Full Transcript
Caloroga Shark Media. Hi there, Johnny Mack. This is a bonus episode on this Friday, October third. The Mark Maren documentary Are We Good hits theaters. This raw, intimate portrait of comedian and podcast pioneer Mark Maron follows the sudden loss of his partner and filmmaker Lynn Shelton.
Maren struggles with grief, disillusionment, and a shifting comedy landscape, processing it all both on stage and off. My guest today is Julie Sebaw. She is the film’s producer, story editor, and originator. She’ll explain where this came from. She’s also working on a Mitch Hedberg documentary that’ll be out in twenty six.
We talked about that a little as well. Just while I have your attention, I hope I have your attention if you’re listening to my podcast. Earlier today, the Normal Sunday episode went out and Johnny Mack’s a little punchy on that one. That wasn’t a lot of fun, So don’t blow that one off. Let’s jump in midsrailer here.
The voices you’re going to hear are David Cross, Mark Maren, and then John Mulaney This is a snippet from the trailer to give you a little taste. I met Mark in the early eighties. I was one of a handful of people. There weren’t many who could tolerate them. I couldn’t draw, no matter how many Conan’s I did.
And that was part of the beginning of the podcast. It’s happening. I’m Mark Maren. This is my podcast. Yeah, there’s that lou read line.
I accept the new found man, and that that is what Mark became. Are we good? The Mark Maren documentary in theaters when hour thirty seven minutes long. In Deuter’s Friday, October third, here’s Julie Sebaugh. All right, let me ask the lame question.
Why Mark Maren? Why now Martin Mare? Uh? Yeah, there’s something about this guy in a sea of comedians where he’s always stood out. I’ve always been a massive fan.
He speaks from not just the brain, not just from his gut. You know, this is up he has to say, and he needs this connection on stage with people kind of in order to function, and you see that a lot in comedians. But he’s just endlessly watchable for his ability to you know, pull no punches, no holds barred. He will go there anything that is on his mind. And it’s been that way for you know, his careers now, however, many decades, and he never really felt like he was successful or influential or moved a needle in any way.
And I find not extremely interesting that he couldn’t see what his fans saw.
And then I was watching his instagram lives when the pandemic struck.
He was kind of the first one doing those instagrams at that time.
Also, just like he was popularizing the podcast, and the stuff he was shown w…
And then it changed very grammatically when Lynn suddenly passed away. It was an undiagnosed form of leukemia. Came absolutely out of nowhere, just lost her super suddenly. After realizing that he had found the love of his life, this was kind of what he’d been waiting for the whole time. And so I was very struck by the question of know, how is he going to go on to create comedy material after this, and also is she going to stick with him?
Is he going to be the person he’s always been, or is he going to be a new, better version of Mark Marin from her influence on him and just the way he was talking about her was the most raw, beautiful, brilliant stuff I’d seen a comedian putting out there, you know, through his Instagram and podcast. And they realized someone should docu meant this next time in his life. And after thinking about it a while, you know, as a major fan who started to make films, I realized it was me and I put together, you know, all the materials, reread the books, you started pulling some of the clips, and eventually approached state Stephen fine Arts, who’d made the Bitter Buddha documentary that Maren was in, and they had kind of a contentuous relationship, which I know is shocking with Marvin, but I also knew that he would yell at fine Arts through the camera, and so that was the reason. Yeah, I kind of feel like I know Maren better than he knows him still up at this point, because he’s talking about he’s going to quit comedy, he’s going to move to Canada, and I’m just knowing, yeah, I don’t think that’s going to happen. I think he’s going to go on stage and create the best material is ever created in his life, and that is what happened.
And so the documentary basically follows this period his life where he’s dealing with grief and who’s turning it into comedy. And I think that’s always my favorite thing about stand up comedy is how we can use it to help us with all of these emotions that the world constantly grows at us. And he even says in the doc grief is an unusual it happens to everyone. This is just my turn. And so yeah, it’s just basically following following this guy on his journey, and I think that people can learn a lot from it.
It’s funny, it’s super sad, and there’s lots of cats. The cats are proving very popular. It’s amazing in that he’s doing his strongest work now on this side of just a horrible, devastating tragedy. He’s at the peak of his powers, and he’s about to walk away from the podcast when we probably need him most. I think you’re right about that.
Many fans who thinks the podcast should not be indeed, But yeah, it’s an interesting time for him also because he has been trying to find a bit more peace in his life. You know, he turned sixty. His birthday party, we’re just kind of looking back at his life is also included in the documentary. And he knows that he can be his own worst enemy, and I think he’s just trying to be an old man in peace. Really, he’s been fighting for so long, and there’s definitely new generations, contrary to what he thinks, who are maimulating him in terms of knowing really forcing themselves to produce quality comedy that’s uniquely personal to them that no one else could be doing, and also carrying his mantle in terms of, you know, his political beliefs.
He does think that his popularity with his podcast has a some negative consequences. You know, the Joe Rogan parallels are always very interesting. But yeah, I think he’s already established his place in the world enough that I don’t probably doesn’t have anything else to prove. We would like to continue having him as long as possible. They’ll still be doing stand up, of course, but yeah, I think it’s just interesting to kind of look at the podcast as a collection of it’s committing it to history.
For yeah, it’s already in you know, the Hall of Fame for podcast. He’s won all the awards. He’s going to start doing some directing also, so he’s continuing to b mart Maron, just in different form. We talk about the Joe Rogan of the Left. I feel like he could be the Joe Rogan of the Left.
I totally get the podcast is a body of work and we’re done with it. But I do see a scenario where you could do almost something like Bird does. Hey, Mark, could you come on on Monday and do twelve minutes about politics and be the Joe Rogan of the left. You have to go away totally. Like, I get you don’t want to prep for guests.
I get you want to take your foot off the gas. It’s six years old. I get all that, But can you do ten minutes every other week? I’ll just say, as somebody who knows Maren very well at this point, I can I can tell what kind of a mood he’s in by the pants who’s wearing, Like I will say, I would not be surprised if anything like that, Just despite is saying to the contrary, because I think he always knows that his fans will be there, and you know, again he’s infinitely watchable, and that he will do different forms of entertainment. But no one’s gonna tell him what to do.
This is Mark Maren. We can’t shape his opinions. Hopefully I have some good questions later. But I do have a few name questions up top, and one of which was, what is Mark Maren like? Now?
I think you may have opened the door there where he said he just wants to, you know, go a way in peace. I think, and hopefully this isn’t a false memory. I think I had a conversation with him back in two thousand and three or four in my early run at Serious Satellite Radio. I feel like I was talking to him in the lobby and that would have been Air America’s Mark Mariner right after that period, and he was perfectly nice. I have nothing bad to say about him, but I just feel like his vibe was like, no, I’m good, you know, let me know when it’s time to go back in the studio, and wasn’t looking to hang, wasn’t looking at a no hang.
It just was like, I’m just here, I’m good man. Is that how he’s like? I try to keep a respectful distance and not bother him too much, although I fail frequently. Yeah, even before this documentary. I’d written the five different journalistic pieces over the years, from Village Boys to La Times.
Yeah, he certainly does have that prickly exterior, but I think we know as all comics, it’s hiding something for Shure. Even now today, he’s kind of been experimenting with medication. I think a lot of people think he probably just has often is a more ADHD. It’s gone undiagnosed, and that might not be a lodge if there is some exploraging in that area. But yeah, I think it’s all It’s a safety mechanism, you know, it really is.
Once your nervous system is wired in a certain way, it’s very difficult to change it. I use comedy to try to do it personally. But yeah, I think he’s trying to kind of figure out between the X tier and IN tier. Like you said, how to just have more peace in his life. It’s been sixty years of chaos.
Like you know, let the man have a good time for once. Makes total sense. We’ll circle back to Maren for sure. I do want to talk about your resume. I love having guests on here.
I explain to my audience I know more about comedy than most people if we go down to the bar, there’s a good chance I know more about it put us on the bar. But the other people who know more about comedy than me know way more about comedy I do, and I’ll put you in that bucket because of the work that you’ve done. I’ve read your pieces, I know some of your upcoming work. I know this work. I just love to hear you explain to the audience your comedy journey.
Oh yeah, thanks. I consider myself a professional comedy fan. Really, I did not know what stand up comedy was until my senior year of college because I grew up on a farm in Missouri without cable and not much to do other than read. So I had all the books, all the magazines. I was very into film and music, and I thought I was going to write about that one day.
So at the University of Missouri, I studied journalism and senior year, David tel Caaman did a show and I got to interview him beforehand, and then we hung out backstage and we went across the street to the journalism bar and he got everyone drunk on Ye you’re misto and so is the height of insomniac, which was the most amazing experience for a college senior about to unleash themselves on the world of journalism. And I immediately moved to New York and started hanging out the Comedy Seller and bugging David tell more More all the time, still to both day, But yeah, I just fell in love with it because at that time, it felt like no one was writing about comedy as seriously as we see today. This was a time when comedy coverage was more shoved than like with the calendar listings or the music events, and it wasn’t being perceived as individual artists with their own perspectives and their own means to say. It was just kind of a generic comedy. It’s something you can watch on the weekends, and I really wanted to change that.
Yeah, it’s been twenty two years of writing about comedy. I’ve recently decided to call myself less of a journalist and more of a opera and documentarian, but that’s a natural progression anyway. But yeah, I’ve covered all the festivals. I’ve been freelanced for most of the time, so have written for basically any title you can think of, and I just can’t get enough. I love the live comedy experience sitting in the bat row of a room and watching all these different people from different backgrounds and who knows why they’re there tonight, but they’ve all gathered in this one space now, laughing at the same thing at the same time in a way that’s completely unable to be recreated again.
And I just leave there feeling a little bit more optimism for the world. We can all agree in this thing. Maybe we’d agree on more that doesn’t know its work out well. But that’s my favorite part about comedy, of being able to kind of lose yourself in it and feel that sense of connection. And I will talk about comedy all day long.
If someone lets. We’re coming up with Julie Sebah. The documentary is called Are We Good? It’s all about Mark Marin. Now.
Behind the scenes, we had a little bit of audio problems. It was almost as if we were in space, like if you watch a space movie, say Apollo thirteen, and there’s that slight delay, and you may have noticed that we were sort of speaking in paragraphs. That I didn’t do what I normally do and jump in mid sentence because I’m enthusiastic. So I don’t want you to think that I wasn’t interested in the answers. We knew about the glitches, and I told Julie, I’m just going to hang back and let you speak in complete sentences so I don’t step on you.
So I didn’t mention that at the open because I didn’t want to poison your brain about it. But if for some reason you listen to that last segment you’re like just not saying anything. That’s why John isn’t saying anything more with Julie Sebaugh after this. Now you dropped a note there. I want to circle back to can you tell me about the roast of Julie?
Who roasted you? That must have been amazing. My fortieth birthday roaster was held in the belly room of the Comedy Store about two and a half weeks before Penn. It was sold out, full room. I mean the belly rooms very small, but yeah, there’s a lot of industry and comics there.
And at the end it was Jeff Ross and Davittel and I said some jokes about let’s see the Joka talked about Jeff Ross was, uh, we’re hey, we’re in the belly room home of Jeff Ross presents Rose Battle and Jeff Ross presents the historical roast. When’s Jeff Ross going to present his own material? Again? That’s why I’m not a comic. But do you tell every time I have sex dreams about David Tell, I wake up covered and hummus, those are the ones I remember.
But it’s also like Mike Lawrence, Brad Williams. There was some roast battlers, Jay Light, Nicole Bacannon. Yeah, that was probably the highlight of my comedy career as far as I’m being roasted for my fortieth and it’s all downhill. Yeah, it was a great night. I was too nervous to really enjoy it, but looking back, that was really really special.
I love to tell. If I had to bet on one comedian do fifteen minutes and just crushing the room. You can’t touch your normal material, just wing fifteen minutes, I would pick David Tel. Yeah. Just the idea of seeing this guy who we all think is so brillant, and we all watched his last special probably four or five times each.
I know it. I know it’s true, and he doesn’t think he’s that good either. I even reproached him about different projects in the past, and he’s like ah, nobody cares like No, people care You’re You’re very influential and insomniac, got a lot of people into comedy myself. Yeah, so I would love to do something on him at some point, but you gotta again get past that exterior. I’m gonna keep working on it.
Well, let’s zero in on the documentary. Who’s part of it? How did it come together? And how do you get Mark Merin even agreed to this thing. Yeah, after Lynn died and I started realizing that something needs to be made, it was either going to be a film or you know, just a regular journalism piece something like that.
The first time when Fine Arts and I approached him was via email to have a zoom pitch, which he was completely noncommittal to in late twenty twenty. We had another one in early spring, and then when the venues started reopening after COVID in May of twenty twenty one, and he went up at the Comedy Store finally, after a week it had been open, and he’d been saying he’s quitting moving Canada all that stuff, And when I thought he was going to be there, I told Fine Arts to bring a camera and show up at the Comedy store and we went in and basically told him he we’re doing this now, and you know, he realizes when things can be of value to him and it did take a while to kind of break down the external shell. But it really is the most raw you’ve ever seen him in a lot of ways. Again, there’s laughing, that’s crying, there’s again the cats are a big part of it as well. But yeah, when you start to get people like John Mulaney, some great stories from Caroline Ray, David Cross, Sam Lipsy, his best friend, his producer Brendan McDonald, to really kind of fill in these places in his story over his life or he might have one view of it, but people have a different view of it.
And actually when he watched it for the first time, the first cut he saw was the last week of February before South By Southwest, and I remember getting an email from him and he said he actually learned a lot about himself from watching it. So I think it was just trusting that process of you know who, those people can tell this story in the right way and they’re not going to screw over And yeah, it was just kind of which is Yeah, it was. It was a five year labor of love that I think we’re all really proud. Of in the end, is this therapy for him or is this like a low key victory lap or he wouldn’t admit to that, or both or neither, Yeah, all the above. Maybe.
Yeah, He’s definitely still doing therapy here here and there. He might think it’s not enough, but and still you know his meetings, you know the recovery meetings, those are still in full effect. I do think that the timing of him wanting to quit the podcast now is very interesting because he does view it as a statement piece about Mark Marin and kind of wrapping up this circle of this time in his life. Yeah. I think it’s going to be a matter of really being honest with himself and really opening the door to new possibilities.
I think he’s trying. It’s hard. It’s hard for all of us, and he’s just the one we’re watching do it and try to hit some inspiration in the meantime. It’s so interesting about Pete Mehren. His last special clearly is best.
He’s even said that, And I teach you a few college classes. They teach you about the Obama episode as the best podcast episode ever done. No qualifier. The reason I say that, if you listen to it. At first, the President of the United States shows up, and then at some point mister Obama drops that he’s just baracking a garage having a conversation with Mark, and towards the end the President of the United States comes back.
But for the middle there there’s two guys in a garage and it’s beautiful. Yeah, that’s the whole goal of WTF is. He wanted real people to drop the facade and have a conversation with him person to persian, and the formula has worked extremely well. My favorite episode is Todd Glass personally because when we went on and chose that as a platform to come out of the closet and kind of tell his story, it was Maren that he trusted and it was so again, so beautiful. Just the trust he put in Maren and the idea that this was the platform where comics felt safe and understood, I thought was hugely just.
I listened to that all the time, still in a lot of ways for different and also I know todded last too, but there’s just a different way of interacting when you can shut out all those distractions and you’re in the sound proper and it’s just you another person where you can really I’m going to use the word unmask which has to do with neurodivergens. But there’s yeah, something uniek he created in that he wanted to be liked and we wanted to like him, and this was kind of our from Avatar for doing so. So yeah, I think there’s this I would I want to hear more about your class, but I think there’s endlessly examples and I want to take it. I want to take your book. Yeah, they’re just endless examples of moments from the podcast that you know, you really see humanity, you know in a way that a lot of these comedians and actors and everyone else he has on.
It’s not just typical promotion. And again it says in the movie like you’re coming into Maren’s world, you have to talk to him. You have to be yourself. That’s the reason why WTF has worked all this time. So when you flip that and Mark’s on the other side of the camera, how do you make sure you’re capturing real Mark Maren and not know I’m on camera right now, I better turn it on or show this side of my personality.
How do you get the real guy? I feel like the real Mark Maren is never far from the service. It’s oways bursting to come out. And it really was just a matter of waiting for those moments, and we had a lot of footage, We went to a lot of cities and again five year labor of love, and it was just a matter of really going in and focusing on what are the actual merit moments, you know, what is uniquely and what is he’s saying that no one else is going to say, and also being really truthful about it and not making it a promotional or a pup piece or anything like that. And again he didn’t see it until the end, so I can say all of that.
And yet also in certain ways he didn’t have a choice. What’s what He decided this is going to be a real thing with real emotions, and we were all just kind of along for the ride with it together with him. How does it work creatively? Does he have sign off at all if he doesn’t like the final version of it? So there’s the legal aspect of the question, there’s the spiritual aspect of that question.
And he clearly didn’t set up to do a hit piece on Mark Marron. But along the way if we found out, I don’t know, he throws eggs at children on Halloween, and he was like, don’t put that in. That makes me look jerky. What’s signe off there? What’s the verbal agreement, the spiritual agreement?
And how do you approach that as a creator? The only thing was if he could say if something made him uncomfortable, and there was none of it at all. There was a few jokes that some of the interviewees made at his expense that got removed that didn’t really add anything to the story, but that was really it. He saw it about ninety nine percent as audience. We’ll start seeing it next week on Friday.
Yeah, he was very trusting, probably more so than he should have been. That’s a very interesting answer. Let’s expand on that. More than he should have been? What do you mean there?
It really was just about having these previous relationships. I don’t think anybody else could have pulled this off. I’ve known him for fifteen years. I think Fine Arts was maybe a little bit less, and that was kind of all the people he had to deal with. Nobody else, So it was just really having this circle of knowing we’re gonna all do the right thing here and make it, like I said, not a hit piece, not a puff piece, but honest, you know, I’m someone who’s done journalism twenty two years and that’s what I want.
I want a journalistic story where you’re showing, not telling. Everything speaks for itself. You don’t need to color it with opinions. Yeah, I cannot say how proud I am of finally getting this done. And I think it’s very emotional and you’re actually kind of getting me like thinking like, yeah, we really did do a good job here.
When you’re caught up in it for five years, it’s hard to see that. But yeah, I’m not sure other than like, Maren’s an amazing subject and when he allows you to do what you do best, then everyone wins. You’re really speaking about trust and the entertainment industries. We both know there are a few people that aren’t so awesome. There are a few people are awesome.
There’s someone aren’t awesome. And I think that knowing you’re working with somebody who’s not going to hand in a hit piece or a jerk face piece, I think that really goes a long way. So I’ll plaud you for that for having that with Mark Marin, who I imagine is guarded. You are correct, Yes, it really has this been you know again, she’s known us for so long. That being said, Uh, here’s a tip for everyone, especially the ladies.
Get it all on writing record all of your meetings. Don’t allow yourself to be in a position of taking advantage of Uh. That’s yeah, that’s just a tip for everyone. Protect yourselves, but also don’t lose that humanity and trust. At the same time, just backing up with some paperwar.
We’re coming up with Julie Seabaws we talk about the documentary. Are we good? All about Mark Maron? Because I’m an honest person, I just want to let you know in that last I did revoice my questions to clear up some audio glitches, but you didn’t notice. Did you know you didn’t?
You are also working on a Mitch Hedberg documentary. Now I’m obsessed with Mitch Edburg. When I heard this thing was happening, I couldn’t wait for it. As I prepped for a conversation today, I saw that you had mentioned in a different interview that Mitch Hepburg was a good interview himself. I did interview him for a couple different times, but the main one was for Las Vegas Weekly about six months before it passed away.
This was for the Stephen Lynch Comedy Central Live tour that they did, and he was just so expansive and personal and was talking about loving Lynn, his wife, and the relationship he wanted to have with his parents, and how he just wanted to be a free spirit, and these are all things we loved about Mitch. Anyway, he was another like you can just tell he’s good birth and yeah, his story is endlessly fascinating to me. He was always my number one. We have the same birthday. I actually knew his mother fairly well before she passed away in twenty twelve.
But yeah, we all know the Mitch Hedberg story is one that is so evergreen. His material can be listened to forever. It’s not about you know, political jokes or sex jokes or even I think he maybe had one or two curse words in his material ever, but just the most pure mind of you know, these kind of well thought out one liners that put a whole new perspective on the world. And like you see things through Mitch’s lens when you hear it its material. It’s completely unlike anyone else, although he definitely has a lot of imitators these days.
For sure, I could name a lot of them, but I will. No one has ever really known the full Mitch Hedward story because in a lot of ways, it ended in two thousand and five when he died, when the Internet was just coming into its own and social media, whereas you know, kind of the treasure trovee of all his material. These days, you can watch endless quips and there’s so much about his life that is completely uncovered. People kind of know that he gives some comedy in Seattle, but that’s about it. But there’s a whole entire life before he was really well known in about ninety eight that we cover all the entire thing from first hand sources.
That again, Jeff Siegel, the director, has been very adamant about tracking down everyone. It’s over one hundred plus people and it’s gonna be eventually. We’ve wanted to kind of keep it small circle and do it the right way because a lot of people, myself included, have tried to do different Mitch projects in the past, and there are reasons that they get shut down, and we kind of went around some of these reasons for this, and that’s why it’s actually going to finally happen. And I cannot say enough how much this will be a career highlight, and I know full well, but everything else is dath ill prem here. I hope it creates another Mitch renaissance.
We had one when the Internet really took off. But he has so many signature bits, like if I run into a can of mister Pibb at the supermarket, I will take a photo of it and send it to somebody. If I’m at Hershey Park and they’re selling frozen bananas, my daughter gets a ten minute routine about how I don’t want a frozen banana now, but I might want a regular banana later. If I’m at a subway, she gets a duck’s bits. It’s all just in my brain, So it’d be great to see another wave of it.
I just feel like edburg Mania has cooled off over time. It will happen to anybody who’s not putting out active material, But you know, I really look forward to this. All of us on this team, there’s four core members that we all knew Mitch personally, and it loved him adored him, and the idea that he does continue having this legacy is sort of part of the you know, the pitching per se. His album Mitch Altogether only went gold a couple of years ago, and we actually have footage of Jack Vaughn from Comedy Central Records presenting Mitch’s father, Arnie with the gold record that would have been Mitch’s. So that’s kind of a team we have in the documentary.
Not not to give it all away, but he does continue selling. It’s true, and especially you know on the digital stations the Comedy Central Records on serious Sex and then plays his step all the time. Yeah, he’s kind of perfect for those clips of chopping them up with small amounts the bite size of Mitch hedbird jokes. Yeah, and even our team kind of what you’re saying, we still responded his stuff all the time. I said a picture broke an escalator to the team the other day because we just want to talk about him all the time, or like this is hey, I lived by the Coach and Horses Bar where he used to go with Doug Stanhope and they once met Quentin Tarantino, and that’ll be a story.
We’re constantly geeking out about Mitch through this whole process. It’s the best project, and again, it will never be as good as this one. I also know Jack Vaughan. He has the job now that I used to have, and I knew him when he was running Comedy Central Records, and we did the Comedy Central Radio deal together. So at some point I wanted to do a Headbird tribute on serious comedy.
This was pre merger. But I’m not a ghoul, so I’m not going to call in Shawcroft and be like, hey, your husband died yesterday. Can we do something? You know, I waited maybe nine months a year. She said nobody had really reached down to her.
So she comes in and we do the tribute and stand Hope’s part of it. And I wound up in the back studio with her, a really small studio and smaller than the room that I’m in now, and she had Mitch’s cassettes and she hadn’t listened to them. I’m telling you this is a true story. I was sitting there with a woman and she hadn’t heard them. I saw her emotionally react to them, and she’s playing some late in life sets Mitch had done and I said to her, you’ve got an album here, and I don’t make albums.
I don’t want anything out of this. I just want to hear the materials A fan and connected her with Jack and that’s where that posthumous album came from. And it was just I’m so glad that that material got out there. Mitch was already under contract for an album where he died, and as far as I know, Wynn had to produce one. But yeah, I guess it was.
Yeah, it wasn’t going to be clear where that material was going to come from. And I remember that tribute you did too. I was listening to it crying the whole time too. It was amazing. I never got meet him.
The other touchdown in my career there was because I remember the day clearly. We were doing Jim Brewers Afternoon Show and we were at the car show in New York City and Jim was crossy because the night before Jim had to cover for Mitch Heedbergh who didn’t show up for reasons. We didn’t know what happened, and we heard in the middle of the show. We all we’re at the car show and Jim’s performing two hundreds of people live and we heard this. We were all just devastated, and you know, Brewer did the radio show and then we all felt like jack holes for the way we were, you know, five minutes ago.
It was like, ah, I can’t believe that guy didn’t show up, and they’re like, oh my god. It was just I can still feel it coming back as I tell you the story. Yeah, I remember the feeling of it hitting me when I heard too. I was returning from a comedy show late at night. I was living in New York at that time and had just seen him at Carolines just before with all the when all the rock stars were there.
Mike Brobiglia opened partially that weekend, and someone wrote me a message that said, by now you’ve heard that Mitch Hedberg gets passed away, and I have not until that message. And the message went on to say something to the effect of he liked his fans and he knew you were one of them, and that’s what’s important. But yeah, I had a terrible month, that entire month when he died. A lot of people I think did I don’t know if you were at the Carolines memorial, but I’ve blocked a lot of that out because it was so emotionally devastating. I was sitting next to this publicist, Michael O’Brien on this side of me, and I had a program on this side of me, and I couldn’t look up at anyone.
I just kept looking down at this program of tears streaming down life face the entire time. But I do the few things I do remember is davidtel being on stage cry and that was horrifictasy. The same with Mike Robiglia. But then also towards the ending, they let in just a bunch of fans who had kind of clambered around outside, and they were telling the stories that we heard about the time he bought the college students an air conditioner, or someone needed a radiator for his car and Mitch bought them a radiator for the Those stories came out as well. And that was also the first time Jana Johnson, his longtime girlfriend of nine years prior to Lynn and the woman who’s very essentially responsible for his career, and she was managing him and got them every opportunity that she could.
She had an elegy that eulogy that she had written that was the first biographical account of Mitch before we all started really knowing him around ninety eight or so, and I do remember feeling like, oh, someone needs to get projects on him going immediately, because no, no one knows any of this story. But that was twenty years ago at this point. So yeah, the amount of emotion I tied into Mitch just because I did feel like I connected with so much, and the birthday thing and these are all very superficial. But I think you know what I mean and understand that people just love the Mitch for who he was in so many ways. We don’t feel that personal connection really with He loved the person behind the jokes a lot.
But yeah, Mitch’s evergreen, eternal, his stuff works all around the world, who his will just a really unique, magical guy. And I will continue talking about him until you cut me off. I’m always wanted to think about what if to know at that stage in his career, he was starting to have to speed up the act because people in the audience were stepping on the punchlines and he was working a little more quickly. It would have been interesting to see the evolution of ten years later, twenty years later, as he’s still working at that deliberate pace no, Stephen Wright still does or would there have been an evolution. We’ll never know, And it’s just one of those things that I think about when his name comes up.
Certainly some of the timing of material was affected by drugs at that point. That’s something Jack Rown has also talked about when he recorded the second album. And it’s pretty obvious, you know, to some people, maybe not if you were a college student at that point, just thinking he’s a funny character. I’m describing myself in Clasi’s not clear the drug thing hit a lot of people by surprise if you weren’t kind of you know, inner circle in industry at that time. But yeah, just the idea that, like, I mean, so many people in the documentary say he would be doing arenas, he would have so many Netflix vetals, But other people say he wouldn’t like social media at all, and he probably would have left comedy.
So we don’t know, but I think any of those paths make a lot of sense for the artists that we knew. I could see that you seem to know Jack Vaughn pretty well. I used to accuse him of being a secret agent. First of all, his name is Jack Vaughan, He’s a nice looking guy. If he ever told you a story about what he would do on vacation, it was always some exotic locale with like a great story to it, And I’m like, you’re clearly on my sex.
Jack Vonn, I’ve known since two about two weeks after I first moved to New York after I graduated college, when I went to the Virgin Records megastore in Times Square for David Tell’s release of Skanks for the Memories, and I have a photo that Jack Vaughn took of me and David’s hell, and he’s been very nice to me ever since. I agree that Jack Vaughn is one of the nicest people in comedy. But he also spent his you know, his FA was with Peace Corps, right, and he’s traveled the world his entire life. So yeah, he’s a very experienced traveler in lots of ways, physically, mentally. I trust him more than anyone else in comedy.
Jack, don’t listen to. This, all right, So you came out here to promote a Marin documentary and I get a headberg Land, and then we did ten minutes on Jackonville. So let me ask you about Mark Maron, What was the unexpected thing that you found out that when you went into this Oh yeah, Oh. That’s a good one. I think it really was that idea that he didn’t see himself as that successful kind of shocking, really, and he never really liked the fact that he became better known for his podcasts than his comedy and just really kind of trying to understand what that must be like in his mind.
I think was probably the most shopping partly. You’re clearly, clearly one of the best it’s ever existed. But again, maybe that’s something all of us can learn. You know, we’re all doing a little bit better than we think we are. Maybe one of the all time grades if we made a list of stand up comedians, he’s going to make it sure.
You’re one of the all time. You’re the old Ghini podcaster, so there. But again, from stand up comedy standpoint, at sixty years old, you just put out your best work, dude. We respect. Everybody loves that special.
I said every year, I do, like everyone else, the top specials of the year. That’s going to be number one. I can’t imagine what’s going to knock that out of number one. Oh, I agree, for sure. For sure, he just keeps getting better, and yet yeah, he wants to quit.
So these are why we keep the reasons why we just keep watching these people like it’s endlessly fascinating to follow these comedy journeys and I can’t get en up with it. I just think Mark Maron was the best at this at this specific period of time to follow. I don’t think there’s going to be unless we have, you know, other pandemics, or well, we will certainly have other upheavals. But it was something about the context of being in that time and watching how he dealt with everything that not only we were all going through, but his own loss and grief at the same time. That just meant, you know, if he can keep going after this, we can too.
And that’s just comedy in a nutshell. So is the thesis here not to be modeling that the tragic event just pushed him to the next level or helped him focus. It seems to clearly be a focal point and his strongest work has come after that. So is that a moment? I would say that it was something thrust upon him and he, yeah, dealt with it as he could, and we just wanted to make sure we were there to capture it.
Obviously, it’s the most dramatic thing that’s ever happened to him, but you know, by far we can see that very clearly what he manages to keep going and like you said, create the best material he’s ever done. And how does comedy actually allow us to do that, especially through his eyes? Yeah, I’m not sure I’m actually answering the question, but there was just something about that moment in that time and watching him go through all this and kind of start to come out the other side through humor that I think is again universal timeless, can’t get enough of it. I will watch comedians create material on the challenging times forever. Yeah, and he’s just kind of the best.
So that’s why it made you know, it was very difficult, but I’m glad we did it for sure. For sure. Do you imagine fans will come away laughing or we’ll be crying? Will we get into understanding of Mark Bhern all of that? All the above?
For sure? Again, like I said, this is watching him make new material in the wake of this tragedy. So you see him experimenting the process, putting it together for better and for worse, and there’s definitely a lot of crime as well. For sure. I have not gotten out of a screening yet without people crying.
So yeah, the full emotional spectrum. And it even works if you’re not a fan of Mark Marin, because again we’re you know, be latering the point by now. But this is something that happens to everyone. Here’s how this guy dealt with it. And that’s all I have for you.
See, here’s what happened. When we were recording. The upload stalled at ninety six percent, so I don’t have the rest of the conversation, which kind of sucks. But I asked her about it being in theaters, and you know, can I just hide out in the basement of crying. She’s like, nope, it’s in theaters.
She did suggest that possible, perhaps maybe there might be another way to see this down the road, but this week it’s in theaters and it sounds fantastic. So at the end, you know, like we do, I go, hey, thanks for coming on. She said nice things to me. I said nice things back, but I don’t have any of that, so just imagine how that went. I want something like this, Hey, Julie, appreciate your time, really looking forward to this.
Thanks for coming on today, and then she said something nice in my general direction, and then we said bye, and then there was some after stuff after the recording about you know, hey, I hope you’ll come back with a Mitch thing and we said all that, but you know, you wouldn’t have heard that anyway, because I wouldn’t have included that in the podcast. So you’re actually getting more content that you would have. I’m punchy today. All right, that is your bonus episode back in the morning with a normal episode comedy. People.
Can we keep this thing calm. This has just been out of control lately. Let’s keep it simple. So Johnny Mack and watch football all day, watch the Jets lose, and then we’ll come back in the morning with a normal episode of daily Comedys. Appreciate you.