Comedian, actor, and interviewer Marc Maron has always had a lot on his mind. If you’ve ever seen his stand-up, you’ve gotten a full dose of his biting reflections on anxieties about the world and his place in it. However, this has always been, to some degree, a performance he’s worked at over months in venues across the country to get ready for a special.
In Steven Feinartz’s documentary “Are We Good?” (playing Tribeca Festival on June 14), we not only see Maron chipping away at this process but glimpse the man behind the mirth simultaneously trying to grieve and use his art as a way of processing the loss of his partner: the late, great filmmaker Lynn Shelton, who died in May 2020. The result would be his 2023 special, “From Bleak to Dark,” which Feinartz also directed and saw Maron grapple with how to engage with this loss and find a way forward. While he’s always been vulnerable in his act and soon-ending, 16-year-old “WTF” podcast, letting a camera into his life off-stage like this was new territory.
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The documentary, which premiered in March at SXSW, required Maron to give a high degree of access to his life. This is something, in typical Maron fashion, he humorously grumbles about throughout the film. In an IndieWire interview following the Austin premiere alongside Feinartz, Maron spoke about this experience and how his way into stand-up specials is different from most.
“My process is moving through these things to maybe no laughter or not quite having a way to make it funny or a throughline to things. Seeing that part of my process, which is not a standard stand-up process, [is where] I knew going into [the documentary] that telling the stories [was] going to be emotionally loaded, and I didn’t have any real control over those emotions,” Maron said. “But I knew that being public with the feelings would eventually enable me to settle into that, and if I believed in comedy’s ability to elevate those feelings into something common and funny, if not touching, that it would reveal itself on stage. So we had to do that.”
Feinartz said that the film was then about figuring their way as they went without any preconception. In total, the duo shot for three years as Maron worked on his special, trying to figure out life after Shelton, wondering whether it was even his place to talk about her loss at all. The art of performing on stage is familiar to Maron, but in the case of “Are We Good?,” he often forgot the camera was even there, entering his home and life as he went through the stages of grieving.
“For better or for worse, the work I do in general is fairly candid and personal. The real question becomes ‘How do you do this? When do you do it?’ The choice to do a podcast episode days after [Shelton] passed away, my producer was like, ‘We don’t ever have to do a podcast again if you can’t handle it.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, I don’t know, I think it’s kind of important to expose this process in a way.’ Because everybody goes through it. One way or the other, you can’t outrun grief, and it’s something that people don’t really talk about,” Maron said. “Part of what I was thinking is I owe it to myself, and just what I do as an artist or performer is to have a public experience with this.”
Maron first met Shelton when he did a podcast episode with her in 2015. Along with developing a relationship together, Shelton also directed Maron in episodes of the television series “GLOW,” his special “End Times Fun,” and her final film “The Sword of Trust.” This connection wouldn’t have happened without the podcast and, in early June, a few months after we spoke, Maron announced that his audio show, which he began in the early days of the medium in September 2009, would end this fall amid feeling “burnt out.”
During our interview, Maron shared how he grappled with how much he should speak about his grieving process in the documentary, knowing Shelton’s death is not his alone to mourn.
“I had a fairly short amount of time with Lynn. We were really just starting out, and she has had a profound impact on the film community, the art community in Seattle; she has family that I didn’t really know,” Maron said. “What do you do in relation to the fact that you’re not the only one grieving, you’re just the one who’s public, and how do you respect that?”
When it came to their creative partnership, which reached its peak in “The Sword of Trust,” where Maron starred while Shelton wrote and directed and made a brief appearance herself, the process of working together gave him the confidence to take on more acting moving forward. (Since Shelton’s death, he’s had roles in films like “To Leslie” and “The Order” and shows like “Reservation Dogs.”)
“She believed in this talent I had that I didn’t necessarily believe in,” Maron said. “When I think about acting or when I’m doing it, I do think about her a lot and her belief in me, because her belief in me kept me going in that particular zone.”
While acknowledging that he is a bit “stubborn” when it comes to receiving direction, he said that Shelton still got a kick out of him acting and that the two would share in laughing while working.
“Her sensibility around naturalism and acting was something that inspired me and helped me to it. Even though I was resistant, and I’d get cranky. She’d be like, ‘Can we do another take?,’ and I’d be like, ‘Why?’ She’d say, ‘Just trust me.’ Ultimately, she was right, and I trusted her.”
Maron said he’s now looking into directing a project based on his longtime friend Sam Lipsyte’s most recent novel, “No One Left to Come Looking for You,” which he and Lipsyte have been collaborating on.
“We’re moving forward with that, but you know it’s a long process, and, hopefully, we’ll see it through. That’s the plan,” Maron said. “You’ve got to figure out how to find the time for everything and still have a life. With the directing, it’s just one of those things that I’ve always been curious about, and I always wanted to try it.”
When it comes to Shelton’s films and her artistic legacy, Maron said that there is one underappreciated work that still resonates for him years later.
“I really like that movie she did with Jay [Duplass], ‘Outside In,’” Maron said. “She got a great thing out of Edie Falco, and I really think that movie is not talked about a lot… She was a real artist, and she had a real sensibility about what she wanted out of a scene.”
As our conversation concluded, I asked Maron about the finale of “Sword of Trust,” where his character goes to visit Shelton’s character’s home and leaves her groceries without saying anything.
“That was a powerful moment because there was a lot of emotion there that was genuine,” Maron said. “It all felt very connected. But yeah, leaving the groceries at the door, that’s heavy… Her best work was really ahead of her, and whatever we were gonna be was really ahead of her.”
“Are We Good?” screens June 14 and 15 at the 2025 Tribeca Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
