San Francisco Comedy Blog

by Chad Lehrman

Marc Maron can be seen in the film “Almost Famous” and has made many appearances on the “Late Show with David Letterman” and “Late Night with Conan O’Brien.” This week he is headlining at the Punch Line Comedy Club in San Francisco on November 8th-10th.

Why did you decide to move to San Francisco when you did, and what did being here do for you as a comedian?

I was living in Alphabet City in New York. I was bitter, miserable, not getting on stage enough, and pissed off that I wasn’t. I’d left my girlfriend and she moved to San Francisco, so it was a combination of a need for stage time, anger, and a need to get back in with my girlfriend. I drove cross-country, I remember doing like a 22 hour stretch. I showed up on her doorstep and said, “I’m here, take me back,” and she reluctantly did. I entered the SF Comedy Competition shortly after that. This was like ‘92. I fared well enough to get work in the area, and that was that. I arrived around the same time as Blaine [Capatch] and Patton [Oswalt], and it sort of felt like a little bit of a renaissance at the time, cause a lot of people had left. I just went out there cause I knew it was a place to go. I’d been to all the other cities that had comedy scenes, and I had not been to that one. It turned out to really help my craft, it gave me more freedom than other places. And then the following year I think I came in 2nd in the competition, in ‘93. I came in 11th or 12th the first year. I was already in comedy quite a few years, I wasn’t coming out there too green. So I started as a middle out there, and then I didn’t middle for very long before I started headlining at Cobb’s and the Punchline.

You’re one of the people credited with creating “alternative comedy” in the U.S. with the 90s shows you did in New York. Do you like that term and do you think it’s still relevant?

I don’t know, I never cared one way or another. For me it was just finding a place to work out that had no expectations. It was sort of like what clubs used to be in New York, showcase clubs, or what open mikes used to be for. You’d drop in on an open mike. That stuff just seemed to have gone away and then there was always a certain expectation or pressure. I was a club comic working on new material in a venue where there was no pressure. That’s what it meant to me.

You have one of my favorite bits about 9/11 (listen in iTunes), when you talk about how it wouldn’t have happened if the terrorists had had women in their lives. How do you talk about controversial topics like 9/11 and keep it palatable for a general audience?

If that was palatable, I’ve certainly done stuff that wasn’t palatable. The way I generate material is through conversation, so I’m not writing things down to affect an audience one way or another. Usually if it turns into a bit, it’s something that started on stage as a conversation with an audience. Once I got that one up and running, people dug it. It was a surprise, and it made a certain amount of sense and brought it back to a level that no one had really thought about. But I’ve done other jokes during the time of 9/11 that didn’t fare so well and I’m doing a joke now about the fires in Southern California that goes either way. So it’s not always palatable to everybody, but it usually starts with a conversation, with my need to have the conversation, and then I see how people receive it.

What was it like working on “Los Enchiladas” with Mitch Hedberg, and do you think he was happy with the way the film turned out?

I have no idea. We flew up there, we did our bits… it was fun. I was only up there for a couple of days, and he was primarily preoccupied with doing his part in the movie. It seemed like Felicia Michaels was really managing a lot of what was going on, but I can’t really remember much of it. I don’t remember Mitch being too… he was just Mitch, you know, he was just sort of off to the side.

What’s your take on the Writer’s Guild strike that began today?

I hope it ends soon because I’ve got a deal to write a script for HBO that’s going to be hanging in limbo for 3 months or however long they decide to do this for. I don’t make a lot of money with the Writer’s Guild. I have in the past, here and there, but I’ve never been a regular writer for anything. I support them and I hope they get what they want, but I don’t want it to last long cause it has a direct effect on my life right now.

Marc Maron will be appearing at the HBO Comedy Festival in Las Vegas on November 17th. Watch a clip of Marc performing stand-up comedy:

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