Marc Maron Talks His HBO Special, 'From Bleak To Dark,' The Death of Lynn Shelton & The "Evolving Capacity For Empathy"

Welcome back to my very irregularly scheduled podcast Deep Focus, where I, Playlist.net Editor-in-Chief Rodrigo Perez, talk long or long-ish with different filmmakers, directors, writers, and actors. Today, my guest is none other than comedian/actor and podcaster extraordinaire Marc Maron. Maron has a new HBO special out, available now on HBO Max called, 'Marc Maron: From Bleak To Dark.' The special is funny, political in the best way, humanist, and also soulful and candid, dealing with a lot of things like grief, mortality, aging, and our current cultural climate.

Maron and I get into all facets of the HBO special, the political content, the humanist content, and all of its various funny, touching, insightful, and barbed aspects. He also opened up to me about the late Lynn Shelton, the filmmaker who passed in 2020 during the pandemic and who was Maron's romantic partner at the time.

Maron even opened up about the screenplay he was co-writing with Shelton before her death and his mixed feelings about reviving it and maybe making it into a movie—the short end of the answer is maybe not and maybe yes, one day, though he did reveal to me that he sent it to indie filmmaker Nicole Holofcener known for “Enough Said,” “Friends With Money” and her most recent Sundance film “You Hurt My Feelings.”

Beyond that, we also got into his own evolution as a human being, which has gone from a grumpy, angry guy cliche to someone who speaks about the "evolving capacity for empathy" that we all carry within us. I think this was a meaningful and soulful conversation, if I do say so myself, so I hope you enjoy and share it.

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