BONUS WTF Origins - Luna Lounge
Bye.
Marc:We'll see what I can remember and how I remember it.
Marc:That's always the interesting thing about getting old is how your brain just kind of rewrites things.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, do you feel like you've done that with other things?
Guest:Like there are other times in your life where you've come up with a narrative on them and then all of a sudden you find yourself being told, that's not how it was.
Marc:Yes, but I mean, usually not a full narrative.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But also some people, you know, you're at the whims of other people's memories of people have said things to me where they said it was me.
Marc:And there's just no way.
Marc:There's just no way.
Marc:Right.
Marc:They just put me in there.
Marc:I got an email yesterday from some guys like, you know, we've been repeating this joke of yours in my family for years.
Marc:And I'm like, I don't know what that is.
Marc:I have no idea what you're talking about.
Marc:Literally, it was a line that was like, beans are good.
Marc:And I'm like, what is that?
Marc:Beans?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I'm like, what is that from?
Marc:I don't know what that's from.
Marc:Is there a joke?
Marc:He's like, I thought I heard it on Sirius.
Marc:I'm like, you know, I don't remember some of my jokes, but I remember the impact of that line.
Marc:If it was part of something, it might have been something I just riffed.
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:But that's possible.
Guest:I could see that.
Guest:I could see it just being a thing you said once and never like the way you'd say, how's the weather?
Guest:Yeah, that happens.
Marc:That happens.
Marc:It's been pretty crazy on stage lately.
Marc:I'll tell you, man, I've been kind of really popping off.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Like, in what way?
Guest:Like, getting angry or just getting full of it?
Marc:Well, just like pushing myself into, like, you know, being engaged.
Marc:You know, you start repeating jokes and doing things over and over again, you get into this thing.
Marc:And now once I broke through into talking about the...
Marc:The Middle East in the way I'm talking about it, it kind of gave me new juice and new courage around some other stuff.
Marc:And just to sort of like keep it, you know, a little confrontational and lively because people are just sleepwalking, dude.
Marc:And I watch comedy sometimes and I'm like, what are we doing?
Marc:What are you talking about even?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That same patter.
Marc:I made fun of the patter last night.
Marc:I actually said, I don't want to do any jokes.
Marc:I can do the patter though.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Where do you think that's coming from?
Guest:Like, cause all of that, all like you can usually point to at certain points in time.
Guest:Like I definitely remember there was a period of time where every comic, no matter what race they were, was doing like the Chris Rock patter.
Guest:And I remember there was a period of time where everyone was doing Dave Attell's patter.
Marc:Like, where is it coming from?
Yeah.
Marc:I don't see much of that because I'm too many generations removed now.
Marc:Most of the comics I see, I think you can see all that stuff with the crowd work videos.
Marc:That's probably more what's going on.
Marc:And I don't know those comics.
Marc:I just don't know them.
Marc:The young comics I know are usually in rotation at the store.
Marc:I'm not going to really see them that much.
Marc:But I can't identify a patter that's kind of infectious.
Marc:I find myself doing a touch of Bargatze sometimes.
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, because he's so laid back, you know, when you get comfortable.
Marc:I saw him last night.
Marc:He came by the store and I made him go on.
Marc:He'd never been on at the comedy store before in the original room.
Marc:What?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He doesn't come out here, dude.
Marc:Yeah, but I feel like he was a club guy.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:But not here.
Marc:Hmm.
Marc:He just doesn't like it's rare that he's here.
Marc:It was kind of fun.
Marc:It was fun to watch him.
Guest:Well, I think this is a good segue because the whole reason I want to talk to you today was after watching you on Dave Cross's new show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:which is called Senses Working Overtime.
Guest:And I was watching it on YouTube.
Guest:You guys are very fun together, as always.
Guest:But you started talking about the New York days, the Boston days, the New York days, all the stuff in your past where you guys had a lot of common ground.
Guest:And I realized that in talking about Luna Lounge, it's this thing that comes up a lot on the show, especially people in your cohort.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I'm not really sure that I could if somebody asked me, like, what's the deal with Luna Lounge?
Guest:I wouldn't be able to tell them very much because I just haven't heard enough detail.
Guest:I could tell lots of people the story of the comedy store, which has been told on our show over and over again.
Guest:I could tell lots of stories about SNL, like as a as a civilian, as somebody who just heard about it.
Guest:But I couldn't do that with Luna Lounge, and so I thought it would be a good idea to ask you some of those questions and get the story from someone who was there.
Guest:So what's the deal?
Guest:Luna Lounge, if anybody's wondering what we're talking about, was a club in the Lower East Side, yes?
Yes.
Marc:It was on Ludlow Street.
Marc:It's now a hotel.
Marc:The building has been level.
Marc:It's gone.
Marc:It was like a few doors down from Katz's on Ludlow.
Marc:And it was primarily a music club.
Marc:I mean, you know, we could get Rob Sacker, the guy who owned the place, to chime in here.
Marc:But Luna Lounge became a phenomenon because it was really the heart of what became New York's alternative comedy scene.
Marc:So in my recollection of it, the comedy show...
Marc:that ended up there started elsewhere.
Marc:You know, that was sort of the final home of it.
Marc:But the beginnings of what was a reaction or a response or along the lines of what was going on out here in L.A.,
Marc:at uh wherever that was uh at un cabaret and and book soup or whatever that bookstore was where they used to do like there was a scene there was a couple of scenes going on out here that largo the original largo uh josh what's it justin auto shows where that there was that whole alternative comedy crew out here and it was a pushback to what was a pushback to clubs
Marc:I guess it was a pushback.
Marc:I never saw it like that.
Marc:I don't know if it was a pushback as more as a sympathetic space for different types of comedy.
Marc:I think coming off of the comedy boom and what became mainstream comedy, I think that these rooms were for people that were doing oddball stuff.
Marc:Many of them were working regular comedy clubs as well.
Guest:Well, that's interesting.
Guest:The one thing that sounds closest to that prior to there being a 90s alt scene was what Robin Williams and Steve Pearl talked about that was going on up in San Francisco.
Guest:Holy City Zoo?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I wonder if that is the kind of spirit of it that migrated south to LA.
Marc:I don't know because I feel like...
Marc:San Francisco in and of itself was always a more encouraging and embracing environment to weirdo comedy.
Marc:And performance art in general, right?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I think New York probably was more that.
Marc:I mean, the performance art that came out of the 60s in San Francisco was hippie shit.
Marc:And I think that the type of...
Marc:of riffing that Robin and Stephen Pearl brought to San Francisco or came up out of San Francisco, that club, the Holy City Zoo, literally sat like 12 people.
Marc:It was the tiniest little place.
Marc:And I think that became a scene because it was so sweaty, so small, so intense.
Marc:And that whole riffing style of improv kind of feels like it started there in terms of
Marc:becoming, you know, a standup style.
Marc:But I think what happened in L.A.
Marc:was a lot of displaced comics from New York and from San Francisco, like that core group of the Young Cabaret.
Marc:There was a lot of sketch people as well.
Marc:Garofalo was out here.
Marc:Dana Gould was out here.
Marc:Kathy Griffin was part of it.
Marc:What's her name?
Marc:Sweeney.
Marc:Julia Sweeney, right.
Marc:Julia, you know, and then people would, Greg Berent, and then Zach Galifianakis was the Largo crew.
Guest:A lot of the names you're mentioning too are like Groundlings crossovers.
Guest:Yeah, Paula Tompkins.
Guest:That was a thing that was probably, and these shows were set up like on Cabaret, that was who, Beth Lapidus?
Marc:Beth Lapidus had a room over there on Robertson.
Marc:And it was just like a room.
Marc:There was a stage in the corner.
Marc:It was like kind of a sit down small bar.
Marc:Largo on Fairfax was a dinner club.
Marc:And it was music to John Bryan and that original crew there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then there was the other rooms, the bookstore.
Marc:I never played Matt Bronger.
Marc:You know, I mean, there was it was definitely, you know, people that were doing stuff.
Marc:And went on to do mainstream comedy, but it was in these new spaces.
Guest:Well, and then it also makes sense that people like Quentin Tarantino were going there to enjoy like that type of scene.
Guest:Largo on Cabaret, right.
Guest:Putting those people in his movies.
Guest:And the same thing happened with Paul F. Tompkins.
Guest:And you just mentioned, you know, John Bryan.
Marc:Well, that was the Largo thing.
Guest:Yeah, but that's really interesting to me that you're saying that really predates, and the timeline shows that it does, that predates whatever was going on in New York with some of the same people like Janine.
Marc:When she came back, yeah, I guess she always had a place there.
Marc:I don't remember when she bought that apartment, but I think what happened in New York was a little different because New York comedy is a little tougher, a little fuck you-ish, and remained that.
Marc:You know, even after Luna Lounge started.
Marc:But what New York did have in a way that I don't think... And what was always interesting that L.A.
Marc:did not have was a sort of indigenous actual performance art scene.
Marc:It wasn't much...
Marc:In the mid 90s, but it was the whatever was left with people who aspired to be like the Worcester Group or Karen Finley or early Eric Boghossian or, you know, that that type of sort of 70s style gritty performance art scene that really was no longer in existence.
Marc:But there were holdovers in young people that wanted to do that at, say, places like Surf Reality or Collective Unconscious.
Marc:These rooms were performance rooms that had no rules.
Marc:So there was really not much stand-up going on in them.
Marc:You had Reverend Jen, Faceboy, Portnoy.
Marc:There was a whole cast of characters down around the Lower East Side.
Marc:Portnoy is Michael Portnoy?
Marc:Yeah, that were doing alternative venues.
Marc:And then what happened was, that was sort of the weird little battle.
Marc:But the first attempt to do an alt show...
Marc:was not at Luna Lounge.
Marc:And the first one I remember, maybe the first two, was done at some small bar that had a small showroom.
Marc:It was put on.
Marc:It was kind of created and curated and booked by Michael O'Brien, the publicist, and Dave Becky, the manager.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:Michael O'Brien.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was part of it.
Guest:Him and Becky.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he and both of these guys continued to be, you know, names in with top comedy people for the next several decades.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Dave Becky became like the really the biggest fan.
Marc:manager in comedy yeah and i also remember like in our first you know five ten years we were always getting guests from michael o'brien well michael o'brien and dave came up together uh you know michael o'brien was just a guy he had very few clients in the beginning running his own shop i think he still does and becky you know locked into him and and and becky was that's how it works that side of the business and
Marc:They came up together.
Guest:I think the last time I got an email from Michael O'Brien, it was still from an AOL address.
Guest:I'm not kidding.
Guest:Wow.
Marc:So they booked this one.
Marc:And on the show was me and Jeff Ross and maybe Todd.
Marc:Wait, do you remember where it was?
Marc:It was upstairs at some place.
Marc:I don't even know if it was a functioning club.
Marc:It was a small room.
Marc:But then it moved almost immediately to a place called Rebar.
Marc:And that was the show.
Marc:Rebar?
Marc:Was Rebar in Brooklyn?
Marc:Nope.
Marc:Nope.
Marc:It was this weird bar.
Marc:I don't know how they found it.
Marc:It was on the west side.
Marc:It was not conducive to what we were doing.
Marc:But that became the first alt-comedy venue.
Marc:It was a bar that was very weirdly kind of, you know, it was one of those places, like, is this owned by the Russian mob?
Marc:What is the style here?
Marc:It was kind of modern but kind of weird.
Marc:And then they had a back area, and eventually they put a curtain there.
Marc:and there was no seats people were sitting on the fucking floor and there was no real stool had some weird kind of weird kind of welded modern bar stool they pulled in there and it was just not and there was no mic well so why do you think they were doing it what what was what was the impetus did they just recognize we have this talent and we need them to have a space to play
Marc:I think it was a reaction to the alternative space, that there was something happening.
Marc:And people like Becky was looking to showcase people, I'm sure.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And to have a place where they had some control over that.
Marc:That wasn't a comedy club.
Marc:And this is when, you know, this is when, like during Luna Lounge, the UCB moved to New York.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And set up shop before they had a theater.
Marc:And they were coming down there.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But it moved from Rebar to Luna Lounge.
Marc:I don't know when, but thank God.
Marc:Rebar was weird and it always had like the same crew of audience.
Marc:That was that was where I got in that fight with Robert Klein.
Marc:He showed up.
Marc:So I was getting some juice a little bit, but the venue didn't stick for whatever reason.
Marc:Wait, what fight did you get in with Robert Klein?
Marc:You know, I was on stage, you know, ranting and raving and he was checking out the scene.
Marc:And then he climbed on stage with me and started improvising with me.
Marc:And I'm like, why?
Marc:I don't want to.
Marc:And he also said something to me off stage, which, you know, I probably took personally.
Marc:But look, I got I don't have a lot of love for Robert Klein, but I mentioned it.
Marc:You know, people because, you know, they read about that.
Marc:Robert Klein had showed up in the in the post or something at this place.
Marc:So people showed up the next week thinking it was a thing.
Marc:And I got on stage and shit all over Robert Klein.
Marc:And then I ran into Rory Rosegarden, like at Penn Station or something.
Marc:That's his manager.
Marc:He's like, what happened with Robert, man?
Marc:He thought you guys had a great time.
Marc:I'm like, yeah, I don't know.
Guest:I don't know what happened.
Yeah.
Guest:But that was all right.
Guest:But that's pretty fascinating in and of itself that the whole thing, contrary to any of my beliefs about it or what I just assumed about it, that was essentially started in New York by managers who were trying to get their talent cultivated.
Marc:Yeah, some of them.
Marc:I mean, I think it was started in earnest.
Marc:It was a nice pocket to fill.
Marc:And the fact that no one was in it for the bread was kind of...
Marc:Cool.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, I don't remember getting paid for that shit.
Marc:But then when it moved to Luna, it changed hands at some point.
Marc:But again, not to comics.
Marc:But when you say it changed hands, what do you mean?
Marc:Like who was booking it?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, at some point, you know, moved from Rebar and then it became Luna Lounge and the show got a name eating it.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Now, who is, if you ever go on the Luna Lounge wiki page, you and Janine are credited with creating Eating It, which I didn't think was true.
Marc:I don't know if that's true.
Marc:I don't know what the first show looked like, but I do, at some point, we were probably there at the beginning, but it was really, you know, Jeff Singer, who I think at the time probably was Becky's assistant director.
Marc:maybe after that, and Naomi Frisch.
Marc:So Naomi Frisch, Jeff Singer, and maybe Michael was still involved, but I don't know when that happened.
Marc:I think everyone kind of moved over to Luna Lounge.
Marc:I think O'Brien was still around.
Marc:I feel like Becky wasn't around as much.
Marc:And eventually Jeff Singer and Naomi Frisch, who was an executive at Comedy Central, and Jeff was in management,
Guest:took over the thing and took over the booking of it i believe and now does this happen like right around when luna lounge opened because because it has here that luna lounge opened in 1995 and based on the timeline you guys would have had to be starting there roughly around that time for for all this to happen uh i mean it was already a place there's a music venue and and then we just did i think it was the monday nights and
Marc:And it was a big night.
Marc:It began to sort of take off.
Marc:But again, although it was alternative comedy or whatever, and there was a slew of people, you did have this weird mixing of Lower East Side performance art characters.
Marc:Laura Deneview.
Marc:What happened to that woman?
Marc:She was kind of a comic too.
Marc:Shapiro was around.
Marc:Rick Shapiro.
Marc:Reverend Jen.
Marc:You know, Michael Portnoy was doing whatever the fuck he was doing.
Guest:Who people know as the guy who got on stage with Bob Dylan at the Grammys and had soy bomb written on his chest.
Marc:Which was by far the least interesting thing he did on stage.
Marc:One time he got on stage and took a bottle of his Prozac out of his pocket and dumped them all over the stage and then stuck his dick in it.
Yeah.
Marc:Which I thought was good.
Marc:It was a pretty good show.
Guest:Couldn't do that at the Grammys?
Marc:No.
Guest:Dylan, you might have gotten a laugh out of Dylan on that one.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Becky, what's her name?
Marc:There was a lot of people around.
Marc:Tammy Faye Starlight, was she there?
Marc:Tammy Faye Starlight, sure.
Marc:Doing her music thing, and she had a guy she did it with who was kind of this schlumpy comic guy.
Marc:There was a lot of these acts that will probably come to me later that were in the orbit
Marc:that were not at all stand-up comedy club people.
Marc:But then on the other side of that, you had me and Jeff Ross and, you know, Louis and Silverman and Janine, Zach, you know, the full Colin Quinn eventually.
Marc:Eventually, people made their way because Singer made it appealing.
Marc:You know, at the beginning, comics like Colin and Patrice and stuff were like, you know, were you guys just doing comedy for nothing?
Marc:You know, they made it seem like it was amateur hour.
Marc:It was an open mic.
Marc:And I always treated it as a place to work out in a way that I could not work out in the comedy clubs.
Marc:And I think eventually that became sort of a thing.
Marc:I think, I don't know why, I don't know if Colin was adverse to it at the beginning, but he ended up coming around.
Marc:And then like the state guys, I think arguably Stella probably started at Luna Lounge.
Marc:Like it was, and some of them were doing solo standup.
Marc:Some of the UCB people were doing solo performances.
Marc:So it became this huge scene, and it was sort of the center of a comedy thing between performance art, sketch, and stand-up that actually got a hip...
Marc:Kind of following to it.
Marc:It was like you go there on Mondays.
Marc:There was a line out the door and I was just this cranky fuck.
Marc:And I hated everybody that was coming in for some reason.
Marc:And I'd get up there and do my little thing.
Marc:And but I was like, you know, why are all these people here?
Marc:And I remember Will Ferrell came down.
Marc:Celebrities would start coming down.
Marc:And it became a thing.
Marc:And they put they make they put couches in the back.
Marc:It was a weird seating situation.
Marc:But there was a stage back there and all these couches and people would sit on the floor and stand around the room.
Marc:And it was in the back room and the bar was out front.
Marc:And that became another scene.
Marc:Ross Broccoli was around.
Marc:Cedar was around a bit.
Marc:Uh, John Benjamin, John Glazer, all those guys, Carrie Prusa, Dave Waterman, everyone went through there.
Marc:All these weird kind of character acts, Mike Lee, uh, you know, all the comics that, you know, of my generation, most of them eventually performed there at least once or twice.
Marc:Chappelle would go down there, you know, but that was later early on.
Marc:It was a little more raw and a little more weird, but then it got pretty mainstream ish.
Guest:Well, before that, before it even got started, what were you doing?
Guest:Like, where were you at at that time?
Guest:Like, you had just come off short attention span theater, and then what were you doing?
Marc:Well, 93, 94, you know, I didn't get past at the cellar until probably...
Marc:you know, 96 or 97.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So your comedy half hour probably happens around the time you're doing Luna, right?
Marc:Well, that's right.
Marc:I went in there totally with alt sensibility.
Marc:Same with that kicking Aspen show that all the work that I was doing, long form work that I was doing at Luna lounge kind of showed itself on the kicking Aspen and it tanked there.
Marc:Ross Broccoli said, I saw that show.
Marc:What was it called?
Marc:Dragging Aspen.
Yeah.
Guest:But so where, how did you build up to that though?
Guest:Like was, you know, your post short attention span theater run, was that just you going to clubs or were you on the road?
Guest:What was going on?
Marc:Well,
Marc:Well, I was living in New York.
Marc:I was doing some feature work and maybe some headline work because I had been in and out of San Francisco for a year or two.
Marc:And so that's where a lot of the building and doing long form happened.
Marc:And then I came back to New York.
Marc:You know, after having been here in the late 80s.
Marc:And then this whole scene was happening, which sort of jived with the type of work I was doing in San Francisco.
Marc:And also at that time, I was doing road work a bit, some club work here and there.
Marc:And, you know, I still had, you know, the New England connection.
Marc:So I was definitely working clubs and doing that.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Trying to make do.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But I would imagine I was probably workshopping some of the stuff that I did on the 95 HBO special, but also clubs.
Marc:I was definitely working at the Improv in New York, Boston Comedy Club in New York, Stand Up New York, random Barry Katz gigs, still doing, you know, road work.
Marc:So I was definitely working.
Marc:Just not at the comedy cellar.
Guest:And so it just seems like that the initial show that happened at Rebar and that moves over to Luna is a really hospitable gym for you at that time.
Marc:For me, it was all I thought about.
Marc:When anyone would talk about alternative comedy, I didn't really care because I didn't come out of that.
Marc:You know, like, I mean, I started, I was already, like, I'm older than all these fucking people now anyways.
Marc:You know, so I started even before Louis, like, Nick DiPaolo's more like my generation New York comic.
Marc:Dave Attell.
Marc:You know, I started in comedy clubs.
Marc:You know, I started in the late 80s, you know, in Boston, then came to New York, and, you know, was kicking around.
Marc:So by 1995, you know, I've been working as a professional comic for seven fucking years.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So for me...
Marc:It was really just a place to work out in a way that I wasn't beholden to anybody.
Marc:And, you know, and the idea of it was you couldn't do new material.
Marc:So that was the challenge.
Guest:Oh, so wait, hang on.
Guest:That was like a philosophical idea behind the show?
Guest:Initially.
Marc:You got to go up there with something new every week.
Marc:Talk about your day, whatever.
Marc:Wasn't a place to do your act.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And I'm like, great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's, I would just get up there.
Guest:That's like what you're doing now.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And sometimes it really wouldn't work.
Marc:I mean, sometimes it was just, but it would, it did kind of train me to do this thing where you just get up there and drive and drive and drive until you find something.
Marc:And if you don't find anything, it's so sad.
Yeah.
Guest:yeah sharpling talks about that all the time about you know he was a regular he used to go every monday and he talks about how it was it would be this amazing thing where just some nights you were just on fire and it was like it was this inspired lunacy just coming out yeah and then some nights you were just tanking so hard like yeah like in a way you'd never see anybody else yeah
Marc:Yeah, it was so painful.
Marc:It's terrible.
Marc:But I can get right there now.
Marc:I'd get up there with the wrong attitude and be mad at the audience.
Marc:and it was yeah it was some serious there was some serious tanking sometimes and i have to go into that front bar and just be like i gotta get out of here was there like a famous foosball table there too in the in the front yeah there was a foosball table i think right up front i don't know how famous it was i just did it just as this thing when you look into luna lounge stuff always people are always like oh they had the greatest foosball table
Marc:I don't know what was so great about this.
Marc:Who cares?
Marc:The famous foosball table.
Marc:Yeah, no one give a fuck about foosball anymore.
Guest:Well, speaking of things people give a fuck about there, though, was the music scene already jumping by the time you guys started doing it?
Guest:You know, dude, I missed all of it.
Marc:What do you mean by you missed it?
Marc:You just didn't care?
Marc:No, I spent my life in comedy.
Marc:I missed that.
Marc:I mean, what music scene?
Marc:So what is happening in 95?
Marc:I mean, that weird, that amazing meet me in the bathroom thing, that was the early aughts.
Guest:Right, but a lot of those bands got their start at Luna.
Marc:Right?
Marc:The Strokes, Interpol, Yeah, Yeah, Yes, The National.
Marc:Yeah, they were around, I guess, but I didn't know them.
Marc:It just wasn't my thing.
Guest:I don't know what I was doing.
Guest:Well, I think the thing at your time, like 1995, the person who became the biggest after starting at Luna was Elliott Smith.
Guest:Was he around?
Yeah.
Marc:He may have been.
Marc:I don't remember him.
Marc:They weren't on the shows with us, but maybe he was around.
Marc:I really was so detached from music in general then.
Marc:I just didn't go to any of it.
Marc:I don't, I missed all of it.
Marc:But it wasn't like the world's crossed over.
Marc:It wasn't like, you know.
Marc:Well, I think probably with some of the performers it did, but not me.
Marc:You know, like I think that like the, like I was always sort of an outsider, but I think around the, you know, like Cross was out in LA.
Marc:He really wasn't.
Marc:around new york yet but like i imagine with some of the state guys and with some of the with garofalo i'm sure there was crossover in terms of hanging out and stuff but i didn't hang out with people right so i didn't see it yeah well i mean that but that's that's not surprising like i i wouldn't say you've ever been like that at any place that you've been it's not like you know if all of a sudden a bunch of celebrities start showing up at the comedy store you're
Guest:You're like fully tapped into that scene and you start, you know, hanging out with them, too.
Marc:No.
Marc:Yeah, it's a it's probably a liability, but it's it's just the way I am.
Marc:There's no lighthearted socializing with big shots except here in the garage.
Guest:Well, what do you mean a liability, though?
Guest:I would think for your work, it's the opposite.
Guest:It probably keeps you more focused on actually just doing the job.
Marc:I guess, you know, but it's like, this is a business built on relationships.
Marc:It's just the nature of it.
Marc:And yeah, totally.
Marc:I just like, I became very wary of that after my time in Los Angeles of, you know, being too close to somebody, you know, at a different level than me.
Marc:I became very wary of it, but there's a way that, you know, people kind of,
Marc:You know, some people just can schmooze pretty easily and want to show up at all those things, and you become familiar.
Marc:And then all of a sudden, you know, oh, wait, hold on.
Marc:Bradley Cooper's texting me.
Marc:I don't know what I need that for.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Guest:But that's so funny, man.
Guest:I've never put that together before.
Guest:But it's true.
Guest:Like, there have been so many times where you'd be like, oh, yeah, I got this text from so-and-so.
Guest:And I'd be like, really?
Guest:That's crazy.
Guest:Did you write back?
Guest:And you're like, no.
Guest:No.
Guest:Why would I write back?
Guest:And, you know, I don't have an answer for that, because honestly, that's probably the right answer.
Guest:I mean, like the right answer is like you could be polite and just say thank you or whatever.
Marc:I'm sure I don't I don't ghost him.
Marc:But like, here's the truth is like, you know, I get kind of attached to people pretty quickly and I know myself well enough to know.
Marc:That, like, you know, it was like, what's that guy's name?
Marc:Del Toro?
Marc:Guillermo del Toro.
Marc:Guillermo.
Marc:Like, you know, he was like, oh, come to the house.
Marc:We'll have lunch.
Marc:We'll be friends.
Marc:And that, like, went down the crapper in a day.
Marc:You know, like, and then I don't want to be the guy that's like, hey, what's going on?
Marc:You know, like, even with James Gray, you know, James Gray.
Marc:And these guys are smart guys.
Marc:They're directors.
Marc:I like talking to them.
Marc:Like, I went to his house for dinner on New Year's a year ago, and I think we had dinner there one other time.
Marc:Well, maybe that, like, I don't know what I expect, but I'm sort of like, what are we doing?
Marc:When are we having dinner again?
Marc:You can come over here.
Guest:And then, like, I don't hear from them and... There's one thing you're up against there that's just the modern reality of it being hard to have friends when you're older.
Guest:Like, it's just... Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Family, work, sure.
Guest:It's hard, right.
Guest:But that idea, I've never pieced it together before that you, you know, had this traumatic...
Guest:situation exacerbated by, you know, drug psychosis when you were a young man that seems like it imprinted you in a pretty terrible way.
Guest:Like, yeah, don't get too close to somebody where the power dynamic is skewed.
Marc:Yeah, no, it was.
Marc:And then because you just started to see it, you just see these people that have that there are people that exist in other people's orbits.
Marc:And some of them are talented people.
Marc:And some of them, you know, there are particular groups that were everybody's just plugging along and killing it.
Marc:Like, you know, you sit at that table at John Mulaney's birthday party and all these people came up.
Marc:But this is the cream of the crop.
Marc:You know, and they all know each other.
Marc:And some of them came up together.
Marc:But for every two or three of the guys that fucking nailed it, there's a handful of people, you know, teaching at UCB.
Marc:So it's just the way it works, man.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know, and are you going to tell me those people that are teaching at UCB didn't want something bigger?
Marc:Of course.
Marc:Do some of their friends throw them a bone occasionally and they show up at a table in a scene?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But, I mean, it's just a rough game.
Marc:So I would rather, you know, be the guy that's sort of like, oh, Maren's doing his own thing or as opposed to like, yeah, you know, Maren keeps bothering me for a little part or something.
Marc:Fuck it.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:I'm just too proud, dude.
Guest:Well, it's that, but I really just don't think you can discount the idea that it made you look down the barrel of like either losing your career or losing your life, getting so closely tied to something like that.
Guest:Like that...
Guest:Until you just brought it up here, I'd never really put it together, and I think that's a huge part.
Marc:And that motherfucker tried to stop my career after I had a falling out with Kennison.
Marc:Calling one night.
Marc:He put the kibosh on me with this idiot named Johnny Zapp, who used to book one-nighters in Santa Barbara.
Marc:Yeah, Sam told me not to use you.
Marc:I'm like, I was 22, and he's fucking blacklisting me from doing a gig in Solvang?
Marc:Fuck.
Guest:You're not allowed to show up and wear the wooden shoes.
Marc:Now that I know, right?
Guest:No windmills for you.
Guest:Stay away from the windmill.
Guest:Stay away from the windmill.
Guest:Well, that's all interesting.
Guest:Now, how did Luna Lounge wind up?
Guest:Like, you know, I know the place itself closed and the building was demolished, but as a club for comics, what was like the end point on that?
Marc:Dude, I have no recollection.
Guest:How did you get out?
Guest:Like you just stopped going?
Marc:I don't know, dude.
Marc:I was still doing blow.
Marc:You know, like it was kind of a fucked up scene.
Marc:Cause I remember like, I think it was Monday nights.
Marc:So I'd have, I'd go to my Coke dealer on fucking Monday night before Luna to get a little jimmied up.
Marc:And then I'd be fucked up till Wednesday.
Marc:Like, I don't like, I don't really remember.
Marc:I got sober in 99 for good.
Marc:So my life, there's probably a lot of fucking PTSD and PTSD.
Marc:cortisol confusion there because, you know,
Marc:Once I got sober in 99, you know, I got hooked up with Mishnah.
Marc:I blew up my marriage.
Marc:You know, I got thrown out of my apartment.
Marc:There's a lot of drama.
Marc:And that, you know, fucks with memory.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:But the thing I do know, like, I don't know how long the show stayed or whether it lost steam.
Marc:Because I remember doing it here and there and doing other things.
Marc:But, you know, 9-11 happened.
Yeah.
Marc:In 2001.
Marc:So that was the end of everything in a way.
Marc:Like, I don't remember where alt comedy was or whether it shut down.
Marc:I feel like it ended at some point.
Marc:But, you know, I left New York in 2002, you know, because Mishnah wanted to come to L.A., right?
Marc:So that's where everything shifted.
Guest:What was going on, though, prior to that?
Guest:Was the alt scene springing up throughout the city?
Guest:Did you have other rooms that were similar to Luna?
Marc:I remember that there were places in that zone between 1995 and 2000, maybe, that Surfer Reality had shows.
Marc:You know, Collective Unconscious had shows.
Marc:You know, some people were booking.
Marc:Sometimes there was a show at the St.
Marc:Mark's Theater and there were... Sidewalk Cafe was where, you know, Shapiro held court and did his thing every week.
Marc:You know, then Rafifi's happened at some point.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:With Merman and that crew.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:I mean, things... Produced shows were starting to happen a bit in Brooklyn, maybe.
Marc:Like, it kind of...
Marc:That generation, that kind of the one after me that came up in Luna, you know, kind of started producing their own things.
Guest:And I think that you're also now getting into the territory where UCB starts to churn out enough people that they go off and start doing their own things, right?
Marc:Well, yeah, they got their own theater.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:The first UCB theater.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So they start blowing up, right?
Marc:More people are coming in from Chicago.
Marc:Sketches infiltrating.
Marc:That all happened after Luna, yeah, and because of the ECB, really.
Guest:But you don't remember a time where it was like, Luna's done, man.
Guest:It's toast.
Guest:You just kind of gradually were moving on to the point where you got out to L.A.
Marc:Yeah, I would have thought it would have been somewhat dramatic, but maybe it wasn't.
Marc:Because at some point I started working at the cellar.
Marc:I got a deal somewhere along the line.
Marc:That helped me out.
Marc:In the 90s, I had a couple of deals with NBC...
Marc:And then, you know, another deal got me out to L.A.
Marc:after 9-11.
Marc:You know, like Mishina didn't want to come back to New York.
Marc:But I got a deal with Fox Studios out of Montreal in like 2000, you know, and then moved out to L.A.
Marc:on that deal to write it.
Marc:But I don't remember...
Marc:exactly, you know, how it, how it ended.
Marc:You know, I mean, Jeff Singer was, he's a whole other story.
Marc:I don't know what happened to that guy either.
Marc:He used to be involved in Montreal.
Marc:He's Canadian.
Marc:He was a pretty intense guy, but I feel like, I feel like there was a decisive end to it.
Marc:Hmm.
Marc:Like we're stopping it.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I don't remember why.
Marc:Cause it wasn't a financial endeavor.
Marc:So I, and I'd have to ask Rob Sacker or somebody, um,
Guest:Well, it also, it sounds like your life was, you know, you were having enough, like, personal upheaval in your life that you probably were like, whatever is going on with the closing of a weekly comedy show was not on your priority list.
Marc:Yeah, I don't know what my relationship was or how it kind of ended with Luna, but
Marc:But, you know, at some point, you know, there was a lot going on.
Marc:You had Pianos down there, right, with Todd.
Marc:Todd and David Cross came to New York.
Marc:Yeah, Tinkle, yeah.
Marc:Tinkle at Pianos.
Marc:And that was a venue that had comedy, alt comedy.
Marc:There was a lot of those kind of shows coming up.
Marc:And that feels like it was – when was that, though?
Marc:Was that in the mid – was that 2000 and something?
Guest:It was the early 2000s.
Guest:It was, like, the time you're talking about, about, like, you know, post 9-11.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:I don't remember, I really don't remember how, I do know it waned.
Marc:I remember it kind of waned, you know?
Marc:And it became less vital.
Marc:Like, at the beginning, it was very vital to me.
Guest:Well, but do you think it became less vital because it became more mainstream?
Marc:Yeah, but you know, the heat came off it.
Marc:I mean, dude, it was crazy down there.
Marc:You know, like when something pops in New York, it's like this lines around the block.
Marc:And then, like, I remember at some point it's like nobody's waiting anymore.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, that's, you know, that then is a place where I think the page turned for you.
Guest:And it's probably what led to ultimately radio being an option because, you know...
Guest:You talk about all the things you had in development that didn't wind up happening.
Guest:And having already done the comedy exploration thing, you're now faced with, am I just going back to clubs?
Guest:Am I just going back to being a feature somewhere?
Guest:Or do I take this new gig?
Guest:Which is probably why, at that time in your life, taking the radio gig made sense.
Guest:Oh, my God, dude.
Marc:I was spiraling.
Marc:By the late 90s, I had not sobered up yet.
Marc:I was in a marriage I was unhappy with.
Marc:I was living in Queens.
Marc:She was thinking about having kids, and I was like, I just wanted to die.
Marc:And I was doing segments on a local TV network.
Marc:You remember that?
Marc:The desk segments for Metro TV.
Marc:And in my mind, I was like, well, maybe this will work out for me.
Marc:I'll just find a local gig.
Marc:Because everything had crapped out.
Marc:Deals crapped out.
Marc:I did not build relationships on the road like you were supposed to.
Marc:I wasn't doing the type of comedy that anybody wanted.
Marc:I could work in San Francisco.
Marc:I could work in Boston.
Marc:There were places I would go and headline, but I wasn't a known quantity.
Marc:Then the marriage breaks up in 99, so I put all my fucking eggs into the sober basket, and I'm just working that and doing comedy, doing meetings, hanging out with Mishnah, getting a divorce, locked out of my apartment, locks changed, subletting
Marc:way down on Delancey street.
Marc:And I don't know, man, once that all fucking came to pass, um,
Marc:I was able to go back to the apartment in Queens, which I kept.
Marc:And then I split.
Marc:And I sublet the apartment in Queens to some fucking loser guitar player who never paid me.
Marc:Friends of Jody and Stoli's downstairs.
Marc:And when I got to L.A., it was like I had to start all over.
Marc:I had to fight to get involved and pay my dues in the alt scene there.
Marc:That's when I got my name on the wall at the comedy store finally.
Marc:2002, 2003.
Marc:I felt like I just wasn't... If it wasn't because I was sort of some mythic guy at the comedy store, I don't know how it would have went for me, really, in L.A.
Marc:I didn't like doing all the alt shows.
Marc:I don't know, dude.
Marc:But what happened was, ultimately, by the time the Air America opportunity came...
Marc:was presented to me.
Marc:You know, I had bought a house with the deal money and I was sitting around and, you know, I didn't have a pot to piss in really.
Marc:And Mishnah was basically an open miker.
Marc:And I couldn't, I couldn't turn it down.
Marc:Like there was no way I could, you know, I had the apartment still in New York and, you know, I was political enough.
Marc:So it was really, again, a sort of, I couldn't see a way around it.
Marc:Cause like, if you remember, that's something that happened in New York was during the divorce.
Marc:Like, you know, after like, dude, we, I, I,
Marc:You know, I didn't have anything.
Marc:That divorce was the easiest divorce.
Marc:We did it through mediation.
Marc:I gave her half of my book deal for Jerusalem Syndrome, which was $15,000 and whatever.
Marc:And then I took that job hosting that fucking Nevermind the Budscocks for VH1.
Marc:They were rebranding with Zach and me.
Marc:And we did this version of the British show.
Marc:I was so disgusted.
Marc:I had the flu, I had diarrhea all that week.
Marc:I was emaciated.
Marc:My marriage is falling apart.
Marc:Like I'm out of the house.
Marc:I'm wearing suits on this game show.
Marc:I did like, we did like 10 or 12 fucking episodes of that thing.
Marc:I remember none of it, but I got paid like 75,000 bucks and it made me solvent again.
Marc:And I gave me a bunch of suits.
Marc:and then from there you went to la like that was the departing moment shortly after i mean you know that that was the thing that got me out of the original divorce spiral um from kim was that i had to take that job and it went nowhere no one even seen it yeah it doesn't exist anywhere there's a promo around um
Marc:but that was like this i don't even want to go into it but but yeah thank god it didn't it didn't work out well and and and so you're apparently now there's no shame in hosting a game show but back then not for me buddy well and also it was just it was not a really a game show it was this weird thing no stakes yeah improv it was an improv trivia show
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, you know, this kind of brings us back to what we documented last year with our Morning Sedition series.
Guest:And so if people are listening to this and they haven't heard that, you can go back to last year.
Guest:We did a series of several episodes on the full Marin here about Morning Sedition called Good Morning Geniuses.
Guest:That was our radio show.
Guest:And you can listen to that with some clips that we played from the show and from our time there, which was like basically the next two years of your life.
Guest:Although I do think we should maybe do this again, have a little, you know, walk down memory lane about the Marc Maron show.
Marc:We really didn't talk about that when we did the- Another like trauma.
Marc:That might be, those memories might be-
Marc:Might be fogged by the trauma of it.
Marc:Well, yeah.
Marc:I mean, there's definitely enough of that that was not ideal.
Marc:Well, you're fucking half of that, dude.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, if you want to talk about that, you know, you've got the whole other side of it.
Guest:Well, that's true.
Guest:That's true for that.
Guest:And we should probably talk about Break Room Live at some point, too.
Guest:That's another thing.
Guest:Oh, more trauma.
Guest:Barely fucking capable.
Guest:Well, that was like right in the heart of your second divorce.
Marc:That's why I took the job.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Part of the condition was to give me 60 grand up front so I could stop the divorce.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then I made them pull Sam in.
Guest:I think all of this stuff, including Back to Luna Lounge, is stuff that were not for these things in your life, you would not have gotten to the podcast.
Guest:So they're all very important and a good part of your origin story.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:Even just talking about these turns, like, you know, I don't generally put the memories together like that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, to where Luna Lounge happened.
Marc:And then, you know, I start fucking around with sobriety and fucking around with a woman.
Marc:And, you know, I'm married, you know, two or like three years and I'm already blowing it.
Marc:And then that whole marriage blows up because, you know, I make I just remember, dude, it was 90 years.
Marc:Must have been 99 or 2000 where I'm like, you know, I'm just like in a room sweating and a year sober with Mishnah.
Marc:Like, are we doing this, man?
Marc:Because I'm going to leave my wife.
Marc:She goes, I guess so.
Marc:I'm like, good enough.
Marc:You know, and.
Guest:That's always a good trigger puller.
Marc:I guess so.
Marc:I'm in.
Marc:I'm in.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:Just the whole fucking thing blew up.
Marc:And then, you know, conversely, she blew mine up again.
Marc:Yeah, but those trauma points of chaos, relationship chaos and, yeah, sobriety, all that stuff.
Marc:Yeah, it does haze things a bit.
Marc:But, yeah.
Marc:Well, I hope this wasn't too traumatic for you to walk down memory lane.
Marc:No, I'd like to, like, get more...
Marc:angles on it i'd like to know more about that period like more about how it did sort of end up because i don't remember i mean you know singers probably around there's people that are around i just don't remember how that all ended i know how my life went but i don't know you know it seems like luna fell into the back the background well that's good we can we can hunt it down it's a little cliffhanger there we'll see if we can find somebody tells us all right buddy all right man
Thank you.