Unlike many comedian guests on WTF, Chris Fleming had a lot of support and encouragement from his family when it came to pursuing a career in comedy. In fact, it was his mother who got him started at open mics. Chris talks with Marc about how he embraces being both inclusive and avant-garde, building a loyal audience but also being accessible to newcomers, and using the stage to create characters, like his popular suburban mother Gayle, while also giving plenty of space to telling jokes. 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.
Full Episode
Hi, Backmarket hier. Die mit der erneuerten Technik, die dich weniger kostet. Wie dieses Handy. Es kann alles, was Handys halt können. Nicht nur diesen nervigen Spam-Anruf ignorieren. Es kann texten, anrufen, chatten, snoozen, liken, entliken. Einfach alles, was ein brandneues Handy kann. Aber das hier ist deutlich günstiger. Denn es ist nicht neu. Es ist von Profis auf Herz und Nieren geprüft.
Lock the gate!
All right, let's do this. How are you? What the fuckers? What the fuck buddies? What the fucksters? What's happening? I'm Marc Maron. This is my podcast. Welcome to it. How you doing? What's going on? Where you at? How's the stress level? How's the despair level? How's the anxiety level? What about joy? Huh? Where's the joy? Are you finding joy in your heart? In your heart? Are you taking it easy?
Right, right. Yeah, yeah, that's what's happening. Today... It's interesting, because today I talked to Chris Fleming. He's a comedian. He does a pretty big act. There's music involved. Sometimes there's live musicians on stage. But mostly, he's a stand-up.
And the odd thing about Chris is that I'd seen clips of him here and there, and I know there's a generation or two younger than me that he's sort of in this scene with Kate Berlant, Hannah Einbinder, these comics that are... I guess you would have called them alt, but for me... A lot of times if somebody is doing the job, they're a comedian. But I didn't know who he was.
He's got an interesting look and I'd seen his reels and I didn't know what to make of him. And I just booked him because I'm like, I know this guy is going to be interesting. I don't know where he's coming from or where he's at, but I hadn't really watched his stuff yet. And I booked him because I knew he would be interesting. There was no way he wasn't going to be interesting.
But the surprise for me, and I told him this, so I'm not... I'm not just saying something negative. So I watch his special. He's got a YouTube series that I didn't know about because I'm old, called Gale, which got pretty popular. He plays basically his mom's friend. And his comedy special, there's a couple, but the one called Hell is streaming on Peacock.
So I watch some Gale, and then I watch his other special, and then I watch Hell. And... What I kept seeing in the midst of his kind of frenetic way of delivering what he does is that he had real fucking stand-up chops. And not just chops. I mean, like, he could riff, man. And that's a rare thing. I'm not talking about audience work. I'm not talking about crowd work.
I'm talking about real freedom of mind, stream of consciousness, riffing with confidence, but Because he's got stand-up chops. And I never thought that I... Right when I started watching it and I saw how he was going at it with the audience, I was like, holy fuck. What this guy is hiding is that he knows how to do this. Because he doesn't do straight stand-up. It's not like club work.
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