Seth Olenick

Comedian and podcaster Marc Maron

This marks the first of an occasional series called Expert Opinion, where The Bay Citizen seeks an informed judgment on a cultural event or place. Comedian W. Kamau Bell attended something of a contradiction in terms — a live podcast — to opine for us. 

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“Why don’t you come by cobbs tnite. Come on for a few minutes.”

This was the text I got from Marc Maron at 3 p.m. Friday, just a few hours before I had planned to head to Cobb’s Comedy Club to review Marc’s show, a live edition of his podcast, “WTF with Marc Maron.” Marc’s podcast is currently the number one way for cool people to express their coolness. It began a little over a year ago, and in that time Marc has gone from hustling to fill the Punch Line Comedy Club, with its 175-person capacity, to easily selling out the 500-seat Cobb’s.

And on this night at Cobb’s, as part of SF Sketchfest’s podcast-heavy schedule, WTF promised to do the thing on which it has built its empire — Marc talking, riffing, trading barbs and road stories with comedians. The main difference between the live WTF and the studio version is that in studio, the podcast can frequently get into painful or uncomfortable — and therefore revealing —territory. Live, neither Marc nor his guests dwell on these moments as much, as everyone is aware of the audience... including the audience. And when comedians see an audience, it’s hard not to set our phasers to KILL! 

So I fooled myself into believing that I was doing some old-school, Hunter S. Thompson-style gonzo journalism, and I set my phasers to KILL!

This night at Cobb’s had a bit of everything that WTF is known for. Marc and his guest admit to having issues with each other and resolve to do so no longer (Marc and Will Franken). Marc has awkward tension around issues of race, specifically black people (Marc and Baron Vaughn). Marc forgets to interview his female guest and instead openly flirts with her (Marc and Maria Bamford). Marc recruits someone to express the lefty-prog political viewpoints that he got exhausted expressing on Air America Radio (Marc and Nato Green). Marc and an old friend/comedy cohort uproariously exchange war stories and shared experiences, and in the process, Marc’s interview reveals his guest in new ways that make the audience think, “I had no idea Bobcat Goldthwait was that freakin’ cool.” (Marc and Bobcat Goldthwait.)

And finally, this evening had the very popular WTF segment where Marc and one of his guests quash a beef that shouldn’t have existed in the first place. (Marc and me. It was about Twitter and it was silly. And it also featured awkward tension about black people.)

Through it all, it was vintage and pure Maron: he's a stand-up comic who wants to be laughed at, laughed with and adored, but only on his terms. A comic who thinks that for laughter to really mean something, it has to be earned and fought for, by the comic and the audience.

And the show is as much about him as it is about the audience. Podcast or stand-up show, Marc is Marc. In the middle of interviews he regularly checked his phone for possible texts from his ex-girlfriend. He expertly wrestled conversations into being less about the people he was interviewing and more about him. Yet, magically, Marc drew out the best in each comic. As a live interviewer, Marc’s main antecedent is Johnny Carson. Marc, much like Johnny, is the star of the show. And Marc, much like Johnny, regularly uses aspects of his personal life (both have ex-wife problems) to compelling comedic effect.

Live, WTF is what many other shows have aspired to be. It is as close as you can get to being in the green room of a comedy club, minus the years of soul-crushing failure. The comedians on stage this evening weren’t doing already-worked-out bits. As an audience member, you felt like you were overhearing a conversation and lucky to be doing so. One time while talking to Maria, Marc even realized he had completely turned his back on the audience. (I told you he was smitten.)

It may be that some of these stories end up in the interviewee’s acts, but one of the exciting things about WTF live is that you could very possibly be seeing it here first and maybe never again. Marc is clearly using the freedom of the podcast as a laboratory for new material. And it’s working.

At the beginning of the evening, after he threw out free T-shirts and packages of his sponsor’s coffee to the audience, Marc read an e-mail from a fan saying that he enjoyed Marc’s recent appearance on "Conan," even though he had heard all the material before on WTF. Marc sighed because he — like all comics — hates hearing that an audience has heard him tell his jokes before. That’s when the e-mailer went on to tell Marc not to get too messed up over that fact and to just accept the compliment. At this moment, the audience laughed knowingly, because they all knew that the fan had handled Marc excellently... and Marc knew it, too.

See, Marc’s audience doesn’t know him better than he knows himself; they know him exactly as he knows himself. 

At the end of the evening, as the crowd was leaving, Marc quietly, determinedly, and slightly too close talkering-ly, walked up to each guest to thank them. And after all the soul-baring and good-natured comedic eye poking, Marc asked me his standard post-interview question. It’s phrased less as a question and more as a fervent entreaty.

“We good?”

Yes, Marc. We good. We very good.