Comedian and podcaster Marc Maron tells us about his interview with President Obama. The brothers in the documentary "The Wolfpack" grew up worshipping movies — now they're the subject of one. We also talk with KPCC's Kevin Ferguson about our new "True Detective" podcast.
Marc Maron tells us 'WTF' is with him interviewing President Obama in his garage
President Barack Obama sat down to tape Marc Maron's hit podcast "WTF" Friday in Highland Park, which has a large enough audience for the president to feel it's worth his time, even if it leaves some asking "WTF?"
We had one of the first interviews with Maron after he interviewed the president. We don't think that counts as us vicariously interviewing the president, but that's what we'll tell all our friends. (We're just one degree away!)
"The president of the United States of America came over to my house and sat with me in my garage for about an hour and four minutes, and we talked about many things," Maron says.
Obama came to the iconic garage where Maron does most of his interviews. The last time we talked with Maron, he told us how the early days of the show were basically celebrities giving him therapy — now he's had a chance to get therapy from the president. He says that Obama definitely gave him some therapeutic advice that he'll be able to use going forward, and Maron says his emotional needs were met.
"I really wanted to get a sense of him as a person, and him as a human, and try to separate my own expectations and my own mind-blowingness around him being president, and I wanted to feel like he was talking to me, and like we had some moments that were uniquely ours," Maron says.
He says that he thinks that happened and that the president felt very real and tangible, with the conversation being one with someone who was present, engaged and thoughtful. Nothing was off limits, Maron says.
"They didn't tell me not to do anything. I mean, he's a professional. They assume he can handle himself at this point in time. He's the president," Maron says. "It was a different experience than anything I've ever had before. You're talking to somebody whose personal narrative is public."
That meant that there are few things Obama hasn't already spoken about, but Maron says he did manage to find some candid moments during their conversation, including Obama saying some things he's never said before.
Maron says the most surprising thing for him was Obama's optimism.
"He saw any sort of progress as incredible. Any kind of incremental growth," Maron says.
The president did further address the shooting in Charleston, Maron says.
"I didn't know if he was going to come, which would have been completely understandable," Maron says. However, he says he was honored that Obama chose to keep his commitment to the show.
Maron says that the Secret Service didn't laugh, but they were concerned about him.
"They were all very polite and very gracious, and incredible — 'Did everything go all right for you?' Concerned about my experience," Maron says.
He says the president also expressed the same concern. He asked at the end of the interview, like he does with all his guests, "Are we good?" Obama told him that he got into the interview very intensely, right into it, but that he wasn't complaining.
"I was like, I got an hour, and I want to try to manage this a bit," Maron says. He tried making sure they avoided getting into the weeds and covered everything.
"He was concerned about my experience. I think maybe he thought it would be more fun," Maron says.
The president has experience with funny interviews; he talked with Zack Galifianakis for his Funny Or Die show "Between Two Ferns," where Obama used the opportunity to push the Affordable Care Act to millennials. Maron says he didn't feel that Obama was trying to pitch an agenda on his show.
Obama told Maron that the reason he was doing the show is he felt it was a place where he could get people interested in politics. Maron himself used to host a political talk show, but says he's since detached himself for politics because he feels he's better at exploring more personal issues. He got into some of those with Obama.
"We were able to talk about him not honoring the script of his father, and why he was able to avoid those pitfalls that his father had happen in his life," Maron says.
White House Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz told reporters that the president had a chance in the interview to reflect on his approach, his perspective and “how his upbringing informs his decision-making.”
Obama just got his own account on Twitter recently, the first time he's had one that's not run by other people — that enabled Maron to tag him in this photo on Twitter.
Monday is
day on
— marc maron (@marcmaron)
Monday is @POTUS day on @WTFpod! pic.twitter.com/HVZQhKYXNM
— marc maron (@marcmaron) June 19, 2015
They also talked about how Maron basically did stand-up comedy while Osama bin Laden was being killed by SEAL Team 6 and how Obama was able to put on that public face for a correspondents dinner, keeping that secret. He says they also talked about the craft of being the president.
Maron says the president gave him one laugh.
"I said I used to run the country from my couch. There was a period I was doing it," Maron says. The president responded that a lot of people do that.
Maron's neighbors crowded the area, according to the White House pool report, including a literal juggling clown. Neighbors found out about the visit thanks to no parking signs going up in the area Wednesday — KPCC's own John Rabe spotted one of those signs hanging on a nearby cactus.
Signs of
visit to
tomorrow for
taping. Too funny, but practical! pic.twitter.com/lD5hTbxRAB
— Off-Ramp Colossus (@KPCCofframp)
Some members of the neighborhood told the press pool that they didn't know that the podcast was taped there or even what "WTF" was, though Yolanda Lem told the pool reporter "I've heard the initials."
Another neighbor, Trish Escobedo, said she was going to head home to find the podcast's website. Websites aren't usually how most people listen to podcasts, but it's a sign that this could be an interview that reaches far beyond the usual podcasting audience, while also giving the president access to the hip audience the show tends to draw.
They also found time to briefly talk comedy, Maron says.
"We talked very quickly about comedy and who his comedians were," Maron says. The names: Richard Pryor, Dick Gregory, Jerry Seinfeld and Louis C.K.
"Which I'm sure is going to make Louis just thrilled," Maron said somewhat sarcastically.
The interview was actually from the White House pitching Maron.
“I think it’s highly unusual. I’m fairly certain this is the first time a POTUS has been interviewed in a garage," Schultz told the White House press pool.
The actual Maron interview with Obama on "WTF" drops Monday — we'll have to wait and see how much Maron asked Obama about what he thought of Maron's cats. Maron does expect the interview to bump up his show's numbers.
"I would think so. It would be sad if it didn't. I would be concerned for the country if it didn't," Maron says.
Storify: Some people are excited about the visit
'The Wolfpack' brothers spent their lives locked up watching movies — now they want to make them
After filmmaker Crystal Moselle met the Angulo brothers on a rare trip outside their apartment, they slowly became friends, and over a five year period she made the award-winning documentary "The Wolfpack."
In the movie, you see how these six brothers are obsessed with cinema, because movies were their only contact with the outside world. But they wouldn’t just watch the films — they’d re-enact them with elaborately constructed homemade versions of “The Dark Knight” and “Reservoir Dogs.”
Now the six boys are no longer being held hostag inside their family’s apartment. In fact, they’ve been flying around the country, promoting the documentary.
When Mukunda and Bhagavan Angulo came by "The Frame "studios, we asked them if the documentary had changed the way they viewed their childhoods, as well as what they planned to do with their passion for movies.
Interview Highlights:
Is there any moment in any day when you look at each other when you're wandering around Hollywood and you say to yourselves, "How did we get here? Is this all a dream?"
Bhagavan: It's funny, I was thinking about that a couple of days ago. It was more towards, like, "Wow, we've come a really long way." We started as younger people in the Lower East Side in Manhattan — we'd just met Crystal, she was teaching us cameras in Washington Square Park and telling us how to write a story.
And in that moment, you would never think that you would be sitting in a chair talking on the radio in Hollywood, Los Angeles, basically where the birth of all film was. Just in the past five years, it's been a long process but it's been really great, too.
What has been the most indelible or profound thing that you can recall somebody who has seen this movie coming up to you and sharing?
Mukunda: I'm glad you mention that, because there was one audience member that came up to me, and she told me how strong we all are and how we got a lot of love from our mother, and she could see that. [She also told us] to never give up and keep going, keep turning the wheel of life, because a lot of people start, how they say, from nothing.
For example, people might say, "I started from cleaning toilets in a restaurant." But she said, "You guys start really below that, from actual nothing, and here you are. I feel like you're going to give the entire world hope, that they can start from below the bottom and go way over the top."
You guys are clearly very interested in movies. How do you want to take that interest and broaden it? What do you hope to do as filmmakers now?
Mukunda: Our main goal altogether is feature films. We're starting our own production company called Wolfpack Pictures, but we're going to be doing short films, music videos, commercials, whatnot, and feature films someday — probably here in L.A.
Our main hope is to achieve the magic old movies had. Today, you can tell that cinema has lost its touch — all the magic is going into TV now, with shows like "True Detective," "House of Cards," "The Walking Dead," "Breaking Bad"... it goes on and on.
A lot of people would look at this film and say that you and your four brothers are survivors, that you went through an extremely unusual ordeal. Maybe that's judgmental on their parts, but a lot of people would say that. Do you think that the resilience that you've shown as kids will be a benefit to your ability to make it as filmmakers?
Mukunda: Without a doubt, because when you're a child, you go through a lot. As brothers, we've always held our imagination as the high hand of our world, and I feel like if we can get through that, we can definitely get through everything else in the world — as well as business in filmmaking. [laughs]
"The Wolfpack" opens in theaters Friday.
'True Detective': KPCC’s new podcast 'Welcome to Vinci' covers season 2
The first season of HBO’s hit series “True Detective” was set mostly in Louisiana, but for season 2, series creator Nic Pizzolatto decided to set the noir-ish detective story right in our own backyard: a fictional SoCal city by the name of "Vinci."
"The Frame’s" John Horn sat down with "Off-Ramp" producer Kevin Ferguson, who’s the host of “Welcome to Vinci,” KPCC’s new podcast about the second season of HBO’s “True Detective,” subscribe to it in iTunes and Stitcher.
Interview Highlights
The inspiration for this podcast:
“So, we know the first season of ‘True Detective’ did a really good job of showing us parts of Louisiana that aren’t New Orleans... We got shots of Louisiana that don’t make it onto TV before, and you really felt like you were getting a tour of Nic Pizzolatto’s home town, from someone with really intimate knowledge. Well when we heard about the second season, they’re coming to our hometown. And there’s gonna be a lot that we can explore really deeply: where plotlines come from, who characters are based off of, what some fictional places are in real life.”
The podcast is called “Welcome to Vinci." What is "Vinci"?
“Vinci is the fictional town that Ray Velcoro is a detective in. Ray Velcoro is played by Colin Farrell. There’s about 95 people living there, it’s just south of downtown L.A., and it’s pretty obviously the city of Vernon, which is a real city in Los Angeles, [which also has] 95 people. There’s a shot of a water tower at the beginning of the episode that says 'City of Vinci.' That water tower’s a real thing too — it says 'City of Vernon.'”
What is it about Vernon that lends itself to great fictional storytelling about crime and corruption?
“Vernon is a super opaque city... There’s a lot going on behind closed doors. Actually, if you look into L.A. Times articles from about three, four years ago, city administrators were making enormous salaries, sometimes comparable to what Robert Rizzo in Bell were making. And it’s a really unique city. It had the same mayor for 50 years. Which tells you right away he was doing a great job.”
Does it have a stylistic feel that is noir-ish?
“There’s detectives... so you’re getting a noir feel right there. There’s a plot that’s convoluted, but easy enough to find who’s killing who and why are they dying. The main characters are really troubled, but they’re also likable. They all have troubled pasts — there’s that noir element. Are there giant overarching shadows? Not yet. I’ve only seen the first two episodes, but not yet.”