BONUS Archive Deep Dive - Year One Comics
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:Mark, you just had Kyle Kinane in there.
Guest:That must have been a nice time with two comics chit-chatting.
Guest:Well, you know, I didn't realize.
Marc:I haven't seen him since... He was one of the beginning.
Marc:He was one of the... Yep.
Marc:The first year, probably, right?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And I haven't... I don't think I've really seen him since 2009.
Marc:Not much, anyways.
Marc:Hmm.
Marc:So...
Marc:Because the pandemic kind of screwed up time for me, and I all of a sudden feel like an old man, it was good to sort of see him and realize that it had been almost 13 years or something.
Marc:And I watched his special last night, and he's still sort of the same guy.
Marc:But the weird thing is, I'm 59 and he's 46.
Marc:I still don't get how I'm that much older than people.
Marc:I guess I didn't feel like I was before.
Marc:Like, what I was...
Marc:Like, so was he 13?
Marc:So when I was 45 and he was 30, whatever, uh, two, uh, it was different.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But, uh, but yeah, it was nice.
Marc:It was nice to, to kind of catch up, see where he's at.
Marc:I liked that guy and his special is good.
Guest:Well, that's cool.
Guest:And, you know, speaking of those early days, you know, we do this every once in a while for people here on the bonus content on the Full Marin.
Guest:We give some guidance to going back and listening into our archives.
Guest:And instead of just picking one episode to go into today, I started thinking about this in regard to Kyle coming over and you talking to a comic.
Guest:Every now and then, you know, I hear from a listener, you see it on Twitter or an email or something and people going, oh, I miss the days when the show was just comics talking to comics.
Guest:Now, I have my own reaction to that.
Guest:What's your reaction when somebody says that?
Marc:Well, I think that there's a finite number of comics I can talk to, and a lot of it had to do with me talking to people in my community, and that was sort of the template for the show, people I kind of knew or knew of, or people who were connected to comedy or comedians that I knew.
Marc:And I don't know.
Marc:I still think we have comics on pretty frequently.
Marc:Right.
Guest:We sure do.
Guest:But I think we also have a very wide variety of people coming on.
Guest:And I think it's because of the type of conversation you do.
Guest:But I always, it's my philosophy of the show is that this is a show about you and about your mindset and about how you filter the world.
Guest:And depending on who you're talking to at any given time, you're getting an assistance with that, right?
Guest:Somebody as a guest on the show is coming on to kind of help talk about the world as Marc Maron sees it, right?
Guest:It's about me having people over to talk about me.
Guest:Basically, yeah.
Marc:And you have changed.
Guest:You know, you're not just a guy doing comedy.
Guest:You're not just like a road warrior working the clubs every weekend or trying to reestablish your name the way you were in 2009.
Guest:You're a guy who's been doing this podcast for a long time.
Guest:You've been doing television.
Guest:You've been doing movies.
Guest:You have other...
Guest:connections to the larger show business community.
Guest:And also you have other interests.
Marc:Right, but there was also the amends process that seemed to be necessary and the reintegration, correct, yeah.
Marc:And I do think we always had other interests, but there was years there where I was not that hot on talking to actors because I didn't know how many of them could really talk.
Marc:And then once I started acting, right, it became more of a curiosity to me to get their insights into things and go a little deeper with actors, same with directors.
Marc:But I was always fans of certain people, and that was a different thing.
Marc:There was the community interviews of people in my world, and then there were the people that I had respect for and looked up to or was a fan of their work.
Guest:Well, yeah, and I tend to think of it when I see people say, man, I missed the show when it was just about comics and comics talking to comics.
Guest:That, to me, kind of irks me a little bit because it reads to me the same way as somebody saying, boy, I used to like you when you used to drink.
Guest:You know, like, you know, if people like in your, oh man, it was so fun when we used to go out to the bars all the time.
Guest:How can we, I missed that.
Guest:I missed that.
Guest:We don't do that anymore.
Guest:And it's like, yeah, I don't do that anymore for a reason.
Guest:Like growth, like, and I don't, and, and here's the thing.
Guest:I don't look back negatively on those kinds of times in my life, but it's, I'm not going to do that all the time.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, and I think the same thing about those early days, I don't look
Guest:back negatively on those early days of the show in fact they were foundational for what the podcast became but like they're there go listen to them like mark doesn't have to recreate that dynamic when it doesn't really exist anymore there is no mark just kind of free floating amongst the world of comedians anymore you're you're a grounded guy
Marc:Right.
Marc:That's true.
Marc:But I also think there's something about the type of conversation that happens with comics.
Marc:There's a shorthand.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:There's a more of... It's more... It's like... Honestly, if there's anything that was sort of a template for other podcasts, it's just two like-minded people shooting the shit about whatever.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:I think what you get with other comics is...
Marc:You know, inside baseball, but also the sort of comfort of knowing that you live the same life and you can sort of work from there as opposed to what is your life like?
Marc:Right.
Guest:It was a big deal that comics came on and talked with you and you were able to kind of elicit such an open conversation with them, especially with some of them who didn't.
Guest:previously open up that much and we can get into that in a minute because what i did here was i went back and looked at some of those early days and thought well what about somebody who's just coming to the show recently they may not know that that really was kind of like i said foundational to wtf this idea of like comics talking to comics and i went back to those early episodes from the first year that we were doing this and i picked out 10 and
Guest:I picked out 10 that I think are like ones if you wanted to go back and start with like some real comic interviews, you don't want to listen to every single episode of the show.
Guest:Here's a good 10 from the first year of the show to get a sense of what we were doing.
Guest:And I think it's also important to point out that when we started this, we didn't go into it thinking every episode is going to be an interview with someone.
Guest:That wasn't the idea.
Guest:The idea was more just like it was WTF.
Guest:It was this philosophy.
Guest:It was mostly going to be you figuring out how to get through these WTF moments in life.
Guest:And whether that was because you talked to a guest about it, or we talked to a fake character, or you did a monologue about it, or you talked to your mom or your dad, or we had Matthew in there.
Guest:There was a real variety sense to it.
Guest:And it wasn't until...
Guest:This first episode I'm going to point out is episode 12.
Guest:If people want to go back and find this, episode 12 is with Nick Kroll.
Guest:And do you want to know why this is significant?
Guest:Can you tell me, Mark, why that's a significant episode?
Guest:Chupacabra.
Guest:It is not.
Guest:It is not when he did Chupacabra.
Guest:You had him back to do that.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Nick Kroll episode 12 is the first interview you did in your garage.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, that makes sense.
Marc:That's when I came back.
Marc:I set up the mics.
Marc:That was before the garage was even set up.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You just sat out there on like a desk, right?
Marc:With two mics.
Marc:There was a table.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And the big mics were on the little stands and I was going right into the power book.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:And yeah, there were just lamps and shit in there.
Marc:The shelves weren't in.
Marc:I hadn't decorated.
Marc:I don't even remember if I'd put the floor in yet correctly.
Marc:I think I must have.
Marc:I think the floor was in there, but it wasn't a functioning space.
Marc:It wasn't really a workspace quite yet.
Marc:Right.
Guest:I don't even know if you had Jesse Thorne over yet to kind of show you exactly how to set it up.
Marc:Well, he had recommended the mics because I remember because I bought the wrong mic at first.
Marc:I bought a Shure 57, which I now use to mic my amps because that's what they're for.
Marc:But the SM7s, I had them, but these are big old mics.
Marc:They're really built to hang like this off a boom.
Marc:But I had them on those little stands.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:You know, so you kind of, you know, I had to figure out how to do that.
Marc:I have seen that, not usually with these mics, but...
Marc:But yeah, it was weird.
Marc:And it was a plastic table.
Marc:Yeah, that was it.
Marc:I don't remember that conversation though.
Guest:You know, I listened to that conversation and it does set the template quite a bit, you know, in terms of like, obviously you were there to talk to him and do the thing you'd been doing when we were recording these in New York with your comedian friends like Jim Gaffigan, Caroline Ray, Todd Berry.
Guest:Those were the type of people who we had come on those early episodes just because we knew you could shoot the shit with them be really easy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But Nick Kroll, the reason you did it was because you liked him.
Guest:He was a young guy.
Guest:I thought he was very funny.
Guest:Up and comer.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:But because of that, you had to kind of get to know him in that talk.
Guest:So that talk was a lot of the kind of early template of how the episodes kind of grew.
Guest:You'd get to know what did you do?
Guest:Where did you come from?
Guest:What's your background?
Guest:He found out about his insanely rich dad.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But yeah, that's a great entry point if you want to get a sense.
Guest:Episode 12 with Nick Kroll.
Guest:And then, yes, as Mark mentioned, he came back a couple of times, specifically episode 26, and then again episode 58, playing the character El Chupacabra, which we loved him doing.
Guest:It was really fantastic.
Guest:So funny.
Guest:That was a third act thing?
Guest:Yes, when we used to do extra characters.
Guest:And the problem is, it was way too close to, like, Comedy Bang Bang at the time.
Guest:You know, he was even doing El Chupacabra on comedy.
Guest:He was doing El Chupacabra everywhere.
Guest:He wound up doing it on his own TV show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Was this, you know, Latin DJ character.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just, it's really a showcase for Nick Kroll, the way his mind works, to be able so fast to be able to do that character with you, just improv it.
Guest:What other ones you got?
Guest:Well, all right.
Guest:So then the next one I have on here is episode 20.
Guest:And this was not in a garage.
Guest:It was not in any location that you've ever done an interview in.
Guest:It was in a movie trailer.
Guest:This was with Zach Galifianakis on the set of the movie Due Date in New Mexico.
Guest:And that's episode 20.
Guest:I remember that.
Guest:And Robert Downey came in.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And that was the first episode we did that made news that all of a sudden I saw clickbait stuff based on the conversation.
Guest:About Downey's mask?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:He talked about how Robert Downey had a person construct prosthesis for him so that he could wear a mask when he went out in public and people wouldn't know it was him.
Guest:And that made news.
Guest:And it was a big flag to me.
Guest:Like, oh, that happens?
Guest:Like, this thing that we're doing?
Guest:We
Marc:Make news.
Marc:Put us on the radar for that, for those outlets.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:That began, that was when we started to realize like, or we didn't realize it at that moment, but that we were doing their job for them.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And it has become in some ways a bane to our operations quite quickly.
Guest:Quite often, you know, it's stuff that gets pulled that we would never, you know, just excerpt and highlight on our own, but it winds up getting put into the bloodstream.
Guest:You know, it gets us in trouble.
Guest:Yeah, just ask Sam Elliott.
Guest:That's the main one.
Guest:Ask Sam Elliott, ask his publicist who will not book her clients on the show anymore because of Sam Elliott.
Guest:So when you're wondering why you have never heard Samuel L. Jackson or Viola Davis on the show, it's because of the Sam Elliott episode.
Marc:Really?
Marc:After all the groundwork we put into getting Viola Davis, now all of a sudden we can't get her because of that?
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:Because the same publicist and she will not put her clients on the show anymore.
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:It's not like I tried to get Sam to say that.
Guest:You didn't do anything.
Guest:You did nothing.
Guest:That's my point.
Guest:It is against our will and wishes, but it happens and it sucks.
Guest:It has negative repercussions on the show.
Guest:So if you want to find the genesis point of that for us, it was this episode, episode 20 with Zach Galifianakis, which got turned into, you know, vulture pieces.
Guest:And I guess there were a lot more comedy websites back in the time, too.
Guest:So these things stayed in the community for a little longer than going out into the outside world of People Magazine and Entertainment Tonight.
Marc:And also, the reason I was there was because it was my hometown.
Marc:It was at a studio in Albuquerque.
Marc:And what's his name?
Marc:Phillips.
Marc:Todd Phillips was directing that movie.
Marc:That's the first time I met that guy.
Marc:And I was out there visiting family.
Marc:And I was dating a woman who came from Albuquerque briefly, Megan.
Marc:And we both went over to the set.
Marc:Yeah, I remember sitting there with him.
Marc:It's a fun episode.
Marc:Is it?
Marc:Oh, really fun.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I just saw Zach the other night, actually.
Marc:He's doing okay.
Marc:Oh, cool.
Marc:Yeah, always- He's back around.
Guest:Always a fun guy to pop up.
Guest:The next one is someone who we saw all the time.
Guest:And the reason I put this on the list was because it's a great example of having a conversation with someone who you-
Guest:A, thought you, you know, was so familiar to you, it'd be surprising you'd be able to get something out of the person.
Guest:And also a person who we talked about before you did this interview and said, hey, I don't know that she ever really would wind up talking very much.
Guest:And this was episode 25 with Janine Garofalo that it was such a good interview.
Guest:that it actually wound up, I wound up excerpting substantial amounts of this interview for our book, Waiting for the Punch, because I don't think it ever existed with her before.
Guest:You know, we talk a lot about, you know, the Robin Williams episode, or there's just various episodes of this show where you're like, oh, you'll never hear that person talk like that.
Guest:I would really want to put this up against any other time someone had a talk with Janine Garofalo,
Guest:And to see if it really came across the same way that this one did.
Guest:This is a great talk with her, which, like I said, we were not sure you could get, you know.
Marc:Well, it's also because we knew her well.
Marc:I've known her forever.
Marc:We worked with her at Air America.
Marc:But she always had that sort of once, you know, the snark element and her intellectual connection.
Marc:kind of position was always sort of a wall in a way to whatever's going on inside of her.
Marc:So I didn't know if she would be willing to be vulnerable enough to even just talk candidly about herself
Marc:At all.
Guest:And she did.
Guest:Yeah, it's a great talk about what it's like to consciously decide to not have children.
Guest:And in a way that is totally honest and open and nonjudgmental, but somewhat regretful, but also coming to terms with regret about it and acceptance.
Guest:It's a great, it was the kind of thing that didn't happen a lot in media at the time.
Guest:That kind of conversation.
Guest:Right.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Well, the next two are kind of paired together because it's episode 30 and 31.
Guest:And number 30 is Kyle Kinane.
Guest:And I really just think people might want to go back and listen to that before they hear the upcoming episode with him.
Guest:And just really just to track it.
Guest:You know, like you said, it's been over 13 years or so.
Guest:I think, you know, we had him on a live one after this.
Guest:You also had him on your pilot episode.
Guest:not the pilot of Marin, but the pilot presentation you did of the WTF show.
Guest:Do you remember that?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It was me and Chelsea Peretti.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't know what that, that was a weird, it was a kind of a nebulous panel show idea, right?
Marc:He was one of the panelists.
Marc:It was him and Kamau, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, that's right.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:And yeah, and it was kind of like these, we did a segment on freegans.
Guest:That was a field piece.
Guest:You went out into the field and went to dumpster dive with people who ate food out of garbage.
Marc:Yeah, I don't know, like, I don't know that that, we had this idea that it might be a refillable type of panel show, but it was a little vague in its construction.
Guest:Just like the vagueness of the podcast at first, right?
Guest:This whole idea, you were going to form it around what the fuck, right?
Guest:Like, that was the premise of this show, was you were going to go out into the world and find insane things that you couldn't believe people were doing.
Marc:Right, but then it never really happened that way, but we kept the title.
Yeah.
Marc:For the podcast.
Marc:That was sort of the... There was some idea at the beginning that was more relative to WTF, but then we were just too far in.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:We didn't change it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it became like... People were like, you can copyright that.
Marc:Like, no, we can't.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But it did become...
Marc:Sort of a thing.
Marc:It did become a branded thing to the point where it doesn't really even, in relation to our podcast, it doesn't mean what it means.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:You know, it's just like, did you do a WTF interview?
Marc:Like it's detached.
Guest:Yeah, it's like AT&T.
Guest:There are no telephones and telegraphs anymore.
Marc:Right, exactly.
Marc:But yeah, the Kinane one, the first one, and I talked to him, the first one I talked to him about it today, he was like, I think he was more of a character.
Marc:Now he's kind of a guy.
Marc:So he's kind of absorbed the character that I call the little hobo.
Marc:I told him today.
Marc:Sometimes I ask how the little hobo's doing.
Yeah.
Marc:And and he's like kind of now he's integrated him and he's not it's not that it's not him, but now he's got kind of a fuller personality range and emotional range.
Guest:Well, the one that came right after that episode 31 is a controversial episode.
Guest:It was not controversial at the time.
Guest:It took about, I think, five to six years before it became controversial.
Guest:But it's probably worth listening to today, not so much for the controversy, but for the sense that we expect our guest to...
Guest:to be honest and open.
Guest:And if they're saying something to you, you're not going to disbelieve them.
Guest:You're going to take what they're saying at face value.
Guest:And that's what happened with episode 31, Steve Ranazzisi, who told you that he survived 9-11.
Marc:Yeah, that was before I set the garage up, too.
Marc:And now I'm remembering it because there's pictures of us talking.
Marc:Yeah, he told the big sort of like, you know, walking across the bridge, the whole 9-11 story.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was a big part of the podcast, right?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:It was a big part of the podcast.
Guest:It was a big part of his persona.
Guest:Like, he had kind of staked himself to this story.
Guest:Yeah, but I think that must have been one of the first times he really said it publicly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think it is.
Guest:Well, it is actually the thing that got him in trouble because he was being years later.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Years later, he's being profiled for something.
Guest:The story did not come up, but the person writing the profile went and listened to this interview to get background info on him.
Marc:Is that what happened?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So it wasn't that he had told the story many times?
Marc:It was our show still?
Guest:Yes, correct.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so the person who was writing it fact-checked it, found that he did not work where he said he worked, then later found he had no affiliation with that company whatsoever, and it was all made up.
Guest:And he admitted it.
Guest:He admitted that it was just one of these – it was like Brian Williams, right?
Guest:Same thing, where it's like you tell this story once, like probably as a –
Guest:And then it just kind of evolves from there as you assume that you can just tell it all the time and must be true.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But but if it's like, I guess I could see how that happens.
Marc:But like, you know, the with those kind of things.
Marc:You know, you have to construct an awful lot.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:It's like, there's a whole, like, wasn't Brian Williams on a plane that was being shot at?
Marc:Yeah, that was how he wound up telling the story, yeah.
Marc:And, you know, the Rent is Easy just had to, how did he make all that up?
Marc:I have one instance of that, you know, in my personal narrative, where there's that thing...
Marc:When I, you know, the story about me and Sam Canison, when, you know, I bring my friend over, you know, uh, like I, like we, it was that big, the Satanist story and the cocaine and the next day, you know, when, when I bring my friend, Bill had flown into town the night before and I, I, we walk in, this happened and, and Sam's like, I pissed on your bed, Maren.
Marc:You want to know why?
Yeah.
Marc:And I go, yes, Sam, because you got that weirdo sweep with my guitars.
Marc:And then it's not clear to me whether I really said, turned to my friend and said, I told you I knew him or whether Jimmy Schubert added that line.
Marc:And then I absorbed it.
Marc:But either way, it's not that big of a transgression.
Guest:Wait, so Jimmy Schubert has said he said it to you or added that in the telling of the story at some point.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:That.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:I was also on Coke and I'd like to believe I said it.
Marc:So I stick with it.
Guest:Well, but here's the thing.
Guest:It fits with this.
Guest:There is an awesome book by the late journalist, David Carr, who used to be the media watchdog for the New York Times and a great journalist and reporter in his own right.
Guest:He wrote a book called The Year of the Gun.
Guest:which is all about him trying to use his reporting skills to go back to the time in his life when he was so messed up on drugs that apparently there was a memory he had of being held up at gunpoint and getting out of it alive.
Guest:And then someone told him, no, David, you were the robber.
Guest:You were the guy with the gun.
Yeah.
Guest:And he spends this book trying to figure out what actually happened.
Guest:And the amazing thing with that book is it turns into a real treatise on memory and how memory is is fluid and what we do with that.
Guest:It's really just there to help us protect ourselves.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Memory is there as this thing to kind of make sure we have roadmaps and narratives for ourselves to get through life.
Guest:But it does.
Guest:It's not trustworthy at all.
Right.
Guest:Huh.
Marc:Interesting.
Guest:And I bet I mean that that's that to me, I think I don't believe Steve Brown is easy.
Guest:It was some guy with a mental problem that made him lie all the time, which is a thing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's a pathological.
Marc:But isn't there some other condition where people associate themselves with tragedies?
Guest:I guess maybe it's somewhat similar to the Munchausen by proxy thing.
Guest:Yeah, maybe.
Guest:It's got an offshoot of that.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I don't want to speak about it.
Marc:It creates an extra added element to your whole...
Marc:personal, your whole narrative.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:Like if you identify or associate yourself with something, like I was there, then like that becomes a huge component of your personality.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, totally.
Guest:And in a way where with these two guys specifically, we mentioned Steve and Brian Williams, you can't unlock it, right?
Guest:Or you're in that box now and you can't get out once you start making that part of your personality.
Guest:Right.
Yeah.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Well, next episode is episode 37.
Guest:And this is with Bill Burr, which is, I think, the first time I was going through the list of our episodes.
Guest:I think this is the longest time you sat and talked to a comic, like at this point.
Guest:And it really was.
Guest:It was one of these episodes where we kind of like got rid of everything else off the deck.
Guest:It was just you and Bill talking for maybe 50 minutes.
Guest:We hadn't grown it yet to be at least an hour.
Guest:But it is instantly funny.
Guest:He tells that amazing story about how he would be practicing his drumming in the house.
Guest:And there was some old guy in the apartment complex who was just this miserable guy who would
Guest:give him shit.
Guest:And he gave his girlfriend at the time, who's now his wife, who's giving her shit.
Guest:And Bill went to confront the guy.
Guest:And the guy was like, hey, how's your band?
Guest:And he was like, this guy got me right in my feelings.
Guest:Just like, boom, uppercut.
Right.
Guest:right right in my feelings and uh i like that is a perfect example of the way if you know when people say i really believe that's the type of thing they're talking about when they are nostalgic about how comics coming on the show to talk to you yeah what it used to create what the the vibe was that's a perfect example of what the
Marc:You know, it's funny in retrospect about that episode is I, you know, as time went on and Bill became more able to talk about his life publicly, you know, I mean, his dad is like an all timer monster.
Marc:Like, I remember talking about that, that episode.
Marc:He's like, yeah, he was a dentist, you know, but like.
Marc:Not this monster.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:I mean, like as time went on, like his dad sounds like a fucking monster.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I asked him point blank about that stuff, but he wasn't, you know, he wasn't talking about it in that way then.
Guest:Well, another guy who provided a kind of revelatory talk at the time was episode 40 with Dave Attell.
Guest:And that was another one of these situations.
Marc:I love that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You were like, I don't know that we ever talked for more than five minutes.
Guest:And here we were.
Guest:Especially not in the daylight.
Yeah.
Guest:daylight at a pool you guys were like lounging at a pool with that one yeah i just remember he had like like at least three different kinds of candies oh yeah we're just sitting there he's got like skittles and he's like i'm like what's happening uh and that again that one follows what has kind of become a wtf template uh of uh going through someone's life back to childhood talking about their parents talking about their families he has great stories um
Guest:Yep, exactly.
Guest:He's got great stories about that shop and his dad.
Guest:And that's a really, you know, to me at the time, too, just a guy who is a fan of Dave Attell and is a fan of comedy.
Guest:I loved that episode.
Guest:I love that we did it.
Marc:I love it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, I've known that guy my whole life and he is one of the best joke writers and comedic.
Marc:He's one of the best comedians ever.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I came up with him.
Marc:So there was always this dynamic of like, he was like the bar.
Marc:Do you know what I mean?
Marc:Sure.
Marc:For jokes.
Marc:And no one could come close to him.
Marc:But he was also this character.
Marc:And you just never really...
Marc:elusive in terms of like you literally it was like Marin and then like you'd have one exchange with him and then he'd be you know he'd say something cutting that would you know kind of like hit you right in the in the guts and then you know you'd say all right bye yeah I just didn't never talk to the guy yeah
Marc:And I don't know.
Marc:There was something about going there.
Marc:I don't remember why he was in town, but I went to that hotel over off Sunset.
Marc:We sat out there by the pool.
Marc:And I just—because Attell's always been sort of very kind of like oddly, you know, business-minded.
Marc:I just remember him going like, what are you doing with this?
Marc:Is this—
Marc:You make money?
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:How does this make money?
Marc:And I don't think we had an answer at the time, did we?
Marc:No, I mean, at the time, we were going full on just with donations.
Marc:But I just remember, like, it was mind-blowing to me, I think, that one, and also the Odenkirk one to a degree, where...
Marc:You realize that I've been around these guys forever.
Marc:And my thought is, like, I kind of know these guys, but they're just my coworkers and guys that I respect their art, you know, because I'm watching them all the time or I see the work they've done.
Marc:But it was one of those moments where I'm like, I don't know this guy at all.
Marc:I don't know him at all.
Guest:Well, I will skip over the next one I was going to bring up because you just mentioned the Odenkirk one, and that's number nine on my list here, episode 60.
Guest:And the interesting thing about that, you're saying it's a similar guy.
Guest:You were around him a lot.
Guest:I think you had a general sense of concern over him.
Guest:I don't know if concern.
Guest:You tell me what your emotional response to Bob was.
Guest:I know at the time you felt like maybe he looked down on you.
Marc:Yeah, because he always sort of talked.
Marc:Like, you know, he was always a worker and he was always like, you know, he was an angle.
Marc:There are those guys like who just knew what show business was early on and begin to, you know, make it in show business, you know, across, you know, like was surprising.
Marc:But I think.
Marc:You know, that because of Odenkirk, I mean, Cross, you know, kind of figured it out.
Marc:But I think I had more in common with Cross when we were younger.
Marc:We didn't I don't know.
Marc:I didn't think we understood show business necessarily.
Marc:But Bob always seemed to be sort of, you know, he got it.
Marc:And I just felt like whenever I'd see Bob and I felt this way with other guys, too.
Marc:You know, he would talk to me in almost a parental way, you know, like, yeah, well, what's going on with you?
Marc:Are you working on anything?
Marc:I'm like, what's with the tone, dude?
Marc:I'm a fucking stand up.
Marc:Do what are you doing?
Marc:You know?
Marc:So there was always that element.
Marc:I don't know if he was looking down on me, but I think not unlike other people that.
Marc:had enough shit together to make a job out of this thing.
Marc:You know, I was just this wild card.
Marc:You know, they, I was not, they didn't know they're like, Oh, here comes this fucking lunatic.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:That's why, that's how I felt.
Guest:Well, I know what's interesting is that episode with Bob wound up going in a very, what became a typical, uh,
Guest:trajectory for a WTF talk where you address those type of things with the person up front, what your perceived notion that they had of you was.
Guest:They had to either dispel that or kind of come around to it, but from a different angle.
Guest:And then after talking for 30, 40 minutes and really kind of, you know, becoming very comfortable and breaking down a lot of defenses, the person might say something that totally pops and makes you think of them in a completely different way.
Guest:And that happened when
Guest:with Bob in a way that, you know, you referenced it for years after like, oh, that thing with Bob made me realize if I talk to somebody like for 45, 50 minutes and they're comfortable, they might say something totally revelatory.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It was like, what's at the core of him?
Guest:That was it.
Marc:And he, he said, rage, rage, rage.
Marc:He just looked at me, rage.
Marc:And I was like, what?
Yeah.
Guest:I know you.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:It helped you big time.
Guest:It helped explain him to you.
Guest:It helped with the stuff you knew about him from the past.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:That guy's a ball of rage.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So yeah, that was episode 60.
Guest:I skipped over episode 55, which was Rob Delaney, who we just had on when you were in London last year.
Guest:But that early episode with Rob Delaney, I would say was the first...
Guest:dark episode you know if you want to have my was it the first time he told that story publicly i wonder it might have been at least the first time he told it in explicit detail and this was the story of him uh getting so drunk he blacked out got in a car and almost killed himself uh he was uh had a broken neck broken back he was in uh you know complete restraints
Guest:And for an extended period of time as his bones healed and he was arrested.
Guest:So once the bones healed and he could not be in a halo and whatever he needed to do that, he had to go to jail.
Guest:And yeah, it's completely a harrowing story of all the grisly details of it.
Guest:And that's why he got sober.
Guest:That was his sobriety story as well.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's a heavy cat.
Guest:He's been through some shit, man.
Guest:He has.
Guest:And that was a heavy episode even at the time.
Guest:I remember thinking like, wow, this is not the goofy show that we set out to do five months prior.
Guest:This was real talk.
Guest:There was a heaviness to him, a darkness to him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, as understandably, he would just still.
Marc:And then it happened again with the kid dying.
Marc:It was just, you know, he had to transcend that too, you know, and he seemed okay.
Marc:The last time I talked to him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm glad we had that second talk, even, even with the equally harrowing subject matter.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, then the last one here is not a surprise.
Guest:This is episode 67, one of our most famous episodes, an episode of ours that's enshrined in the Library of Congress historical record with Robin Williams.
Guest:And so I think most people who are listening to this are aware of that episode, even if they haven't heard it.
Guest:One of the reasons I wanted to highlight it with these 10 comedian episodes from the first year of the show is that I think
Guest:What might get lost about that talk with Robin, because it was such a great talk, because he revealed so much of himself as a person and not as a character in that, is that it really, at the core, is two comics talking to each other.
Guest:Like, I think that's the prime episode that when people have that nostalgia for this show being about comics talking to comics, that is evident 100% in that talk.
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, it just so happened he's one of the biggest stars ever.
Marc:But, like, at his core, you know, he's a comic and a comic guy and a guy that worked at some of the same venues I worked at years later, obviously.
Marc:So, you know, approaching it from that angle.
Marc:And he was a guy that just was, you know, fundamentally shy.
Marc:And I've said it many times before that if it was...
Marc:there was no reason for him to perform because there was nobody else there.
Marc:So when we really got down to sort of just talking about, you know, struggles and about standup and about, you know, performing and about, uh, you know, drug addiction and what other, and then eventually, you know, suicide, sadly.
Marc:Um,
Marc:He had no reason to hide.
Marc:He had no reason to put on a show because there was no audience but me and I was just another comic.
Marc:So it was really kind of an amazing interaction.
Marc:The whole thing was, you know, just being at that place on the water there, not being able to take pictures in the house.
Marc:There was a certain amount of secrecy involved.
Marc:It was just his assistant there and then him showing me that room.
Marc:That was the weirdest thing about all of it.
Marc:He's like, you know, you want to see something?
Marc:I'm like, yeah.
Marc:He's like, you can't tell anybody about this.
Marc:I'm like, oh, shit.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:And he shows me this room full of these toy army soldiers.
Marc:But they were like...
Marc:It's the weirdest thing, but they were like detailed.
Marc:They weren't like little GI Joe sizes.
Marc:They were like double the GI Joe size, but they were all like, you know, kind of perfect models, like detailed, like, you know, like almost like a hobby, like, uh, people who build model ships or something.
Marc:I don't think he built these.
Marc:He just collected these strange military, uh, um,
Marc:what do you call them, dolls.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And he had a special room for them all.
Marc:They were all just standing from different militaries.
Marc:There must have been, I don't even know how many, but it was a whole room.
Marc:Like, you know, but he swore me to secrecy and I guess it's okay now.
Guest:Well, I'll tell you, if you forced me to pick out one clip
Guest:From the history of the show.
Guest:There's lots of things that could be.
Guest:If you said pick out one thing that best represents this show.
Guest:It's a clip from that episode.
Guest:And it's very fitting with what we've been talking about in this bonus episode here.
Guest:Comics talking to comics.
Guest:Why that's interesting to people.
Guest:Why that's funny.
Guest:And I just think this clip was so representative of what WTF did.
Guest:is and became and really just why we were doing what we were doing.
Guest:And it seemed like the community in San Francisco sort of indulged your indulgence.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:You can't do it anywhere else.
Guest:No, I mean, I think you're right.
Guest:It was an eclectic mix.
Guest:And a loud, you know, like weird comedy like Freaky Ralph, who eventually set himself on fire.
Guest:To close?
Guest:No, to end his life.
Guest:Oh, no, I'm so close.
No.
Guest:Yeah, that's the ultimate closing.
Guest:But seriously, I'll be here until five minutes from now.
Guest:God, man, you're killing yourself.
Guest:Oh, shit.
Guest:Oh, fuck.
Guest:It was only a comic record.
Guest:It's a close.
Guest:Did you see the first and second show?
Guest:It's not an opener.
Guest:Oh, God.
Guest:That is an amazing clip.
Guest:It's amazing for so many reasons.
Guest:It's amazing because it's funny, first of all.
Guest:Second of all, you talk about it all the time.
Guest:You just talked about it here, how he was not in Robin mode in that talk.
Guest:And, you know, he's not like on the late night show.
Guest:He's not doing characters.
Guest:How quickly he was able to riff three amazing jokes based on that thing that you said.
Guest:Like, he really was a genius.
Guest:Like, his brain worked that fast.
Guest:But also the idea that this was a joke specific to comics.
Guest:There's no way any other human beings would have had that joke.
Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I forgot that I got him laughing like that.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Well, your setup was perfect to close.
Guest:Literally, my favorite moment in the history of this show was that clip.
Marc:I love making those guys laugh.
Marc:Jesus, man.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:That fucking Eddie Murphy beat.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:That's another one.
Marc:It's one of the best things that's ever happened to me.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, why wouldn't it be?
Guest:If you make Eddie Murphy laugh that hard?
Marc:Right out of the gate, dude.
Marc:And I just saw it hit him.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Where are you sitting?
Marc:Do you have a steakhouse at your place?
No.
Guest:You know, he just asked me.
Guest:He said, where are you sitting?
Guest:Do you have a steakhouse at your place?
Guest:No, this is the lounge.
Marc:Dude, it was the gateway, dude.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Like, it changed.
Marc:It was right out of the beginning.
Guest:It was a cackle.
Guest:It wasn't the, like, Eddie laugh.
Marc:No, I got him.
Guest:It wasn't the... No, I got him.
Guest:It was like, he...
Guest:In the solar plexus.
Marc:I got him.
Marc:And it just opened it right up, dude.
Guest:We were in.
Guest:Do you know the other, he's not Eddie Murphy, but he's a funny guy.
Guest:I'm not going to take that away from him.
Guest:The other guy I remember laughing to the point where you got him so hard was Jason Sudeikis.
Guest:Do you remember that?
Guest:Oh, what was that about?
Guest:He was telling you his story about how he found out he got on Saturday Night Live.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:went to the after party.
Guest:It was like, I was in the cast.
Guest:Holy shit.
Guest:I got, I got a car to take me to the after party.
Guest:Went home that night, started to try to fall asleep at like, you know, 6 AM.
Guest:Couldn't, couldn't, had to get up, uh, went over to my television, uh, and the futon, the used futon that, that I had bought, you know, cause I thought I was going to be out of there in, in, in weeks time, uh, that two years before, uh, and watched, listened to the, watched the opening credits, listened to Don Pardo said my name and
Guest:bawled my fucking eyes out.
Guest:Yeah, it's like, you know, it's just like one of those things where you're like, that's, what?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's how it went down.
Marc:It's nice to be bawling your eyes out on a used futon for good reasons.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It may be the only recorded time.
Guest:Oh, that's so funny.
Marc:that story doesn't usually end well no it does not
Guest:A very, very authentic laugh from Jason Sudeikis that, again, truly got him right in the funny bone.
Marc:Well, that's the amazing thing also about a lot of these older episodes is that, especially the comedians one, is that we, the comedians, because we got them before they were big.
Marc:I mean, we've got talks with Kevin Hart.
Guest:before he became you know I mean he was big in the like the whole premise of that interview was you were like Lil Kev you're big now but nobody knows it right like that was the whole it was like him and Russell Peters it was around this period of time where these guys were selling big arena act shows and but it was because they were targeting a very specific audience they were not global superstars hater we got a hater that's pretty old oh the hater's an amazing talk yeah I mean you know
Marc:That's what's interesting about, I think, the way the pace of media or the way it works is that everything kind of exists in this weird present, especially with people who are relevant and stars currently.
Marc:But to really hear...
Marc:the tonal difference between what they were then, you know, even, even Sudeikis, you know, he's on SNL a long time, but now, you know, he's a big star.
Marc:Hater's a big star.
Marc:And it was just a different, but I, you know, it's weird.
Marc:Maybe, maybe it's not that different.
Marc:I, I, I think I still get that tone out of people, no matter how big they are.
Marc:Like, I think that's true.
Marc:When I lock in with people, uh,
Marc:They're going to be who they are.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, absolutely.
Guest:I don't think I don't think we would still be doing the show if if you somehow got a different type of reaction from the guests who, you know, uniformly all leave feeling like they had a satisfied time.
Guest:I think it's very rare that anybody feels like, I don't know, wasn't comfortable with how I talked for an hour there.
Guest:Like, I think most people walk out and they go, wow, that was something.
Marc:And then there's the people that go, wow, that was something.
Marc:And on the car ride home, they're like, call their publicist and go, can you just take out that thing I said about what's his name?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:It's always somebody else.
Marc:The thing I said about my dad, I don't want him to hear that.
Marc:Well, there was one I can't remember who really kind of had, well, I mean, it's another conversation.
Marc:That's a bonus episode we'll never do.
Marc:Here's all the stuff that people asked us to take out.
Guest:This is called the betrayal of confidence on the full Marin.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Let me reread these and then I'll put them in the episode description.
Guest:It's episode 12, Nick Kroll.
Guest:Episode 20, Zach Galifianakis.
Guest:Episode 25, Janine Garofalo.
Guest:Episode 30, Kyle Kinane.
Guest:31, Steve Ranazzisi.
Guest:37, Bill Burr.
Guest:40, Dave Attell.
Guest:55, Rob Delaney.
Guest:60, Bob Odenkirk.
Guest:And 67, Robin Williams.
Guest:If you want to listen to Mark and other comics...
Guest:doing their thing back in the first year of this show, those are 10 ones that I would say don't miss.
Guest:So go enjoy those.
Guest:We'll talk about this again some other time, Mark, some other shows.
Guest:I think we've got some good ideas for new archive things to bring up.
Guest:And if you're ever thinking about any that you want me to unearth, I will do that.
Guest:Yeah, that was fun.
Marc:I like trying to remember things.
Yeah.