Say what you want about Marc Maron, but no other person alive today makes comedians seem like more like philosopher-kings. “I’m interested in the fact that comics are people who are oddly courageous in their desire and their commitment to sacrificing any sense of normalcy in their lives, any sense of security, and most of them are oddly unique individuals,†Maron says in his A.V. Club interview. “Let’s have a broader conversation with people that have spent their last however-many-years thinking about their lives. I mean, they’re philosophers. They’re poets.â€
As he announced last month on WTF, the comedian will hopefully be bringing that unique blend of neurotic genius and uncomfortable insight to a television near you, in the form of Maron’s new pilot for Fox. “We shot this thing. Nobody really got paid. And we shot it in my house with a really great crew. It was a legitimate thing,†Maron explains. “Ed Asner plays my dad, and we got a lot of great other supporting cast: Seth Morris, Erin Daniels, Matt Jones, Sean Patton. It was all a group effort. It wasn’t me going around, ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck. I hope this happens.’†Not that having the interest of the industry does much to drowned out his anxiety, clearly. “The only thing I’m worried about is like, ‘Do I have the chops to do this?’†Maron wonders. “’Cause I haven’t done a lot of acting. When I have done it, I can get into the moment and do it. And a lot of their fear was, ‘These comics… You never know.’ But I think everybody was into it, and I felt pretty good about it. So when it comes to limitations, it is what it is.â€