a narrative.
Guest:But the Marc Maron show, which we talked about the last time, ended July 2006.
Guest:And we didn't start Break Room Live until the end of the summer of 2008.
Guest:And so I wanted to figure out, well, what exactly was going on with Mark career-wise when
Guest:During that time, July 2006 to summer 2008.
Guest:And it's funny.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I had lots of contact with you.
Guest:I think if we talked about things at that time, the most was about you working through your marital issues.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But in terms of career, it's like...
Guest:You didn't do any shows.
Guest:There's nothing in your filmography or TV credits.
Guest:You filmed that one Comedy Central half hour in 2007, the one that had the sheep on the stage.
Guest:That was 2007?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And other than that, I didn't see a lot.
Guest:And in fact, there was one email that I had from you that was just like, hey, how's it going?
Guest:What's up?
Guest:And you were like, this was on May 1st, 2008.
Guest:And you said, well, career ends officially on June 1st.
Yeah.
Guest:I couldn't even figure out what that possibly meant.
Guest:Maybe you had some dates booked through that time.
Guest:And then after that, you were like, well, I'm never going to get any dates again or something like that.
Marc:Maybe.
Marc:I wish I had the books in front of me or a way.
Marc:I don't know that my Apple calendar goes back that far.
Marc:No, probably not.
Marc:those written books somewhere, the sequence of events that sort of started everything going bad, and I'm not even sure what the dates were, but it was when did I do those dates with Henry Rollins and Janine Garofalo?
Marc:Yeah, that was roughly around this time period.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So what happened there was I did New York.
Marc:I remember I did New York with Rollins and Garofalo at, what was it, the Mercer somewhere.
Marc:And then I went home and I don't know how close to the next week we did, because we did a couple of days.
Marc:I feel like we did more than one show at that silent movie theater.
Guest:Well, you did in New York, it was at the Gramercy Theater.
Guest:Yeah, the Gramercy Theater.
Guest:And that was April 13th, 2007, which was right around when you shot that Comedy Central taping.
Guest:That was also spring of 2007.
Guest:Right.
Marc:All right, well, then I go home, and in between that date and the dates that I did in L.A.
Marc:with Rollins and Garofalo, that was when my wife left me.
Marc:I feel like she left me the day of one of those shows.
Marc:And I feel like we did more than one show, but maybe I'm wrong.
Marc:But it was either the day of that show, because I remember getting to the theater and just being leveled, you know?
Marc:And I feel like I'd just gotten home.
Marc:from New York.
Marc:And, you know, she was all kind of... She had set it all up.
Marc:Like, I literally walked in from New York, probably, and sat down, and she said, you know, I'm leaving.
Marc:I want a trial separation.
Marc:And, you know, that was it.
Marc:You know, there was just nothing but mess after that, but we never were in the same house again.
Marc:So I was pretty...
Marc:devastated through all that time i mean that that was a very long and fucked up time because oh yeah i remember so like that what what day that was in june so then i go to uh i go to edinburgh that's when the edinburgh shit show happened was that summer it must have been july and
Marc:And, you know, it was like, I feel like I did a couple of things.
Marc:I like, I feel like I went to Australia too in that period.
Guest:You did.
Guest:You did.
Guest:Because I noticed an email around the same time where I asked, are you back from down under?
Marc:Right.
Marc:I had these dates set up and she had left for this three month trial separation.
Marc:I began coming kind of unraveled.
Marc:And, but I had those international dates set up because I remember I went to Australia and
Marc:And like right when I got to Australia, my computer fell out of my bag and broke.
Marc:And I couldn't even imagine how I was going to manage without that ability to communicate and have my computer.
Marc:And I was on top of everything else.
Marc:It was a mess.
Marc:And then that writer, Luke Davies, an Australian writer.
Marc:He was a friend of Jerry's and a guy I'd met.
Marc:And, you know, he kind of stepped up and hooked me up with a Mac guy because I remember I got a hard drive down there.
Marc:I got it fixed, but it was an Australian hard drive.
Marc:So it went the other way.
Marc:But I got used to it.
Marc:But the time was always like, you know, there was something different about it.
Marc:But so he set me up with that.
Marc:And I think I must have gone to Edinburgh after.
Marc:And that was a mess.
Marc:That was when I was with Kirk.
Marc:And that was within the three-month trial separation period.
Marc:Kirk Fox.
Marc:Kirk Fox.
Marc:And that was kind of a sad, horrible experience.
Marc:And then, I don't know, Mishnah, my soon-to-be ex-wife, decided that I was there...
Marc:Having an affair with Morgan Murphy, which I wasn't.
Marc:So the trial separation, I think she was looking for a way just to put a nail in it.
Marc:And I got home and then, you know, the trial separation, you know, right at three months, I was just furious and I was trying to get some, you know, to get some sort of like a closure or...
Marc:Not closure.
Marc:I wanted to get ahead of it or something.
Guest:Oh, oh, oh.
Guest:Right, because I do remember it became your choice to actually file the papers.
Marc:It was dumb.
Marc:It was all pride, you know, and I thought, well, if she's not going to make a decision, fuck it.
Marc:You know, I'll file the papers and get her served and do all that.
Marc:And then and then she'll see that I mean business and maybe that'll work itself out.
Marc:I have such backward thinking about everything.
Marc:But I just I thought also that it would give me some advantage in the proceedings.
Marc:So I filed for the divorce and I don't know.
Marc:I don't think I had any real empathy around what she was doing because I couldn't see through my anger.
Marc:And then that that that started the disaster that start.
Marc:You know, she aligned herself with a very sort of aggressive divorce lawyer she knew from the program.
Marc:And they just started to chip away at me.
Marc:And so all it was all like craziness after that.
Marc:It was all disclosures, me going to Kinko's photocopying.
Marc:every record that I had and her lawyer filing motions because I didn't include the last page of bank statements, which just had the, you know, the points on it or, you know, the advertisement.
Marc:It was clearly a shakedown that I grew to realize was that she wanted the house.
Marc:So that was a very bad time and it didn't let up.
Marc:It just didn't let up.
Marc:And I thought about selling the house, but then I really didn't know what Boomer would do because he lived outside and,
Marc:And that's what kept me there.
Marc:I thought about, like, getting an apartment.
Marc:And that must have been, yeah.
Marc:Into 2008.
Marc:Into 2008?
Guest:Yeah, I think so.
Guest:I think, you know, looking at certain emails or correspondence I had with you, all this stuff was going on from, like, 2007 into 2008 in terms of dealing with the divorce.
Guest:When do we start break room?
Guest:We start that in September of 2008.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So, yeah, it was just a spiraling shit show where I was going broke.
Marc:You know, no one could really lend me money.
Marc:My my dad wouldn't lend me money.
Marc:I think my mom gave me a little money to keep me afloat, but I was spiraling the fucking drain, dude.
Guest:Well, what was your you had?
Guest:Did you mentally have any like career prospects or like career goals or ambitions at this point?
Guest:Or were you totally swamped?
Marc:No, I just knew that I was doing what I could.
Marc:I was doing what I always did.
Marc:Again, I mean, this was not a time where I could sell tickets.
Marc:So whatever club work I was taking was just that kind of unknown headliner club work.
Marc:I was probably doing a few TV appearances here or there.
Marc:I don't think you were.
Guest:To be honest with you.
Guest:Like I looked up your like maybe a Conan here or there when you'd be in New York because Conan was still in New York.
Guest:So you're out in L.A.
Guest:I don't know what TV appearances you could have done in L.A.
Guest:at that time.
Marc:I was leveled.
Marc:But yeah.
Marc:And that was the state I was in.
Marc:I was trying to, you know, to win something.
Marc:And then we were in court.
Marc:It just got way out of hand because her lawyer was so aggressive.
Marc:And it was like, I remember I was sitting outside.
Marc:I was journaling every day.
Marc:I can't even look at those journals.
Marc:And I do remember going up to work in like Palo Alto at Rooster Teeth Feathers because I work with Siroth and his wife.
Marc:And the reason I remember that is I was writing these journals that were very honest and
Marc:And raw and I'd left them.
Marc:I was with them in their hotel room and I'd left it.
Marc:I was so nervous.
Marc:I had read it and they probably did, but it didn't matter in the long run.
Marc:But so I was journaling and I was talking to friends every day.
Marc:I was very depressed and I was just, you know, trying to keep it together.
Guest:Yeah, and I do remember you taking a lot of fill-in gigs anytime there was a gap with a host on Air America.
Guest:You would do a fill-in if they lost somebody and they didn't have them.
Guest:I remember you would do guest spots for Randy Rhoads, and then they fired Randy Rhoads.
Guest:So there was a period of time where you and Sam and Ron Cooby, you were all filling in.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:Yeah, I kind of remember that.
Marc:Was I doing it out here?
Guest:Yeah, you would do it out there, and then anytime you were in New York, you would go into the studio, you'd do fill-in spots for Rachel Maddow, you would do fill-ins.
Guest:You were trying to, I think, stay in the mix there, because everything we're saying is pointing in the direction of you essentially had no other real prospect.
Guest:So keeping your fingers in the fire here, yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Other than the stand up.
Guest:And, but I think they must've been trying to keep me in, you know, I think it was always Scott Elberg who was there at air America thought, you know, Mark Marin is a good guy to keep around and we'll, you know, try to do something with him.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Also you and Sam on your own started doing a video thing, very primitive kind of like Skype interface and
Guest:that you guys called Maren V. Cedar, and you would do it every Friday.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I think he was utilizing his Air America email list to have a group of fans who still wanted to watch him.
Guest:And you guys would do this video chat, essentially, where you talked about things.
Guest:I think you probably...
Guest:you know, were there just to go back and forth with Sam.
Guest:He was doing like politics on and you were just kind of reacting.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, that's the dynamic.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I vaguely remember that.
Marc:And I remember, I don't remember when we got that.
Marc:Merrin v. Cedar was actually, I think that kind of bled over and was the initial, um,
Guest:title for break room live i think that's exactly right not only the initial title it was what we did for the first four months uh because so so from from my records here what wound up happening was carl ginsburg who had been at air america from the start he left then he came back and he uh got in touch with you because there was new money right there's new money there at um uh charlie
Guest:Yeah, Charlie Carriker was a wealthy guy who I think had made a lot of money with the brand Living Well, which was like a lifestyle.
Marc:And also we thought Ben & Jerry's, right?
Marc:It was always Ben & Jerry's, we thought.
Guest:I think he had something to do with the purchasing of Ben & Jerry's when Ben & Jerry's sold.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, there was, he was a businessman.
Guest:He had some money and he was a lefty and he wanted to get into progressive politics.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, in pro wrestling, we call this a money mark.
Guest:That this is the guy who's going to pay a lot of money to do the stunts and he's never going to get any return.
Guest:Didn't we call him Mr. Magoo?
Guest:Yeah, he was kind of a Mr. Magoo type.
Guest:Sure.
Yeah.
Guest:But yes, so the bat signal went up because there was money.
Guest:And Carl, not unlike me, and I've given Carl the credit for this before, that it's like he got what your appeal was and how you could be a viable host of something, presenter of something.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, that was his goal, was to get the money to basically set Marc Maron up on the path to getting a TV deal somewhere.
Marc:Right.
Marc:He thought we could do the Daily Show over there.
Guest:Basically.
Guest:And I think, but I think his end goal was, yes, we would use the Air America infrastructure to do a Daily Show type thing.
Guest:But ultimately, this would be getting Marc Maron a gig as the new Jon Stewart somewhere.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, he would be the producer of it or whatever.
Guest:It was not a bad idea in terms of what could work.
Guest:It was a bad idea in terms of, A, the infrastructure at Air America was totally not suitable for doing this, nor was the kind of presence online at the time for streaming video.
Marc:And across the board, it didn't exist.
Guest:Across the board, not just us.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:The other thing, though, was like you had management, you had representation.
Guest:And so Carla was trying to like backdoor agent this thing.
Guest:He's the backdoor man.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:He tried to backdoor everything.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I remember there was a weird meeting at Epix that I feel like happened in a kitchen.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Totally weird.
Guest:I remember him doing something where he invited representatives from the Onion sales department to...
Guest:to come in and talk to us about break room live and they came there they're in sales and they came in and were like so basically expecting us to say we'd like to advertise on the onion and instead carl showed them a pitch reel of our show and was like eh looks pretty good this would look good on the onion right and they're like
Guest:uh okay do you want to buy some advertising for it on the onion is that what you're trying to tell like it was totally inappropriate like i and i think that was all of his plays were just like he was just hoping at some point somebody be like this is good we'd like to buy it
Marc:Yeah, but he was, like, dealing with, you know, like, side, you know, people.
Marc:Total side people, yeah.
Marc:You know, and he'd always presented to us, like, he'd got something real going.
Marc:And he always walked around with sort of a manic kind of charisma with his cigars and everything.
Marc:And, you know, he's like, yeah, we're going to meet.
Marc:I remember he's like, I got a meeting for us at Epix.
Marc:And he actually knew someone at Epix, but, again, it was one of those meetings.
Marc:It's like, what is this meeting about?
Marc:Yes.
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What are we selling all the time?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because again, like are these ad people, what are they expecting?
Marc:Like it was, and he dragged me up there and I just didn't know what was supposed to happen.
Marc:He was out of his depth.
Marc:But when this happened and he pitched this to me, like he pitched it to me, dude.
Marc:And I believe I'm the one that said, we're not doing this without Brendan.
Marc:So you got to buy him out of that serious business for real money.
Guest:Buy me out of there just meant meeting my salary demands.
Guest:I wasn't under contract or anything, but yeah, they had to pay up.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Pay up like we were getting paid at the original Air America.
Marc:And part of my deal was like, I guess I'll do it.
Marc:I didn't want to do it.
Marc:I was not really emotionally together, but I needed the divorce to be over.
Marc:So I said, you know, I'll do it for the amount of money that we used to get at Air America.
Marc:Plus, you got to give me 60K up front.
Marc:I had to meet with Carriker about that because I got to stop this divorce because it's bleeding me out.
Marc:And as I said, it was all very interesting because they did that and I paid her off and it turned out to be exactly what the house was worth.
Marc:So it was all about that house.
Marc:And in retrospect, I understand it more now.
Marc:But on top of that, there was all the legal fees.
Marc:But they were able to, upon starting that job,
Marc:you know, stop the divorce proceedings that had been going on for a long time.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I think then that is also why you then needed Sam to come along because you always like Carl's biggest, biggest nightmare.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Carl's biggest nightmare.
Marc:Cause I was like, I can't, we got, I'm not, I don't want to talk politics.
Marc:And Carl's like, we're not going to, but I didn't know what he wanted me to do, you know?
Marc:And we didn't, I, we had to have, we had to get writers in and,
Marc:I think we got Bruce in.
Marc:I don't remember who, but I wasn't until later.
Guest:But yeah, I mean, at first it was nothing like we we would go on the air.
Guest:I mean, you guys, you know, basically started doing it before I did because I was still on working through my end of my term at Sirius where I was had been working.
Guest:And I gave my notice, and I think I maybe had like a month before I joined you guys.
Guest:You guys went over there and started filming stuff.
Guest:And to be perfectly honest, what you started filming was good.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was in a...
Marc:an old audio studio that they'd set up these, I guess at the time were relatively high tech cameras because Laura, what's her name?
Marc:Laura Flanders.
Marc:Laura Flanders was, you know, doing some big undertaking of what would now just be a streaming video show.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So it was Flanders.
Marc:And so we kind of piggybacked into that story, which had been made into this streaming video studio, but it had no personality.
Marc:It was just black.
Right.
Marc:And despite Carl's, you know, very passionate resistance to having Sam on, you know, he complied.
Marc:And we got the money for Sam, too.
Marc:And that turned out to be kind of a monster that we couldn't really hold back.
Marc:And it created the tension that kind of was...
Marc:was what Break Room was because Sam had a very specific agenda.
Marc:I just needed somebody to talk to, but there was no way I wasn't going to get steamrolled by him.
Guest:Well, ultimately, you guys came into it with two different styles of presenting.
Guest:His style of presenting was much more akin to what he's been doing ever since on his show, The Majority Report, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:So he wasn't wrong in his idea of what he thought worked.
Guest:And you weren't wrong in what you thought you were good at and what you weren't going to be able to do in terms of the, you know, the lift of a daily politics show.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He just didn't want to be funny.
Guest:Well, I mean, whether he wanted to or not, I think he thought this is the audience I can engage, which to his credit is the audience he's engaged ever since that on his own gig.
Yeah.
Guest:But like, it's so weird.
Guest:I've never, even the original Air America, I've never been a part of something other than this, other than Break Room Live, which we haven't even gotten to that part yet of it becoming Break Room Live.
Guest:But I've never been a part of something like other than this, where it was doomed to failure from the start.
Guest:Like it was ill conceived from the get go.
Guest:Because the technology wasn't there.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The technology wasn't there.
Guest:The personnel were, was a problem.
Guest:It was a problem.
Guest:Like, you know, Carl should have said, absolutely not.
Guest:No, Sam.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like if he, if he wanted the thing that he ultimately wanted, which basically you and I then went and made as a podcast, it would have been better.
Guest:But the, the dichotomy between you and Sam never allowed for the thing to gel ever.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, I guess I felt bad about that.
Marc:But I also didn't have confidence enough in myself because, you know, we had no writing staff.
Marc:And there was no set.
Marc:And there was no, like, there was no...
Marc:Context, you know, Carl had no idea about nothing.
Marc:And by the time you got in, I mean, we ended up building segments that would serve both Sam and I. But the bottom line was is we were working with very new technology that wasn't really effective.
Marc:They spent like $100,000 on a website, you know, to do everything we wanted to do.
Marc:But no one was watching this stuff then.
Marc:I mean, maybe Rocky Laporte was doing something.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Leo Laporte, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, Leo Laporte.
Marc:But there was nothing going on.
Guest:There was no streaming.
Guest:Yeah, no, and it was this idea that it would come in the middle of the day.
Guest:You know, a lot of websites around that time, mid-2000s, they had, you know, verticals on their site that would support like a tech window, right?
Guest:And you'd have like...
Guest:Oh, these tech guys talk about tech like you're talking about Leo Laporte.
Guest:Or, you know, I remember the website Rocketboom.
Guest:That was a big deal at the time.
Guest:All these things, big deals were like probably viewed by a couple thousand people.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But that was the idea here was you'd have a this would help build Air America as a digital media brand and that it would rival like the Huffington Post.
Guest:That was the that was the goal.
Guest:And that never was going to happen.
Guest:But more so the thing that we were trying to get off the ground by Carl's vision was like he was trying to produce a pilot a day like that was what he was.
Guest:That was like his goal for us was like every show was going to be something that would be used to sell this elsewhere.
Guest:Which was not sustainable at all.
Guest:And that became very obvious quickly that if this is the type of show we're doing, this live streaming thing, it's either got to be absolutely nothing, just production-wise, two people talking and set up an agenda and then go back and forth.
Guest:And that wasn't working because of you and Sam.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Or we need to put some personality into this thing.
Guest:We need to make it a show with characters, with like a vibe, right?
Guest:And that was where the idea of doing it in the break room started.
Marc:Well, you know, it was like pulling teeth because Carl just –
Marc:Like, you know, he he didn't have any real vision and whatever vision he had, there was no one really there to manifest it.
Marc:You know, we tried to put curtains up in that studio and it didn't look like anything.
Marc:It looked like like a low budget Charlie Rose, which was already low budget.
Marc:And then we like I remember we we stacked some garbage in there to try to get some personality.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And then like and then the the the idea for break room, I don't know.
Guest:Who came up with- No, I know exactly how it happened.
Guest:We had a day where we couldn't use that studio.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we said, let's just shoot today's show in the kitchen, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Let's go in there.
Guest:And that one day was better than any of the other days we had done because you were interacting with staff members as they came in to make their lunch.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so we just, we knew it when the day was done.
Guest:We're like, that's the show.
Guest:Like the dynamic that went on in there today, that's the show.
Guest:So we went and pitched that.
Guest:We should do this in the break room.
Guest:And it required a complete overhaul.
Guest:We had to redo the website.
Guest:We had to change everything that we had structured promotionally for this thing being called Marin v. Cedar.
Guest:Now it's called Break Room Live.
Guest:But it was actually probably easier as a technical undertaking because all they had to do was run some cables from next door to the break room.
Guest:That was it.
Guest:We picked up and packed out every day.
Marc:Yeah, I thought it was a brilliant idea.
Marc:And the funny thing is, is that this show would be just par for the course now.
Marc:We could do it in the middle of the day and it would do fine.
Marc:It would get good numbers.
Guest:Nowadays, lots of people do these things on YouTube every single day.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And and like with me and Sam, some of the stuff like that we really worked on kind of worked well when he would sort of like let me play a part in stuff.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But, you know, like we get in the weeds so much and I just could never understand, like, you know, why are we talking about this for the third day in a row, this fucking bullshit episode?
Marc:Abramoff tape, it was just always that stuff.
Marc:You know, you'd pick these narratives that ultimately were nothing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But they were something, but who gives a fuck?
Guest:Right, no, to me, the only things that actually had any kind of stickiness and longevity were the pre-tapes we did.
Guest:With Matthew.
Guest:We would do a lot of pre-tapes with, well, Matthew did some, but the real MVP of the show, period, was this guy named Bill Buckendorf, the editor.
Yeah.
Guest:And he came to us through John Benjamin.
Guest:John Benjamin recommended him because he had done some comedy videos for John.
Guest:And this guy, Bill, he could whip anything up that we asked him.
Guest:If we went to him and we're like, we have this idea for a thing, we'll give you some footage and can you make it?
Guest:He would make it in a day.
Marc:And I'm still pretty proud of the McCain commercial.
Guest:Yeah, that like that, John McCain, like, you know, any any time we had a little germ of an idea based on the news and then we could construct something around it like that guy could execute it.
Guest:And he just sat there in his little cubicle.
Guest:He did it every day.
Guest:He never really talked much.
Guest:I think he was then also wound up being the one in the break room.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And like those things, which I will put a link to in the episode description, are all the things that are still up on YouTube from Break Room Live and Maren V. Cedar.
Guest:And some of them are really great.
Guest:Like, you know, you would go on field pieces to shoot things.
Guest:You did stuff at your house, The Angry Chef.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Those were the things that got popular.
Guest:Like if there was anything in the show that was popular.
Guest:But that's the stuff that people would talk about.
Guest:Oh, I loved your Angry Chef videos.
Guest:Those things.
Guest:which was always our instinct.
Guest:You and me, we always thought the things that people connect with like bullshit, like regular things that people do on a daily basis.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, and, and then, you know, I liked doing those and I liked shooting the Matthew pieces and you know, that stuff was, was fun to do, you know, but ultimately it just like the tension between Sam and I was real and, and it just got worse.
Marc:And,
Marc:And we always had a pretty good time in the office before we go on the air because that's when he would let himself be funny.
Marc:But then he just started, you know, stuttering some esoteric lefty garbage and would go on for hours.
Marc:It felt like.
Guest:Yeah, well, you guys were, like, you were sitting there live on camera with opposite agendas.
Guest:Like, you had diametrically opposed agendas of how to get through that hour.
Guest:And I just kept poking at them.
Guest:Well, we did a thing where we split it.
Guest:We decided to, you'd make the first half hour would be...
Guest:the show structurally that we wanted and then the second half hour would be like a live chat with people who are live on the stream and so that was our idea of trying to separate it with like okay so this first half hour will be like marin heavy where we do a lot of these produced pieces field pieces desk pieces yeah and then the second half will let sam just do his thing where he wants to talk
Guest:extemporaneously and take you know instant messages from listeners and things like that the live chat right and i think that just made it it made you angry that you would then have to sit there through that half hour and you'd just be like oh god
Guest:Like just sighing and shaking your head.
Marc:Waiting for him to stop talking.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:But yeah, but then I remember there was a big sort of like, when Just Coffee got on board, boy, that was a big day.
Marc:All we thought was like, we're getting free coffee.
Marc:I remember we went to town.
Marc:We couldn't get any advertisers.
Marc:Why would we?
Marc:So these, you know, Moon, what was his last name?
Marc:I just remember his name is Mike Moon.
Marc:Mike Moon at Just Coffee in Madison, Wisconsin was an Air America fan, I think a Cedar fan, but he liked the whole thing.
Marc:And he we said we'd let them advertise for free coffee.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then we posted we like had this bulletin board, the bulletin board.
Marc:That was a big I thought that was a great idea that every day show, whatever we were going to be talking about, we kind of put on the bulletin board.
Marc:behind us it was a real bulletin board and then at some point just became covered with just coffee stuff and we were putting a pitch in the just coffee getting free coffee for everybody boy that was good times yeah i think they were paying like 400 bucks a month yeah that was that was our only sponsor yeah and it was everywhere yeah and then we brought we brought them along to the podcast
Marc:That was the greatest thing in the world.
Marc:That was really the first sort of testament to our powers.
Marc:I think we built their business, dude.
Marc:Their web business.
Guest:I know they had to definitely kind of reorganize it.
Marc:Yeah, based on that.
Marc:And they didn't love, Moon was like, we don't love the catchphrase, but it's doing something.
Marc:Pow, I just shit my pants.
Marc:Just coffee.coop.
Marc:He's like, we're not thrilled about it.
Marc:We had a coffee mug made of it.
Marc:We had all kinds of shit going.
Marc:But Break Room, man, and then there was that period in Break Room where you and I, I took that gig for The Guardian.
Guest:Well, that was right away.
Guest:I know, at the beginning.
Guest:And that was another Carl thing where he was like, go do this because it will be good for the show.
Guest:We were trying to just get the show out of the blocks.
Guest:We had started in September, I think right around Labor Day, and we weren't even a month into it when you and I had to leave to go do this three-week trip with The Guardian.
Guest:What a fucking nightmare.
Guest:Well, I mean, you might think of a nightmare just in terms of getting things done.
Guest:To me, it's one of the greatest things I've ever done, like in terms of a professional experience.
Guest:That was just fantastic.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Why?
Guest:to go cross country and just see the whole of America and do comedy every day.
Guest:And, and, you know, basically whatever we wanted to do, we could do, we decided we were like, we're going to go over to that meteor crater and we're going to film something there.
Marc:And we did.
Marc:Yeah, that was fun.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, it was fun seeing all this stuff, but it was like also pressure.
Marc:And I remember we had some sort of camera that never worked that was supposed to be able to go live.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Remember?
Marc:Yes.
Guest:We were, you know, at the mercy of early stage technology.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:We would do things and then we would start uploading it in the early evening.
Marc:And we didn't know if it would be done by morning.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That was the crew behind the Air America documentary that got made for HBO.
Guest:They were hired by The Guardian to do this thing.
Guest:And they wanted you.
Guest:And they came to Carl and said, can we get Marc Maron even though he's doing this show with you?
Guest:And that's what Carl was like, yes, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Marc:Well, I had to do a whole deal with Kirker and, you know, they were going to pay me separately.
Marc:You know, there was two like like because it was not in the contract.
Marc:It was a big pain in the ass.
Guest:Well, we still had to do the live Marin v. Cedar from the road.
Guest:That was another tricky thing.
Marc:And interrupt Sam's little Sam time.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He had a fucking, he was in the middle of yammering about something and he had to go like, all right, we got Marc Maron, I think.
Marc:Where are you, Marc?
Guest:And that was before we were in the break room, I think.
Guest:It was.
Guest:It was just the Maron v. Cedar part.
Guest:I mean, like I said, it was only a month in to doing it.
Guest:So we really hadn't even gotten our footing with doing the show.
Guest:And then we were out doing this much more complicated production by being remote and across different time zones.
What?
Marc:What were we even doing out there?
Marc:I remember going to one Palin rally.
Guest:Yeah, we went to a Palin-McCain rally in Colorado.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, we were just... It was a real, like...
Guest:You know, look into what we were interested in at the time, because we were, you know, we were not bound to some kind of editorial guidance from The Guardian.
Guest:So it was just like whatever you and I thought, well, let's stop here.
Guest:We stopped at your high school.
Guest:We filmed stuff of you walking around your house.
Guest:your old neighborhood my dad did we have soup with my dad we went on we we had your dad go in the rv and filmed him in there too like in the the yeah you talked to roseanne bar we drove around with her like around santa monica or something it was it was a weird wild time
Guest:And we went to Sedona, didn't we?
Guest:We went to Sedona, absolutely.
Guest:And again, this was very in keeping with our attitude.
Guest:We did nothing political in Sedona.
Guest:You walked around and went to crystal shops and tried on a cowboy hat.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then we cut that into a thing, right?
Guest:Like, that was it.
Guest:We did one that I still love to this day of you and I, we got to Cincinnati at, like, in the middle of the night.
Guest:And you were like, come on, let's go out and put Cincinnati on the town.
Guest:And, like, it was just filming you, like, going around to all these empty stores.
Guest:On an escalator going up and down.
Guest:Yeah, you're, like, sadly.
Guest:Like, first you're, like, excited.
Guest:And then, like, by the end of the video, you're sadly sitting on the escalator going down because there's...
Guest:Nothing going on in Cincinnati.
Guest:You're like knocking on the door of like CVS asking if you can come in and look at the trial size.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't know, man.
Marc:It's so weird how much that anxiety that caused me because I could never like I could never be interested enough in.
Marc:in politics to make it my life.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But that was the thing.
Guest:It's so funny because you were hung up on that as a, you know, almost like a barrier for you to get this done.
Guest:And I was the one being like, no, get rid of that stuff.
Marc:Like the thing that's going to work is you.
Marc:Right.
Marc:We finally did that with WTF.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:That finally really landed that I had this weird, you know, kind of like, um, uh,
Marc:I had this pressure I put on myself from the inside, from the very beginning of Air America.
Marc:Like, I didn't really realize what my specific talent was.
Marc:So I just kept trying to keep up with all this stuff.
Marc:And there were times where I was on it.
Marc:There were certain narratives that I could wrap my brain around.
Marc:Tom DeLay, Karl Rove, Jack Abramoff.
Marc:And then the guy from the terror timeline, that book, you know, the 9-11 stuff.
Marc:I mean, there were things...
Marc:That would give me a kind of narrative.
Marc:But the day-to-day stuff used to drive me fucking nuts.
Guest:But it was a thing that really took an effort for you to shake.
Guest:Because if you go back to even the first episode of this podcast...
Guest:The very first thing you do after introducing the show and saying hi to the audience is a rant about Whole Foods, which I think a lot of people remember that rant.
Guest:They remember that shit forever.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it went into your book.
Guest:You put it in Attempting Normal and that...
Guest:But that was predicated on you reading an article about health care.
Guest:Like, so you were still in the mindset of like, if I have something I'm going to talk about, I have to hinge it to this kind of political context because you thought that's what the audience was.
Guest:You thought like, oh, the only reason they stick around is because I'm doing politics for them.
Guest:And it took some time for you to shake that.
Guest:But it was like 1500 people.
Guest:We knew 400 of them.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So that's right.
Guest:Well, and that was the goal when we started WTF was, okay, we knew that at any given time we had like maybe 400, 500 people watching break room live.
Guest:We knew that based on the like, um,
Guest:youtube views and everything we could get a regular audience maybe up into like the 1000 range 1500 right and that was our goal with wtf was that was that like that number circle that that's what we should have and it was by episode three and i've told this before by episode three we had 30 000 downloads for wtf
Guest:And that was what made us make the decision of like, okay, we can't paywall this.
Guest:We can't, you know, make this exclusive just for that niche audience.
Guest:This somehow, you know, broke free.
Guest:Right.
Guest:We jailbraked this community.
Guest:idea that we had thought was going to be for a mailing list and now it's out in the world and the people are discovering it mostly thanks to you know the placement on on itunes at the time yeah that and the artwork um but it had an audience so that was why we kept that but the definite goal was just to you know basically deliver the show for the break room live people
Marc:Right.
Marc:And that's why I got hung up on, you know, holding on to them.
Marc:And it's like it was always so sad to when when I was at Air America, maybe even break room and I go do comedy shows.
Marc:I remember going to Cincinnati.
Marc:I don't even remember when that was.
Marc:But Air America had given the illusion that I had a following.
Marc:And I remember this guy in Cincinnati paid me a fortune on a guarantee to do four shows at the comedy place there.
Marc:And I didn't draw anybody.
Marc:I drew people we knew from the fucking chat room.
Marc:And I told the guy, you don't have to pay me, man, because I feel bad.
Marc:And he's like, no, a deal's a deal.
Marc:Whatever.
Marc:I remember going up to Foxwoods at some point, and it was just that one dude from...
Marc:from the fucking chat room, brought that fire truck and 12 other people.
Marc:That guy's name was Chris.
Marc:I don't know why I remember that.
Marc:And, you know, nice guy, whatever, but I didn't draw.
Marc:It was not based on anything.
Marc:It was like being in fucking Siberia, man.
Marc:But also we got to talk about
Marc:We all knew that Break Room Live was not going to be renewed.
Marc:We had a year-long contract, and it was just sort of counting the days at some point.
Marc:I mean, Sam and I had a weight-losing contest, and we did these bits, a juicer bit and all that.
Marc:But we knew that the jig was up.
Marc:I mean, it seemed like months before it went down.
Marc:Months before that we knew it was going to go away?
Marc:Yeah, because we knew we were on a year deal and it wasn't going to keep going at what it was costing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then that was the great thing.
Marc:They fired us and didn't make us leave.
Yeah.
Marc:That was the best thing that ever happened to us.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I mean, technically you were still under contract.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So, but, but I mean, any other media outlet would have been like, pack your bags, get away from the mics.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're out.
Marc:You'll send checks to your house, but you're not coming by the building anymore.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then I think Sam was trying to get on other shows and there was still this idea.
Marc:And then by that point they were, they had Montel and Lionel and it was a fucking shit show in there.
Guest:Oh, I mean, I definitely pitched myself to them when they said Break Room was ending.
Guest:I pitched myself on a different role within the company, but they didn't keep me on, which wound up being a blessing.
Guest:But I did have to go get other work.
Guest:I mean, for the first many years of doing the podcast, I was doing other jobs.
Guest:I know.
Marc:We couldn't even say your name.
Guest:It used to drive me nuts.
Guest:Yeah, once I was working...
Guest:elsewhere that I had a non-compete that basically prevented me from doing other jobs.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was like the man behind the curtain, the mystery man, my producer.
Guest:You know, in a weird way, I actually probably wound up working out for the best because, um,
Guest:Not that I would have ever been a public-facing person in terms of the show at that time anyway, but I think one of the great parts of the appeal of the show from the early years was this real DIY vibe that it had, that it was almost like this guy just sits in his garage and turns on a button and people talk and then it becomes this show.
Guest:So it actually did help the show out.
Guest:Well, that's what it was.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, but I mean, completely removing any production element from it was good for the image of the show.
Guest:It was good for this idea of like, yeah, this is just this guy.
Guest:That's all it is.
Marc:I just remember sitting in that office and we're, you know, we, you know, I don't remember how soon it was after we got fired, but it was like, what are we going to do?
Guest:You definitely brought it up to me before everything was done.
Guest:Like you were saying, the writing was on the wall.
Guest:So we knew that things were coming to a head.
Guest:And so, yeah, we had to, like, you know, make decisions.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And we were like, well, I know guys that are doing this thing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It seems doable.
Marc:And then we worked out a way we like Apple was excited about anybody with a name to to get behind it.
Marc:And and I guess that's when we built the relationship with Libsyn.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, we built a relationship with them on the basis of them seeing that we were doing well on their platform.
Guest:From Break Room?
Guest:No, from the show.
Guest:Like, Libsyn is like a thing that anybody in the world can use, right?
Guest:You just sign up, here's your account.
Guest:And Jesse Thorne said, that's what I use.
Guest:Oh, okay, Jesse, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:To do my show.
Guest:So we just signed up for Libsyn and we made the show.
Guest:That was who we were putting it up on.
Guest:The guy there, Rob Walsh, reached out to me initially because the show was doing well.
Guest:And he was like, you know, thanks for choosing Libsyn.
Guest:And if you need anything, let me know.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:Yeah, so we were doing those shows in the old studios at Air America, and that was all because of Break Room.
Marc:Jesus Christ, if they'd kicked us out of the building, who the fuck knows?
Guest:Well, I think we would have set the show up the way it actually wound up happening with you back in L.A., right?
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:We probably wouldn't have had the kind of early days of developing this show the way we did with you and I in the room together and making many shows at a time.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But I didn't know like how it was all going to work.
Marc:You know, I'd gotten used to having a crew on radio, like without, you know, what are we going to do without K-Lo?
Marc:What are we going to do without, you know, and it just came down to me and you.
Marc:And then after we did this stuff in New York and I came out to L.A.
Marc:and I was that was frenetic.
Marc:You know, I met with Jesse.
Marc:You know, what do I do?
Marc:What are the mics?
Marc:And I took that mixer.
Marc:I stole the mixer and some other equipment from Air America.
Marc:I don't even think any of that equipment is worth anything now.
Guest:nah nothing i have some rack equipment what was that thing we need a telos i got a fucking telos yeah i got a 360 too dude oh well that is that's that's a collector's item like really oh sure like there are i'm sure djs that would fucking pay a pretty penny to you for a 360 machine really yeah i got one
Guest:Let me know.
Guest:I mean, the interface is garbage.
Guest:It's like the equivalent of having a turntable.
Guest:Like, ooh, I have this old thing.
Guest:This is great.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:It's a keyboard that you could put short recorded pieces.
Marc:I think up to like three minutes probably.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And you just push it.
Guest:But the loading of it is very cumbersome.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's a million easier ways to have a soundboard now.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah, no, this was like a top of the line thing.
Marc:And I still have that little mixer.
Marc:Yeah, just sitting in that garage, which wasn't even like a thing.
Marc:It was just garbage in there.
Marc:Not a table, that IKEA table, which I think this is still the IKEA table here.
Guest:I think this is still the one.
Guest:I do think that we, you know, in doing Break Room Live in the compromised way that we did for a year, almost a year.
Yeah.
Guest:It gave us the ability to know that like something like doing a podcast, you know, we had already been through the ringer.
Guest:We already knew like everything we did that in that year of break room live was all like our own thing.
Guest:And we had to just, you know, scrap it together.
Guest:And so the podcast seemed much easier.
Guest:And then we knew the production stuff that could go into it.
Guest:You had radio chops.
Guest:So all these things that we've been talking about over the last several episodes of this,
Guest:They all made sense and led up to the right moment.
Marc:Oh my God.
Marc:I just like, and then we were on that thing from the very beginning, man, Monday and Thursdays.
Marc:I flew out here, hooked up my power book, had these big mics on little, you know, podium, like a little desk podium stands.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:There are those pictures that guy took early on.
Marc:That's exactly what it was.
Marc:Just like old lamps and a bike.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Sitting amongst the clutter.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Just clutter.
Marc:People would come over like, what are we doing?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I do think even though we've kind of gone over all the things that we, you know, did leading up to WTF, I think we should do one more of these origin stories, because I think one of the things we don't talk about a lot is like what we were doing in the first like two years, even three years of this show in terms of trying to parlay it into something else before we knew it can just be its own thing and we can make a living and have a, you know, basically a fulfilled story.
Marc:time doing this as a podcast there were lots of attempts not just from us but from other people trying to get us to do things that happened in those early years that's because everyone thought it was a joke yeah and they thought well this has to be a step to something else right it was crazy i remember that's why i fired dave becky yeah i walked in there with i don't even know what year we were at right at the start 2009
Marc:He's like, I don't get it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And a lot of them still really don't.
Marc:Even when I was negotiating this Apple thing.
Marc:Well, can you just do the podcast if we get you a room?
Marc:I'm like, what the fuck do you think this world is?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, it's and then there was the whole issue of like just getting people to figure out that it's on their phone.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They could just like, how do I get it?
Marc:What do you mean?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, this is good fodder for the next time we do this.
Guest:I will say it's crazy to me looking back at the last few things we talked about at, you know, not a single one of them went more than two years.
Guest:It was like less than two years, less than five months, less than a year.
Guest:Like all these things were very short term solutions.
Guest:And then all of a sudden we have this thing that's been going on for 15 years.
Guest:It's really crazy.
Marc:It's so crazy, man.
Marc:I just remember the panic, like, you know, getting up at like six in the morning and seeing the episode hadn't posted, calling you like, call Lipson.
Marc:What's going on?
Marc:Just like fucking just panic because of one email.
Marc:Like, where's the episode?
Marc:Oh, fuck.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Chris didn't get his episode.
Guest:Those have always been my favorites.
Guest:Production being upended by one person emailing or putting a comment on a website.
Guest:Those have been my favorite things since day one.
Marc:Mark's going to lose it.
Marc:Someone with a fake name is having an issue.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Well, we know that all the people here listening are not fake.
Guest:They are loyal subscribers.
Guest:And we thank you for being here on the full Marin.
Guest:We'll do one more of these origin stories in a couple of weeks.
Marc:Great.
Marc:That's going to be the early days of WTF?
Marc:Indeed.
Marc:When my entire house was filled with envelopes, sending schwag to contributors?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:When you thought you yourself were a full merch store.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:I didn't know how else to do it.
Guest:With your nerd cock t-shirts.
Marc:That was a failure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:All right.
Marc:All right.