Marc Maron is 'All In' for upcoming Phoenix comedy show

Interviewing a famous podcaster who has interviewed many famous people himself, including Barack Obama, Robin Williams, Bruce Springsteen and 15 years' worth of other A-listers, can be intimidating. So, as a fan, I was both excited and nervous when I was asked to speak to Marc Maron ahead of his Phoenix stand-up show, “All In.”

Maron is famous for his cynical outlook and often discusses some dark parts of his life with his guests on his "WTF" podcast, which he started in 2009. His frank style allows his guests to open up, too, which generally leads to funny and insightful conversations.

However, my interviewing fears were alleviated as soon as we started talking. He joked about the Arizona heat and the people who love to go into it for prolonged periods during the summer. The professional that he is, he ended up making me feel at ease, even though that was my job.

The comedian isn't just famous for his skills behind the microphone. He's also an actor, writer and musician. In 2013, he starred in a self-titled sitcom for IFC that ran for three years, and he'll soon star alongside Owen Wilson in the Apple TV+ series “Rambler.”

Maron's new stage show, "All In," hits Phoenix’s Orpheum Theatre on Saturday. He spoke with Phoenix New Times about the show, the future of comedy, a little politics and where he stands on retirement.

Quotes have been edited for length and clarity.

Phoenix New Times: Are you nervous about doing your new stand-up show, "All In"?
Marc Maron: I don't know if I'm nervous. There's some big pieces in there that I think are solid, longer bits, which is the way I work a lot of times, and then some smaller ones. So it came together and it's got some depth and it's got some menace and it's got a rawness to it. So you know, I'm not nervous.

I guess I get more nervous heading into Arizona; that market has never been amazing for me. And now my booking agent has booked me both in Tucson and Phoenix to do these larger venues. It's just funny because I used to do a show at Stand Up Live as my Arizona date, which is like 400 to 500 people, and my manager or my agent decided that there are still more people that wanna see you, so I think we should step up the venues, and it turns out there's only about 100 more (people). I think the Tucson show is looking good. The Phoenix show is a bigger venue that is definitely not gonna be filled up. It's an interesting type of intimacy; the intimacy of 400 or 500 hundred people, you know, in a venue that seats 1,500. But it is an intimacy nonetheless. And it'll be an interesting show.

Speaking of interesting shows, did you watch the latest presidential debate? What did you think?
All I know is that before Kamala there was very little for Democrats, and some progressives to hold on to in terms of belief in leadership. So, yeah, I was just sort of amazed at how quickly a sort of machine coalesced culturally and politically around her. And look, I don't know what's gonna happen. I wouldn't say that I'm hopeful, but I'm excited that there is a reasonable and sophisticated counterbalance to the insanity. ... So that's exciting, it's all very exciting. Again, I wouldn't say I'm necessarily hopeful, but at least there's a fight.

Do you think a changing "woke" world kills comedic creativity or makes it more intelligent?
I don't think either of those things are true. I think that what's happened is, you know, everything has become fragmented. I don't think there is a common cultural dialogue going on. And I think because of the fragmentation of the media universe people are able to build their own bubbles and serve their own people.

A fart joke will always be funny, right?
I don't think anybody's anti-fart humor. I think it might be considered a little easy and a little base, but I do think the idea of comedy that basically tells vulnerable, marginalized people to suck it up and take a hit, that's a different thing.

Dave Chapelle tried it with the trans community. It didn't go well.
After thinking about it long and hard, outside of his obsession with the trans reality, I think ultimately if he is methodical about what he does — which I think he is — I think initially what he was most upset about was that there was a bunch of anonymous and angry voices that, through social media, had the power to destroy people. I feel like, he had people close to him that were affected by that and I feel like he felt that it was wrong. I really think that the basis of his attack was to keep comedy free, whether that got misdirected ultimately. Which I think it did.

Ultimately, it's about encouraging your freedom to live the life you want to live. If you are not comfortable with someone else's way of living life, the democratic idea is that you figure out a way toward tolerance and acceptance, and once you remove tolerance and acceptance from the conversation, it really throws a wrench into the gears of the democratic idea. So, if you're a wrench, you should at least know what it means to be doing what you're doing.

Is there anything that you won't talk about in your act?
Nothing is really off-limits. I sort of moved through my material from my own point of view and my own struggles, and my own ideas of how I'm trying to understand things. I've told jokes in my life that were wrong-minded. I've told jokes in my life that could be seen as controversial if I was a bigger voice on the scene. But, for me, no, there's nothing off-limits. You can talk about whatever you want but you have to decide for yourself whether you want to shoulder the repercussions of what you're saying and whether it's worth saying. So, really whether or not there's anything I can or can't say or I won't touch, it's not because of ideological principles. It's just about like, do I wanna deal with that shit?

Where do you think comedy is headed in the next 10 years? It seems female comics are on the rise.
Look it's always gonna be the same. If somebody can find an audience, they'll play for them, and if more people get on board then, you know, they succeed at being that level of comic. There's a lot of comics around; a lot of them are just OK and working their angle. It's a lot different business than what I started in. There's a lot of weird crowd work going on.

But, you know, Nikki Glaser is a huge comic now and she earned it. And you know, Maria Bamford is a genius, and there's Kate Martin. Look, comedy is not gonna go anywhere. It's just like the dominant paradigm. At this point in time, since everything is content and everything is based on likes and followers, the justification for what success is really has nothing to do with the creativity or the art of comedy. It's not like that has changed much but it's changed in terms of how one gets seen and popular.

There's a lot of people that are terrible but are extremely popular, but I don't know if that's ever been different. I think comedy will just keep plugging along. And as you said, there are a lot more women and a lot more diverse voices out there doing it. Whether they make it onto the large radar, I don't know. But, comedy has always been sort of a niche thing for a lot of people. Success is based on a number of followers and likes and crowd work and $100 million deals. But, that's just the way capitalism works and now everybody is just a cog in some sort of strange machine serving tech giants. That's just the way the world is going.

Speaking of which, will you ever have Matt Rife on the podcast?
No, I'm not that interested in talking to him.

Have you ever thought about retiring?
I think about it all the time. I don't know, a lot of people say that it's impossible to do, but, look, I'm kind of doing more acting and trying to figure out how that works for me and standup keeps coming. It's still my primary source of creative enjoyment. But, yeah, sure. I think about retiring a lot, but I don't know really what that looks like. I don't know if I'll pull out entirely because that's just a little weird. But I am gonna be shooting a movie next month. That'll kind of determine whether or not I'm cut out for the acting game in any big way. So we'll see what happens.

Marc Maron: All In. 7 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 21. Orpheum Theatre, 203 W. Adams St., Phoenix. Tickets start at $26.50. To purchase tickets, go to the Orpheum Theatre website.