The comedian John Cleese once told me, “It’s one thing to be quick and witty. It’s another thing altogether to be able to write a joke that, no matter who tells it, it gets a laugh every time. And it’s rarer still when someone can do both things.” Are We Good?, the documentary about comedian, actor and podcasting pioneer Marc Maron, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival over the weekend, is a remarkable portrait of a tortured artist who is able to do just that.
It’s also a film about Maron’s life and comedy career, his struggles with mental health and addiction, and his disillusionment with the world and the shifting comedy landscape. But mostly, it’s a film about making sense of unthinkable loss during unprecedented times.
If you’ve seen Maron perform stand-up live or if you have listened to his WTF podcast in the last five years, you’re aware of the enormous, shocking loss Maron experienced after his partner, the filmmaker Lynn Shelton, died suddenly from a rare blood disease in the early weeks of the COVID pandemic. At its core, the film is about Shelton’s absence, the hole she left in Maron’s life, and ultimately about making sense of his grief as he returns to stand-up and uses his art to navigate his pain.
Director Steven Feinartz, who also helmed Maron’s most recent HBO special From Bleak to Dark, uses an uncomplicated approach in Are We Good?, employing home videos, old Polaroid pictures and even a touch of animation—much to Maron’s chagrin—as well as interviews with fellow comedians like John Mulaney, Nate Bargatze, David Cross, W. Kamau Bell and Michaela Watkins, who, as a close friend of Shelton’s, is particularly insightful. And the direct style matches Maron’s sharp personality.
But it’s his use of recent footage of Maron’s life sans Shelton, testing out new routines (both at home and on stage), that captures Maron’s grief while also making the cantankerous comedian relatable to the point of being (almost) lovable.
In 2022, I spent an afternoon with Maron, interviewing him for an oral history project for Tulsa’s Bob Dylan Center. I knew, of course, about Shelton’s passing, and had seen a few clips of Maron’s then-current standup, which incorporated it into his act. But in person, there was no hint of his pain. So, to see it laid so bare in Are We Good? was both shocking and revelatory.
Maron is, of course, often vulnerable to the point of it being uncomfortable on his WTF podcast. His remembrance of Shelton and his discussions about loss with Andrew Garfield and Patton Oswalt are among the most poignant. But Are We Good? takes even those unnerving examinations of grief to another level. Although the film chronicles Maron’s career, from his earliest stand-up performances in the late ‘80s, through learning his craft and developing his addiction at the feet of Sam Kinison, it’s far more interested in how Maron’s personal life has changed since Shelton’s death.
“I don’t know that I’d ever felt what I felt with her before,” Maron said of Shelton on WTF the day after her death. “I do know, actually… I was better in Lynn Shelton’s gaze.”
Shelton’s death broke his heart and toppled his world, especially because he couldn’t grieve her in any typical way given the state of the world in May 2020. It’s no wonder, then, that Maron—who says in the film that he felt like he felt on display when his well-meaning neighbors tried to comfort him from six feet away—made liberal use of Instagram Live during those dark days. While he’d begun using the app’s feature while Shelton was alive, her death changed his approach. His live streams in the wake of her passing, used to great effect by Feinartz in the film, allowed Maron to connect with the world outside and process what he was experiencing.
In the film, they also allow Maron to essentially tell his own story, in a format where he seems most comfortable, unfiltered and most of all, vulnerable. We watch him work through his grief in real time until Maron is finally able to speak about Shelton without bursting into tears.
Of course, the film includes plenty of Maron popping off in his typical dark and cutting way, about politically incorrect comedians–“hacks with an excuse” – as well as Joe Rogan’s bro culture and what he sees as Dave Chappelle punching down in his act. But Feinartz ultimately uses his unfettered access as a way to examine Maron himself, which helps us to understand his present pain, as the comedian in turn opens the darkest, angriest parts of himself to us.
Also helpful are all of the moments Feinartz includes where Maron is annoyed by the director’s presence. It keeps Are We Good? from ever feeling like anything remotely resembling hagiography. Similarly, when he captures Maron developing jokes, preparing for live appearances, and bemoaning the fact that he isn’t a bigger star, it elevates both his subject’s skill and humanity.
Understandably, then, when HBO taps Maron for a comedy special, it lifts his confidence. Maron is excited and talks openly about his grievances about being a working comic for decades who hasn’t always felt as recognized as his peers by the entertainment industry. Hardly resentful, however, Maron comes across as emotionally mature and self-aware, while also grateful that his podcast and acting career have given him other avenues to explore his talent. Ultimately, the special makes him feel like he’s arrived, and it becomes a place where his emotional and artistic lives meet honestly.
In the end, Are We Good? isn’t just a documentary about Maron and how he deals with loss through stand-up comedy. Rather, it’s a fine example of a director and subject working together to create what is essentially an authorized documentary that never feels performative. The subject’s grief and mental health struggles are the story’s anchor, but the film never fetishizes that grief.
In other words, it’s a film built around the kind of blunt and sometimes shocking humor that Maron has built his career on, while also hanging on something rare in a behind-the-scenes film about a comedian: a gentle, sensitive emotional awareness. And as Maron prepares to give up his WTF podcast platform for good, Are We Good? illuminates what has made him that medium’s ideal messenger.
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