Marc Maron’s ‘Are We Good?’: What happens when stars clash with their documentary filmmakers
In Steven Feinartz’s documentary Are We Good? about comedian and podcast pioneer Marc Maron, the director and subject grapple over who is in control of the narrative.
When Feinartz suggests animating still photographs to help chronicle both Maron's career and his life after the unexpected death of his partner, filmmaker Lynn Shelton, the comedian is against it. Yet Feinartz, who had full creative control over the project, used the animation anyway.
"The moment I mentioned animation, I could already hear [Marc] recoiling," says Feinartz. "If the film didn’t have that back and forth, it wouldn’t feel like a Maron doc. He’s not someone who just sits back and lets you tell his story. There was trust, but also a kind of tension."
Are We Good?, which debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 14, is the latest celebrity documentary that incorporates a star subject visibly and verbally struggling with their decision to surrender creative authority to a director.
Matt Wolf’s HBO documentary series Pee-wee as Himself and Bess Kargman's Diane Warren: Relentless, about the Oscar-nominated songwriter, also feature on-camera, often uncomfortable, banter between the subject and the director about who should have control over a story that each wants to tell differently. (In both cases, the director had complete control over the project and its final cut.)
In the opening sequence of Wolf's Pee-wee as Himself, the late artist and performer Paul Reubens tells the camera, "You are not supposed to control your own documentary. You are supposed to [make] people, many people, alright, everyone but me, feel that as the subject of a documentary that you really don’t have a handle. Have a take. What’s the word I’m looking for? What is everyone telling me that I don’t have on myself?”
"Perspective,” Wolf can be heard saying off-camera, to which Reubens responds, “You and I are going to be arguing [about that] for a long, long time. Until this documentary is finished. You mark my words.”
Wolf and Reubens' contentious verbal relationship is captured throughout the two-part series, which premiered on HBO in May.
"Paul and I were involved in a power struggle," says Wolf. "He didn’t like the answer 'no,' and as a director, I’m accustomed to getting my way. We had similar ideas about his story and how it should be told. I just needed Paul to let go, so that I could do what I needed to do to reappraise him as an artist. I think at the end of the day, Paul and I wanted the same thing. However, to achieve those goals, I needed to be tough about maintaining my editorial autonomy."
In Kargman's Relentless, which debuted at SXSW in 2024, Warren's prolific songwriting career is examined. So is Warren's innate desire not to discuss her creative process or show up for certain interviews. At one point in the documentary, Warren tells Kargman that a camera is placed at a bad angle before grabbing it and repositioning it. At several points in the film, Kargman confronts Warren about her production power plays.
Kargman says that while she didn't want the audience to hear her voice in Relentless, she also wanted them to know what it was like to be in her shoes and "experience what I was experiencing."
"As I say in the film Diane had a wall up, and I was trying to break through it," she says. "I wanted the audience to experience the occasional deep frustration I had, so you hear me challenge her. In a perfect world, I would not have put myself in the film."
To hear Feinartz, Wolf, and Kargman verbally debate with their respective subjects about style, storytelling, or final cut gives each film tension and an air of authenticity.
"If anything, the banter between me and Marc just made things more transparent," says Feinartz. "You see me trying to make a film, you see him pushing back. It’s less about control and more about letting the mess be part of the film."
The power struggle unfolding in all three documentaries is, at times, jarring but also entertaining. Arguably, the breaking of the fourth wall is more captivating than the profile being told, which could, in part, be due to the fact that most celebrity-driven documentaries are boring self-produced infomercials that offer little in the way of new, unusual, or engrossing information about the subject.
Practically any doc featuring a musician — Halftime about Jennifer Lopez, Miss Americana about Taylor Swift, and Homecoming about Beyoncé — is a carefully constructed commercial produced by the star or their record label. While recent celebrity documentaries like Elton John: Never Too Late, Martha, Beckham, and The Last Dance were all insightful, there is the issue of subjects being paid to participate, which raises questions about creative control and merit.
"I definitely wanted the audience to be clear that this is not a puff piece, or a vanity project," says Wolf. "However, more importantly, control was an important theme in the film. Paul separated himself from Pee-wee Herman as an artistic and professional choice, but also as a way to protect his anonymity. When that precise separation crumbled after Paul’s arrest, it was devastating for him. Paul lost control of his personal narrative in the media, so it was very relevant that he struggled with issues of control in the documentary. I was less interested in making a meta-commentary on celebrity documentaries, and more interested in understanding Paul’s experiences both in the past and in the present while making the documentary."
The recent trend toward push-pull celeb-docs docs is a welcome diversion from the puff pieces that soft-pedal around their A-list subjects. But it's anyone's guess at this point if distributors will get behind raw docs about celebrities or stick with what works — fake docs about celebrities.
Are We Good? is seeking distribution.