by Marc Maron
And here’s the worst part, I found this out like two years ago. I was at my sister’s and we always talk about my dad when we get together and she was like, “Don’t you remember wit training?” and I was like, “What?” and she said, “We had wit training.” When my parents were divorced, we would go over there on Sundays, he would sit us down at the end of the night and give us wit training. He would throw out something and we were supposed to be funny back, and my sister would just sit there and I would engage with it because I just wanted my daddy’s love. Yeah, so I had wit training. How creepy is that?
SUE COSTELLO—COMEDIAN, WRITER, ACTOR
I have a fundamental belief that a lot of people have an aversion to love and to niceness. We take ourselves down, the self-sabotage. That is the key to life, I think. I think the key to life is realizing you are going to get fucked over, because as kids we’re all vulnerable. I don’t ever want to feel vulnerable again. I don’t ever want to be hurt again. Well, part of the maturation process is to understand it is going to happen, so suit up.
TOM SCHARPLING
I liked Pink Floyd when I was fifteen. Then there was a point where I had no use for it. I liked all the Syd Barrett stuff, but then something happened and I just started getting fascinated. There was this weird stretch with them where Syd Barrett freaks out and—maybe it’s a career thing for me, I’m just relating—but those guys were like in the wilderness for years. The guy that wrote the songs is gone, and now they are just kind of looking at each other like, “I think we’re going to keep this thing going.” They are writing songs that are vaguely like his. They have to start over, and they are doing all these things like Atom Heart Mother and Ummagumma and these weird albums.
It’s kind of fascinating to see them have to learn how to be a band publicly. They are failing wildly sometimes in front of everybody. I think maybe I relate to that part of it. I feel like I’m that right now. I feel like I’m in my Atom Heart Mother phase of my career where I kind of had a job that paid for a long time, and now I kind of don’t. I’m figuring out what my future is going to be. I’m hoping I come up with Dark Side of the Moon at some point.
I started listening to Wish You Were Here. I think it might be the most depressing album. If you think about it like this, I can probably make a case it’s the most depressing album ever. Their lead singer flakes out, they go like four years struggling to succeed, and then they come up with Dark Side of the Moon. It’s beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. It succeeds. They’re enormous now, bigger than they ever were with Syd Barrett. Then, the album after that, Wish You Were Here, is about how it’s all just worthless. They are just like, “This is all garbage. Everything we fought for is meaningless. We’re all miserable.”
Just imagine you hit the lottery twice. They hit the lottery the second time, and they are playing these sold-out shows across the world and everything. They look in the mirror and are like, “This is all just garbage. Our lives are garbage.” They write this album about how fame is worthless and meaningless. “Have a Cigar.” These songs about how it’s all corrupt and it’s a joke. No one actually knows who we are. That’s the most depressing thing ever. To get all the success, they got everything they wanted, and then they realized it was just nothing.
WILL FERRELL—COMEDIAN, ACTOR, WRITER, PRODUCER
I had lunch with my dad one day when I said, “Hey, I’m going to try to go for this comedy thing. Do you have any advice?” And he gave me some of the best advice, which doesn’t sound like great advice, but he said, “Well, if it was all based on talent I wouldn’t worry about you. I’ve watched you now on these shows and I think there’s really something there. But you have to remember there’s a lot of luck and if you get to a certain point, three years, four years, five years, and you just feel like it’s too hard, don’t worry about quitting and don’t feel like you failed. It’s okay to pick up and do something different.”
For some reason, that took the pressure off. I’m like, “Oh, okay. Well, this is like the lottery. I’ll just give it a shot and if it doesn’t work I’m not going to feel bad about it.” Of course I desperately wanted to succeed like anyone else, but that weird piece of advice, if it was written on a piece of paper, would be the most uninspirational thing. But it’s practical. It came from a guy who’s been a musician for thirty, forty years and all of a sudden it just was like, “Oh, okay, well this is a crapshoot anyway. Let’s just relax and try not to squeeze the bat too hard and just have fun and throw it away.” I kind of tried to use that as my approach.
SUCCESS
“Bawling Your Eyes Out on a Used Futon for a Good Reason”
Despite several years of conversations on the podcast with very talented and successful people, talk of success comes up much less frequently than discussion of failure. I guess it makes sense. People are often driven by their failures, sometimes entirely defined by them. Success is fleeting and elliptical.
And yet the joy people exude when they talk about moments of success is undeniable and infectious. Whether it’s Michael Keaton telling me how he created Beetlejuice, or Tom Kenny telling me how he landed on the voice that became SpongeBob, or Julia Louis-Dreyfus telling me how she stood up to a studio trying to prevent her from getting her role on Seinfeld, everyone lights up when they tell a good story about things working out.
Defining success for myself was always challenging. It was never really about getting rich. I never thought about how to make a lot of money. I just wanted to be paid for being a comic. I wanted to be known for it. I wanted to be relevant. I didn’t even learn to consider my own success, outside of a joke working onstage or getting a radio job or landing a deal to make a show, until a few years ago. I guess I just assumed if I worked hard or at least kept working, I would be successful. Ultimately I found success. Not in the way that I ever imagined and not entirely about money, though that helps.
The bottom line is, I don’t really think about money, never have. I don’t spend much. I like knowing I have it because in this business you never know when or if you’ll make more, and no one wants to be broke. Especially as you get older. You never know what life events will rob you of your savings either.
I had no idea what would happen when I started the podcast. There was no way to make money. Neither my producer nor I were “business” people. Over the years we figured it out and learned how to build a business out of thin air with voices moving through it. From doing the show, other opportunities evolved. I wrote a book; I produced, wrote, and starred in a TV show; I sold out theaters as a comic; millions of people listened to the podcast. I am a success on all those levels. All my dreams have come true.
When you’re talking to other people who work in entertainment, you’re bound to hear great stories like this, about the moments when it all went right. Sometimes it was the starting point for a long and prosperous career. Other times it’s an anomaly, a brief moment of clarity in an otherwise fragmented life. They don’t necessarily have any larger meaning, other than marking a time when the person telling the story felt everything was okay.
These are stories about making it, in spite of what seemed like a stacked deck. These are personal triumphs amidst professional chaos. These are the things that happen when everything lines up in that once-in-a-lifetime way.
CHRIS HAYES—JOURNALIST, WRITER, NEWS ANCHOR
The difference between doing a thing because it will get recognition, and doing a thing because it expresses something or fulfills you, it is so hard to do in a media landscape that is, in a very literal fashion, built upon the endorphin rush of the ping of recognition.
Really early on, when I first started doing journalism, freelance writing, when I was in Chicago, I would write articles, and they would be in the alternative weekly. Then, poof, they’d be gone.
The first day that I had a byline was in the winter, and I got on the bus, and rode it south on Clark Street, knowing that the van that dropped off the free paper came from downtown. I went south until I
hit a bookstore that I knew was south enough to have it, and I got it there fresh off the press, and grabbed it and saw my byline. I still remember that moment. Amazing moment.
What I came to realize is that it was going to be a path to misery for me if the way I valued the work was the reaction it got, because sometimes it would get a reaction, sometimes it just dissipated. I realized it in that moment. Now I have lost sight of that a million times since.
Marc
You fall victim to that because now you’re making a show that’s out in the world, and you’re like, “Did it go viral?” Or “Did anyone pick up on that?” “Did it get traction?”
Chris
As opposed to, “Did we make a thing that was good?” A good thing in the world that I’m proud of, as a thing. As a real thing.
“WEIRD AL” YANKOVIC—MUSICIAN, ACTOR
It really surprised me that people have said they’re fans of mine. I mean, I’ve become friends with people like Ben Folds and I got to direct his video as well. Just the people who even knew I existed.
In 1984 when I first started out, I met Paul McCartney at a party and I weaseled my way up to him because I was like, “Oh, this is my chance to meet a Beatle.” And he knew who I was! He turned to Linda and said, “Honey, it’s ‘Weird Al’!” Like, what? No, my brain cannot handle this. It was crazy.
He knew who I was, and then people were taking pictures of us together, and I was like, “This is the best day of my life.”
JULIA LOUIS-DREYFUS—ACTOR, PRODUCER
I got an overall deal at Warner Brothers Television.
I developed a script there for me to star in. Got paid to develop it. The script came in, and it wasn’t what I had envisioned and it didn’t seem fixable to me. I said, “I don’t want to do it, I can’t do it.” I had a window. Legally there was a window, in which I could pull out of this thing. Then about three days later, these four Seinfeld Chronicles scripts come to me from Larry David. I read them, and think, “Oh my God, this sounds really good. I got this.”
I went in. I hung out with Jerry. Then Warner Brothers threatened to sue me. They thought I had done something illegal or unethical. They were suspicious of the fact that I pulled out of my deal with them, and then so quickly on the heels of that, became involved with this gig.
I was terrified. I was nothing. I was this little person and this was a huge studio and they were threatening. They said they wanted their money back. It was a lot of money. Seventy-five grand. That’s a lot of money, particularly back then, it was huge. I thought, “But I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t break our contract.” One of my attorneys said, “You’ve got to just give it back.” But if I do that, doesn’t it imply that I’ve done something wrong? I didn’t do anything wrong. Right?
I called Gary David Goldberg, who was the creator of Family Ties and Spin City. He’s subsequently passed away, but he was a mentor of mine, and a very good friend. I told him that Warner Brothers was threatening to sue, and what should I do, and I was so scared, and I’m being told by lawyers to give the money back.
He said, “You know what? I don’t respond well to bullying. Keep the money.”
I took his advice and I never heard from Warner Brothers. Nothing. Is that wild?
They had no legal grounds. They were just being dicks and I called their bluff. It was a great thing, actually. It was a good lesson. “I don’t respond well to bullying.”
Marc
Okay, the prank you did on the phone, that was funny.
JON BENJAMIN—COMEDIAN, WRITER, DIRECTOR, ACTOR
Wait, it was funny?
Marc
It was irritating. Here’s my reaction to that prank: I’m an idiot. Why’d I even fall for that?
Jon
No, see, I take it differently. I take it like I included you. The kid who no one liked, I included.
Marc
Okay, yes. Why, thank you.
So you call Jon’s cell phone and you get a message like, “Hey, this is Jon. If you need to reach me, my new cell phone number is…” and he gives a cell phone number. Then you’re in your car, you’re risking your life calling anyway. Then you call the number that he leaves after you remember it while you’re driving, and it’s the same number.
Jon
That one is working like a charm.
I get a lot of that. “Why? Why did you waste my fucking time?”
SACHA BARON COHEN—COMEDIAN, WRITER, PRODUCER, ACTOR
When we were making Brüno, we wanted to finish the movie in this arena. A normal romantic comedy has the guy propose to the girl in a stadium full of sports fans, and they kiss, it’s on the video screen. We thought, all right, let’s do that. Let’s have all the sports fans, but let’s do it in an Ultimate Fighting arena and let me make out with a guy. We wrote in the script, we’re going to do this and it’s going to turn into a riot. We knew it would be a security issue.
I thought, how do I get out of here? We’re going to have two thousand rednecks, we want to have a riot, but how do we get out of here?
Basically, I’m told by my lawyer beforehand—I’ve got this great lawyer who is this gay southern man. He’s a genius in the First Amendment. He lives in India. He’s got fifteen lawyers working for him and whenever we’re in trouble we call up and they’re like, “Okay, in the case of Smith versus the State of Arkansas, it is very clear that the indemnity.…” We call them up and it’s really good for us. He has these fifteen guys. All Constitutional, First Amendment law. They say, “All right. There are twelve things you need to know. None of these laws can you break.”
The big one was, he said, “Whatever you do, don’t incite a riot, because that’s a federal offense.” If you’re crossing a state line to incite a riot, then that’s punishable by a minimum of, I think, three years, and it’s a federal offense. That’s what the Chicago Seven were up for actually.
I said, “There’s a problem, because I am crossing a state line in order to incite a riot at the end,” because I thought it would be a great thing for the movie.
We went through all the nudity laws and the decency laws. We had to let people know that there would be nudity. As a result I had this poster printed which had girls in bikinis, really hot girls in bikinis, going, “There will be nudity at Ultimate Fighting.” Obviously, when they got there it was male nudity. Then there were about fifteen stipulations of, I can kiss him on the mouth, I can kiss him on the nipple, but I can’t put a finger in his rectum. He can place an open palm on my ass cheek, but the moment it gets within two centimeters of the rectum you’re done. Basically, Arkansas ended up being one of the only places in America we could get away with it, because the indecency laws were framed wrongly. They put the punctuation in the wrong place. Essentially we thought we could win in a court case. Making out with a guy and being almost naked was okay.
We had two thousand people the next night. We couldn’t put barbed wire on the top, but because we had to have some way of stopping people from jumping in, so I put faked barbed wire on the top of the ring, so that people psychologically wouldn’t want to jump it. We had all the chairs stuck down with metal, basically. Unsuspecting audience.
We had the police there. There were about fifteen cops there. Basically, the cops said, “Listen. If you break any of these laws we’re arresting you.” It was a bit like the end of The Blues Brothers. I had the cops there. They were going to get me if I broke the law.
In the end it really worked. We changed the scene a tiny bit. I realized that there was a problem with the scene. Because I attacked him, the crowd booed me. This time I said, “You know what? I’m going to turn my back to face the crowd and you’re going to punch me in the head.” He did it, and it was great. Because he was playing unfairly, the crowd was on my side. I then hit him. He hit me. He was tougher. I had some blood, and then the crowd was on my side. They were fully behind me. They were ready for me to really hurt him, and that’s when I kissed him. That’s when they freaked out, but they couldn’
t jump over.
I’m kissing and making out, and all the time I’m thinking of all the legal laws. Okay, I can stroke his ass. He goes to put a finger in my ass, I’m like, “Whoa, whoa. Pull it away.” Then at one point I see a chair flying in. It’s a metal chair flying in and I’m thinking, “What the fuck? How did this happen?” What happened is somebody had got a knife in and was sawing through the chains. They were so committed to hurting me. Eventually, I’m lying on my back and I’m thinking, “If I hold my costar tightly I can move from left to right and dodge the chairs.” Eventually, after two chairs, I hear, “Go, go, go.” The rule was, once you hear, “Go, go, go,” you have to go. So we went. But we got it. We finished the movie.
DAVE HILL—COMEDIAN, MUSICIAN, WRITER, ACTOR, RADIO HOST
I had this idea, that I was just joking around, thinking of the worst place for me to do comedy. Me, specifically, because I don’t do a lot of crowd work, I’m not very likable. Where it would go really badly? I thought, prison’s probably the worst place for me, and for most people.
I called Sing Sing, because I wanted it to be like maximum security, because if I’m going to do it, I should do it, right? I set up the show, and I thought, “This is really funny.” I thought, “If it goes well, that’s great, and if it goes badly, that might be even better.” It was just fun to talk about with my friends, and then about a week before the show, I was like, “Wait a minute, this is an awful idea. This is like a horrible prank I’m playing on myself. This is going to go awfully. This is not going to be fun for me, I’m not going to walk out of there.”
