Marc Maron: Panicked 2025 Movie Review
Partway through “Panicked,” his latest HBO special, the comedian Marc Maron casually makes a reference to “the show.” He doesn’t explain what he means, nor does he have to: For more than 15 years, Maron and his producing partner Brendan McDonald have presided over the podcast “WTF With Marc Maron,” an interview show that vaulted the once obscure stand-up into name recognition, a sit-down with President Obama and a solid career as a screen actor. But “WTF” will come to an end this fall, a fact that looms over “Panicked” even though it was recorded in May, before Maron made the announcement. So much of “Panicked” dwells on familiar topics for Maron — his cats, anxiety and frustration with “anti-woke” podcasting peers — that it’s largely distinguished in his catalog by the events framing the release.
For a more holistic look at how Maron is handling this pivotal juncture, fans will have to wait for “Are We Good?,” a documentary about his life that will get a theatrical release in October after premiering at South by Southwest earlier this year. (The title comes from Maron’s signature question to podcast guests with whom he’s had prior beef, which in the show’s early days was most of them.) That film’s director, Steven Feinartz, also helms “Panicked,” which was recorded at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
The venue suits Maron’s NPR-adjacent audience of engaged lefties, a demographic he lovingly ribs as “empathy whores” who’d only attend an arena show if they were shuttled from a Whole Foods parking lot. That doesn’t stop him from feeding them (ethically raised) red meat like an opening bit about how much he hates Trump supporters, especially those who happen to be fellow podcasters. “All they really wanted was to say his R-word with impunity,” Maron says. In the moment, “they” go unnamed, though a later joke takes a swipe at bro-casting staple Theo Von. The inevitable punchline lands to thunderous applause: “Was it worth it, you fuckin’ retard?”
“Panicked” improves when it focuses on the minutiae of Maron’s everyday existence rather than the broader sweep of current events, even if the old Air America commentator — the gig where he and McDonald first crossed paths — dies hard. There’s a long and delightfully told story about Maron evacuating his home during the Los Angeles fires this January with pets in tow. (“I got three cats and one carrier. That’s not a porno movie; that’s my life.”) The material about his aging father, now living with dementia, is refreshingly candid, especially a riff on the surprising silver lining of a parent who no longer has a filter. And while there’s far less discussion of the sudden death of his former partner, the director Lynn Shelton, than in his previous special, “From Bleak to Dark,” the closing anecdote combines trenchant observations on the long-term trajectory of grief with Maron’s typically cranky take on Taylor Swift.
Though averse to medication, Maron admits to suffering from “intrusive catastrophic thinking,” a state of mind increasingly well suited to the world in which we live. Per the title, “Panicked” continues the comedian’s project of finding new ways to articulate his reflexively pessimistic, relentlessly anxious, very Jewish worldview. “I don’t know if I could tell the difference between happiness and ‘Fuck, that’s good coffee,’” he admits. Soon enough, Maron’s audience will no longer be privy to a steady drip of his internal monologue. Instead, they’ll get only the most polished, distilled ver- sion, delivered onstage between gigs like Apple TV+’s golf comedy series “Stick,” on which Maron is quite good. “Panicked” may fall short as a political treatise, but it affirms Maron as an unparalleled narrator of his own agita, and many others’ too. From here on out, it’ll have to be enough.
