Corin Tucker is still one of my best friends, so despite going through that kind of rough phase of Sleater-Kinney and then the breakup of the band, which does end up feeling a little bit divorce-like, we’re still really good friends. We dated for a second when we were nineteen and twenty. She’s married with two kids now.
People really focused on that even though in my mind, I’m like, “Doesn’t everybody do that?” It’s fine, I have nothing to hide, but it was just one of those things. I still remember reading a review after Sleater-Kinney played a show in New York, and the reviewer mentioned it. It was years later, I’d just been to Corin’s wedding. But if you don’t provide people with a narrative, people will provide one for you. We were never good at self-mythologizing in Sleater-Kinney. I think when you don’t do that, someone will just fill it in for you.
PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON—WRITER, DIRECTOR, PRODUCER
We all kind of started out together. Me. John C. Reilly. Philip Seymour Hoffman. They had a little bit more of a résumé underneath them. Which was really helpful, even if they made four or five films, that was more than I’d done. When we were starting out, they had my back and they were really helpful. Like, “That’s where craft service is,” the simplest things. Just having a few movies under your belt makes a big difference.
But you know, Phil was like, he maybe had a long list of kind of not-so-great movies, but he would always be the best thing in it, you know?
When I saw him for the first time in Scent of a Woman I just knew what true love was. I knew what love at first sight was and it was the strangest feeling, sitting in a movie theater thinking, he’s for me and I’m for him and that was it.
Strange. Believe me, when I was a kid, just like eight, nine years old, I always thought I’d have Cary Grant in my movie or Harrison Ford. But something happened when I saw him.
SAM SEDER—COMEDIAN, WRITER, DIRECTOR, ACTOR, RADIO HOST, POLITICAL COMMENTATOR
I grew up with Jon Benjamin.
Marc
You guys were best friends?
Sam
Yes.
Marc
Like, when you were ten?
Sam
No, no, we were archenemies first.
JON BENJAMIN—COMEDIAN, WRITER, DIRECTOR, ACTOR
Sam was my actual bully in junior high.
Marc
And then you became friends? Why? Because you negotiated it?
Jon
No, we became friends later, probably out of desperation.
I started prep school in seventh grade. I was a little guy. I loved disco, which was a very unpopular musical movement at the time. He was really “husky,” I guess would be the best word.
Marc
So he comes up to you and he says, “Hey, Shorty!” and you go, “What, Fatty?”
Jon
Well, no. He would want to beat me up. That was the thing.
Marc
He was a “beater-upper”?
Jon
Yeah, he would chase me and stuff like that, as I remember. I was terrified of him. He was, I think, fairly serious about it—although I don’t know if that was true at the time—about killing me. There was that feeling. He sort of ruined a good year in my life.
SAM SEDER
Jon’s sort of like a pathological liar. I mean, he’s a little bit reformed, but a lot of what he talks about, that stuff is imaginary. We were enemies, but then I think through high school I didn’t really deal with him at all.
JON BENJAMIN
In any event, Sam left that prep school, and I went to college in Connecticut. This small college. My parents are dropping me off, and I’m nervous about being there. My roommate was a very strange guy from Spanish Harlem. Not many people at Connecticut College from Spanish Harlem. I open the door across the hall, and Sam Seder is there. Which I thought, at the time, was like seeing the Virgin Mary, in a bad way.
I just was like, “You’ve got to be kidding me, right?” That’s the guy who used to beat me up for a year and a half, now he’s practically my roommate. His dad is there, dropping off his clothes, and I’m like, “What are you doing here? This is going to be bad.”
Then it ended up like that feel-good story you’d see on TV. We became best friends, through alcohol. We knew no one else, and he was like, “Let’s go get some beer and get drunk, and go to college.”
SAM SEDER
I know exactly the moment you and I met.
Marc
It was in Harvard Square.
Sam
Yes, and I had done an open mic. I was with a couple of friends who I had invited. You were walking with your soon-to-be first ex-wife. I said, “Oh, that’s Marc Maron.” You turned around, you were like fifteen yards ahead of us, I don’t know how you heard me, or maybe you sort of sensed that there were people, and you turned around, and you said, “Is there a problem?”
That moment I remember really well, because at the time I was like, wow, he’s really cantankerous, but what I came to realize was that was your way of saying, “Can you ask me for my autograph?” That was basically what you were saying. “Is there a problem?” Like, why would there be? No, we’re in Harvard Square, we’re walking around. I don’t know, what possible problem is there? It was really you saying, “Hey, could you come over here and ask me for my autograph, please?” That’s what that was, and that dynamic is really I think what I’ve come to understand about you.
Marc
Like when I’m doing that, I just need attention?
Sam
That was the subtext.
Marc
The subtext of “fuck you” is “come on, let’s hang out”?
Sam
Right.
Marc
Yeah, that’s true.
Sam
Well, it’s not even just hang out.
Marc
It’s like “take care of me”?
Sam
No, it’s not even take care of me, it’s like …
Marc
Celebrate me.
Sam
Yeah. Exactly.
Marc
Are we all right, me and you?
LOUIS CK—COMEDIAN, WRITER, DIRECTOR, PRODUCER, ACTOR
We’re under development. You’re one of the people I’ve known longer than almost anybody.
Marc
For some reason over the years, despite whatever happens in our lives, I feel very close to you as a friend. When you were having trouble and your marriage was falling apart, I had this idea of your life in my head and I hadn’t really been in touch with you at all. And then when you told me what was going on, I was like, “Holy shit. How did I miss your entire life?” And then I got very saddened by the fact that I had been out of your life, and then some resentment happened.
Louis
We were best friends for a long time. A long, long time. It’s hard. There are times when it’s hard to be your friend’s friend.
Marc
Well, it’s not like I have any new friends.
Louis
Oh, that’s good. So I wasn’t replaced. Good. That would feel worse.