{"id":2441999,"date":"2019-03-21T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-21T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=302271"},"modified":"2019-03-21T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-03-21T22:00:00","slug":"marc-maron-reflects-on-1000-episodes-of-wtf-and-returns-to-aspen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/marc-maron-reflects-on-1000-episodes-of-wtf-and-returns-to-aspen\/","title":{"rendered":"Marc Maron reflects on 1,000 episodes of \u2018WTF\u2019 and returns to Aspen"},"content":{"rendered":"
Comedian and \u2018WTF\u2019 podcast host Marc Maron will perform Saturday night at the Wheeler Opera House.<\/strong>
Dmitri von Klein\/Courtesy photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Marc Maron<\/a> defined the podcast medium over the last decade with \u201cWTF,\u201d<\/a> his essential twice-weekly conversation show.<\/p>\n

\u201cWTF\u201d was born out of fear and self-loathing and desperation in 2009, when Maron\u2019s stand-up comedy career was on the skids and his second marriage was recently ended. From his garage in Los Angeles, he launched \u201cWTF\u201d into an as-yet unformed podcast landscape with no clear path to finding an audience or making a buck.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s since become a cultural institution, with guests ranging from comedians and artists of all stripes to President Barack Obama, while reviving Maron creatively and leading to his defining stand-up work in the specials \u201cThinky Pain\u201d and \u201cToo Real.\u201d Two weeks ago, Maron posted his 1,000th episode of \u201cWTF.\u201d On Saturday, he brings new stand-up material to the Wheeler Opera House in Aspen after a sold-out Boulder Theater show on Friday.<\/p>\n

Arriving at 1,000, Maron finally felt the enormity of the podcast and how it had transformed him.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the arc of the struggle,\u201d Maron said in a phone interview from the garage in early March while he was putting together number 1,000 with producer Brendan McDonald. \u201cEntering this thing with nothing more than, \u2018I\u2019ve got to do something.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

For the landmark episode, McDonald and Maron broke from the established \u201cWTF\u201d format of a monologue followed by a long-form interview, and instead spent more than two hours reminiscing about the \u201cWTF\u201d journey together and responding to listener feedback some hilarious, some heartfelt. (Yes, Maron shed some on-air tears as he thanked his longtime creative partner for making the thing happen.)<\/p>\n

By the time he launched the podcast, Maron was already a stand-up veteran with specials and a record-count of appearances on \u201cLate Night with Conan O\u2019Brien\u201d to his credit, but he had become embittered as stardom eluded him. The podcast not only helped him find the massive audience he\u2019d always craved, but also oddly humbled him and helped him find his voice as a comic (self-obsessed as always, but less angry and more funny).<\/p>\n

\u201cHow it helped me is that once it became successful and I found my place in my business, my sense of self shifted,\u201d he explained. \u201cAfter working 25 years to get some traction and to get some voice out there that was me, it happened with the podcast. So after five years of the podcast I had a certain amount of self-confidence, or self-esteem, that wasn\u2019t there (before) because I had actually accomplished something.\u201d<\/p>\n

It mellowed Maron, now 55, and freed him from the confrontational and often alienating style of his early years.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you work your whole life toward something and it happens, it takes a load off and you can land in your body a bit,\u201d Maron said. \u201cSo that helped. And the constant communication, talking to people and saying funny things.\u201d<\/p>\n

His relationship with listeners is distinctly intimate. Regular WTF-ers have become acquainted with Maron\u2019s idiosyncrasies and obsessions \u2014 from his cats\u2019 health to his tortured relationship with his narcissistic father, his ongoing struggle to quit nicotine lozenges, his long-ago struggle with alcoholism and addiction, his love of vinyl, his past as comedy\u2019s biggest asshole. His stand-up has the same inward-looking bent, but his interviews end up being so revealing of guests because Maron himself is such an open book.<\/p>\n

So how, as a stand-up performer, does Maron deal with audiences who already know him so well and may have spent hours listening to him talk about himself?<\/p>\n

\u201cThe familiarity has only helped my stand-up in a huge way, because I don\u2019t experience any apprehension or fear about being on stage,\u201d he said. \u201cMost comics pretend they\u2019re not afraid most of their career and then one day it just goes away an you realize, \u2018This is where I live, on this stage.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

His free-form monologues at the top of the podcast led him to freedom on stage. He calls them a \u201cworkshop for ideas\u201d for his stand-up sets.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t necessarily have an audience, but I have complete freedom of mind that lands with an audience,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But podcast fans may not realize that stand-up is his lifelong passion and can take an unusual interest in the mundane details of his life that spill out on \u201cWTF.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019d be surprised that I could do it so well, because it\u2019s what I\u2019ve always done,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd people would be like, \u2018Hey good show. Did you get that thing fixed at the house?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Putting together episode 1,000, Maron found himself thinking back to the early days of \u201cWTF\u201d when he was packing envelopes with schwag to send to people who\u2019d donated $10 to keep the thing going: \u201cThere is a nostalgia to it, but \u2014 just like the beginning of my stand-up career \u2014 it\u2019s like, \u2018God, I can\u2019t believe we did all that s\u2014!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In the years that followed, the show rose to a hallowed place. In 2015, President Obama made the pilgrimage to the garage in a watershed moment for Maron and for podcasts at large. When the greatest interviewer of our time, Terry Gross, decided to open up in a rare and revealing personal conversation, she chose Maron as her interlocutor. When Robin Williams\u2019 death by suicide shocked the world, Maron reposted a 2010 interview where Williams spoke candidly about his struggles with mental health. And, of course, Maron has ticked off consequential interviews with every comedy legend you can think of and with enigmatic cultural titans including Bruce Springsteen.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt became something without any expectation,\u201d Maron said.<\/p>\n

The garage itself grew into such a hallowed landmark that when Maron moved to a new home last year, and left the Highland Park garage where it all started, it occasioned a New York Times story about the space that treated the ephemera piled there \u2014 posters and fan sketches and dusty books and family photos and Obama\u2019s coffee cup \u2014 as treasured artifacts.<\/p>\n

Concurrently, Maron has developed into a Screen Actors Guild Award-nominated actor, beginning by playing a version of himself on the IFC series \u201cMaron,\u201d then a washed-up wrestling promoter on Netflix\u2019s acclaimed \u201cGLOW\u201d and now starring in the recently premiered Lynne Shelton comedy \u201cSword of Truth\u201d and opposite Robert De Niro and Joaquin Phoenix in the upcoming Batman flick \u201cJoker.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last month, Maron was enshrined in pop culture history, appearing as himself on an episode of \u201cThe Simpsons\u201d where Krusty the Clown comes to the garage for a \u201cWTF\u201d taping.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very flattering and sort of amazing that, at least to some people, I\u2019m enough of a cultural icon to become part of the legacy of that,\u201d he said of \u201cThe Simpsons\u201d guest spot.<\/p>\n

Among his obsessions, for nearly a decade of \u201cWTF\u201d episodes, was the inner workings of \u201cSaturday Night Live.\u201d In countless interviews with \u201cSNL\u201d players and alum, Maron talked through his failed mid-1990s audition for the show. The inquiry more or less resolved in a two-part interview with \u201cSNL\u201d founder Lorne Michaels in 2015. But a new frontier in the saga began in this season of \u201cSNL,\u201d when, in a sketch lampooning podcasts, castmember Alex Moffat spoofed Maron, playing a cartoonish version of the comic (exasperated and wearing Maron\u2019s thick eyeglasses and Doc Holliday goatee, he declares crankily \u201cI gotta find something new, people, I\u2019m gonna freaking kill myself!\u201d).<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, if I\u2019m going to get on \u2018SNL,\u2019 I guess that\u2019s how I\u2019m going to get on \u2018SNL,\u2019\u201d Maron said of the skit with a laugh. \u201cI think he did a good job with it. I would have liked to see more. And I would have liked to have had the opportunity in my life to have hosted \u2018SNL.\u2019 I don\u2019t think that\u2019s going to happen, but I can live with the characterization of me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maron is still a road warrior of a comic, flying to theater and club dates around the U.S. and Europe. He\u2019s currently developing an hour of material for a new special, a follow-up to 2017\u2019s \u201cToo Real\u201d for Netflix. The new material, he said, largely circles around the themes he\u2019s been mining for decades like parents, addiction, middle age (there\u2019s a bit about vitamins) and a dash of Trump and politics.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve done better stand-up than I\u2019ve been doing the last couple years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

And Maron is no stranger to the Wheeler Opera House stage. He first performed at the historic theater in the mid-1990s during the early days of HBO\u2019s U.S. Comedy Arts Festival. After HBO left town, he returned during the brief run of the Aspen Rooftop Comedy Festival in 2010 where he taped an unaired \u201cWTF\u201d episode with guests Michael Ian Black, Hannibal Buress and Gary Gulman at Belly Up.<\/p>\n

His stops here have ranged from memorable gigs at the Wheeler to small barroom shows and what he called a \u201chorrible TV taping\u201d of Comedy Central\u2019s \u201cKicking Aspen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI had some good and bad experiences in Aspen doing comedy \u2014 the lack of oxygen is always an issue, in terms of your mental capacity,\u201d he said with a laugh. \u201cThe first tine I came up there, I decided I had to work out and I think I almost died.\u201d<\/p>\n

atravers@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Comedian and \u2018WTF\u2019 podcast host Marc Maron will perform Saturday night at the Wheeler Opera House.Dmitri von Klein\/Courtesy photo Marc Maron defined the podcast medium over the last decade with \u201cWTF,\u201d his essential twice-weekly conversation show. \u201cWTF\u201d was born out of fear and self-loathing and desperation in 2009, when Maron\u2019s stand-up comedy career was on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2441999","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-15 16:28:06","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2441999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441999\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2441999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2441999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2441999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}