Marc Maron (born September 27, 1963) is an
American
stand-up comedian.
He has been host of
The Marc
Maron Show, and co-host of both
Morning Sedition, and
Breakroom Live all politically-oriented
shows, produced under the auspices of
Air America Media. He was also the host of
Comedy Central's Short Attention Span
Theater for a year, replacing
Jon
Stewart. Maron has been a frequent guest on the
Late Show with David
Letterman and made 42 appearances on
Late Night with Conan
O'Brien, (more than any other stand-up performer). He was
a regular guest on
Tough Crowd with Colin
Quinn and hosted the short-lived U.S. version of the
British TV Rock Trivia gameshow
Never Mind The Buzzcocks on
VH1.
Maron has been featured in his own specials on
HBO and
Comedy Central, as
well as on comedy showcases such as the
Cam Neely Foundation fundraiser, which
also featured such performers as
Jon
Stewart,
Denis Leary, and
Steven Wright. He can briefly be seen in the
film
Almost Famous as the
"Angry Promoter" who engages in quasi-martial arts fisticuffs with
Noah Taylor, then chases the tour bus yelling "Lock the
gates!"
In May 2008, he toured with
Eugene
Mirman and
Andy Kindler in
Stand Uppity: "Comedy That Makes You Feel Better About Yourself
and Superior to Others."
In January 2009, a collaboration with
Sam
Seder which had begun in September 2007 as a weekly hour-long
video webcast became
Breakroom Live with Maron
& Seder, produced by Air America
[117302]. Until
its cancellation in July 2009 the show was webcast live, weekdays
at 3PM Eastern, with episodes archived for later viewing as well.
In its final incarnation, the show was quite informal, taking place
in the (actual) break room of Air America Media, with the cafeteria
vending machines just off-camera. This meant occasional
distractions when Air America staff and management alike would
occasionally come in for food and drink. Maron and Seder also held
court in an online "post-show chat" with viewers, in an even less
formal continuation of each webcast, after the credits had
rolled.
His first one-man show,
Jerusalem
Syndrome, had an extended off-Broadway run in 2000 and was
released in book form in 2001. In 2009 he began workshopping
another one-man show,
Scorching
The Earth. According to Maron (in
Scorching The
Earth) these two shows "bookend" his relationship with his
second wife, comic
Mishna Wolff, which
ended in a bitter divorce.
During his
career, Maron frequently appeared in the live alternative standup
series he'd organized with Janeane
Garofalo called "Eating It," which used the rock bar Luna Lounge in New York's Lower East Side
as its venue from the 1990s until the building was
razed in 2005.
Career
From almost the first day of the progressive talk radio network
Air America Radio's broadcasts in
2004, Maron co-hosted
Morning
Sedition, a three-hour early-morning
radio show with
Mark
Riley, which aired weekdays from 6am-9am Eastern time. The show
was unique in the
Air America lineup, in
its heavy reliance on both live and pre-produced sketch comedy,
utilizing the talents of staff writers, as well as the on-air
hosts. The format was a left-leaning near-satire of typical morning
"Buddy" radio programs, including recurring characters, interviews
and listener call-in segments, and it attracted a loyal fan
base.
As 2005 waned, it became known that Maron's contract would not be
renewed as of December 1, 2005 due to problems with then Air
America executive
Danny Goldberg.
Goldberg reportedly did not "get" the comedy or agree with the
satiric and often angry tone set by Maron and other writers
(
Jim Earl and
Kent
Jones) for a morning-drive time show. Removal of Maron
constituted the disassembling of
Morning Sedition causing many fans to
circulate online petitions to the management of
Air America Radio.
On Monday, November 28, 2005, it was officially announced that
Maron's contract had indeed not been renewed. His last
Morning
Sedition broadcast was on December 16, 2005, and the show was
discontinued shortly thereafter.
On
February 28, 2006, Maron began hosting an nighttime radio program
with Jim Earl as sidekick for KTLK Progressive Talk 1150AM in Los
Angeles
called The Marc
Maron Show from 10:00PM PST until midnight PST. The
program was frequently delayed (sometimes for over an hour) due
KTLK's contractual agreement to broadcast local
sports events - which would often go into overtime.
The Marc Maron Show was never
nationally syndicated by
Air America
Radio despite reported contractual clauses promising so. The
show was streamed online live, but the show was not publicized, and
the existence of the stream was not well promoted.
On July 5, 2006, it was announced that
The Marc Maron Show's final episode
would air July 14, 2006. A few days before that date, Maron bluntly
discussed his long struggle with Air America Radio's executives
on-air.
Following the cancellation of his self-titled show, Maron
occasionally guest-hosted for other Air America Radio
personalities. These included:
Springer on the Radio on November
6, 2006 and
The Sam Seder
Show on December 1, 2006, the entire week of December
18-22, 2006, and on February 15 and 16, 2007. Beginning in October
2007 he again returned to the
Air
America airwaves, as an occasional fill-in for both
Rachel Maddow and
Randi Rhodes. He also had a regular guest
appearance on The Sam Seder Show on the 3rd hour on Fridays
(occasionally missed due to travel).
At his August 21, 2007 appearance at the
Edinburgh Fringe festival, Maron "riffed"
on his separation and divorce from his second wife,
Mishna Wolff.
In 2008, Marc and
Sam Seder expanded their
prior collaboration on a weekly hour-long video webcast (streamed
at The Sam Seder Show website) into a daily show (and "post-show
chat") produced by
Air America
Media called
Maron v. Seder. The show became
Breakroom Live with Maron
& Seder starting in 2009, and could be viewed on Air
America Media's website. On July 15, 2009, after less than one
year, Air America Media canceled
Breakroom Live. This was almost exactly
three years since his previous Air America program -
The Marc Maron Show had been
canceled (on July 14, 2006). Past Breakroom Live episodes can still
be found through Air America Media's website (as of this
writing.)
According to the show's hosts, the reason given for the
cancellation was financial. Ironically, the day before the
cancellation, the show got some of the first real publicity it had
received (outside of mentions on Air America's own website, and in
Air America email newsletters) when maximumfun.org posted its
podcast of an interview with Maron on
The Sound of Young
America.
On the final
Breakroom Live
webcast, Maron noted that this marked the third time since 2005
he'd been told by [an ever-changing series of executives at] the
network that his services would not be required in the immediate
future. Co-host Sam Seder pointed out that this would be the end of
his
fourth show at Air America since the troubled
network's inception.
Early in 2009, Maron had begun workshopping a new long-form one-man
show entitled
Scorching The
Earth, a dark yet comic examination of his separation and
divorce from his second wife.
Immediately following the demise of
Breakroom Live, Maron
brought a truncated version of the work to the Montreal
Just For Laughs festival.
On September 1, 2009 a new twice-a-week
podcast called
WTF with Marc Maron
debuted.
Marc Maron
lives in Astoria,
Queens
but is moving back to L.A., as revealed on the 22nd
WTF podcast.
Way back in 1995, *Maron auditioned for
Saturday Night Live, when
Lorne Michaels was overhauling the cast. He
attributes his turndown to an awkward personal meeting with
Michaels.
[117303]
Published works
- The Jerusalem Syndrome (2001) ISBN 978-0767908108
Media releases
CDs
- Not Sold Out (2002)
- Tickets Still Available (2006)
- Final Engagement (2009)
See also
References
- "Late Night With Conan O'Brien, January 21, 2009
- TV host
- Marc Maron
External links
Wikis
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