Tag Archives: comedy

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2012 – The Second Presidential Debate

Politics is something that I tend to loathe to comment on in this space.  I have my political philosophy, and I suppose the intrepid readers do too – and I am sure it can be inferred from other posts in this space on more frivilous topics.  That being said, if I am going to be commenting on television, then it would seem like a bit of a dodge not to comment on the most crackling television program of the last week.  Yeah yeah yeah, I skipped writing after Debate #1, but that was dull as dishwater, the moderator put forth almost no effort, and essentially we were forced to choose between a boor and a corpse in terms of “who won”.  But anyway, some random thoughts to unpack – if you want some more horse racey sort of commentary you can find it in a lot of places, I’ll point to one of my old classmates, for a thoughtful take – as the stuff on TV commentariat largely is pretty useless.

  1. There is something eerily sexualized about the way that commentariat and writers discuss things like Presidential debates.  It’s not just that most of the commentary covering this stuff treats it like a sporting event, where lying and shaky command of the facts is seen as tools in the toolbox, but essentially the Beltway media is just looking for glorious, Russell Crowe like displays of machismo.  When Mitt Romney bullied Jim Lehrer – fresh out of his crypt for this glorious event – look at how weak kneed the Chris Matthews, Mark Halperin population was.  They wanted to feel his muscles basically, and indeed last night’s show the discussion came to Obama’s feats of strength.  I have no idea how a woman could ever win this office in my lifetime when the press and media (and I suppose their readers) are so entranced by locker room behavior.
  2. Indeed, one of Mitt Romney’s early salvos, hushing  the President with “You’ll get your chance in a moment.  I’m still speaking.” had a crystal clear parenthetical “boy” at the end of it.  It stood out in its racist stank in a way that really put us in the George Wallace wayback machine.  Obviously the media did not mention this – since we’ve solved racism in this country for good.
  3. The president let some good hanging curveballs go by still – indeed when the question was posed about the biggest misconception about you, I was secretly hoping he’d say “That I’m a Kenyan Muslim”.  But a lot of it lies in his own brand image, as some sort of political Shane who rode into town and saw these two parties lying there.  His team has always marketed him as something of a blank slate, who is not of a political party and whose personal awesomeness would win the day.  He was better than he was in the first debate, but whenever one watches him or listens to his oratory, it is hard to see why he bothers rolling out of bed to do this job.  There was the moment of genuine anger when his opponent tried to score political points with the Libya story which is still ongoing – but largely he was going through the motions, albeit much more deftly than two weeks ago.
  4. Of course the President also repeated a couple of debunked memes, pandering to deficit fetishists despite Social Security’s good condition and the data largely arguing against structural unemployment (that folks just need new training for these industries that can’t find good people).  Building on #3, it is fascinating that over 3 years his most impassioned speech was to advocate for a Grand Bargain where the safety net gets snipped in exchange for solving the deficit – that’s inspirational for you.
  5. It is fascinating how constipated actual political debate is.  I know a lot of people who put the socialist leftist moniker on the President – which clearly shows a near total ignorance of civics classes in middle school.  But what sort of issues are being discussed?  We had two candidates discussing coal, and drilling for oil, while totally ignoring climate change.  The parties agree on the drug war, and on the unfettered freedom to round up Muslims and put them in shipping crates in Guantanamo, and even on making a fetish of reducing the deficit regardless of how the economy’s actual output is doing (or the actual cost of money in 2012).  Last week, the vice presidential candidates were basically arguing over who gets to crush Iranian people economically more.  Hell, the last day of the DEMOCRATIC National Convention was more or less dedicated to ghoulishly spiking Osama Bin Laden’s head into the end zone.  I can see the argument that the country is more partisan than ever politically – though much of that whitewashes the rest of American history – but the notion that the two parties are really that different veers into George Carlin’s illusion of choice.
  6. When these debates are entertaining, it is clearly in spite of itself.  Yesterday, Gawker posted the Memorandum of Understanding governing these debates (which Romney summarily went back on early on) and what you see basically are folks who are desperate to avoid entertainment or any sort of spontaneity.  You see debate formats like the Jim Lehrer snoozer or the faux town hall meeting last night, and they are stage managed so precisely and the topics so limited (though one man blessedly brought up gun control which floored me) that perhaps just judging the manliness of each candidate is the only thing that you can use to grade the debate.  The Debate Commission’s job seems to be  to stamp out the edges of the area to debate basically.
  7. Salon’s Alex Pareene has some good ideas on what would make things better.  Of course this will never happen, since once again both parties are trying to discourage close listening of what is being said.
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The Smartest Man in the World

As we have touched on in this space from time to time, comedy podcasting has started to become a more vital part of my commuting and listening rotation.  Indeed, like how now is the best time ever for television (providing you know where to look) – the lower barriers to entry have allowed comedians to find audiences with more efficiency than ever before.  Yeah, the podcasts themselves do not make a ton of money, but the exposure is invaluable.  It is the digital version of musicians giving away singles in promotions – maybe you’ll want to see them perform.  Indeed, as card carrying fans of Marc Maron’s podcast, we piggy-backed on it to see him do stand-up near our little hovel here, and he pointed out how new it is for people to come to a show to see him.

However, as a vehicle to promote his comedy – Greg Proops’ Smartest Man in the World podcast might be the one that does it the best.  While Dana Gould fashions a fairly produced program, and other podcasts rely on an interview, chat show type of format – Proops’ show is simplicity itself – he comes up before a live audience, and away he goes.  For a solid hour plus, he just talks – when in Dublin, he might talk about his last time performing in Ireland or going to a chipper that did not have chips.  You see the improv chops he showed on TV in his most famous incarnation – unlike his stand up set (which we saw), here there is a lot of crowd interaction, and a lot of just riffing on stuff, including current events and politics of today.  (put simply, he is no William Kristol, let’s just say) But politics is merely a component – no more a component than boinkable rock bands, how the band Rush became more boinkable due to Geddy Lee’s love of Negro League baseball, Caravaggio’s love of donkey phalluses in poetry, and hating on Phil Collins.  (for what its worth, Proops himself when he makes fun of songs sounds like a credible Elvis Costello impersonator).  Overall, this is the rawest of the podcasts I can think of – no guests, no other ballasts for the entertainment, but also no recycling of material and not just performing stand up.  If Maron is the best overall in the medium, Proops’ is simply the funniest.

 

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The Dana Gould Hour

In the increasingly crowded field of comedy podcasts, finally one of the veterans of the well, not just the “alternative” comedy movement (think Janeane Garofalo, Patton Oswalt, Comedy Death Ray), but also comedy in general, has joined the podcast derby.  I don’t know if you know Dana Gould by name – he wrote and executive produced The Simpsons for a time, and has been a touring comic of consequence since the late 80s.  Long a favorite of the comedy nerd set, Gould has brought some of his dark, twisted appeal to The Data Gould Hour, a new bi-weekly podcast which is actually one of the better put together outfits among comedy podcasts.  Obviously there are a lot of awesome podcasts out there, but when you are doing one every two weeks – instead of daily or twice a week, there is some refinement that is expected – and Gould certainly aims in that direction.  His first two episodes have featured a large cast with other comics like Eddie Pepitone, Paul Greenberg and a couple I can’t remember.  So far, through two episodes – it is a very strong entry into the field – the show is a deft mix of Gould riffing on topics that interest him, and dark vignettes that alternate between hilarious, uncomfortable, and uncomfortably hilarious.  A couple of typical examples:

  • Gould talks about the Beach Boys as the American competitor to the Beatles and goes over differences, including highlighting their manager/father Murry Wilson, who seems particularly creepy in the stage mom genre.  He then plays actual footage of Wilson badgering his son Brian during the recording of “Help Me Rhonda” and you see what a bully creep he is.  So then Gouls reads letters Murry wrote to Brian, with a cherry musical backdrop. “you did not just betray your band, but your family …”  The bit takes on the tone of the Rodney Dangerfield scenes in Natural Born Killers and it is both funny, and totally messed up.
  • A skit where Gould plays a father on the beach and the thoughts going through his head – reflecting on dolphins and then suddenly taking a very strange turn.  Also dark, but the buildup is very funny.

But then there is more everyday observation – where Gould and Pepitone speculate on Woody and Soon-Yi and how the meeting between Woody and Mia Farrow must have gone, and then expounding onto their own experiences when you get caught red handed doing something which you legitimately cannot sugarcoat.  There is also some fun riffing on the sorts of distraction Martin Luther King might have faced in writing his famous speech. (“I have some STEAM …”)  Not all the bits work of course (the story about meeting Paul McCartney does not seem to lead anywhere and the punchline is not worth the wait), but I am grateful Gould is on board.  I laughed really hard at some of this, and I don’t do that often.

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The Adventures of Tintin

It is interesting how loaded a term Steven Spielberg’s name is at this point.  Doubtlessly one of the very greatest filmmakers alive, Spielberg’s canon is so well known that it is a waste of disk space on WordPress’s servers for me to rattle them off.  He has been able to touch a cultural nexus, the intersection of mass culture and actual legitimate art, in a way that only folks like The Beatles, Kanye West, Picasso have been able to do.  His thrillers and science fiction movies of the 70s and 80s are part of the tapestry of our youth (well “our” if you are my age).  What is striking about The Adventures of Tintin is not that it is his first animated piece, or that it is his skillful adaptation of a children’s literary classic – but that it is a “Spielberg movie”, and one realizes with a start just how long it has been since he has actually MADE one of these things.  Minority Report and Munich are superb movies, but throwback entertainments they are not.  Instead, we have Sean Connery stepping into Bond in 1980, or Michael Jordan scoring 55 points wearing Chuck Person’s number at Madison Square Garden.  Okay, okay, it’s not quite THAT good – but it tickles the Indiana Jones receptors just the same.

Tintin is a journalist of some repute in France presumably in some time that is not precisely modern  He procures a model ship at a local market after sitting for a portrait (a wink to Herge fans no doubt) and coming home.  Meanwhile a pickpocket seems to be working his magic in the crowded square, and of course Tintin’s loyal companion Snowy, is barking to try (unsuccessfully) to get his master’s attention.  In any case, while trying to see what his dog wants, Tintin is approached by a couple of shadowy figures who seem very interested in the ship.  Despite the sorts of ominous warnings that movie characters immemoriam have neglected, Tintin brings it home, and suddenly narrowly avoids some bullet fire.  The model boat breaks and something rolls behind the desk – Snowy seems to have an idea.

Snowy is one of the real delights of the film, and Spielberg takes so much care in producing him.  We’ve heard dogs bark in movies like Snowy does, but how often do we hear the animated dog slobber, or that tinny sound that sounds like microphone feedback dogs make as they are entering or departing a whimper?  Spielberg doesn’t have to do this – it’s a barely noticeable detail but you appreciate that it’s there.  Snowy often times seems like the smartest organism in the movie – and the issues a dog has communicating its brilliance to us luddite humans is felt acutely here.  In any case, the model ship and the attempt to take it leads Tintin to investigate and takes him to the Haddock Mansion where he spots another model ship.  Could the two be related?  Could the need to find the ships result in an adventure where Tintin is trying to outwit the bad guys?  Well, that’s entertainment for you.

The movie rushes headlong into the adventures as Tintin, Snowy and a key figure go from land to sea to a quaint notion of a Moroccan port.  There are chases, fights and an opera singer with a key power for a key time.  All of this is handled with such easy precision that it’s invisible.  Spielberg is just such an easy craftsman in putting this stuff together.  The animation, of the motion capture sort that was used in The Polar Express is handled here in a way where you just sort of take it for granted.  The movie is shot in that crappy 3-D technology, but Spielberg does not linger on it – it makes the chase scenes more visceral, but it is surprisingly unobtrusive and the colors still pop.  Spielberg has such command of the medium and storytelling that you end up focused on the latter.  The resolution is totally enjoyable in that way that ties up the loose ends and leaves room for umpteen sequels – I almost laughed at how it set the deal up.

If there is a weakness in the movie it might have been the choice to go 3-D motion capture.  The movie works and Spielberg is too good to make it a distraction, but the clear line technique of Herge is such a raison d’etre for the book series that abandoning it is a curious decision.  Can it be Tintin if you don’t use the drawing style?  I don’t know – so Spielberg is not gunning for authenticity on that front.  That said, he has created a fun entertainment that is hard not to enjoy and feel like your money and time were not wasted.  It’s not his best movie since Catch Me if You Can, but it is his most Spielbergian.

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Beavis and Butthead

They’ve returned, and not a moment too soon.  Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butthead in 1994 was one of the great satires on television.  The show – so well known as to not really require recapping, followed its namesakes through their adventures as terribly underwhelming high school students in a place that bears an awfully close resemblance to Texas.  In a way Judge was a genius in how he had a show lampooning disaffected teenagers hiding in plain view nestled in the middle of MTV’s lineup.  The particular inspiration was that the show managed to both have inside jokes while the outside of the jokes stayed funny as well.  Even if you just wanted to laugh at the hijinks of these kids, there was plenty of meat.

A scant fifteen years later, the show is back as MTV ordered 22 episodes.  The format has been largely kept.  The difference is really in the video commentaries.  As any snarkpot could tell you, MTV doesn’t play videos anymore.  Indeed, with the Web, why would artists need videos on MTV?  As such MTV no longer has a current cheap video library, so more often, we are left with the boys commenting on Jersey Shore episodes.  This is a dropoff from the first version of the show – lets face it, Teen Mom has plenty to mock, but not enough actual cheesiness to be able to hoot and holler.  The reality shows are more just generally pathetic than a satirical laugh a minute.

Fortunately though, while the video interludes are no longer inspired, the stories themselves still are.  As has usually been the case, the episodes involve taking a kernel of an idea – for instance when the fellas learn about the idea of asking a father for his daughter’s hand – and riding it to a very logical conclusion, or at least logical if you are as stupid as Beavis and Butthead are.  It is a savage view of teenagers and a world borne entirely from consuming television and shitty fast food – and in its spare visual style and story lines – the point of view is so sharply seen.  In particular, the episode where they get inspired by a certain popular vampire movie is just ridiculously brilliant.

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Breaking Bad – Season 1

As the curtain goes up on Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad on AMC, we see a middle aged man in his underwear driving an RV frantically with a passed out partner, both in gas masks.  The RV hits a ditch, the man gets out takes out his camera, doffs his mask and we see a desperate message.  Is it a confession?  Is it a suicide note?  The desperation, the pace has been set up.  Yeah, we’re not sure why we are here, but the moment is gripping.  Hell yeah, THIS is a freakin’ television show.

Desperation is what crackles throughout the abbreviated first season of Breaking Bad.  There is the desperation of Walter White (Bryan Cranston), the old man we left off in the ditch back in the first paragraph.  He is a chemistry teacher in his 50s, in a loving marriage, but with a lot of bills stacking up.  As he gets a dicey cancer diagnosis, he looks at his chemistry background and access to chemicals, sees the bonanza from crystal meth – even has a DEA agent brother-in law to give him a ride to do some research, and suddenly voila!  A job opportunity.  At this stage in the game, Walter gives off a man just beaten up by life – between his bills, his family stresses and his own disease.

Desperation also oozes out of Jesse, Walter’s old student who has been put out of the meth business by the DEA.  Or at least he was, until Walter finds him and makes the offer.  One of the great pleasures of the show is the humor in their exchanges.  There is a definite comedy team sort of chemistry going on, but the comedy comes as they stumble from desperate position into another.  It is one thing to start the meth business game, but how do you find customers?  Jesse can do that, but it involves dangerous folks – folks who could rough Jesse up good.  Suddenly Walter is in with these thugs who are trying to steal his formula – or even worse, kill him.  So there is another desperate situation.  But what if this gets resolved – what next?  Bodies don’t just disappear, do they?  Like any good thriller, these sorts of conflicts are dealt with at the most elemental, ground level.  We see the decisions Walter and Jesse make, and they all make sense – I am not sure I could be a meth dealer, but if I were …

The desperation is at home too.  Skylar, Walter’s wife, loves him and wants to take care of him.  But he runs off for hours at a time.  What can she do?  The family is running low on funds.  She has to worry about him and a son with Cerebral Palsy.  She is desperate too – and the family interactions are true and tense.  Everybody here loves each other, but the equipment to communicate it just isn’t there – but how hard they try.  Even Jesse is desperate, trying to reconcile with his parents, and trying to at least show something for his little brother to mentor.

This show does even more than I’ve hinted though.  We see the desperation certainly, but we also see Walter dealing with it, and working his way around both his domestic life and his newfound criminal one.  How would we deal with his situation?  Would we be able to make correct moral decisions?  Would the moral compass shift?  It’s easy to see Vito Corleone as a good man when you are just in his shoes after all.  Right now, clearly the groundwork is being laid, but especially towards the end of the season – we maybe see the birth of a man who is not exactly where Walter saw this story headed.  This is the sort of show that bursts with life and energy – something Scorsese would have directed perhaps … it is just a lot of fun.

 

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Forgetting Sarah Marshall

From the beginning in his naked, pathetic, sorrowful breakup with the woman in the film’s title, Peter Bretter, as played by Jason Segel is one of the biggest sad sacks in movie comedy history.  When Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell) walks out of his life, he is crestfallen – and many other synonyms.  Sure, he tries to go on dates – he meets other girls, but somehow it ends up with Peter crying pathetic tears – as Dan Patrick might put it, drooling the drool of regret into the pillow of remorse.  So Peter tries to go to Hawaii to forget about things – perhaps to be able to get out of this rut.  But alas, when he arrives, somehow Sarah and her rock star fiance are in the same hotel.

Of course this is all the setup for a formula movie, and in its way, as written by Segel and directed by Nicholas Stoller, Forgetting Sarah Marshall IS a formula comedy.  It is also the funniest of the movies to roll out of the Judd Apatow hit factory, and perhaps the best.  While the film lacks the sweetness and higher emotional stakes of The 40-Year Old Virgin, it amply compensates with one accomplished comic character and performance after another.  The credit has to be shared between Segel’s screenplay, which gives this gallery of players such good dialogue and material to work with, and the actors themselves who bring exactly the right note time after time.  Actors over and over again seem to indicate that comedy is at least as hard an art form as performing drama, and this film provides evidence through and through.

As we pick up where we left Peter, yes, Sarah is in the same hotel with her new fiance, the rock star Aldius Snow (Russell Brand).  Snow is your archetypal clueless rock star with his tics insecurities and ego – he is like a creature from another planet.  Russell Brand of course took this character and made another movie based on him (Get Him to the Greek), and he is very very funny.  Obviously the song he sings in the movie is ridiculous – but if it wasn’t for the lyrics, it would be a totally plausible rock song.  Indeed, Aldius Snow is a totally plausible rock star – and of course that is why he is so hilarious.

This development does nothing to help Peter to move on from the Sarah relationship.  However, the resort is much more than just them.  There is the lovely woman behind the desk Rachel (Mila Kunis), and the weirdly chatty bartender, and the spaced out surf instructor (Paul Rudd, of course walking through), and a waiter who when a great star like Aldius Snow is in his presence, does what one suspects many waiters do.  All of these characters are given quirks and depth – they all have chances to be funny and quirky.  The resort becomes its own microcivilization – Peter soon becomes not just a guest but a friend of these people.  All of the actors in these roles bring the exact tone, whether it be luminousness with Kunis, Jonah Hill’s awkward creepiness or even Kristen Bell in the thankless position as the pill (Segel’s screenplay is wise with her and gives her more humanity than just being an evil harridan).  Even skype conversations between Peter and his brother (Bill Hader) are written perfectly.

At the head of the class is Segel himself as Peter Bretter.  Bretter, as the first paragraph of this tome would indicate, really needs a break.  His sad sack act, especially as a counterpoint to all the happier folks around him in Hawaii, is crucial – and Segel is walking a tightrope here.  He has to take this character, drive him as far down towards pathetic as possible without compromising the likability for us as an audience to root for him.  His Eeyore act is what gives the movie its essence – a place for all these forces of nature to work.  He is a terrific straight man here, and as the movie works through its inevitable steps, it never stops being funny and effective, right down to the realization of Peter’s career dreams.

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This Has To Be Funny

In a lot of ways, it is kind of heartening.  I am sure those who know the WTF Podcast by now (and if you don’t you should start to) – who know Marc as a clever, incisive, deeply troubled empathetic dude who has become one of the best interviewers around.  But is the comic-now-interviewer still on point as a comic?  Fortunately, we don’t have to worry about that.  This Has to be Funny, Maron’s new album is a tour in the head of a guy who has seen a lot, but ever so uneasily getting acclimated with having some inner peace.

For Maron fans, this won’t be terribly new.  He has given versions of many of these anecdotes on various chat show appearances.  Indeed the voices in his head and his truthful sound check are well honed and funny.  His material these days is less overtly political, and in some ways more universal in its dealing with life problems.  His description of the addiction of texting while driving is particularly funny “At least if you are driving drunk, SOMEONE is driving the car …”.  He also touches upon his own family and the sort of communication issues they have – and certainly in the laughs there is some insights about the trouble that every family has – to some degree or another.  The bits are all good of course – although the best one for me was Marc’s description of his visit to the Creation Museum.  Those who know Marc’s background in politics can sort of see the direction the bit is going a mile away – and Maron does not disappoint.  However, he is not without empathy for the true believers.  Unlike Bill Maher, he does not belittle people who do that sort of thing – although certainly he is bemused by it – but when he lays out where True Believer Christians are on his scale of annoying relative to a demographic such as vegans, I couldn’t help but chuckle knowingly.

The real trait that permeates through Maron’s comedy is vulnerability and a certain emotional nakedness.  Chris Rock – one of my very favorites – is a virtuoso at the sort of high level “who are we as a society” stuff that the auteur comics like Pryor did so well.  However, he has a shield from his life – what is Chris Rock like at home – his views are clear, but I am not sure how personal it is.  Rock is not the only one who is like this surely.  Jerry Seinfeld, Robin Williams, and even George Carlin all had those sorts of walls between the comedic persona and the man – while no value judgment on the comedy, the gig feels like a costume that they take off when they leave the stage.  For Marc Maron, it’s all out there.  He has struggled a lot with his inner self – and the struggle is there visibly.  His stories and jokes are funny, but he provides his material a sort of autobiographical urgency that is interesting.  The bits feel like they really happened to Marc in the way that he told them – it feels like HIS voice and HIS life, that we are looking into his life.  The intimacy in his work is striking for a comic – it is hard not to feel like you know him a bit more than you do other guys after listening to him at work.  Maron’s album, while not transcendent necessarily, is very solidly funny, and I am glad he is doing well – and that I care about how he is doing might sort of be the entire point.

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Louie

I have to admit that I cannot review this show without admitting that I am a huge Louis CK fan.  Is he the funniest man working today?  That is certainly debatable – but with Chris Rock on the sideline for the time being, Louie is definitely in any conversation or bucket you’d put Aziz Ansari in for instance.  Louie had his time in the sun with the fairly uneven but interesting HBO sitcom Lucky Louie.  That show might have had a good run if it did not get canceled after its only season – but fortunately it led to FX’s series Louie - which is the best comedy show on television right now.  What Louie CK has managed to fashion in the show is something fairly similar to what he has fashioned in his own comedy – a mixture of family observational comedy and absurdist touches, deftly alternating between very high art and well … something else.

The show is an interesting format.  At first, it bears a resemblance to Seinfeld in its early days – Louie intersperses the acting part of the deal with some cuts of stand-up performance.  However, the comedy is not meant to be a wrapper necessarily for the action (which here is sketch not true sitcom) – it’s just a chance to hear him be funny.  Louie is a virtuoso with timing – his everyday observation is funny in a way that can only be fully appreciated in person.  However, the meat of the deal is in the sketches.  What is striking about the sketches – which are directed and edited by Louie himself, is how high quality they are.  The original music choices and production quality are top notch – the scenes actually look fairly top shelf, much more akin to an independent film (the good kind) than a sketch show.

One good example comes from this season’s premiere episode.  The main story starts with Louie at home with his girls.  We see him cutting the vegetables, preparing dinner.  The cuts, the music here are all darn near artful – it looks like an upper class twit product ad of some kind.  The funny dinner sequence gets interrupted by a surprise a visit from Louie’s extremely pregnant sister.  Louie’s sister and Louie have a dialogue exchange about their mutual past which is funny, and surprisingly warm – there is some credibility established.  This sets up the scene that night when she is in pain and needs to be rushed to the hospital.  She is screaming and wailing, and for a second, her character is fully sympathetic with us.  The screaming is painful, and you can see the pandemonium of the scene – it is a convincing dramatic scene.  We are put off guard as she is rushed to the hospital – I mean this is a bleepin sketch show, and we are caring about the scene – what is going to happen to the character?  I had no idea where this sketch was going – and isn’t that the best test of writing?  The punch line blindsides us – and I’d be loathe to divulge it.  It is worth seeking out.  That sort of unpredictability is evident when Louie has encounters with Joan Rivers and Dane Cook.  The scenes play as effective drama – or more accurately the SETUPS of the jokes are established with total realism – and so the laughs, when they arrive are ever huger.

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WTF With Marc Maron

If you follow comedy or radio at all, chances are you have heard of Marc Maron.  He has not exactly been obscure, but he has basically been a modestly successful comic with a personal life that has been a serious train wreck – or at least containing the cornucopia of ailments (marriage difficulties, drug addiction) that would fill up any standard E! True Hollywood Story.  Maron is a funny guy – even back in the day you could see that:

But of course now, his fame has finally started to come via his WTF podcast.  The podcast is frankly, the best radio show going – long form interviews and occasional comedy revues which are an anethema to the not only short attention span theatre of MTV and Michael Bay films, but also the pretentious preciousness that too often infects more high falutin venues like National Public Radio.  Maron with Bill Maher this past week explained that the show and his recent career turn was about getting away from things like politics and into the dive of the human spirit or whatnot.  It is a bit hokey to say, but the show really does work on that level.  Even though the guests are mostly comics, the subjects Maron touches and the insights he gets are the sorts of things that could make a more professional “journalist” jealous.

I have listened to a ton of his podcasts over the last few months (he adds two a week and ITunes keeps a good archive of recent episodes), and what I am struck by is the presence of Maron in the interview.  Each podcast starts with a ten minute or so monologue, which is always funny.  Marc’s stories are amusing, and very much in the fastidious tradition of Jewish comics of yore – his style is energetic, nervous, vulnerable.  If you listen to the podcasts for any length of time, you feel like you KNOW Marc – and the things that he likes and the worries and neuroses he has.  He is an open book, and it bleeds into his interviews as well.

Indeed, most of the guests he books seem to be people he knows, has known or has had impressions of.  Often, there is apologizing to do or something – sometimes they are chance meetings.  Marc often spends the early parts of the interview confessing his feelings – and trying to reconcile them.  This is disarming to the listener, and I imagine to the guest – how can you keep your celebrity guard up when he is so willing to let his down.  The honesty here becomes fascinating.  The interviews proceed in this manner and the insights he gets are amazing.  In particular, his interview with Robin Williams was probably the best interview I have seen with him.  It is completely conversational, and Williams goes through the flights of fancy that he uses on television so often – but he levels with Marc – admitting to the depth of his alcohol relapse, and explaining how much he worries about his career still.  Of course, he also made Louis CK cry – they were old friends, and listening to Louie discuss Marc’s transgressions in their friendship is heart wrenching.  More recently, his interview with Todd Hanson, founder of The Onion touched a dark place, and the result was not just good conversation but something truly moving – it is a very good episode to get, I don’t want to spoil it.

Maron is just gifted at conversation – and the conversation is as good as there is.  The Todd Hanson and Henry Rollins episodes are probably my favorite of the batch that is up there now, though the Garry Shandling, Patton Oswalt and Richard Lewis ones are good too.  Occasionally he does live WTFs, and those are less intimate interviews and more funny revue format with a lot of performers.  These are much lighter but a good amusing podcast also.  Overall the quality of interview is just terrific – this is the sort of long form stuff that you just can’t hear anymore on radio or anywhere else.  He has deserved a break – he has always been a quality comedian, and it is nice that now some notoriety is coming his way.  His show has given me more to think about how people are – the human condition in general.  I cannot recommend it highly enoigh.