NEED TO KNOW
Marc Maron opens up about grief like never before in an intimate new documentary, Are We Good?
In theaters now, the Steven Feinartz-directed film features glimpses of the comedian, musician and WTF podcaster’s past, interviews with his contemporaries and — with both heart-wrenching detail and attempts at levity — his journey mourning in the years following the loss of girlfriend Lynn Shelton.
That journey involved sharing updates with his social media followers, as the doc shows. “My girlfriend’s been ill,” Maron, 62, can be heard saying in an Instagram Live dated May 13, 2020. He then fights back tears in another post only five days later, announcing that Shelton had died of acute myeloid leukemia: “She was my partner. She was my friend. And I loved her and she loved me and I knew that… I was better in Lynn Shelton’s gaze.”
Steven Feinartz
Shelton died at age 54 on May 16, 2020, weeks into the COVID-19 pandemic. The Your Sister’s Sister filmmaker knew Maron for years before their relationship turned romantic in 2019. The night before a doctor check-in, Shelton “just collapsed” at home, the comedian recalls in Are We Good?
“I had to call the ambulance and it was horrifying,” he recalls in an interview with Feinartz, getting emotional. “And then that was it. She was dead 18 hours later.”
Shelton’s sudden passing “was all very horrible, just unexpected and horrible,” adds Maron, crying. “A day doesn’t go by where I don’t sort of deal with it…. I was more comfortable with myself when I was with her. Everything was supposed to work out. And it didn’t.”
In interviews, Maron’s friends, including John Mulaney, David Cross, Michaela Watkins, W. Kamau Bell and more, detail the special bond that he and Shelton shared. “Lynn found his fussiness so endearing,” recalls Watkins, 53. “The more of a pain in the ass he was, the more she thought it was so charming.”
Are We Good? captures Maron’s musings while at home with his cats in Glendale, Calif., including a moment when he breaks down upon seeing the late Shelton’s boots and rainjacket still by his door. “We didn’t have a long enough time together,” he says at one point.
Amanda Edwards/Getty
“Maybe I don’t understand the whole nature of companionship,” he admits. “Hopefully my money will hold up and when I become ill I have enough money to be taken care of. But I don’t want to watch somebody die again, or have somebody watch me die.”
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Maron poured many of his memories around losing and mourning Shelton into his return to stand-up comedy; the doc includes footage of the GLOW star testing out risky material onstage before its inclusion in 2023 HBO special Marc Maron: From Bleak to Dark.
Shelton, he says, would “probably” have liked the first joke he came up with after her collapse. After she was intubated in her hospital bed, Maron quipped to himself — and her — “Selfie? … No, no selfie.”
Steven Feinartz
Feinartz’s documentary includes audio and video from Maron’s WTF interviews with President Barack Obama, Andrew Garfield, Patton Oswalt and more. In June, the comedian announced that the podcast will end this fall after airing over 1500 starry interviews since 2009.
Are We Good? is in theaters now.
