Transcript
Marc Maron (0:01)
Look, you heard me say it before. I don't know how much time I have left. There are a lot of things that pass me by, especially when it comes to books, and I worry about having enough time to get to them. But another thing I always say is there's no late to the party anymore. And the Foxed Page is a great way to get back in the loop of great literature. The Foxed Page is a podcast and YouTube channel that dives deep into the best books. It's basically your favorite college English class, but very relaxed and way more fun. No exams, no participation, and only books you really want to read. Your host is Kimberly Ford, a bestselling author, a one time professor and PhD in literature. She offers up entertaining, often funny lectures that will leave you feeling inspired and a little bit smarter in a nice literary way. She digs into everything from J.D. salinger to yellowface, from Stephen King to Madame Bovary, from Pride and Prejudice to Trust. Want to get the most out of what you read? The Foxed page is for you. Visit the foxedpage.com or find it on YouTube and podcast platforms. All right, let's do this. How are you? What the. What the Buddies? What the nicks? What's happening? I'm Mark Marin. This is my podcast. Welcome to it. How's everybody doing? Grim times. I don't know. I don't really keep up with social media that much. I don't know what's going on on TikTok or Threads or Facebook or Twitter. I don't. I really don't. I do engage with Instagram a bit. I do poke around a bit there to see what's going on elsewhere sometimes. I generally read the news, but I don't, I don't really. I. I am out of the loop sort of day to day with a lot of what's trending or infecting the minds of the masses. I'm not really on YouTube. I don't know if it's an old man thing. I don't know if it's zero fucking. I don't know if it's just how I budget my time, but I'm just not. I'm not on the pulse of all that. Though it did come to my attention somehow through this or that, that the, the rapture is happening tomorrow. Which I, on some level, pretty exciting. I mean, that's sort of a big day. I guess that's when all the believers just kind of rocket into the sky like, you know, lit fireworks and, you know, kind of zoom up to heaven. I'M not sure where it leaves the rest of us, but I don't guess it can be any worse than where we are right now. And I have to assume that with a lot of those people raptured up, it might be relatively pleasant for, you know, for as long as whatever's supposed to happen down here to happen, you know, what can we do? You know, the rapture's out of our hands. But I think some things that may be in our hands are what's happening in terms of just blatant authoritarianism.
Interviewer/Host Assistant (3:25)
And.
Marc Maron (3:25)
Fascism, which go hand in hand. I believe the government is sort of a authoritarian operation beneath Trump, who's just a godless autocratic monster. It's kind of a symbiotic perfect storm of a fucking nightmare politically. And the administration being driven by the 2025 guys is, you know, they've put jackboots on Jesus and it's unfolding into a very, you know, very efficient and frightening authoritarian driven fascist operation. And I spoke about this a bit, and I don't see any reason not to continue speaking about it, that anybody who's dismissing the firing of Jimmy Kimmel as a business decision, that's a shallow point of view. Sure, abc, owned by Disney, made a decision to take Jimmy off the air. But this is how corporate entities who are not people capitulate to government. Strong arming, this government being fundamentally authoritarian. So you can say it was a business decision, and you can say that late night was dying, and you can say that network TV is dying. All that to be true. But what is more sort of frightening is that the corporate entities that represented show business are, you know, no longer have strength. They're competing against streaming, and they capitulate. So in an optimistic view, if by some miracle of corporate democracy, these corporations stand up to this administration and fight for what is really the freedom of speech. You know, maybe we have hope, but I've not known corporations to operate at the behest of democracy. They do at the consumer. And I guess some of these boycotts of Hulu and Disney are maybe making an impact. I don't know what will happen to Jimmy, but the bottom line is that this was strong arming from an authoritarian administration to shut him up and to make an example of him. For anybody who speaks out against the administration, and as a comic and as somebody who believes in the First Amendment, the only part of the First Amendment that this administration, through their policy and through the people within it seem to defend are the words shut the fuck up. And behind that is the power to implement shut the fuck upness. Now for democracy to work in this one, the response to shut the fuck up is go fuck yourself, fuck you now, without being able to have the go fuck yourself, fuck you response to shut the fuck up, we just get, you know, enforced shuck the fuck up ness. And that is not democracy. And historically and from my point of view, there's a lot of fuck you in art, There's a lot of fuck you in satire, there's a lot of fuck you in painting, there's a lot of fuck you in theater, there's a lot of fuck you in music. These are the arts that, you know, stand up to fascist bullshit in one form or another. I'm not saying all art. Some of it's just pretty. And the stifling of these voices of fuck you or hey, this is, you know, I'm out here on the edge of fucking human understanding and consciousness and creativity. I'm a fucking astronaut of art. Just because you don't understand it or it makes you uncomfortable, you're gonna see it as some sort of leftist plot or you're gonna shut it up. I mean, accommodating the sort of most shallow, least sophisticated, least interesting, most boring among us because they're uncomfortable with people who aren't like them or art doesn't kind of fall into, you know, the parameters of what they understand, which is, you know, forest paintings or AI generated trump masterpieces. The more we accommodate that, the more we're going to homogenize into some, you know, thoroughly fascist country on one level and just frighten people who are afraid to explore. And if you start sort of demonizing the arts because you don't understand it or it threatens your way of thinking, then what the fuck do we have? I mean, it's, look, this is what's happening. This is the portal. They're using the death of Charlie Kirk to stifle all voices of resistance. And that's straight up authoritarian bullshit. Already many people are afraid to say fuck you, to shut the fuck up. But if it becomes enforced, you know, no more fuck yous to our shut the fuck up. We're, you know, it's over now. Look, I, I, I'm, I'm not sitting here with big solutions or big hopes, and I, I guess you just have to fight for it any way you can. On a lighter note, today I talked to Christopher Guest. Very funny guy. I've tried to have him on for years. Anytime he had a project I would try to have him on, just never happened. All it took was for his wife, Jamie Lee Curtis to say, give him a call. And it happened. He came over. You guys know him from the movies he wrote and directed, like Waiting for Guffman, Best in show, A Mighty Wind. And of course he's been part of Spinal Tap for more than 40 years. There's a new Spinal Tap movie. He's here and we had a very pleasant talk. I got a couple of names wrong, but you know, he corrects me. That's just old. Just oldness. The oldness coming through. The documentary about me. Are we good? Opens on October 3rd in New York and Los Angeles with special screenings around the country on October 5th and October 8th. Go to arewegoodmaren.com to see where it's playing, get tickets. And there's still a couple of weeks to pre order the graphic novel. WTF is a podcast on Kickstarter and here's the deal with that. If we get enough pre order to push The Kickstarter past 200 grand, Box Brown is going to create a special WTF trading card featuring me and the original Garage Cats. And that will be sent to everyone who pre ordered the book through Kickstarter. If it reaches 250 grand, we're going to make a frame set of four different cards for every person who ordered a book. Go to z2Comics.com WTF I also, I just saw one battle after another. I went to a small screening. I just, I wanted to see it. I was willing to wait, but I went to a very intimate screening in a relatively small screening room and I'm ready to see it again tomorrow on fucking imax. What a goddamn movie. I'll try to get a few words in about it after I tell you a little bit about. Okay, let's do this. When you think of home security, what do you think of? Probably some sensors on your doors, an alarm, maybe some cameras inside your house. But here's the thing. Those all come into play after someone breaks into your house. That's a reactive approach. We've recommended SimpliSafe on WTF for years because they take a proactive approach. SimpliSafe is designed to stop crime before it happens on your property. Simplisafe's Active Guard Outdoor protection uses AI powered cameras that can identify a potential threat, like someone lurking on your property. Simplisafe's professional monitoring agents can use two way audio to confront the intruder, letting them know they're being watched on camera and that police are on their way. That's real security. And Simplisafe is So confident in what they do. There are no long term contracts or hidden fees. You can cancel anytime. Right now you can get 50% off their new SimpliSafe system with professional monitoring and your first month free@simplisafe.com WTF? That's SimpliSafe.com WTF? For 50% off and your first month free, simplisafe.com WTF? There's no safe like SimpliSafe. I wanted to add to the First Amendment discussion that as a comic doing club work, I see a lot of comics still, you know, speaking very freely and pushing back and doing the funny that is in. In the name of fuck you. In the name of resistance, in the name of satire. These are the tools that the comic, the satirist, the humorist, the playwright, the artists have to keep power in check with no checks and balances anymore in terms of the norms that have been destroyed within the government itself. You require voices of resistance and fuck Eunice and fuck funny to be a check on power. I mean, now that none are left, if you take away the speech of those individuals courageous enough to do a funny kind of, you know, go fuck yourself with that intention, like, look, this is why this is wrong. This is what's really happening. This is who you are. This is who we are that, you know, you lose. One of the last bastions of a check on power is artists, comedians, playwrights, musicians. Once you start fucking shutting them up, there's no check. And this is not a reliable check. This is not like, you know, some sort of, you know, means to balance power within the government. Those have all been destroyed through single party rule. But we're out here in the trenches of being human, you know, with a lot of fuck you and us. And, you know, it's frightening. I mean, are they gonna start putting National Guard troops in comedy clubs? I mean, the Comedy Store, you know, you can put. They put the phones in the bags so you can release what you wanna release if you record yourself. But you don't have a bunch of rats in the audience looking to start shit with your words, you should still have some control over that. But that's the other thing. All these platforms by which everyone thinks they have the freedom to say whatever they want. Corporate owned and completely vulnerable to government interference and control of algorithms. All right, look, it's a bigger conversation. It's not really my wheelhouse on some level, but I'm trying to keep abreast of the situation. And, you know, I'm just trying to keep. Go fuck yourself Fuck you. You know, a healthy answer to shut the fuck up in America. One battle after another. Paul Thomas Anderson's new movie is spectacular. It's got a fucking great pace. It's rooted in the Thomas Pynchon book Vineland. So it's got a lot of that great Pynchon esque, satirical kind of writing and names and ideas. On a deep level, this is a satire, but in terms of balancing the humor of the thing, it's not prescient. It's happening. So there is a terrible core of this movie that is very reflective of the culture we're living in. Though much of it is funny and framed as funny. If you look at the situations in the language that. The kind of balance between funny and just abject terror, because of its representation of what we are very close to in terms of a police state, it's. It's a very provocative balance. And Paul Thomas Anderson pulls it off, I think, you know, drawing from Pynchon more directly in Inherent Vice, which I watched a while ago, which is also a hilarious satire of a different time. You know, he's kind of perfected it now through the pace, the music, the characters, the, the, the, the framing. I mean, it's just a stunning film that just kind of keeps punching. And the performances are great, but it is foreboding because it is a reality we're very close to living in, if not already there. And the humor is good. It's enough and it still packs a punch. I've got nothing negative to say about this movie. It's essential watching and it will be used by right wing ideologues as an example of a truth about left leaning resistance. You know, mark my words on that. Go see it though. It's spectacular. I'm gonna go see it again. I'll wait until, to talk about it again until everyone else goes and sees it. Okay, you guys, Chris Guest is here and it was an honor to talk to him because he's important in the history of modern comedy and he's a great guy and he's brilliantly funny. Spinal Tap 2 the End continues is now in theaters. And this is me talking to Chris. 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