I’ve long been a fan of Marc Maron’s WTF podcast. There’s something about the longform interview format that appeals to me: the opportunity to really dig into a conversation, to find unexpected connections and commonalities rather than just rattling off career highlights for the sake of filling airtime between commercial breaks. Maron has always excelled at this, approaching his guests as fellow travelers whose experiences might intersect with his own doubts, obsessions and insecurities. So when his partner, filmmaker Lynn Shelton, died suddenly in May 2020 from a rare blood disease, Maron’s decision to process that grief publicly — through his podcast, his stand-up, and virtually every available outlet — felt less like an overshare than a natural extension of the vulnerability he’d been practicing for years.
Steven Feinartz’s documentary Are We Good? is both a chronicle of that grieving process and a broader biographical sketch of the comedian’s life and career. Feinartz, who previously directed Maron’s 2023 HBO special From Bleak to Dark, maintains an intimate rapport with his subject, though that familiarity occasionally works against the film’s effectiveness. Maron’s natural grouchiness, which he may or may not be playing up for the camera, makes him an interesting subject for such a personal portrait, but it also means we’re frequently watching a man who seems to be questioning whether this documentary should exist at all.
The film’s strongest moments come from its most unguarded footage. Instagram Live videos captured during the early days of the pandemic offer a raw, immediate window into Maron’s emotional state, his voice cracking as he tries to make sense of a loss that arrived during a period when the entire world felt upended. Watching him go through some of Lynn’s belongings that still occupy space in his home, or listening to him struggle to articulate her impact on his life without breaking down entirely, is genuinely heartbreaking. There’s no performance here, no attempt to find the joke or package the pain into something more palatable, just a man trying to figure out how to keep moving forward.
Feinartz devotes considerable screen time to Maron’s creative process, following him to smaller clubs across the country as he works through new material with a stack of notes in hand. It’s fascinating to watch a comedian of his caliber still searching for the right angle or the perfect turn of phrase that will transform devastating personal tragedy into something an audience can not only laugh at, but find cathartic. The behind-the-scenes glimpses of this trial-and-error approach underscore the notion that using comedy to work through trauma isn’t an easy process, even for a veteran performer. The work is the point.
The documentary also fills in some biographical gaps, particularly regarding Maron’s early years — territory I was largely unfamiliar with as a podcast listener. His relationship with his father, who appears in the film while struggling with dementia, adds another layer to the grief narrative, though I found myself wishing Feinartz had pushed deeper here. Maron’s increasingly vocal stance against authoritarianism and his criticism of comedians who’ve drifted toward right-wing talking points gets touched on briefly, but this also feels like missed opportunity. Given Maron’s platform and his willingness to take unpopular positions within his industry, a more thorough exploration of this material would’ve been welcome.
The talking head interviews with fellow comedians, including longtime friends like John Mulaney and David Cross, prove something of a mixed bag. Some offer genuine insight into Maron’s evolution as a performer and his reputation among peers, but others feel like they could’ve been trimmed without losing much. The film sometimes feels like it’s over-explaining what Maron himself communicates more effectively through his own words and actions.
For all its documentary conventionalism, Are We Good? succeeds largely because Maron remains such a compelling presence. His honesty about mental health struggles and his refusal to sanitize or package his grief into something more digestible is an admirable quality. In a cultural moment where public figures often keep their pain at arm’s length, there’s something valuable about watching someone with Maron’s reach acknowledge that grief doesn’t follow a tidy narrative arc, that working through trauma is messy and ongoing and sometimes embarrassing.
The film also serves as something of a time capsule for a specific moment in Maron’s career. With WTF scheduled to wrap later this year, Are We Good? captures an artist at a crossroads, figuring out what comes next after decades of pouring his neuroses into a microphone. Whether that means focusing more on acting or scaling back on standup to simply enjoy life remains to be seen. But whatever direction Maron chooses, I hope it keeps him in the public eye. His voice, his sensibilities, and his willingness to articulate the darker corners of the human experience with both humor and hard-won wisdom all feel too valuable to just fade away.