Marc Maron Has Mastered Playing Marc Maron

Some actors are chameleons. Other actors have carved out their own corners. Michael Caine has Wise, Subservient Father Figure. Morgan Freeman has God and Maybe God. Clint Eastwood used to have Gunslinger, but now has Unhinged Old Man. And Marc Maron… well, Marc Maron has Marc Maron. He’s played Angry Marc Maron, Intellectual Marc Maron, Misogynistic 1980s Marc Maron, Rat Marc Maron, and Evil Marc Maron. He’s played five characters simply named Marc. And he’s also played straight up Marc Maron on four different shows.

It’s true that every actor short of those method lunatics mostly plays variations on themselves. But the big difference with Maron is that, even when he’s not deliberately playing Marc Maron, it’s easy to spot the Marc Maron. It’s not that he’s a bad actor, just that it’s all out there—over 1,000 hours of revealing podcast interviews, three partially autobiographical comedy specials, and a borderline excessive amount of media coverage (this, rest assured, will be the definitive Maron interview).

Take Maron’s latest role—Pawn Star Marc Maron—in Lynn Shelton’s new indie comedy, Sword of Trust. Pawn Star Marc Maron, or Mel as he’s called in the film, is a downcast Alabama pawn shop owner who learns to open himself back up to the world during a quest to sell an antique Civil War sword. Different job, check. Different home, check. Different life trajectory, check. On paper, Mel is very much not Marc Maron. But Mel is also cranky and sarcastic, and as you dig into his backstory—he’s a former drug addict, he has a trusty assistant, and he’s into guitars—things begin to feel familiar. It’s a bit unfair. Maron is actually great in the film—quietly soulful and deceptively vulnerable. A different person, really. But such is the cost of having a corner, a distinctive voice, and an avid fan base.

For a bit more Maron, GQ met up with the comedian at Manhattan’s Rivington Guitars to talk music, the hazy line between reality and fiction, and how he approached building the character of Mel in Sword of Trust.

GQ: What’s your relationship like with fans out in the world?
Marc Maron: Somehow I've managed to cultivate an audience of people who are not unlike me. It's not really a demographic, it's more of a disposition. And I understand that they have a fairly genuine relationship with me, and they do know me pretty well if they're regular listeners. So I try to respect that. Almost all my fans are very respectful. None of them are too intrusive recently. Except the ones that have showed up at my house.

With podcasts, you're in peoples' heads all the time. Personally, I don't have a very obsessive relationship with podcast hosts. But I have had them show up in my dreams.
I get dream emails. I show up in weird places. Not too many sex dreams. Usually it's me being me in a situation. Like, telling people to do things.

People feel like they know you.
Well they do. I was more candid in the earlier shows, and then I became a little more calculating about what I will and won't share. Again, I don't know them. So what your relationship is relative to any single person is going to shift. But I know that a lot of them have relied on me to get them through stuff, or I've just been a constant in parts of their life. I just did a show down at NPR and the woman was like, “When we took family trips, it was always an episode of WTF cause my dad.” And I'm like, “Has the show been around that long? How old are you?” I realized, I'm a middle-aged guy, she's probably in her early 20s, so she was in high school with her dad going, “Got to hear this guy!” So, alright, I'm okay being that guy.

Do you notice a difference in your interactions with fans of the podcast and fans of your stand-up?
I don't know anymore. But at the beginning, it was a weird transition. I was always a stand-up, but I was not that popular. But once the podcast brought people in, a lot of them didn't know I did stand up, or how well I could do stand-up. So they'd come to the gigs going, “Let's go support Marc, he's going to need us there.” And then [after the show] they're like, “Holy shit.” And I'm like, “Yeah, this is what I've been doing my whole life. This was the plan. Not the thing where I talk about my plumbing and my cats.”

It's a weird thing when people box you into different things. I am a stand-up, but I have to be the great podcaster. “He's a stand-up, but he's really doing good as an actor.” But it's like, Can we all focus on the stand up for a minute? This was the goal. Next I'm going to play guitar, and maybe I'll do a good job at that. It's like, “He's really coming along.” But what about the stand-up? That's really what I set out to do. How do you feel about that?

Doing all these things, and performing different versions of yourself, do the lines between reality and fiction start to blur at all?
No, I know who I am and I know I can turn some things off. But I'm showing up as myself. Not that I'm a movie star, but most of the people you know as movie stars are movie stars because they're generally themselves to a degree. There's variations, but the reason you like them is because they are who they are. But with me it's like, “No, he's just being himself.” It's like, No I'm not. I'm doing the other thing.

Your music is used for the score in Sword of Trust. Do you feel like you have a voice on the guitar?
I'm getting there. I don't know if it's particularly mine, but I try to find it. I've become very aware of tone and what it means. I know what appeals to me and what feels good. It would take someone else to say I have a voice.

When I play by myself, I tend to get into some repetitions. And I tend to be in the sort of blues-rock world. But lately I've been trying to figure out how to free myself a little bit. As a non-musician musician guy, I've been listening to a lot of jazz and trying to learn more about what it means to go out there with a freedom of mind that doesn't behold you to certain licks. I'm a hobbyist. But it seems to be pretty important to me. More important than a lot of things. I'm pretty insecure about it. But I did get to play with Slash.

That’s fun.
It wasn't fun. It was cool to be up there [at an L.A. benefit concert], but I was very self-conscious. I'd never practiced so much in my life, so by the time I got there my hand hurt. But he was nice about it. It sounded pretty good.

When you're a real musician, these guys play constantly, and it's their life. They practice all the time and they're complete nerds about it. My thing is stand-up. That's what I did every night. That's what I worked. That's what I spent my life doing. And I got really good at it, and I appreciate the professionalism of it. When you see a stand-up and it seems easy, it's generally not. They've spent years trying to be who they are. I know my tone as a comic. I know my voice as a comic. I know as a guitar player [that] I'm a bedroom guitar player.

But what it made me respect is that I can hold my own for a couple tunes. Those guys who can play all night, that's their fucking life. And it was never my life. And I'm happy it wasn't because I can still enjoy it now. My equipment doesn't exude broken dreams or failure. They're not vessels of hope diminished.

Given that you’ve been you’ve been doing comedy, acting, and podcasting for a while, are you able to get a bigger thrill from accomplishments in music?
What gets me is there's part of me that wants to try it. But then I'm up against, Do you want to be another 50-something year old dude who decides to live his rock and roll dream? How do I do that with real authenticity and integrity?

It sounds like you’re uncomfortable with it.
I'm very uncomfortable with it. For me, when I finally found out how to sing in public, it was horrendously terrifying. ‘Cause I feel like that's the most vulnerable thing. A lot of people think comedy, you're up there by yourself just talking. I'm like, “That's easy.” But actually singing and showing that part of yourself, I have no confidence in that area, I have no method to it. It's all going to be very raw. So it's right there on the surface. And it's terrifying. But I can do it now if I keep my eyes closed.

What parts of your own life did you bring to the role of Mel in Sword of Trust?
The Sidewalk Cafe stuff, when I was down here in the late '80s, there was a lot of drug casualties. Now they're all older—if they've lived. I see some of the cats who were hanging out when I was hanging around. Now they're all gray-haired. It's sort of like, Wow, that guy's still alive. But you saw it happen, and I've been close enough to losing myself to know that there is a line that can be crossed where you don't come back the same. You never come back the same, but you can lose whatever your essence is. And I think that's a very real thing.

I think Mel got out from under it just in time. I think he lost his dreams and lost his heart to a degree, but he didn't lose his soul. With my own relatively real struggle with addiction, I didn't get strung out and I didn't get totally lost, but it was close enough to where I could put my mind there.

You’ve done over 1,000 podcasts. Do you have any remaining dream guests?
A white whale would be Albert Brooks. I don't know why I haven't been able to talk to Lily Tomlin. A lot of it hinges on whether the person can have a conversation for an hour. But I think the bigger question in general in the culture we live in is: Can everyone do a podcast? It seems like there's an assumption, “Oh, I can do that.” And then they go do it and, Are they my contemporaries now? With comedy, if someone does a few open mics for twelve of their friends, Are you my peer? Are you a comedian? It's a very weird, densely cluttered landscape of content. I don't necessarily see what I'm doing as content. I don't see myself as a brand. I'm definitely engaging and searching and trying to evolve in this world, but it gets a little weird when everyone just sort of confidently assumes, We're the same. But what did I work for then? What did you do?

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Originally Appeared on GQ