W. Kamau Bell and Marc are similar comedians in that neither of them will ignore the current political environment in their acts. Kamau and Marc talk about how that’s shaping up today versus how it was during the first Trump administration and what they each feel about the balance between civic responsibility and entertainment. They also talk about Kamau’s decision to play the Kennedy Center despite the Trump takeover, his five year break from comedy, and what happened after he released his documentary about Bill Cosby. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Chapter 1: What is the significance of comedy in today's political climate?
Well, no, one of the saddest things I can hear from my kid is, Dad, can you put the phone down? I'd like to say I've never heard that, but I've heard that. Can you look at me? Can you look at me? Yeah. Oh, really? He says that? It's been, it's been, I got, on occasion, you know, big news story breaks and you're like, whoa, I gotta keep up with this.
Yeah, no, I'll be right there. But that's a good question though. Do we have to keep up with it? No.
No, we don't have to. I feel compelled. I guess my wife says it all the time. I feel compelled to keep up with it.
No, I do too. You've been in the political racket for a while in terms of covering it one way or the other. And once you're locked into the narrative and you kind of know the players and you've got a basic sense of how it works, which I only have a basic sense. I couldn't tell you... Ja, genau.
Die Beziehung zwischen den drei Branchen, die jetzt alle zerstört wird und wahrscheinlich niemals die gleiche wird. Ich weiß nicht, was das ist, aber ich kann eine Narrative folgen. Und die Wahrheit ist, dass die Dichte, in der ich es folge, es nicht wichtig ist, ob ich es als brechende Neuigkeiten sehe. Yeah.
It's not like... It's not gonna come back to you.
Mark, you missed it. Yeah, and it's not gonna change my life. No. Other than whatever I'm gonna do with my head, which is not good.
Well, this is it. This is it. A lot of that.
It's over.
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Chapter 2: How did W. Kamau Bell approach his performance at the Kennedy Center?
It's like the trenches. Yeah, I mean, when I'm working on an hour, there's some markets I don't do theaters in. There's a couple markets that I shouldn't be now, but I'm doing it. But I'd go do all the clubs. And that kind of two shows Friday, two shows Saturday, show Thursday. You know, that second show Saturday, where I get kind of like... Yeah, you get loose and a little weird.
Yeah, but there's still a thrill to that.
No, I think, you know, I came up in that world, but I think for me, I wouldn't have been able to build up, I wouldn't have been able to, if I was just going out and doing showcases, I couldn't build the hour. Yeah, because you can't do it in pieces. No, you can't sort of like, I know I'm lost here, but I gotta be lost to find out where I'm trying to get to, so, yeah.
Yeah, I find that a lot of times you do the hour and you're, you know, outside of being older, you basically, you run in the same circles, you know, in terms of your thought. Yeah, yeah. You're kind of restating things you've said before with today's spin.
Yeah, well, that's the great thing about having taken such a break is that I have a lot of stories that have happened in the last five years. So I don't feel like I'm like scraping the barrel. Yeah.
13.
Oh, also du hast noch 10 Jahre Zeit.
Genau, sie geht in die Hochschule. Die guten Dinge sind auf dem Weg. Ja, das wird alles passieren. Wer ist dieser Kerl? Ja, genau. I got to tell her when she was 12, she told me something that one of the boys in her class had done that was stupid. And I was like, hey, from the ages of 12 to 30, boys are just trash. And so you should just know that.
And then I told other people, other women were like, it's older than 30. I was like, yeah, I know, but I didn't want to bum her out. For always. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe they will always be trash. Yeah. But like...
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Chapter 3: What was the impact of W. Kamau Bell's documentary on Bill Cosby?
Yeah, after the show. The thing that I also have is I can feel like there's a lot of, especially because a lot of security people are black often, and they will be like, they will take extra care. I feel like I'm getting extra care because they know what I'm going through and what I'm out there doing. So it's a thing. Sometimes I can feel people really watching out for me in ways. Oh, that's good.
Yeah, no, I... Wer wusste, dass ich... Ich bin auch... Als 52-jähriger grünhafter Mann bin ich in meinen Unk-Jahren. Leute sehen mich als den alten Mann, der... Wir müssen ihn schützen.
Er ist ein Pillar der Gemeinschaft.
Ich bin ein Pillar der Gemeinschaft. Ich war nie ein G, aber ich bin ein OG.
Weil ich nicht gestorben bin.
Ich war nie cool genug, ein G zu sein. Er hat die Geschichten. Jetzt habe ich einige Geschichten. Ich habe drei Kinder und... We did a doc that they were in, and me and my wife talked a lot about, should we do this? It's a constant negotiation of what should I be doing, how much should we be doing, how much should I be putting them out there?
It's a constant negotiation about how to move through the world.
No.
Ich will nicht sagen, dass ich auf eine Art und Weise aufgewachsen bin, aber die Karriere, die ich gewählt habe, da muss ich mich nicht nur um meine Lebensversion kümmern. Die Art und Weise, wie ich meine Karriere gewählt habe, es wäre viel einfacher für mich als Mensch, einen Vier-Hour-Dokumentar über Bill Cosby nicht zu machen.
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