BONUS Ask Marc Anything #6
OK, here we go.
Ask Mark anything.
All right.
I will do the best I can to answer these.
Let's see.
Here we go.
What interviews made you cry more than a little?
Well, I think you can hear any time since Lynn's passing talking about grief makes me cry.
I think I cried a bit during Andrew Garfield.
I don't remember, but I remember crying.
as far back as Melanie Linsky.
A lot of times you can't hear me, but a lot of times I know that it comes up in my throat and it's not the right time to cry, but the emotions, I feel it in my heart.
But certainly it seems that during the conversations about grief, there's been some tears and certainly in just trying to keep it together after Lynn passed with those first few interviews after that, you know, I was either holding back tears or squirting them out a bit.
You've talked openly about getting sober, and I wondered if there's any insights, approaches, or skills from your sobriety journey that inform your interviewing technique.
Well, I would say that on some level, if you look at the basic premise of Alcoholics Anonymous, it's one drunk talking to another so that drunk won't drink.
Yeah.
If you start talking to somebody else about them, you're not thinking about you.
So theoretically, you're not thinking about drinking.
And maybe both of you aren't.
So the idea of service, of empathy, and of engaging with somebody else to get out of yourself was at the core of this show, even at the beginning.
And some of it was about making amends with people that I thought I had wronged or treated badly.
So there was definitely a lot...
of sobriety in that, in the beginning of the show and throughout the show and continues to be the show.
And then just talking openly about sobriety in and of itself.
So all of that, I would say that this podcast and my style of interviewing and what evolved to become this show was heavily influenced by sobriety and my experience with it.
Whatever happened to that old comic?
Come on now.
John Daly, the character he did years ago, he pops up on TV shows.
I think you could look him up.
I think he's still I've seen him in some movies here and there.
He still works, mostly acting.
And I don't think he's doing come on now anymore.
I've been listening to every new episode since the summer of 2014 and finally subscribed when you went to a cast and I'm slowly listening to the episodes I'd missed.
Is there a chance of the live WTF shows coming back?
I love the fast paced, almost chaotic late night talk show energy that those have and would like to hear a new Eddie Pepitone rant.
Well, you know, you can go find Eddie Pepitone on Instagram.
He rants constantly.
quite frequently.
But I don't know.
I don't know if we've ever thought about it.
I think there's a chance that we may do some specific one-on-one live WTFs if we can get those set up.
But I think the larger panel shows were a lot to wrangle, a lot to organize, and they served a purpose at a time.
We didn't know how to generate income and we created a separate pay site and
for the live ones.
So they were sort of, the idea was to do something special that we could make a few bucks on because at the beginning of podcasting, it was hard to make money, but also they were spectacular shows.
I don't know.
Look, I'll think about it.
I saw Two Leslie last week, and I thought you and Andrea Riceboro and the rest of the cast did a phenomenal job.
I noticed you had an executive producer credit.
Was that just a title they gave you, or did you have more to do with the film than just acting?
If you did, can you talk about it?
No, that's something they negotiate.
That's something agents ask for when you become part of it.
It becomes part of the deal as part of your sort of like, we can only offer you this much money, but we can give you an executive producer credit.
I think that's how it works.
But I didn't have anything to do with the production other than acting.
Were you bullied as a child?
Yeah, sure.
But, you know, I've been on both sides of that coin.
I've been bullied and I've been the bully.
I wouldn't say it was a regular thing that I was bullied.
Orny Adams said on the Bert Kreischer podcast last week that after the interview he had with you last year, you're back to hating him again.
Did anything specific happen between you two or is it Orny being Orny?
I don't hate Orny.
We had the podcast.
Everything's fine.
You know, like I wasn't even thinking about Orny.
If anything, my feelings about him are better, if not the same.
I never hated him.
He's just annoying.
And now I'm annoyed that he's out saying that.
Any acting gigs on the horizon?
You spoke about wanting to do some plays.
Anything in the works?
No one has offered me a play.
I might do a recurring cameo in a Melissa McCarthy Christmas movie.
That sounds kind of funny.
We'll see if it happens.
But other than that, I haven't been offered anything major.
No.
What are your thoughts on the Best Picture nominees?
Did you like Babylon?
I feel like it got snubbed.
It didn't get snubbed.
It wasn't that good.
There was a lot going on in Babylon, but the story, for me, in and of itself, had been told before and told better.
And I think he just overcompensated or something.
A lot of it was kind of gratuitous and not very interesting.
And also, you know, if you're going to integrate modern idioms into a period piece...
you better be very good at that because it's distracting and I don't care what your intention was.
I guess his idea was that not much has changed in Hollywood.
Well, that's not really true.
And actually having people say and do things as they would in current times was distracting, not unlike much of the gratuitous scenery eating in that movie on all levels.
And the thing that really fucked me up was like...
It was fine to look at.
And, you know, I could tell a lot of effort went into it, but a lot of it was just like it didn't do anything for the story.
And again, the story had been told before.
And the fact that he that when gets up to go get a cigar and, you know, he's going to kill himself or he could.
It's like he shouldn't have that ruined the entire movie for me.
I was already on the fence.
But when blows his brains out, that is a false scene.
That guy, that guy, that character would never have killed himself.
And, you know, it almost would have saved the movie for me if he had just come back with a cigar.
But because, you know, we were expecting that and we've seen, you know, it was so predictable that to go against that would have been the way to go.
And then to realize that there's no way that that character would have killed himself.
I know Nathan Lane brought it up on the show once, but in your mind, is there any real significance when you treat that an episode was a good talk, a great talk, or a great all caps talk, et cetera, or are we just reading too far into it?
No, no, there is a code to that.
I'm never going to say a bad talk, but yeah, those variations mean something.
For me, have you ever truly disliked a movie or show that a guest was promoting?
And did you have to try and navigate the conversation without saying that?
Yes, of course.
I wouldn't say... I generally can be... You know, these are... I do...
hour-long career scoping interviews.
And sometimes the only way I can get people in here is if they're out doing press for their most recent project.
And a lot of times I don't love those things, but I find something nice to say about them.
And then we get into the meat of it.
I've loved the many conversations you've had with rock and roll musicians, writers, biographers, photographers.
Is there anyone from that world you'd like to talk to that you haven't yet?
I'm sure there is.
There's plenty of people.
There's probably hundreds of people.
I just, I kind of wait to see who comes around now.
I don't know that in my mind right now that there's somebody I need to go chase with.
Years ago in your Monday email, you listed Ice Cube as a guest that Thursday, but then he wasn't on.
Why did he cancel?
Any chance he'll be on someday?
Well, you know, that was a rare case where we agreed to tape an interview the day before we were supposed to air it.
And...
We were going to tape it on Wednesday so it could air on Thursday.
We've done that once or twice.
I think Kristen Wiig, we did like that.
It was special, and we were excited, and we wanted to do it, turn it around.
Maybe they requested that.
I mean, we generally don't like to announce guests in advance if they haven't happened yet because sometimes it falls through like it did with Ice Cube.
He canceled the morning of the taping.
We never heard why, and they never tried to reschedule.
So I don't know.
We did book his son recently, though, so maybe I'll ask him.
Nice HBO special.
Do you dye that Groucho stash?
I think so.
I don't dye anything, man.
I got no dye going on.
This is all Natch.
Who is your favorite or handful of favorite film directors?
What specific film or films of theirs stands out to you?
That's a big question, and that's something I think me and Brendan can address on a separate bit of bonus content.
I'd really have to put some thought into that.
But right now, I'm kind of obsessed with Kelly Reichardt.
I just watched all of her fucking movies in a week.
So it was Oddball Comedy Fest, Shoreline Amphitheater, 22,000-plus packed, and you were opening the second set.
The crowd was visibly distracted after that intermission, and then you took the stage.
I'd never seen you, but a few minutes in, your set wasn't going well.
That's when you sat forward at the edge of your stool, leaned into the mic, and very clearly stated, this isn't going well.
22,000 people shut the fuck up, whipped their heads to the stage, saw you on a stool in the spotlight, and erupted in laughter.
You kept applying pressure, volcanic laughter from that point forward.
22,000 became laughing bobbleheads and most likely WTF lifers like I did.
I don't have a question, but that day you showed...
How to get real with an audience.
I'm a musician, but that taught me about performance in general.
Well, thank you.
Yeah, you got to make a choice.
Either you autopilot through it or you lay it down, man.
Where are we at?
Are you doing the cop buddy comedy with Ben Foster?
He seemed really into the idea.
There's no way that would be a bad movie.
No chance.
I'm game.
I'm ready.
I haven't heard from Ben's people.
Next year, I'm teaching a college course on humor.
Could you please recommend some books or movies that you think I should include on the syllabus?
There's some good history books about comedy.
My buddy Cliff Nesteroff's book, The Comedians and Nodal Sayers, I'm Dying Up Here.
But I don't know in terms of humor, you know.
Great interview with Howard Stern.
Why has he never done WTF?
Well, you know, he was booked once when his most recent book came out and we were told he canceled everything on the West Coast except for Kimmel and wasn't going to stay here for a press tour.
And I don't know how it would go.
I think it would be a tremendous challenge.
for me to stop him from hijacking the interview because it's his nature.
But I'm game.
I'm open.
I'd love to talk to him.
But he's one of those guys, he's talked almost about everything in him.
So I don't know.
I'm beginning my journey to sobriety, but I have had problems with the whole meetings thing.
I know you and many others say that meetings are an integral part of starting and maintaining sobriety, but I just can't fucking get the religious aspect of it.
If I'm an atheist with an intense anger towards anyone preaching God shit to me, which means I grew up Catholic and went to church every Sunday until I was 18, as someone who is also non-religious, how do you learn to get past this shit?
Well, I mean, look, man, I mean, the idea is...
It's about powerlessness.
It's about truly understanding.
And, and, you know, I'm powerless over alcohol.
My life has become unmanageable.
I believe the power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.
So it's really about hammering in and, and, and understanding the,
the nature of powerlessness.
And I think believing in something bigger than yourself supports that.
So it doesn't have to be God.
It's just, and it doesn't have to be anything.
You just have to, you know, understand the nature of powerlessness, powerlessness, powerlessness.
to the point where you won't drink, that you understand that you're incapable of drinking or using drugs safely or whatever it is that is your thing.
So ultimately, I just kind of let the God stuff go by.
And that's why the language in AA revolves around a higher power.
And yeah, some people who share in stuff are God-y people, but the higher power idea...
is only to enable and sort of kind of be the foundation of you believing in your bones that you're powerless over alcohol, right?
And that you don't have control.
So if you put something bigger than you or transcendent or mystical or even if it's just the universe or the AA groups themselves as a higher power or it's just something that
somehow supports the fact that you are not God, you do not have the power, you do not have control over almost anything, but certainly not over drinking.
So look, you can get hung up on that, but just really ask yourself, is there nothing in those meetings that you're getting that are helpful to you?
Because if there is, you should go to them.
Because a lot of people get turned off by the God thing or whatever, and it's just their disease talking to a degree, and eventually you go out and you drink.
Or you just stay sober without it.
People get sober without AA, but take what you can use and leave the rest.
No one's talking about Jesus.
There's no priests in there.
You don't have to go to confession.
You do, but it's with your sponsor and it's a very different experience.
I just think that, you know, figure out a way to work the steps without God.
It's possible, dude.
And it's up to you.
Make it what you want.
But just really wait out, dude, before you bolt because of the God thing that you're not getting anything out of those meetings because you should be.
Yeah.
You know, just, you know, put that thing aside.
You can do it.
It's not Jesus.
It's not Catholic.
You know, it's vague.
Have you kept in touch with either Opie or Anthony since the breakup?
What do you think of Anthony's descent into alt-right politics and bigotry, especially as of lately?
I don't talk to Opie or Anthony.
I just did Jim and Sam, so I saw Norton lately.
I mean, Anthony was always on the cusp of that.
What do you mean, what do I think about it?
It's not great.
You know, it's scary and it's weird and it's disconcerting.
But, you know...
What am I going to do?
I just finished the new special and having seen the set in Chicago in April, I remember there being some old head callbacks that got cut out for HBO.
Can you talk specifically about how you edited or lengthened particular jokes?
Do you sometimes just get tired of material?
So by the time the taping comes around, it doesn't feel as fresh and you cut.
Does the newer stuff tend to stay in by virtue of being new?
No, it's not really about new.
I don't know why things fall to the wayside and why things stick or don't stick.
But, you know, I was doing two-hour sets up until a week before, hour and a half, and I just had to cut it down and tighten it up and see what served the through line and what served the hour itself and what was redundant.
But no, it wasn't a matter of being new.
Some things just get lost because I don't say them a couple nights and I forget.
Any chance of a return to Reservation Dogs next season?
I don't know.
I don't know where that character can go, but I'm willing.
Yeah.
A few years ago, you mentioned accidentally sending a text about a famous couple you knew to one of the two in that couple.
It was a bit vague and you wouldn't mention their names.
Can you say who it is now?
Yeah, it was Jeff Baina, Aubrey Plaza's husband.
Would you ever get into script writing for film stage or otherwise?
What would you want to write?
I don't like writing.
I've written TV scripts.
I've written other stuff, but I don't like writing scripts.
You know, I co-wrote with my friend Sam for the TV pilot, but he did most of the script writing.
I did a lot of story stuff.
I don't like writing.
You probably already talked about this and I missed it.
Why the shift to eating vegetarian right now?
Do you think you'll continue to move forward like this?
No fish either?
Are you balancing your macros?
I do.
And I was a veg for 25 years and I'm curious about the protein carb balance.
I'm trying to get the hang of it.
I do have a basic understanding of what I need to eat.
Look, it's not a lifestyle change.
I just, you know, after the colonoscopy, I had a clean gut and I thought I'd try it.
And I'm just kind of going day to day with it to see if it, uh,
helps my cholesterol, which it did profoundly, fairly quickly.
So I might stick with it.
I don't know.
Did you and Brendan consciously choose marketing to wrestling bros to take the focus off the older or medium older women fan base?
No.
We have the opportunity to do bonus material.
Brendan has been a lifelong wrestling fan.
So this is an idea he came up with.
And I said, okay, let's do it.
It
It's no marketing.
It's just Brendan embracing a passion of his that he's had since childhood and bringing me into it.
There was no calculus around it.
If you could travel back in time to any era in any location, what and where would you go?
I don't know.
I'd kind of like to know what early 70s New York was like, because I hear it was rough and weird and bad, but I'm kind of curious about it.
But I also am curious about mid-70s Albuquerque.
I find your conversations about acting to be really insightful.
Have you read Isaac Butler's The Method?
I tried, but, you know, I just got bored.
I got bored in the Russia part.
Maybe I'll try again.
What advice do you have for someone moving to L.A.
soon other than not to move there?
Well, have a plan and hopefully have, you know, a way of beginning to execute it.
I wouldn't come out here with just, you know, kind of nebulous and romantic expectations.
But if you know why you're coming here and you're ready to engage that and you have an angle or a friend or an in or a class, don't just come here with a romantic notion about L.A.
and what you want to do here.
Have a plan.
even if it's just a short-term one.
How do you stay motivated to create when the burden of coming up with ideas is on you?
How do you keep yourself focused?
I get on stage and talk.
You talked briefly with Stern about meeting your heroes.
What was the absolute worst human being you met, who you admired previously, but their attitude ruined it?
Um...
I don't know if that's happened to me.
You know, sometimes it doesn't meet your expectations, but I've never really felt that somebody was, oh yeah, Robert Fripp on an airplane once was a dick to me for no reason.
And I was barely a fan, but it kind of, I remembered it.
Um, but he apologized after, you know, I just said, Hey, you're Robert Fripp.
And he's like, you know, he was just snotty.
And I don't know.
Then after on the way out, you know, he asked me to help him get a thing out of the overhead.
And he said, Hey, I'm sorry, man.
I'm just going through a thing with a woman.
And I'm like, okay.
So it worked out.
Um, did you get any AEW merch during your mini series?
I hope Tony Khan hooked me up.
He did not.
Uh, last record I picked up.
I picked up a Yardbirds record that I'd never really listened to.
And I'm surprised because maybe if I had listened to it, I would have felt more connected to Jeff Beck because I didn't know a lot of their stuff.
Roger the Engineer.
And it was a new version of it and it had bonus material.
And it's fucking awesome.
Have you kicked the nicotine lozenge habit?
If so, how?
Yeah, I kicked it years ago.
I was off nicotine for three years and now I'm smoking cigars again.
I'm all fucked up.
I don't want to start back with the lozenges, but I got to get off them.
So it took me a long time, but I just stopped.
But here I am.
When you were starting out your career, was there another comic who offered advice or helped with material so you had a better idea of how to craft your material?
Was it just a dog-eat-dog world and you were on your own?
Well, you know, you come up with a crew.
I don't know that anyone helped me or offered me advice or any of that.
But, you know, I definitely had peers at the beginning who were all sort of—we were all just trying shit.
But it was not, you know, we were supportive, but we were all kind of on our own.
So I don't really have that.
But, you know,
We were definitely a group of us, though.
There was definitely a generational thing, both in New York and in Boston.
They're, you know, running around, you know, eating in the middle of the night with Jeff Ross, Silverman, Louie, Todd Berry.
Nick DiPaolo was around, you know, Atel.
You know, we were kids and we were doing it.
But it wasn't like we'd sit around and help each other write jokes, really.
Occasionally someone would tag something.
But there are comics that do that.
Not me.
You take poetry seriously.
Do you still find it worth your attention?
Whose work do you find yourself drawn to?
I haven't picked up some poems lately.
I was thinking about picking some up the other day.
Yeah, right when you read poetry... Oh, yeah, I read The Dry Salvages, T.S.
Eliot, because I got an email from...
Donald Fagan, actually.
And he sort of said that my special was my wasteland.
And then I remembered how much I like the dry salvages.
And I went and read bits and pieces of T.S.
Eliot's work.
But if you read a genius poet, it completely shifts your entire perception almost immediately.
Any experience listening to Rory Gallagher, one of my favorite guitarists ever?
If familiar, hope it's positive.
If not, start with his work in taste and just...
Keep going in order.
Yeah, I've got... I went out and bought Rory's first few albums.
And I like it.
You know, I didn't know his stuff.
You know, I'd always seen him around on the cover of magazines and...
All kinds of shit.
But I ended up finding an original copy of the self-titled first record.
And I've got Deuce.
And I've got Live in Europe.
And that, you know, I mean, Taste, I don't even know where that comes in.
I don't even see it on this list.
But that's 71 and 72.
And they're pretty great.
Kind of amazing.
When I saw your latest tour, the show easily went over 90 minutes and you referenced you went long many nights before tightening for HBO.
Will you be releasing any of that extra material on a future album or post on WTF Plus?
Well, I might keep working that material and it might show up somewhere.
You mentioned before your special came out that there was a bit you were workshopping during your tour that didn't land until the night of the taping and it just worked.
Would you ever be willing to share what that joke was?
Oh, I mean, it was just there was a couple of beats that happened that had not happened before.
And a couple of things took a real long time to finesse.
But then that night, like I'd only done that joke about about Lynn, about it being the her dying was the worst day of my life.
And I'm sure hers, too.
I'd only done that once before.
And it was sort of a weird joke to do.
But but I loved it.
And the callback to her being a bird during the sort of Ireland story.
I'd never done that before.
are you embarrassed or ashamed at how many severed relationships you had in the comedy scene?
Do you feel responsible for that?
Was it insecurity, jealousy?
What made it all so toxic?
And is it changing now?
There's not that many severed relationships, really.
There's probably two or three.
I was just a bitter, angry person.
And a lot of times when I brought those relationships up with the people I thought I had them with, they didn't even know what I was talking about.
But there's only, I would say, two or three
permanently damaged relationships.
Everything else is okay.
Yeah, sure, it was insecurity.
Maybe it was jealousy.
I was responsible to a degree.
It wasn't so toxic.
I was just toxic.
Yeah, it's definitely changing now.
I kind of miss hearing Mark do ads.
Is something wrong with me?
You're on the bonus.
Well, you can still go listen to the ads.
Have you ever interviewed or tried to interview any of the remaining members of the Grateful Dead?
They're all pretty old now, so it would be cool to hear you get some stories out of any one of them before they're gone.
I don't know.
Bill, Bobby makes me a little uncomfortable.
I've met him a couple times.
Phil, I interviewed years ago.
I don't know how he's doing health-wise.
I don't think it's going to happen.
What was it like meeting Brooke Shields?
It was great.
And I think I'm going to interview her thoughts about Buckethead.
I don't know much about him.
You know, I've listened to a few albums he's played on.
I think he's a good guitar player.
Who are some of your favorite female vocalists?
Um, I don't know.
Who have I been listening to recently?
I like Bobby Gentry a lot.
I got that new Waysblood album.
She's good.
I like, uh, Sharon Van Etten that she's pretty good.
I enjoy listening to her.
Um, uh,
I've tried to... I was listening to Lana Del Rey a little bit, trying to get the hang of that.
She seems to be very good.
I like Ariana Grande.
She seems to be able to sing really well.
Miley Cyrus kills me.
Dolly Parton I enjoy.
I don't know.
There's probably more.
I have to really think about it some more.
I'm re-listening to the Paul Thomas Anderson episode, and you say, what's the deal with you and Ricky Jay?
Did you not care for Ricky Jay, or did you know him personally?
No, he's fine with me.
I just thought he was always an odd presence.
When fans see you on the street, would you prefer they leave you alone or say hello?
Hey, man, you know, do what you got to do.
Most of my fans are pretty polite.
Bill Burr made a movie.
Are you going to have him on the show to promote it?
It's been years since he's been on and you two have a great chemistry.
Maybe.
I saw him the other night.
You mentioned your Auschwitz joke to Mark Summers, but stopped short of telling him the joke.
Curious if this was because he didn't seem like the type of brother who'd get the joke given he had family there.
No, I just didn't want to burn the joke because I don't know that the special had dropped yet.
Over the years, WTF has transitioned from being a comedian interview show, upon which its reputation was built, to a general celebrity interview show.
Has this caused any resentment among comedians?
I don't know.
I've always been impressed with your ability to develop rapport with guests, and you build a sense of comfort and connection through active listening skills and appropriate sharing of your own experience.
Your self-disclosure works to validate your guest's experience rather than pivot the conversation back to yourself.
These qualities really help to open up the dialogue and often promote greater emotional vulnerability when approaching more sensitive topics.
As a mental health counselor myself, these are essential qualities of an effective therapist.
In an alternate timeline...
where you did not pursue comedy, do you feel as though counseling may have been an appropriate path for you, either in mental health or addiction recovery?
I don't think so.
But I show up for people more now and in a different way.
And I'm always available to talk about recovery.
I wouldn't say always, but I will.
But I don't think it would have been my life.
In a recent episode, I can't remember which, you mentioned that you never watched the Deadwood TV series.
I was surprised to hear this knowing that you interviewed Ian McShane years ago, having never seen his best work.
Is there any chance you will watch the series?
We never interviewed.
I never interviewed Ian McShane.
How have you been feeling having to relive the loss of Lynn in your very active press tour for your incredible show?
Yeah, you know, it's been okay.
You know, there have been moments, but it's been okay.
Do you go into interviews thinking this is the only time you'll ever interview the guest so you can be bold in what you ask?
I listened to Matthew McConaughey on WTF and on another podcast, and you got the better interview because you seem more willing to push him out of his comfort zone.
Yeah, sometimes you got to do that, you know, because like, what do you, you just want the, you don't want the canned stuff.
You don't want him to just run his hustle on you.
Have you ever in your adult life worn a Halloween costume?
If so, what?
I have not actually.
You've alluded to this briefly, but do you have any sense of how Lynn's family feels about you talking about her publicly and in your special?
You've done a lot to express awareness of her work and you obviously speak of her in incredible terms, but I'm curious if her family feels the same way.
Look, when she died, I was being approached by press because it was a very public phenomenon.
And one of her cousins said, maybe ease up on the public grieving or addressing it because there's a lot of people that are going through that.
And I thought that was correct after I got kind of angry at first because it was my experience.
But again, I am a public person and some people aren't.
And they should be allowed the space without that pushing into it.
But yeah, I have no idea how they felt about the special.
And I do wonder, and it was a concern of mine, but I thought I balanced it well and I made the choices I made.
So far, the only Sam Lipsight novel I read is Hark, which I absolutely loved.
Which of his novels would you recommend I read next?
Read all of them.
But I would go from Hark, then maybe read Homeland, and then The Ask.
There's two collections of stories that are good.
But I would save the subject, Steve, for last.
That one's a little more abstract than there's other ones, and it might be interesting to read it after you've read everything else.
Okay, there you go.
Thanks for your questions.