Paralyzed by Hope: The Maria Bamford Story (2026) Movie Script

[audience laughing]
This is Roberta. Isn't she cute?
Yeah, she looks real good tonight.
Yeah, but, um, really glad you're here.
And right now, we'd like to play for you
a musical interpretation
of my relationship history in the past.
[audience laughing]
[playing slow-tempo tune]
-[playing off-key]
-[audience laughing]
[playing fast-tempo tune]
[audience laughing]
Sorry.
[audience laughing]
[man] So I assume
this is all being shot at this moment?
[man 2] Yes.
This is the beginning.
This is how you know.
All right.
Let's go talk to Maria.
-Oh hello. [laughing]
-Hi, Maria.
Welcome to my world.
Now, we don't know
if you even wanna take part in
this idea of making a documentary.
But while we discuss it, can we mic you?
-Of course. Oh my God, I love to be mic'd.
-Okay. Okay. Okay.
Do you want a banana or an orange?
-Oh my God, that's very kind.
-Want a banana?
-I will take a banana.
-Okay.
Oh my gosh, thank you so much.
That's extremely generous of you.
-So you said to me
-[Maria Bamford laughs]
"I don't know
if I wanna do the documentary."
-"I don't know if it'll happen," I guess.
-Yes.
But regardless,
you wanted money for today.
-Yes, for sure.
-And you had a number, you said.
You never know in show business
if things are really gonna work.
-[Maria] Yes.
-So you said, "Just give me 500."
[Maria] Five hunnid.
And I don't know if with a documentary,
you're supposed to hand out cash.
I don't know if that's how it works.
But maybe we have no ethics here.
What?
I am totally down.
And at the same time,
I want you guys to have a good time.
So if it doesn't feel like a good match,
a lot of times in show business,
it is like dating,
uh, where it's like you go,
I want it to be fun for everybody.
-Yeah.
-So it's okay if it's-- if it's--
-Uh, yeah. Everybody's free.
-[Judd Apatow] And if it's not
Well, wait a minute.
[laughing]
-Okay.
-No. No. [laughs]
Oh man, I am so
Thank you, guys, so much for coming out.
This is a dream come true. I've always
wanted to do something like this.
I'd love to do, like, a sitcom.
The thing is, is, like, I've had
some meetings with the showbiz types.
And they always have a hard time with me.
They say, uh, they say,
"Maria, um, we love what you do.
It's interesting with your voices."
"That's interesting." Um
[audience laughing]
"But who are you?"
"In a sentence or less,
who is Maria Bamford?"
I thought about it.
Um, you know, I just think [exhales]
[raspy voice] I'm
just a small-town girl
[exhales] trying to make it in the city.
-[audience laughs, applauds]
-[doorbell rings]
Who's at the front door? Is this--
I have no idea. I don't know who it is.
-This is really
-Okay.
[Maria] It's my prescription!
Oh nice.
I believe it's fluoxetine, which is the
[Apatow] That's like Prozac?
[Maria] generic of Prozac.
-Yeah, I have 40 milligrams of Prozac.
-[Apatow] Mm-hmm.
[Maria] I have a bit of a tremor
due to my Depakote,
which is a, uh, mood stabilizer.
And I take a thousand of that.
And then, yeah, fluoxetine.
Everybody recognizes this.
[Apatow] Yeah?
I have a bit of a tremor
that's distracting in a performer.
"Why don't you take a medication
to offset the hundreds of medications
you're already on,
so that I feel more comfortable?"
[audience laughing]
To which I'd like to say,
"Weakness is the brand."
[audience laughing]
Oh yeah.
[audience cheering, applauding]
I don't wanna quash this cash cow.
Uh, I may be mental,
but I'm also a millionaire.
[audience laughing, cheering]
[man] Maria is very unique in that
99% of comedians
will tell you that they have anxiety
and that they're struggling,
because that's almost the starting point.
And you understood at some point
that it's shtick.
Maria is different.
She is really tormented by things.
Sometimes it feels like
you're talking to a lobster
whose shell has been removed,
but it's still alive.
And it's just feeling every
single molecule in the room.
She's telling you what's happened to her,
and it's palpably real.
It's that refreshing thing
of you've never seen
or heard or felt this before.
Like, what am I watching?
What am I listening to?
Because there is some place
that Maria Bamford is sitting on
[chuckles] this planet
that is different than everyone else.
Many comics are so, uh,
informed by their environment
that that's what forms us first.
I think Maria
still has always tapped into her youth,
always like, "I'm never
gonna forget all this stuff." [chuckles]
"And I'm gonna get on stage one day,
and I'm gonna figure out how
to talk about this to my favor."
I'm originally from Duluth, Minnesota.
Duluth in the house, oh yee!
-[audience laughing]
-Yee!
My mother told me before I went to my
first girl-boy party in the eighth grade,
she said, "Maria,
remember what we talked about?"
"Gonorrhea, syphilis,
herpes one, two, watch the cold sores."
"Date rape is a lot more common
than people think. You look so gorgeous."
"You were conceived
in Groton, Connecticut, in a campsite."
"I am not saying you weren't planned."
"I'm just saying Bamfords get pregnant
like falling off logs."
"Oh, Jenny's mom's here to pick you up.
Well, have a good time!"
[audience laughing]
[Maria] Where I grew up
was idyllic in retrospect.
It's a freshwater Monaco.
It's a little San Francisco.
Here it is, where I once lived as a child.
We moved here from Florida.
My dad got a job as a dermatologist.
Look at this huge manse.
It's massive.
Parents lived over there.
My sister lived up there.
There's the living room,
there's the kitchen.
Duluth is very pro-arts education.
I was in a gifted program.
I started playing the violin
at the age of three.
My mom put me
in the Suzuki violin program.
The Suzuki Method is a type of,
far as I'm concerned,
and this is my opinion,
torture for both parents and children.
Little did I know, she said,
"You cannot quit
until you're 12 years old."
[woman] She was an amazing violin player.
I'm sure she could have been
played professionally
if she had wanted to,
but she didn't want to.
[Maria] When I was around nine or ten,
I remember just feeling like
there is something
desperately wrong with me.
You can see it in the artwork
that I did as a kid,
drawing these like,
"I'm down in the dumps."
And then a picture of me, like,
with a dump.
When I was growing up,
I was a bit of a dark kid.
I was reading in the paper
that a lot of kids
in the United States
are suffering from depression.
Younger and younger,
our children are seeing
the sippy cup as half empty. And, uh,
[audience laughing]
I never really thought
of myself as depressed
as much as paralyzed by hope. And, uh
[audience laughing, applauding]
[cheering]
[Maria] My childhood,
materially, was idyllic.
You know, we lived in
the real nice area of town.
The public schools were very good.
My mom worked in retail a little bit.
She worked at a fancy lady clothing store.
She was a deacon in the Episcopal church.
But my mom was also,
I know now, on mood stabilizers.
'Cause she was
a very highly anxious person,
and she did have some moodiness.
[Sarah Seidelmann]
Mom was always more serious.
I would say like a rule follower,
you know?
She was pretty compulsive about
just, like, keeping a really nice house.
And she was, like, always on a diet.
Like, I just remember
she was always on Weight Watchers
or something, and, like,
she would often not eat dinner with us.
[Maria] In the era she grew up in too,
it was very important.
Thin, you gotta be beautiful.
Mom told me recently, she said,
[imitates mother] "Honey, when you
don't wear makeup, you look mentally ill."
[audience laughing]
Now when I go home,
I'm sure to wear thick green eye shadow
and a line of lipstick around my lips.
[imitating child]
"Baby look pretty now, Mommy?"
[speaks gibberish]
[Seidelmann] I think she was just a force.
And so what she said mattered,
whether you liked it or not.
Like, it really mattered
to both Maria and I.
[Maria] She'd be sort of
disgusted with me.
Like, that I didn't look attractive,
was messy.
Then I slowly developed
an eating disorder.
I started going on weird diets
and jogging on a trampoline at night
with weights on my legs,
you know, 'cause I didn't wanna get fat.
But one of the ways
that I would deal with stress as a kid
is suicidal ideation.
So I would just think of ways
I could die, hope to die.
You know, just like, that was my go-to,
and I would talk about killing myself.
[Seidelmann] She was struggling.
And I remember she faked her own suicide
in the foyer of the house.
[man] So we came home
and opened the door on fifth street
and she's laying in the hallway.
She's got some ketchup on her.
I remember at the time feeling,
shit, this is, you know, a cry for help.
And what did we do?
We didn't get it.
[Maria] I was a bit
of a dark kid growing up.
Occasionally, I'd stage
my own death for fun.
[audience laughing]
"Mother, I've taken
a whole bottle of pills."
[imitating mother]
"Oh my God, what did you take?"
[as Maria] "Tums."
[mother] "Maria, those are your father's."
[as Maria] "What, Mother?
I can't hear you."
"The calcium is coursing
through my veins."
[audience laughing]
[Maria] But I think for my mom,
that was an ongoing fear.
She would say, "Sometimes I just,
I couldn't find you in the house."
"And I just thought,
we're just gonna have to drag the lake."
[Seidelmann] I had this sense
that she was so delicate and vulnerable
that the world was gonna eat her alive.
And I really felt like it was my job
since nobody else seemed to be doing it,
to toughen her up.
There was one time, my friends and I,
Maria was like,
"I wanna, you know, play with you guys."
We were like,
"Get out of here, kid." [laughs]
So we're like, "Hey,
we're gonna tie you up under your bed,"
like loosely with socks.
But we were like,
"Now you have to stay here." [laughs]
And Maria was like, "Okay."
And I think she did stay there
for a while, you know?
And looking back, I feel terrible.
But for her, that was like
a really terrible experience.
[sighs]
I wish I could take it all back. Yeah.
[Maria] I was just a super sensitive kid.
They sent me to therapy
as soon as I started having problems,
and I would basically just take naps,
because I-- I couldn't sleep at night.
So I would kind of go there
and take a nap.
The reason I can't sleep at night,
my sister gave me titty twisters.
Uh, it was the '70s.
It wasn't personal. Um
-[audience laughs]
-[gasps]
I somehow got it in my brain,
I thought, "What if I were a T twister?"
"What if, despite it being done to me,
I didn't wanna do it to anyone else."
"I have no plan to, no desire to.
I'm trying to stay up all night
so that I don't,
that I'm sitting on my hands."
"But what if, despite all that,
I honk hooters?"
"What if I break breasts?"
"What if I, you know,
if-- if I got out of control
and I chopped you and Mom up
into chunks and bits,
had sex with those chunks and bits,
put those chunks and bits on a Cobb salad,
tossed it, and I'm just spitballing,
fed it to the Baby Jesus?"
[audience laughing]
[sighs] "Don't worry.
It's a type of intrusive thoughts OCD."
"I will deal with it
when I'm 35." [exhales]
I started to fear,
you know, not only that I was, um,
maybe, like, a molesting person,
that I would rape people,
or maybe I'd be a serial killer.
Like, I mean, oh, I'm so scared.
I'm gonna do this thing that
I don't want at all to do.
So now I squeeze my fists
and then I try to get the thought
out of my head.
And as soon as you try
to get a thought out of your head,
what happens? It comes right back.
So that's when I started,
you know, isolating,
I think more from friends.
Um, I tried to tell my mom about it.
She was the first person I told.
I said, "These are
the weird thoughts I'm having."
"Um, I can't sleep at night.
I'm really scared."
She said,
"Honey, it's okay if you're gay."
I was like
So you're coming--
you're coming in for the role of
Maria Bamford's mother, okay.
And you're Marilyn Bamford.
-Yes.
-[Maria] Okay.
Well, whenever you're ready.
"Sweetie, listen, kiddo,
it's okay if you're gay."
"But I'm not gay."
"I know. I know,
but it would be okay if you were."
Okay.
I'm just gonna give you a line reading
here real quick. Um
[Marilyn Bamford sniffles]
[imitates mother] "Two women together
is a wonderful thing."
"There's nothing to be ashamed of."
You do-- try it again.
"Two women together,
I'm sure is a wonderful thing."
"There's nothing to be ashamed of."
[Apatow] Sounds like
your mom has an energy
that made you wanna go
to the opposite energy.
[Maria] Uh, yeah, exactly.
And my dad was the one who was like,
that was the personality
where it was like,
"I don't need anything."
[mutters, laughs]
"We don't need groceries."
"You know what?
We still got cottage cheese left. We got"
[shouts]
"What we could do
is take a little bit of cottage cheese
and, uh, some maple syrup
and put that on toast."
[splutters] "I've never tried it before,
but it seems, it might be good."
"It's a little savory
with a little bit of sweet." [laughs]
-"Your mother wants to go out." [laughs]
-[Apatow laughs]
[Joel Bamford] It turns out that 1%
of people have night terrors.
I don't think I had it as a child,
but for 15 or so years I've had it.
So that, what it means
is in the middle of the night,
without any particular warning,
I-- I bolt up and scream.
Somebody said it was
just like being in World War II.
It was like a horrible attack going on.
And, uh, then I jump up,
and I would run into the wall.
I've got a little scar here on my nose.
So I just said, "You know, wouldn't it
be better to be strapped down?"
So I put a seat belt into the bed.
Now this is the only thing
that's kind of unique.
If you're going to Europe,
you don't have your special bed
with a mattress and all the details.
So this slips in easily.
And that's
where World War II began, in Europe.
-Oh yeah, I suppose.
-[laughs]
[Joel] And then you put this on,
and then you have this around your waist.
But a few times,
you socked your bed partner.
Marilyn, yes, at one time had a black eye,
which was tough because
she is very busy with a women's shelter.
And so, you know,
it was a little hard for her to explain.
And of course nobody believed her
anyway, you know, so
Believe women.
[Joel] Yeah, gotta believe.
[Maria] One thing
that did give me some relief was
I did like being on stage.
Just felt, it felt great.
And it was that connection with people,
but very safe.
Trying to make a difference
in my neighborhood.
I started mentoring kids
in my neighborhood without telling them.
And, uh
[audience laughing]
[child's voice] "Maria Bamford,
you're weird."
[adult] "You're weird."
[child] "My mom's gonna kill you."
[adult] "My mom's gonna kill you."
[audience laughing]
[child] "I'm gonna tell my mom
you've been swearing."
[adult] "I already told my mom
some of that you've said to me."
[audience laughing, cheering]
[Apatow] When did you first become aware
of what a comedian is?
[comedian] Thank you. Thank you very much.
[Maria] Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy,
we got both their albums.
[audience cheering]
[Maria] It was the album,
Eddie Murphy was like,
he put cologne on his penis.
[accented] "Baby,
did you put your dick in the sink?"
[audience laughing]
[Eddie Murphy] Mia told me
that you had your dick in the sink.
We did religiously watch
Saturday Night Live.
I mean, it's like everything
would kind of just drop,
and we would all stay up late
to watch that.
'Cause that was something
I guess we all agreed on.
I am Gumby, damn it!
You don't talk to me that way.
[audience laughing]
[Maria] The thing that I really enjoyed
creatively was theater.
And I think it may be
because of the oxytocin
sort of burst that you get on stage.
And laughs, I did like getting laughs.
[audience laughing]
My mom did like prestige,
you know, like fame.
[audience cheering]
[woman] Come on, Maria. Yay!
[Maria] So I think that's definitely
an attraction I have to show business,
is, like, prestige.
It's like, "Oh, a shiny object
I can take home to Mother."
There's some pictures,
the photos and pictures
Mom got kind of mental
over my sister's behavior in junior high.
My sister started doing a little
smoking a little pot.
And my mom freaked out.
My sister, though,
ended up getting really good grades,
going to college, going to medical school.
[Seidelmann] There was I think an angst
between the two of us in many ways,
just as we grew up.
That, you know, desire to be beloved in
your parents' eyes, which sounds so weird.
You think you should be graduating
from that at age 18,
but I don't think either one of us did.
My sister is a doctor.
Uh, she's super successful.
She's always telling me about different
She's a path-- pathologist.
Um, the way I like to introduce her is,
"This is my sister Sarah."
"She cuts up the dead into chunks."
[audience laughing]
Yeah.
Yeah.
I got into a college at the U of M.
But I was, like,
having more problems with my moods.
Broke up with my boyfriend
from high school,
which was destabilizing, where I thought,
"Now I'm really a bad person."
The eating disorder got a lot worse.
I'd done sketch and improv,
but I really was excited
to do stand-up because I was like,
"Oh, I will get to say
exactly what I wanna say."
After ten years of binge-purging
and obsessing about my weight,
I could have thought
of a whole new economic system
with the United States and Canada,
reduced the national deficit
by a quarter billion dollars
and done any number
of political activities
for the betterment
of women and minorities.
But I'm thin, and that's what's
most important to me right now.
[audience laughing]
My sophomore year in college,
I called a suicide hotline.
And they're like, "Well, what's going on?"
And I told them, like,
"Oh, I can't stop eating,
but then I'm also running eight miles
or whatever." And they're like,
"Oh well, why don't you try this?"
And I got in my first 12-step program,
Overeaters Anonymous,
which changed my life
in that it helped me stop the bulimia.
For 30 years, I've been in
a food-related 12-step program
called Overeaters Anonymous.
A white woman was bulimic?
How did it[snorts]
[audience laughing]
[cheering]
[exhales]
[laughing]
I'm sorry. I [grunts]
I lost interest in my own narrative.
[audience laughing]
When I went through treatment
for this eating disorders thing,
the therapist said, "Well, why don't
we invite your mom for a session?"
So my mom drives
four hours to Minneapolis,
and the therapist asked her,
and I think it was one
of her second or third questions,
"Marilyn, who's your favorite?"
That's a terrible question to ask.
And then my mom said, "Well, Sarah."
[Seidelmann] First of all, like, what
therapist would ever ask that question?
And we were living
different lives at that point.
I was, like, in this hyper-responsibility
mode of medical school and residency,
and she was on this very, very risky,
vulnerable adventure
of becoming a comedian.
[Maria] I think my mom,
she was so relieved
that I was doing anything.
I lived kind of, like,
in a hippie cooperative
and played the violin on the street,
and I was kind of a glum Gus,
not a lot of fun.
A lot of the effort to be an extrovert
was used up on stage.
We met at sort of open mics
in Minneapolis in the early '90s.
It was always interesting
trying to watch her
try to bridge the gap
between what was clearly
just severe shyness
to get to the audience.
I went to my therapist recently,
and sometimes my therapist
says to me, "Maria."
[inhales]
"I wonder if sometimes
during our sessions,
if you are performing
for me."
[audience laughing]
[Maria] Hmm.
And it's true, I do like her
to have a good time. [giggles]
Soon after I started doing stand-up,
I shaved my head.
When I began, I was a pretty young lady.
What will happen is a guy
will come up to you and go,
"You know, I think you have something."
"I would totally go about it
in a different way."
And it did help
in people not bothering me.
Hi, I'm Maria's mother.
[audience laughing]
And I just figure by this time,
you must be thinking,
"God, what was going on with that family?"
[audience laughing]
[Maria] My parents became aware of me
doing them in my act,
but I don't think they worried too much
about it because I wasn't
Nobody was watching it,
or it wasn't on TV.
And I was with a bald head,
you know, wearing floral muumuus
and living the good life.
You know what I'm saying?
You know, when you forget about rent
for a whole year.
[Jackie Kashian] I remember her
telling me, "I'm gonna go on tour
where we all dress up
like Star Trek characters,
where you're just at a mall trying to
make sure you stay in character
as people walk by you
and say rude things." [laughs]
"You got makeup all over your face."
[accented] "My genetic makeup?"
-[laughing]
-"I'm very different from you."
Which is the best-paying job
I had ever had.
I had enough money
to be able to move to Los Angeles.
I was like, "Yay, this is a sign."
[Tig Notaro] I don't remember
meeting her the first time.
[laughs] It's like,
there was this coffee shop
in Culver City called Pettersons.
That's where I met so many people
like Maria, Zach Galifianakis.
It was a open mic scene
of comics trying to get heard.
I think Maria at that time was, I think
doing more kind of performance art.
I remember there was a fiddle.
I mean, she morphed into a great comic.
When I first saw her,
she was doing something else.
She was a violin act?
-[laughing] I forgot.
-[man laughing]
[Maria] Got to Los Angeles,
there were already two other women
who had violins in their comedy acts.
And it was such a relief.
Like, I was just like, oh,
I can finally let go of this albatross.
I didn't get what she was doing.
I admit, the first time I saw her,
didn't see her in the best place,
but I wasn't able to get through
the crowd's confusion.
She was very comfortable
being on the border,
being in the outer orbits
of, uh, where material can go
or how you hook an audience.
I like to do a lot of different voices
and stuff in my act.
Sometimes that confuses,
like, the "industry" out here.
It's like, I'm really shy, so I like
to hide behind characters, see?
[giggles] Right?
And, uh, it's just there, right?
What was funny about her
was that she seemed off,
you know, or that her comedic voice
seemed like
[chuckles] "Oh, she's a little nuts,
in a good way."
[laughs] But, like, I go into a place,
you know, some shop,
and I try to get help.
It's just so, you know,
like, "Exc-- excuse me. Hi. Can you"
"Excuse me, can Hello.
Can I get some hello." You know?
But if you go in and you're like,
"Hi, what's your name? Cindy?"
"Cindy, I need to speak
with your manager."
"Thanks a lot, sweetheart."
[audience laughing]
[woman] In that time,
there were a lot of rules.
I remember being told, like,
you play to the men in the audience.
That's who you have to make laugh
because there are women in the audience,
but they're on dates,
and they'll only laugh if the guy laughs.
And they would never have
two women on the same show.
'Cause it's too the same.
It never occurs to them
that a bunch of white men
is not at all the same because they can
all be different. Women was one thing.
When I first moved out to Los Angeles,
I wanted to be rich
and famous
and rich.
Um, but then I found out
about clerical work.
[audience laughing]
When I moved to Los Angeles,
she had been here a couple of years,
like, probably three or four years,
and she was temping,
and she was in offices.
I remember her saying to me,
"Well, you can temp."
And I was like, "I don't wanna temp."
[Maria] I had been working in a bakery.
I tried to work, like, as a barista,
uh, but I was not good enough for that.
And I had gotten in about
five grand worth of health debt
'cause I had gotten
an antibiotic for an STD,
where I had
a terrible allergic reaction to.
[telephone rings]
I was getting all these collection calls,
and I couldn't pay my rent.
I got mugged, robbed.
Like, all this stuff happened in a short
amount of time. And I was just like
[groans]
[audience laughing]
I've been for over 20 years, I've been in
a money-related 12-step program
called Debtors Anonymous,
'cause I wasn't sure.
I'm still not completely clear
on how to have and keep a job.
Uh, even tonight I had to double-check.
So it's, "You want me right
at that moment to come, okay."
"And then, and then to stay."
[audience laughing]
"Even if Mama feels done."
[audience laughing]
She was just starting to get some work,
but she still had the day job.
Holy God!
[studio audience laughing]
Where-- where did you get this?
That's a Stradivarius.
What the heck! I love ya!
Mmm!
[audience laughing]
[Maria] It was funny.
I was on The Tonight Show
and I was temping there, actually,
the next day at NBC News
from the same building.
I'll tell you a little about myself.
Uh, my mother always told me that
[imitates mother]
"If a boy doesn't like you, okay,
it is just because
he is intimidated by your beauty
because you are the most beautiful girl
in the whole world."
"And if you would stop doing
impersonations of me,
maybe other people could see that."
[audience laughing, applauding]
[Maria] You know, I'd only net,
like, $400 off that appearance.
I mean, that was great, but I don't think,
"I don't have to stop working."
[man] Who do you think
her influences were?
If you look at the comics
that immediately preceded her,
like Ellen DeGeneres or, uh, Carol Leifer,
if you go back further and it's
Joan Rivers and, uh, Phyllis Diller,
who sounds like Maria Bamford? No one.
She's sort of a unicorn
of what her style is.
[man] I remember first time I heard her,
I thought she was more than one person
because of the different voices.
Like when she does the character
Juice Box,
that might be my favorite voice of hers
because it's not only so distinctive,
but I know what she looks like
by listening.
There's, you know,
also these documentaries on TV
where they'll have some woman
named Juice Box saying how great the
the sex industry is.
"I" [sighs]
[feigned innocence] "I--
I wasn't abused as a child."
Um, "I don't do drugs. I just love sex."
"I'm just a very sexual person, and"
[audience laughing]
"Wor-- working in an unregulated industry
that provides no legal recourse
should I be repeatedly victimized
kind of makes me feel hot."
[audience laughing]
[Maria moans]
[Brian Posehn] The voices,
she's had the voices for 20, 30 years,
but it's not like her just doing
a generic white lady
that works at the mall,
uh, you know, selling perfume.
[man] Yeah.
That's a specific person.
Come on, Andy, the lights!
Your breath, it's so fresh.
That's Close-Up.
Close-Up toothpaste?
Why do you think they call it Close-Up?
[accented] If you're talking
about toothpaste,
I mean, aren't you interested
in buying this product?
Now that I speak about it
in a low whisper?
It suggests sex.
[Kashian] In the first ten years
that I knew her,
every single time after a show,
someone would say,
why don't you just use that voice
all the time?
And initially she was like,
"Well, that's not actually how I talk."
"I mean, I don't Why would I live a lie?"
I have this voice. It's been
suggested to me throughout my lifetime
that because of it, I might be a dum-dum.
Uh, which, it's okay if I say it?
No? I don't know.
Uh, but, yeah, I don't wanna, like,
seeming incompetent,
even though sometimes I am.
And, um
[audience laughing]
And then also a spate of DJs
in the '90s would, uh, ask me,
"Is the age you sound
the age you were molested at?"
[child's voice] "Is this
where the healing begins?"
[audience laughing]
But she was always trying to figure out
who it was okay to make impressions of
and if they were ever gonna get mad.
My dad's really just
a series of sound effects.
[grunts]
[snorts]
[gasps]
[snorting]
-"Everything okay over there, Dad?"
-"Whoo! Yeah."
[speaks gibberish]
[clears throat]
-Then Marilyn made a big deal about
-[chuckles]
First time I did one, he cried
when I did an impersonation of him.
He was, like,
felt really upset by it, and, um
-Let me see, I do a little
-[Apatow] The first time?
Yeah, yeah, first time I did one,
he got upset and then
[Apatow] Did he mean it?
Did he like it later?
I don't know.
-[Apatow] Did he ever like it?
-I don't think so.
Well, this is the last thing
my dad said to me after a show was
[clears throat]
"I was sitting next to this guy,
you know, and I said,
'What do you think of the show?'
You know, you were on stage." [snorts]
[clears throat] "And he said,
'Well, it's not my cup of tea.'"
[laughs] "Anyways, we ended up having
a great conversation."
[Apatow laughs]
I've seen a lot of scary things
in my 33 years,
but there's still nothing
more paralyzing and suspenseful
than a non-sequitur left
on my answering machine by my mother.
[imitates mother]
"Hey, kid, it's your mom."
"Listen, your father
slapped your Uncle Phil in the back."
"It turns out
Bill had this huge sebaceous cyst,
and it just went splat,
and there was kind of this
cottage cheesy stuff going everywhere,
and I am sending you
an article on Lucille Ball."
[audience laughing]
[Apatow] Was it a mocking of your mom?
How did that begin?
I'm sure it came from a negative space.
-[Apatow] To get her to change?
-Oh yeah.
[Seidelmann] She was, by that time,
doing me as a character,
and there was a video of it.
Maria, have you ever noticed
every joke you tell,
you're the victim? Hmm? Hmm? Hmm?
And yet, and yet,
every every joke you tell,
you do an impersonation
of someone else, okay?
Or someone from our family.
Who's the victim now, buddy? Huh?
Who's the victim now?
So then I brought it back to Duluth
with me, and my friends start laughing.
They are falling on the floor, rolling,
and I'm sitting there going [chuckles]
Apparently, it is somewhat accurate
what she's doing.
Like, I'd go out to LA,
and we'd be hanging out with some people.
She'd be like, "This is Sarah,"
They'd be like,
"Oh, you're that sister." You know, like,
people already didn't like me before,
and I was just like, "I'm not that bad."
[Bruce Smith] The simple plan
at the get-go was more acting work.
She had already done a movie
called Lucky Numbers
that was a John Travolta,
Lisa Kudrow movie.
-[Maria as waitress] Morning.
-Wendy, how are you?
-[Maria as waitress] Just fine.
-Yeah? How's the cold?
Oh, it's just allergies, I think.
Really? You're not allergic
to me, are you?
No. [laughs]
I don't think so.
You guys probably recognize her,
'cause I did.
I saw the crappiest movie
in the whole, whole, whole entire world.
Maria was the only funniest thing.
She was in that movie Lucky Numbers.
Did you see it?
It was on the airplane the other day.
I couldn't believe my eyes.
[woman] But watch it,
'cause she's awesome in it.
She stands out.
Now that I see it,
now I realize why I recognize you.
-Very good. Congratulations.
-[woman] She was a waitress.
Thank you. Oh, that's so nice.
I'm so sorry about the movie.
[woman] That's okay. But you stood out.
-Who cares? You stood out.
-Yeah, who cares?
I think the starting place where you
kind of find your footing with talent
is you see what they're doing,
and you just try to take that
and expand upon that.
In Maria's case, that might be
something like Comedians of Comedy.
[chattering]
[man shouts]
[host] Ladies and gentlemen of Seattle,
Patton Oswalt.
[audience cheering, applauding]
[man] At Netflix,
we were starting the streaming business
and had become kind of a big player
in the United States
for independent film, uh,
for documentary for sure,
and more and more for stand-up comedy.
So the sweet spot
was a comedy documentary.
I'm not worth this. Holy shit.
Guys, thank you so much.
This is the first night
of the Comedians of Comedy tour.
Thank you guys so much for coming out
to this and packing the room.
[chuckles] Holy
The Comedians of Comedy
came about 'cause I was down in Atlanta,
and I remember doing I was doing a club,
and I did a bunch of radio,
like, your standard morning radio,
and then a friend of mine was like,
"Hey, there's a college radio station
that would love to have you on."
And I went and did that one, and that
was a longer, more real conversation.
[cheering]
[Patton Oswalt]
It started bringing in this audience.
Some shows, I suddenly
had people that were more your age
and more kind of getting your wavelength.
Fuck yeah!
You just had these people
who were just like,
"We do comedy, and we do road gigs,
and we wear our flannel."
"And we wear the same clothes
that we wore last night
to the show the next day."
Uh, which I don't agree with.
Uh, okay. Oh my gosh,
there's a camera already!
I love show business.
[Smith] Comedians of Comedy
really was like a defining moment
in the sense that it coalesced
a group of people
who are very more experimental
on the comedy side,
but very distinct voices.
What's up, Kevin?
How's life in the mailroom?
I'm still sorting that out. [laughs]
[Ted Sarandos]
People had known Brian as an actor,
but not had seen him as a stand-up.
Are you the guy from Just Shoot Me?
-Yeah, yeah.
-Oh my God!
[laughing]
[Sarandos] Patton, I think,
was pretty well-established at that point,
among comedians for sure,
and then Zach and Maria both did the same,
like, "Who the F is that?"
[audience cheering]
It's an old American classic,
join in if you know the words.
Old MacDonald had a pterodactyl
E-I-E-I-O with a
[screeching]
[audience laughing]
[continues screeching]
Here
The formats were more loosey-goosey,
so I feel like the audiences were also,
um, more willing to accept this kind of,
uh, off-brand type of humor back then.
This character is called the guy that
talks about the Garfield movie too much.
[audience laughing]
"Did you guys see the Garfield movie?"
"He's, like, wearing sunglasses."
"And he's eating a lasagna,
and Odie's up to his old tricks."
Maria was doing really interesting stuff,
and then, you know,
there'd be pauses of, like,
quiet and then a rupture with laughter
from Maria's audience.
What do they all say
when you start a new job? They all say,
"We do things a little differently
around here." [laughs]
[audience laughing]
"It's a bit of a nuthouse." [chuckles]
"So hold on to your hat,
it's gonna be a wild ride."
But it never is.
[audience laughing]
I've worked for a job like that.
I've trained people, and it's always like,
"Okay, dude, um, I'll be training you,
and the fax machine's a little tricky."
"No, seriously, dude,
you gotta dial 9 to get out."
A lot of people try
to use the fax machine, and they go,
"Oh, it's not working."
I say, "Did you dial 9?"
"Okay, um, once a week, we get bagels,
but then once a month,
um, Rajiv brings in mini muffins,
and it's on a Monday, so guess what
that's called. Mini Muffin Monday!"
[laughing]
[Maria] "Dude, it's boring."
[laughing]
"You'll really wanna kill yourself,
but hold out till Friday,
'cause every other Friday
is casual dress!"
"No hats, no tees,
no T-shirts, no tennies!"
[audience laughing]
[Maria] I remember being very intimidated
by all those guys.
Usually, they're shot in a threesome,
and then I'm always shot by myself
because I was very shy.
I didn't wanna hang out with them if
When we weren't on stage,
I just felt too anxious to hang with them.
I remember getting a call,
"We have a female comic,
and we wanna make sure
that she feels comfortable,
so we wanna get
a female shooter on the team."
[man] In some ways, I'm, like, embarrassed
that we put the two women together.
Like, "Oh, the woman, uh,
the woman cameraman
can be with the woman comedian."
And as you know, you're just trying
to get the person to open up.
[Elizabeth McDonald] We did not bond
instantly. We did not not bond.
But Maria would perform
and then wanna go back to her hotel room.
[man] When you're with her, are you aware
this person is going through something?
I was very aware of it
because I was going through
the same things myself.
So, yeah, yeah.
Now, Maria,
I see this pill on the floor here.
[Maria] Oh, that's my Prozac!
-I was-- I was gonna bring it out.
-[McDonald laughs]
I have a pocketful of it.
[McDonald] But I feel that maybe she was
at that beginning stage
of testing the waters
with her mental health
and testing those boundaries, like,
"Is it safe as a comic to really go forth
and talk about these things
in a very frank and honest way?"
I have this therapist.
I prefer to call her "the-rapist,"
and, um
[audience laughing]
Because I don't take it seriously.
And, um
She told me, uh, it's important,
I have a lot of anxiety, right?
And so she told me
it's important to, like,
I should try to sing my anxieties aloud,
uh, 'cause that kind of
takes the "power" away from them.
Takes the power away.
And, uh, so I've come up with a new tune,
and it's set to, uh, the theme
from The Bodyguard,
starring, uh, Whitney Houston.
Um hmm.
Okay.
If I keep my ice cube trays clean
Then God can't kill me
And if I clench my fists
At odd intervals
Then the darkness within me
Can't take over my hands
And force me to do something
I don't wanna do that's inappropriately
Sexual or violent
[audience laughing]
[Maria] It's a new one.
I'm workshopping it.
Comedians of Comedy,
truly, I got to see word of mouth
doing a little club in North Carolina,
and then the next night
we're down in South Carolina,
and there's more people there
because friends have
emailed each other
or called each other and said,
"This show we saw was fucking crazy."
[cheering]
[Oswalt] And especially I saw the word
start to get out about
Maria Bamford.
"There's this girl on the show.
She went up early,
and she's all I thought about afterwards.
Her stuff is so weird."
[audience laughing]
[Sarandos] When it was getting ready
to release the film,
we had, you know, some traditional
kind of press tour things.
And a premiere. We did a real premiere
at the Egyptian Theatre,
actually, in Hollywood.
And Maria was a complete no-show.
I didn't know then
that she would just go off the map.
Nobody knew how to reach her,
no one could reach her,
they said she was on hiatus,
and they meant it.
[Maria] At that point,
I was so anxious because of OCD,
I don't hang out. I never hang out.
Like, I gotta go.
What if I kill everybody?
I am so afraid of hurting people,
I don't leave the house.
Like, I don't
I keep my hands under my armpits.
Like, it was pretty scary.
And then when the Internet
became more popular, I googled it.
I googled "unwanted thoughts"
and up came OCD.
I saw a professional
in Glendale, California,
Dr. Rodney Boone, he's still there.
[man] We see people dealing
with all sorts of things,
but largely our practice specializes
in working with people with OCD
and anxiety and anything
that's sort of repetitive or ruminative.
Okay, so this is your journal? This is it?
-And you've written down your thoughts?
-Yes.
"I, Maria Bamford,
am a horrible, creepy, serial killer,
molester, raper and genocider,
and so is Blossom"
98, 99% of the people could have
random thoughts of something violent,
something sexual, something unwanted,
and they just kind of write it off
as fake news.
Like, "Oh, that's weird,"
and go about their day.
But where it kind of, a little spark
can grow into a fire, so to speak,
that becomes OCD, is maybe this thought
actually means something.
Do you have any fears about
maybe having sex with Blossom
or, um, shitting on the Shroud of Turin?
No.
The approach that she underwent
with Dr. Boone
was sort of an exposure approach.
You know, write out your worst-case fear,
and then tape yourself.
You know, saying it out loud,
and then listen to it over and over
until you kind of get used to it
and habituate it, and it loses its power.
You haven't ever thought of jacking off
an entire farm family and their animals
and then rubbing yourself down
with all the semen and then, uh,
killing them?
Yes.
Okay, that wasn't so bad.
Last year, you built
this sizable online following, Maria,
with your YouTube comedy series,
The Maria Bamford Show.
If folks haven't seen this, do head over
and watch this. It's very funny.
It's based on the idea
that you've had a nervous breakdown.
[Maria] It's The Maria Bamford Show!
If you haven't been watching the show,
I had a nervous breakdown,
and I moved in with my parents,
and now they're cramping my style.
It's The Maria Bamford Show. Hey!
I'd always wanted to be on a sitcom,
and so I made myself
my own sitcom of, like
[chuckles] a premise
that I think could happen,
which is that I go full mental,
and then I have to move home
with my parents.
Okay, honey, I'm just gonna put,
turn the lamp on you.
Now this is for
seasonal affective disorder.
It's kind of bright.
It's good. It's good. It's good.
So you just sit here and relax
and let the light hit you,
and I will chat with you.
Thanks, Mom.
[Kashian] The show was about OCD.
-And it was about intrusive thoughts.
-[screams]
[Kashian] And it was
about all these dark, dark things.
But it was years before
she had a lot of other problems,
so it did feel like
personal foreshadowing.
Hey, Pete.
Heard you had some meltdown here
at the hospital or something,
see you've still got
your bracelet on. [laughs]
[speaks gibberish]
How much of that is true to real life?
I have not experienced mania,
or you know, having a sort of
psychotic break or anything,
but many people in my family have,
and, uh, so there is some fear.
There's a genuine fear of, like, madness.
My mom has had, uh, manic episodes.
You know, she called the pope,
which I love mania
in that it's all in the realm
She called the pope?
-Yes! I mean, she didn't get through.
-[man] Right.
But she got a monsignor
on the horn. [laughs]
She called the Vatican
to get in touch with the pope.
Yeah, 'cause, well, mania,
it's all in the realm of possibility.
It's like, "Oh. Yeah, somebody
should give him a jingle-jangle."
[Seidelmann] One day, my parents called me
from the freeway
on their way home from Minneapolis.
My mom was trying
to drive the car off the road.
My dad was driving,
and they put me on a speakerphone,
and I was like,
"You need to go to the emergency now."
"This is so dangerous."
[Smith] There was a point
where Marilyn had actually called up,
and she seemed to be having
a manic episode.
It was just like
a very kind of run-on sentence, uh,
that, uh, was not anything resembling
what you'd call a conversation.
She got put in the hospital,
and she did eventually leave.
I think it was, like, a week later, AMA.
She left against medical advice,
and my dad supported her.
He picked her up
from the airport, and I was like,
"God bless you. I hope this goes okay."
And it did go okay.
They went to the cabin,
slowly, slowly over time with medicine,
and she did go to her
follow-up appointments,
but she did not wanna be in there anymore.
[Maria] I'd always known I had depression,
and there was bipolar in my family,
but at a certain point,
I started talking very quickly
and also feeling extremely depressed
in sort of an active way,
which I had never felt before,
which was making plans for suicide.
I had told a friend of mine,
"Hey, heads up,
if ever I start talking too fast
about wanting to get into touch
with the pope
or some other ethical authority,
put me in a purple van
and drive me to doggie daycare
'cause I need to be boarded
for the weekend."
"Mental illness runs in my family,
and it drops at about 40 years old."
-Christmas is here
-[automated voice] Christmas is here
-Fa la la la
-Fa la la la
Christmas is here, Christmas is here
Fa la la la, fa la la la
-Ding dong!
-Christmas is here, Christmas is here
Fa la la la
[Smith] With Target,
it was a Christmas campaign.
We did it a few years in a row.
[vocalizing]
They had her in mind from the get-go.
[Christmas music playing]
The spots were written
in a very Maria-like way.
[panting]
[Kashian] She was asked
to play a version of herself
doing that manic need for shopping.
I did not even have to audition.
-[reporter] Really?
-No.
[reporter] Oh, that's nice.
[panting] I'm doing
a bit of light calisthenics
to practice for the big
Target Two-Day Sale.
[Kashian] The campaign
is the perfect example
of something that has
a great deal of stress attached to it.
There's millions and millions
of dollars involved.
[grunting]
[Kashian] And so, but if you look deeply
into the eyes of Target,
you're gonna see a corporation.
Feels so good to give. Mm!
[Kashian] And that weighed on her.
[Maria] Once taking that money
and signing a contract
saying that I would never
speak ill of them,
I started to look for things
that were not great about them.
[reporter] Tonight, 260 Target workers
in Long Island, New York,
will vote on whether or not to unionize.
Target, like Walmart,
has successfully dissuaded
their employees from unionizing for years.
[Maria] I started feeling bad about it,
and this is also pre-medication,
so I was getting a little obsessed.
[crowd clamoring]
[shouting]
I'm so excited. I haven't slept in days.
Literally days! [laughs]
When I had super stressful stuff happening
before I got on the mood stabilizers
that I am now,
I started to ramp up, amp up.
[kisses, laughs]
And I stopped being able to function.
[shouts]
[cackles]
I just was so obsessed
that it was evil and that it was wrong,
and then so I was checking with everybody.
I drove up to this priest
in Santa Barbara,
who everyone said was great.
I got an interview with him
to see, like, what he thought.
Yeah, got real weird, got deep.
[Apatow] So you got obsessed with
if it was wrong to take their money.
Take their money.
And then I finally asked
The New York Times ethicist.
[female voice]
I'm a celebrity, broadly speaking,
spokesperson for a company I always loved.
But I've learned that its labor practices
here and abroad are not so admirable,
and I'm ashamed I took the job.
May I use my website
to promote organizations
that oppose such practices,
anti-sweatshop groups, for example?
And, most important, may I keep this job?
I said, "Is it still possible for me
to do this job?"
And the ethicist said, "No, it's not."
[Smith] Target called me up
in the last year
that Maria did the commercials,
and they said, "There's an article
in The New York Times op-ed."
"Was that Maria?"
I said no at the time
'cause I was also lying.
[laughs]
And, uh, which is also unethical.
Did Target ever say, like,
"Hey, why are you doing this?"
Yeah, no, I think I did not work for them.
I think after the third year,
they said, yeah, they were
-Moving in a different direction?
-Moved on. [laughs]
After I lost the Target gig,
I mean, all sorts of things were happening
where I was just not feeling well.
[exhales] I wasn't sure what I was
gonna be able to do or not do.
I don't know if anyone here
is thinking of suicide.
Don't do it.
It's not the season for it, late fall.
-[laughing]
-And, um
Most people don't think about doing it,
maybe you think of it once in a while,
just feeling sorry for yourself.
Like, "Oh, the stewardess
won't give me the whole can." [sobs]
"Oh, turbulence, I wanna live."
[laughing]
But
Just imagine if your friend calls
and says,
"I think I want to commit suicide,
but I'm okay tonight,
but I might call you.
Can you take me to the hospital?"
[Maria] I made an appointment for myself
to stay in Las Encinas,
which is a facility for 72 hours.
I thought it was covered by my insurance.
It was not.
[Amy O'Connell] I call it "Lost at Sea."
She had looked at it,
and she talked to me about it.
She goes, "They have a pool.
I think it's gonna be great."
And I go, "Yeah, it looks pretty,
and it's close. Let's go."
So my friend drove me
to the psych ward, and, um,
I had my interview
with the, uh, psychiatrist,
and he asked me, you know,
"Why are you here?"
I said, "Well, I have a plan."
"I'm gonna-- gonna kill myself."
"Okay, great." Um
When you first get in,
they take away all your stuff,
anything you might hurt yourself with.
Keys, pens, headphones.
The staff is very disinterested,
'cause they have seen
a lot of kooky behavior.
You got to lock your stuff in a closet.
Do you need anything?
I was just a little hungry.
I was wondering if you had a sandwich.
No.
Okay, maybe, just any
do you have anything, or?
Uh, graham crackers.
Can I have a graham cracker?
Only one.
I had the fantasy, which often people do,
that a psychiatric facility
is going to be a healing space.
It is not. It is not.
It is there to keep you alive.
They are understaffed.
Um, they are scared.
They're overpopulated.
There are people there
for all sorts of reasons.
Some people who are genuinely dangerous,
and anything you say to them,
you sound like a crazy person,
because you are.
So what are you here for? [exhales]
I was trying to kill myself.
Great. Great.
Uh, what's been going on? What are
your symptoms? Tell me your history.
[sighs] I was on antidepressants, SSRIs
That was working,
but I started talking faster,
and every moment became unbearable.
Every moment is unbearable.
Every moment is unbearable,
and I started just, like,
having this repetitively crap idea,
"Oh my gosh, I should kill myself.
I should kill myself."
"You know what I should do?
I should kill myself."
Okay, perfect.
Uh, now, what kind of work do you do?
[Maria] I was just in the facility
for those 72 hours,
uh, and then I got out,
and I think the coming weekend
I had shows in Chicago.
I was feeling terrible, but I went,
'cause I just thought,
"Oh, I gotta do the job."
I went on this mood stabilizer.
It had a side effect, cognitive confusion.
Like, it's difficult to think or talk.
So when I got to the hotel,
I was just in a panic.
I started walking around Chicago.
I lost all my ID and stuff.
And then I cut myself on something,
a taxi cab that I was next to,
and so I'm bleeding.
I I couldn't get words out.
I was making this noise
[speaks gibberish]
About an hour before showtime.
And I called my mother and said
[speaks gibberish]
[imitates mother]
"Honey, somehow get to the airport."
"Go to Delta Priority."
"Tell them you are
Gold Medallion." [gasps]
"And tell them about your website."
[Apatow] And that's when
you checked yourself in a second time.
[Maria] That's when I went
to another place
that was covered by insurance.
I think I tried
a few other mood stabilizers,
'cause I didn't want to go on Depakote,
the current medication I'm on,
because of the weight gain issue.
So suddenly you have, like,
a pharmacy's worth of meds.
So then I could kill myself.
My-- my therapist at the time,
I was about to leave, and she was like,
"Can you promise me you're not
gonna hurt yourself?" I'm like, "Nope."
So then I was mandatory.
I had to stay for ten days.
I just felt really bad.
[Seidelmann] I went to LA, where I
could just go visit her at the hospital,
and I just wanted to do anything
that I could help,
but I also realized
it was way above my pay grade.
You went through these,
like, horrible, horrible dark times,
and it was just like, oh my gosh.
Like, I mean, I just, then I had
so much more compassion for you.
-Hard to understand if you don't know.
-[Maria] No, it's weird.
Well, then 'cause everybody
looks good on the outside,
and it's hard to know
what anybody's internal experience is.
[flight attendant] Welcome to Los Angeles.
Local time is approximately 12:30
[O'Connell] Marilyn flew out from Duluth.
-She read Maria Oprah magazines.
-[laughs]
I remember,
they read Oprah magazine cover to cover,
'cause that's what you do
[inhales] when you're
in the mental hospital.
She made you feel relaxed, calm.
-[Marketa Velehradska] Mm-hmm.
-[O'Connell] Her mom was super supportive.
[Maria] She became
a therapist later in life.
She definitely changed. She changed a lot.
Like, she would say,
"I am so proud of you."
That was extremely helpful.
I did develop some willingness
to try a new the Depakote medication,
which my mom had done well with.
[O'Connell] I remember
her medication got adjusted,
and I think she started feeling
much better.
[Maria] "Meds have changed my life
in a deep
and what feels like a lasting way."
"They have allowed me to maintain
what I understand now
to be a baseline mood."
"I don't feel high,
but I also don't feel really low,
unless I have an alcoholic beverage
I'm not supposed to have."
"And here's the kicker.
I still wanna stop taking meds."
"At least twice, I've cut my meds
to 500 milligrams to have more energy."
"Unfortunately, what immediately
follows cutting the drugs
is me going back to feeling
at first great,
and then quickly,
ampidly, angrily unstable."
[audience laughing]
[Smith] Maria sort of inched back in.
She did local stage time
before getting on a plane again.
Then there was, like, a weird poetry
to the way Maria brought her struggles
into the act.
-[rock music playing]
-[audience cheering]
You did your special. This is an unusual
way of shooting a comedy special.
Yes, uh, I did a comedy special,
an hour-long special.
Most comics would do it
for 300 people, 400 people in a, uh
-Comedy club or a theater, maybe?
-Comedy club or a theater, perhaps.
Uh, I decided to do it
in my living room for my parents.
-[host] Yeah.
-And, uh
Thanks so much for coming,
Mom and Dad. [sighs]
Who was the audience?
Well, let's just say I destroyed.
Yeah.
If you're feeling bad, uh,
and you have a plan,
do what I did.
Wrap a little blanket burrito
around your meats and cheeses.
Uh, put a little feed bag
of microwave popcorn around your neck,
'cause it's gonna be
a 12-hour wait at the ER.
And have the coast guard
take you to Lost at Sea hospital,
because you are Lost at Sea.
And there you'll walk for 72 hours
with a schizophrenic man.
With no teeth, no pants.
Keeps saying stuff like,
[accented] "It gets better."
[Smith laughs]
I do not believe you,
but you're very sweet.
[laughing]
But I did have a friend
come visit me in the psych ward,
which is a great thing.
I mean, that is amazing
for somebody to come visit.
Very grateful.
Uh, they gave me a real talking-to.
"I just talked to my spiritual advisor,
and he said
that people who commit suicide,
sometimes it's time for them to go,
that they just need to move
to the next dimension."
"And I just wanna give you permission."
"I'll let you go."
-"Okay, uh, you're horrible."
-[Smith laughs]
"And please come visit me tomorrow."
[laughing]
Every comedian I know,
you have to be pretty humble to be like,
"No, I just wanna do it
in front of two people,
and they'll be laughing,
but it won't seem that I'm killing
because there's not
a thousand other people at the show."
I think a lot of times,
this part of you is reacting.
"That must be a good joke
Everybody is laughing."
And you only have Maria's parents
to indicate whether this is funny or not,
but they're the butt
of the joke sometimes.
Hey, are you guys okay?
Do you have to, you know, go to the pod?
The powder room? My dad, um
[clicks tongue]
had prostate surgery,
and, um, so now he has a bag.
-[slow-tempo piano music playing]
-[audience laughing]
[Stephen Colbert] Feels emotionally honest
all the time with her.
Her complete commitment and that includes
her honesty about her mental state.
It's so refreshing.
Can I give you a slice?
It's all funny and heartbreaking
at the same time. It's beautiful.
I-- I love she's my favorite comedian.
Okay.
[Colbert] Think of all the people
for whom her experience is real,
that they recognize themself in that,
and there she is making jokes about it.
The problem is because
I talk about mental health,
which, uh, so then lots of people,
as I'm doing the exchange
of goods and services,
they'll tell me about a suicide attempt.
No one saw this coming.
[chuckles] Or they'll have a bracelet
of just getting out of the hoosegow,
the hospital,
and I'll have to say,
"Can I run your card again?"
[laughs]
"I'm so sorry about your father."
Feel a relationship coming on.
I, uh, get ready for it.
I used to be afraid of,
you know, relationships.
Somebody would ask me out, I'd say,
"Just take my purse. Don't hurt me."
[audience laughing]
"No, I wanna get to know you."
"I have nothing of value."
[audience laughing]
I get jealous of people who are
really confident in their relationships.
People who are like, "Yeah, we both met.
We both just kind of knew."
[groaning]
[splutters] "So-- so you don't
ever fight about anything?"
"Oh." [laughs]
"He doesn't like onions."
[audience laughing]
[Maria groaning]
"You never had any issues
you had to work through
with, like, a freaking workbook?"
"You know, if I were you,
I'd watch out for red flags."
"Okay, but what if I'm, like,
a flag factory
that only manufactures giant red flags?"
[imitates flag unfurling]
[Kashian] She was doing
a lot of Internet dating,
'cause I did Internet dating,
and she always says
that I'm an inspiration
because I found a nice fella.
Come on, sit in. You've gotta sit in, kid.
-[laughs]
-[man] You're so aware of the camera.
I know I am. That's okay.
That's what the thing is,
is it creates a sense
of self-consciousness.
-It's not our fault.
-[chuckles]
[Maria] Scott, when we first met,
he would jokingly say,
-"I'm depressed too."
-[Scott Marvel Cassidy laughs]
And which made me laugh,
and, uh, it then
turns out he is. [chuckles]
[Cassidy] This is called
Maria Sleeping in the Studio.
As you can see,
uh, it's a mannequin and Maria
[clears throat]
won't sit still,
so this is the best way to do it.
In therapy, they say,
"Find the thing you wanna do,
and then do it for the rest of your life."
And I have. I found painting.
I wanna do it the rest of my life.
But now the therapist,
even Maria, are saying,
"Well, you can't be by yourself
all the time." [laughs]
But that's how it's done.
[Apatow] When did you
first become aware of Maria?
Um, when we met on the dating app,
and I told my friend,
"Oh, I met this gal Maria Bamford."
He goes, "Oh yeah, I sent you a video."
[upbeat music plays]
-Welcome. It's very nice to have you.
-I'm not interested.
My guest, Cynthia Dingus,
is registered by
the United States Department of Beauty
for a beauty expert.
-I don't know how you can get prettier.
-No!
-[kisses]
-[Maria as Cynthia chuckles]
I saw the video. I was like,
"Oh, that's right. You're hilarious."
-[laughs]
-Aww.
And, um, you're beautiful.
[laughs]
[Apatow] Where did you take her
on the first date?
[Cassidy] We went to a caf place
that does not exist anymore, Coffee Table.
We went on a second date,
the second date was super intense.
It was, like, a four-hour hiking date.
-Scott told me everything about himself.
-[Apatow chuckles]
And it was everything.
Well, 'cause I did a deep dive
on YouTube and watched all her stuff,
I'm finding out all this stuff,
so I told her all my stuff.
I think it overwhelmed her.
I'm from Philadelphia,
outside of Philadelphia,
a place called Wayne.
My dad was a pretty awful ex-Marine.
He beat the crap out of us.
He would, you know,
he would scream at us in public.
He would hit us in public.
He punched me so hard,
I broke the drywall with my back.
Like, he punched me into the wall.
Um, I mean, I'm laughing now,
but it was pretty effed up.
[Maria] My husband and I both learned
we have a hobby in common,
and that pastime is longing for death.
-And, uh, it does eat the clock.
-[audience laughing]
It does, um
Don't worry about us.
Uh, we have fully filled out
It's from the suicide prevention people.
You can do it yourself.
Uh, a contract, a safety contract, says,
"I, Maria, I, Scott,
will not harm, kill myself."
"I will call these three people first."
Uh, nothing prevents impulsive self-harm
quicker than paperwork.
And it's-- [sighs]
it's in a magnetized chip clip
on the front of our refrigerator.
[audience laughing]
So if ever you guys come over
and you help yourself
to a Cran-Razz LaCroix
[audience laughing]
you know we're okay. I, uh--
Whenever you mention suicide,
just not make it sexy.
Uh, it's not sexy.
I don't like people
to feel gaslit 'cause there's a lot of,
um, memes out there for health
that are sort of like,
"Hey, tell someone about it."
"Hey, you, get help."
"Hey, open up."
"Tell someone."
-[jazzy music playing]
-[Maria] Single, stylish, now.
A lady's gotta be ready
for when it happens.
It's my life, and I'll do whatever
it takes to get that sassafras feeling.
Sassafras.
Because when you feel this good
Ain't no man gonna tell me
I ain't a woman.
[woman] Uh, Maria? Maria?
Hey, Maria, what are you--
what are you doing?
Uh, hair commercial?
[woman] No, no, no, this is not a hair ad.
It's the show. It's your show.
-Let's get you to the van, okay?
-[gasps] My show.
[gasps] I have a show?
-I'm so excited to have my own show!
-[explosion booms]
[Smith] Mitch Hurwitz really understood
Maria's comedy and Maria's voice.
And the Emmy goes to Mitchell Hurwitz.
[cheering]
Arrested Development.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
[Smith] And at the time, he was using her
in the fourth season
of Arrested Development.
[man] Will she be okay?
Well, we can treat all of these things,
but if she's really gonna be okay,
she's gonna have to tackle
this drug problem.
Didn't tell me you had a drug problem.
We met at a methadone clinic.
Are you high?
We met at an acting class. [laughs]
The method one
I'm gonna let you guys hash this out.
[Mitch Hurwitz] I had a deal at Netflix.
This was right after we brought
Arrested Development back there.
Tell you how different,
like, Netflix was at that point.
Um, I ran into Ted Sarandos in the hall,
and, you know, he said,
"What are you working on?"
I said, "I'm thinking about doing"
"Um, I really wanna do a show
with Maria Bamford."
And he said,
"I'll greenlight that right now."
"I mean, let's just go to series.
She's a genius."
[Apatow] Is it true that Mitch, he said
to us that he ran into you in the hallway,
and then he said,
"I wanna do something with Maria"?
Yeah, 100%. And I think,
I'm sure he had the same experience I did
working with her on Arrested.
You just want more of her.
You wanna be able to see
where else can you take this?
Where else can she take this?
It's so raw and real and vulnerable
that you're all in for the ride.
[Apatow] What was the original pitch
for the show?
[Sarandos] It was Maria Bamford
playing a version of herself
that takes place before, during
and after her mental breakdown.
We had a basic shape of the show.
We did three different timelines.
So it's when Maria has broken down,
returned to Minnesota.
-How do you feel?
-I feel like I wanna kill myself.
Oh still?
We also wanted to show her manic phase
when she was at her most successful,
her Target years.
[gasps] All this shopping,
I can't get enough!
[shouts]
[Pam Brady] Then we wanted
to show her rebuilding.
So Larissa says
that you think you're really funny,
and you have a lot of mental illness.
Wow, that's how she described me.
-Yeah.
-Wow. [laughs]
[Apatow] Did you ever
see her Lady Dynamite show?
Uh, see Lady Dynamite?
-I was on Lady Dynamite.
-[Apatow] I'm sorry.
Come here.
You're gonna put stand-up in your show?
-[director] Cut!
-Yeah. I mean, is that bad?
It's bad. It's been done
so many times before.
Everybody we asked to be on the show
was just like, "For Maria, yes."
[man] The great Andy Samberg.
[Maria] David Spade!
-Oh!
-[shouts]
-Hi! How are you?
-Hey!
[man] When did you find out
you would have characters on the show?
-So we wanted to have two different types.
-[man] Yeah.
Like, Lennon's kind of
playing the spiritual.
She sees ghosts and everything,
and Bridget comes in, and she's a hammer.
I mean, that's not a one-to-one
of her best friends,
but it's something with a little conflict.
Will you keep a lookout for me?
-I'm not even listening.
-Just pick a funny name.
I don't listen when you talk.
I went to one of the writing things.
Maybe you were working.
No, I went too.
-Oh, you did? Oh, I didn't see you.
-Mm-hmm.
[laughs]
-But, uh
-I didn't see you.
[laughs] I was there.
It's Judd Apatow, super producer.
Judd had been chasing Maria down
to make a movie for years.
In fact, Judd plays himself
on Lady Dynamite.
And in real life and in the show,
Maria says,
"I don't wanna be that successful."
It's a double crossover sequel
of Bridesmaids and Ghostbusters.
Feig is in, and it is called
Bridebusters?
Actually, no.
We never thought of that.
Write that down. Brides
Busters. No, we're gonna go Ghostmaids.
I love you so very much. Bye-bye!
-[Apatow] Maria, don't! Stop thinking!
-Oh God, oh.
[Cassidy] I don't know
how they produced it,
but they called me the Easter egg
in the first season
'cause I'd show up in the background.
They eventually, uh, wanted me
to be in the second season.
-And that was fun.
-[both] Mm!
In fact, her real parents came in
and played actors playing her parents.
Well, isn't he a gentleman?
Joel, take notes.
[Joel] Nice grip, boy.
That'll help on our way
in the lunar module to Alpha Centauri.
[director] And cut!
They had tapped into something
that wasn't regular television, for sure.
She delivered the lines as if they were
her life, and they were pretty close.
I feel like you're the first guy
I could share everything with.
[Hurwitz] You know, a lot of people
hide those qualities in themselves
that they think don't make them look good.
Even though I'm on
five different mood-altering meds,
I will be struggling
with mental illness the rest of my life,
which means you will be struggling
with mental illness.
She knows that, like,
your struggle connects you to the world,
even though it's the thing
you most wanna hide.
-I don't care about that.
-Oh.
-'Cause I love you.
-[chuckles]
I'm gonna help you through that.
She helps people
come to a place where they can
poke a little fun of their own illness,
and that's the beginning of healing
in my mind,
that if people can laugh.
[man] It's interesting. You've been in
this business for a relatively long time.
But when I read articles,
even from a few years back,
it seems like you're constantly
referred to as the next big thing.
Is that humorous to you?
Like, even now, I see those comments,
"She's the new thing."
You know, this is your mantle.
Well, it's exciting
to always be on the cusp.
[Smith] Who could ask for more
than the show is about you?
You're number one on the call sheet.
But at the same time,
after one day on the set,
she called me up, and she goes,
"I don't see how I can continue
to do 14-hour days."
I felt so terrible in terms of,
you know, you really
wanna bring your A game,
and I was just, like,
I needed to sleep, like, 12 hours a night,
which is not good
with making television or movies.
-Sleep is the worst thing you can do.
-Do. It is. It really is.
[Brady] We had
to make sure she had a little pod,
because she really needs a lot of sleep.
I love how everyone
always, yeah. [splutters]
People are like, "Let's do French hours."
"We're only gonna shoot,
you know, from three to five p.m.,"
and then it never
It never turns to, yeah, no.
-Yeah, it gets German hours very quickly.
-[laughs]
I was like,
"No, I will-- I will go mental."
"This-- this whole show
will happen in real time."
-[laughing]
-[Maria] Uh
I would argue the most maligned group
of untouchables
in Los Angeles are extras.
-People
-[audience laughing]
in the background of film and television.
I have many times been an extra.
You are left without food, water,
bathroom breaks for hours at a time.
They throw buckets
of Red Vines at you. Uh
[audience laughing]
And most painfully, you're inches away
from a tiny, gorgeous group of people
who are having all their dreams come true.
[audience laughing]
[splutters] Uh,
here's what I should have done,
uh, according to the rules of the game.
I should have made
a big speech at the beginning.
I should have said, "Netflix,
should you massage my kale
with avocado and sea salt and lemon,
so too should you massage
the kale of the extras."
"For that which you scream at the extras,
'Use the porta potties
a thousand yards away,'
so do you scream at me,
for I too am an extra."
[audience laughing]
Uh, what did I actually do?
Uh, my very own husband was an extra.
He calls me.
[imitates husband]
"They have us in a van. Uh"
[audience laughing]
"It's-- it's over 100 degrees in here."
"The guy won't let us out.
It's locked from the outside. Hey."
"I can see you. Can-- can you see me?"
[as herself, chuckles]
"Oh. Oh yes, shit, babe."
"Yeah, I'll try to--
I'll get somebody over there."
"But they're doing my hair."
[audience laughing]
[Apatow] What was the process like
if you wanted to do a second season?
[Sarandos] I think it came up
in the context of,
"We're not making a second season, right?"
[laughs] It was from my own team.
I said, "We're definitely
gonna do a second season."
-Oh good. I'm still finding out who I am.
-[crowd cheering]
and I either push people away
or do everything that people say
and lose myself
and trying to find a balance.
Sweetie, we're all still trying
to figure it out.
You more than most.
Oh thanks, Mom. I'm so sorry.
Oh, honey, you never have to
apologize to your mother,
and I never have to apologize to you!
Critics did love the show, but didn't
talk about it much in the second season.
But I still recommend the show
to everybody.
People always ask me, "What is
your favorite Netflix Original show ever?"
And it is Lady Dynamite.
And it is the least-disciplined thing
I've ever done
as an executive was to renew it.
[laughs] Because I may have been
the only person watching it.
But it's been a great
I still am incredibly proud
of what they achieved with that show.
We have about 43 seconds.
As soon as everybody comes from
the breakout room for the studio audience,
uh, Maria, I'm gonna
prompt you.
Hello!
-Hello! Hello!
-Hello.
Hey, everybody. Hey! All right! Thank you
I'm actually in Duluth, Minnesota.
Uh, my mom is dying actively of cancer
and of lung cancer. And, uh, so,
if I don't believe in God, how can I
still contact my mother in heaven?
Ooh, um [clears throat]
Does she have email?
[laughs]
I think she was 76,
and she loved to work,
you know, do her elliptical.
And she was having a little
She had a little pain in her lung,
and she was like, "Oh, that's weird."
And she dealt with it for about a month,
then she's like,
"You know what? I think I'll go in."
They said it was stage 4 lung cancer.
It was just so weird.
Maria started to sob,
and my mom was immediately like,
"Sweetie, it's gonna be okay."
And then she said,
"I'll probably come back
as some kind of strange bird
and bother you."
[chuckles] We all just started laughing.
But that was my mom, like, always too
Always mothering. I mean, always putting,
you know, her grandkids,
her kids, in front of her own.
Oh, why does she have to die?
Because she loves life.
-My mom, she loves
-Yeah.
She we went to TJ Maxx.
She's on her last legs, and she delighted
in the candle aisle, I tell you.
I knew she was feeling sick
when I brought her two baubles
to line her nest with.
You know, I told her
a couple things that I was
I was in The New Yorker
and The New York Times in one week.
I was like, "Mom."
She's like, "Uh, uh-huh."
And I'm like, "Oh shit, she's"
You know, she just feels so ill.
She was, had can-- and then I felt
really shitty, like, "What am I doing?"
Like, trying to get my mom, like,
"Mother, can you do
one more thing for me?"
"Can you clap for me?" [laughs]
Um [sniffles]
She had been in and out of the hospital.
The last time she was in the hospital,
she was like, "I can't go back there."
[Maria] My mom died in the home.
I was there with her last breaths,
and she was totally out of it.
She was just taking
these long last breaths.
It was just like,
wow, it's just like birth in reverse.
I mean, it just felt like that.
It just felt like, wow, like
And just what a professional
she was about it.
You know, I don't know.
If there's such a thing as a good death,
my mom had the best one.
My mom died, and I was there,
and, uh, my sister was there as well,
and she said what she saw
was my mom took her final breath,
a rush of energy left the room,
a shaft of sunlight, uh,
came in onto my mother's body,
and then a bird hovered
outside the window,
and that bird was my mother.
Uh, what I saw was
-[groaning loudly]
-[audience laughing]
Welcome to this service
in memory of Marilyn Bamford.
[Maria] And it was all during quarantine,
so it sucked.
Like, we couldn't have a funeral
in person, had to have a Zoom funeral.
Oh my goodness. [sobs]
Um [sniffles]
"When I die,
give what's left of me away [sniffles]
to children and old men that wait to die."
[sniffles] "And if you need to cry,
cry for your brother
walking the street beside you."
"And when you need me,
put your arms around anyone
and give them what you need to give me."
"You can love me best
by letting hands touch hands
and by letting go of children
that need to be free."
"Love doesn't die. People do."
"So when all that's left of me is love,
give me away."
[Seidelmann] Certainly,
my mom was not perfect,
but I think Maria now sees
Sees a lot of only beauty
in what my mom was and how she was.
[slow-tempo music playing]
[Marilyn laughing]
[Maria] She loved living. She loved life,
so she always had tons of stuff going on.
She loved people. She loved the hot goss.
She loved getting in other people's
business, you know, like going [laughs]
She loved Christianity.
She loved her friends. She loved food.
I don't think she would have had kids
had it not been,
you know, that era,
and so I don't think so.
But I don't have anything
to complain about.
The only thing that I think made it
more dramatic was my own brain.
-Mom?
-[Marilyn] Yeah?
Thanks for letting me do
less-than-accurate
and highly-embellished portrayals of you
for the Internet
and on television.
And in movies if they'd let me.
That's okay, honey. It's very funny.
[audience cheering]
Thank you so much!
Oh my goodness, how delightful.
You guys, some people love life, uh
[audience laughing]
I've always been on the fence
about the whole thing.
I could go at any time.
Uh, what I would really like
is a sharp blow to the head
that I do not see coming, right?
[laughs] Surprise me.
[audience laughing]
My mom got stage four lung cancer,
and, uh, she decided to not have
any more treatments.
She went on hospice. I don't know
if you've seen a hospice in action.
Oh my God, that is the best health care
we have in this country.
Uh, 24-hour nursing care, all the morphine
you can eat with no one watching.
Treat yourself, go hospice.
-[audience laughing]
-Uh
My mom, so positive.
[imitates mother] "The great thing
about this past couple years
has been the first time in my life
I've been below goal weight
on Weight Watchers."
"So my membership has been gratis."
[as Maria] "Mom, you do know that even
if a coffin is tight around the hips,
eventually it fits."
[audience laughing]
[imitates mother] "Oh honey,
don't do that one. That's not a good one."
[audience laughing]
But the joke's on me,
because she got cremated,
and now she's just a pound!
Thank you, God!
[audience laughing, applauding]
I, uh, like
to bring her around the country,
and I take her out
at Nordstrom shoe departments.
[audience laughing]
"Oh, no, thanks. I'm just looking."
[audience laughing]
Uh, the day she died,
my parents were together 60 years.
My dad was heartbroken,
and, uh, he brought out a box
from their bedroom,
and he showed the contents
to myself and my sister.
Inside were a large
purple plastic vibrator
and a butterfly-style vibrator
with a remote.
And he said
[imitates father] "I-- I think your mother
would have wanted you girls
to to have these."
I'm sure she would be horrified
about the thing about the vibrators joke
at the end of that set.
[man] Wait, he really said that?
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
I really thought it was something that I
I could share with the two of you,
but apparently not. [chuckles]
What a horrible, terrible thing
was hidden in there.
Well, maybe I should
make it more clear in the joke.
-Those are quality items that she had.
-Exactly.
[Maria] They were very-- those are
high-priced. They weren't poorly made.
-[Joel] And the humor of--
-There wasn't a lot of wear and tear.
"Yes, Father."
"I shall take these as an heirloom."
"And I will pass this down
from generation to generation."
Thank you so much. Miss you, Mom.
[cheering]
[TV show host speaks indistinctly]
[Maria] I definitely told my mom,
I think, I hope I did,
how much I loved her, and how
She was very glad for your presence,
you and Sarah, at the end.
I didn't want anything to do with death.
Her dying.
I can't imagine.
Like, it's just to be by yourself
after you've been with somebody
that's been positive so long.
And all of your activities
have been with them.
-[Maria] Yeah.
-So that you don't have those activities.
You were in a dark pit.
And then, do you
see yourself digging out of it?
Or do you see yourself sitting there?
But in truth,
you can't walk out. [chuckles]
-You still have your loss years later.
-[Maria] Yeah.
And the waves of feeling bad come and go.
[Maria] After two years
of my mom being gone,
my dad lost about 30 pounds.
He didn't wanna eat anymore.
The problem, I think, was depression.
He always had that. He always had that.
And I think my mom really helped him with
In terms of constantly having plans,
always had people over,
always had relationships going.
[Seidelmann] I remember sitting
in his kitchen after my mom died,
and this was probably two years
into his widowship,
and it's just like he put his head down
on the kitchen table,
and he's just like,
"I don't know if I can go on."
[Maria] He went on meds again.
But I know every time I talked to him,
it was that same talk
that I've had with myself a million times
where it's like, "Nothing is good."
"Nothing is fun."
I know I've been underweight before,
and I was definitely,
your brain can't function.
So I know, yeah, definitely,
I hope I've made it clear.
Have I made it clear, Father,
how much I love you and how grateful I am
for a wonderful childhood?
Yeah. Yeah.
[Maria] Yeah.
-Yeah.
-[Maria sighs] Yeah.
Then my sister said,
"Oh my gosh, he's gotten COVID,"
and then she went over there,
and he had fallen.
And he had fallen into,
like, I think out of weakness.
It was just heartbreaking.
A lot of times when people are dying,
or at least I read about it
in this pamphlet,
is that they start, um,
reaching towards the sky,
people when they're dying,
and, um, my dad started doing that,
and then he, uh, said,
"Oh, the breeze off the lake is perfect."
"It's a great day for a sail."
And then he said, "There's my cookie club,
and there's, um,
some people are playing a game."
"Hey, can I play?"
And then you could see,
he was saying stuff like,
"There's so there's puppies."
"Can we give them treats?"
And he must have gotten the answer,
and then he started, like,
whipping treats at these puppies.
I mean, just like, oh, you know, just,
what a sweet man my dad was.
[accented] Please look along the stage.
[speaks gibberish]
Hopefully, you know what you've
come to see. Maria Bamford! Hi!
I hope, ma'am, in the front row,
do you know what you've come to see?
Yes, I do believe I'm seeing my sister
in my very own home.
-[laughs]
-[Maria] Oh yes.
[Seidelmann] As the years progressed,
it got to be the point
when I would go to a show,
especially if it was in town.
I'm so excited,
and I know this is gonna be fun,
but also scared, like,
"What's she gonna say about me?"
I always wanna make sure that people
are volunteers, you know. [chuckles]
It isn't a hostage situation.
[Seidelmann] But during the pandemic,
Maria was doing these shows online.
-Hey! Hi!
-[men and women cheering, laughing]
[Seidelmann] And one of the jokes she told
was a story that I had just told her.
For me, it was a very sacred story.
It was a very vulnerable story.
And I just said,
"This really hurts
when I tell you a personal story,
and it just becomes comedy without--
you never ask,
and it just feels so hurtful."
"So if we do still have a relationship,
it'll just be me not telling you
any stories that are important to me."
I think I've really hurt her feelings
over the years.
That's the ugly part of it.
She would tell me, "Please don't do it.
It really hurts my feelings."
Please stop telling your jokes,
'cause they're not jokes,
and you're hurting us.
I love you, Sarah.
I wasn't able to stop
doing an impersonation of her
until my parents died.
And then I was like,
"Oh shit, we're-- she's all I have left."
And turns out
it really hurts her feelings.
Why don't you shut the fuck up, Maria?
Like, why don't you like, what are you
[splutters]
Yeah, what are you getting out of it
at this point?
[Seidelmann] There was a short phone call,
and the next day she sent me an email
and said, "I will never do that again."
[voice breaks] And it makes me cry now,
because every day, we talk.
It means a lot,
'cause there is a safety in that.
I don't know.
But I'm so grateful for our connection,
because we talk and we laugh every day,
and it's awesome.
Let's-- let's see if she's here already,
I don't know.
Nicole, thanks for coming out today.
Um, it's always great when I see you.
Thank you so much
for agreeing to listen to this show.
I have to rehearse
What I do sometimes to get an audience
is I put it on Twitter, what I need,
which is, "Is anybody available?"
Well, then I just do an hour to them
over a cup of coffee.
-Really?
-[man chuckles] Yeah.
[laughs] At a coffee shop,
it's like, of course she does.
[Apatow] Do they laugh?
Not always.
She sits in a coffee shop across--
one-on-one with someone,
and then just runs the stuff.
[Apatow] The entire set.
Yeah, for an hour.
She'll find-- wait a minute.
[Apatow] Do you do that for yourself,
or you do it for them?
[Maria] I do it for myself.
It's all for me.
-[Apatow] For memorizations?
-Yes, to remember it.
[laughs] I would feel real awkward
with the eye contact.
I'm like, "You like that one,
right?" [laughs]
I once thought I was being heckled
for a half-hour
at the Boise, Idaho, Funny Bone.
Uh, turns out this woman
was a very big fan,
but she was experiencing cerebral palsy.
I did not know that before,
uh, I asked her,
"Isn't there a curfew at the whorehouse?
Why don't you shut the fuck up?"
Oh no.
That's great.
That's-- that's self-publishing.
There's no overhead.
She puts that whole hundred in her pocket.
[man] She pays them a hundred dollars.
-Wait, she pays you?
-[man] Yeah.
[laughing]
And I wanna get on camera
that I did pay this wonderful artist
a hundred dollars for her time.
-No way.
-[man chuckles]
Well, here, I'll do a bow,
so you get the full experience.
And I get the full experience, really.
[laughing]
[Apatow] What is your hope right now
for, like, your career?
-Uh, I think just enjoying.
-[Apatow] Yeah.
Yeah, 'cause there's a lot of good times.
-Oh. [laughs]
-[man laughs]
Will there be other people
this morning, or is it just you?
-Uh, do you wanna do five, Neil?
-[Neil] I'm okay.
[Maria] Thank you for coming.
Good morning.
This is creepy to say,
but, uh, sometimes when a parent dies
and there's generational wealth,
it's a cash cow.
-[Apatow] Yeah.
-And, uh, so
There's no need for me to work.
Like, I don't need to.
So, uh, I think
I'm gonna try to calm down.
[laughs] And enjoy myself, enjoy my life.
Hello, how are you?
[Neil] Did you know
she was performing at a clown theater?
Of course.
[Neil] At eight a.m. in the morning
on Wednesdays for a while?
-Why not? [chuckles]
-[Neil laughs]
-At a clown theater? [laughs]
-[Apatow] At a clown theater.
[man] Yeah, there's a lot.
You can buy a shirt. The shirt.
They made these. They're $69.
There's the Portal Potty,
which also have the--
Oh, I'm so sorry.
-It's a clown theater?
-[Neil] Yeah.
[chuckles] What does
that even fucking mean?
Yes, greetings, my babies!
-My name is Nimbus.
-[audience laughing]
Clowning, from what I understand,
is stand-up with nudity, crying
and a considerable lack of consent.
-[plays "Charge"]
-[audience cheers]
[woman] It's not improv.
It's very vulnerable.
If you're in the audience,
you're not totally sure
if you're supposed to be laughing or not.
[scattered audience laughter]
[Neil] Did you meet Maria first?
-I messaged Maria on Instagram. [laughs]
-[Neil] Why?
[Claire Woolner] "You live in Altadena.
We're close."
"We're opening this new little space."
"If you ever wanna come work stuff out,
we would love to have you."
-[crowd chattering]
-It's after eight a.m.
People are starting to get angry.
It's 8:06.
Uh, this is a huge opportunity for me.
I did not know I was gonna be opening
for Maria Bamford today.
-[audience laughing]
-[man] You're
[Posehn] She acts like
she's not super ballsy, you know?
She acts like she's fragile.
Clearly, she isn't.
Who wants to do that?
Perform in front of a bunch of parents
at eight in the morning on a Wednesday?
That's fucking--
[laughs] No!
I am not a good time.
[audience laughing]
I am an assignment from a therapist.
I am-- I am something comics go
to see to go, "Huh."
And
[audience laughing]
I can sell out Portland on a Tuesday.
-[woman] Yes!
-[laughing]
[Woolner] Outside
of our community was nothing.
She, like, legitimized it.
People that were just fans of comedy
that weren't also artists
started knowing about the space.
And so then we start building a following.
She started the morning show thing.
The morning show craze,
that was all Maria Bamford.
People love it.
They show up with their diaper bags,
and they'd be like, "Can I bring my kid?"
And Maria's like, "Yeah, bring the kid."
[man] And it was also huge
because she never wanted any money.
[laughs] It very quickly became
a huge part of our business model.
It was like, "We gotta get Maria
to come in here
and do some of those eight a.m. shows
that sell out in 15 minutes.
Thank you so much for coming. Yay!
-Jenny, thanks for coming.
-It was awesome.
It's a mess, sorry. Thank you.
-I'm so proud of you.
-Thank you. Thank you.
[reporter] 100-mile-per-hour
wind gusts, hurricane-force winds
unleashing fires across
Southern California at this hour.
Racing through Pacific Palisades,
tens of thousands
racing to evacuate homes already lost
The news right now, the Palisades fire,
another fire breaking out right now.
This one is being called the Eaton Fire.
This is near Altadena.
[reporter 2] The Eaton Fire started
around 6:30 p.m.
with just an estimated 20 acres.
And the blaze, as you can see,
it has quickly exploded into more
than 200 acres, and it keeps growing.
[reporter 3] Here's where things stand
this evening. At least 11 people are dead.
More than 150,000
are under evacuation orders.
And some 10,000 buildings and structures
have been burned to the ground.
Scenes of apocalyptic destruction
as six different wildfires
[Apatow] When did you find out
that your house didn't burn down?
[Cassidy] When I drove up.
It's fucked up.
I'm gonna-- I'm gonna go up here. I gotta
The stumps are smoldering.
[Neil] Is there fear
of the wind kicking up again?
[Cassidy] Yeah. Yeah.
Oh, I shouldn't even be doing this.
[grunts]
Whoo-hoo!
[Maria] Our house made it, uh, because
our horrifying, terrible neighbors.
-Who are Trump supporters and racists
-[scattered boos]
saved our home.
[audience laughing]
With garden hoses
and Super Soakers. [sniffles]
I don't know
if they're gonna ever watch this.
-[chuckles] But, um, the other side.
-No.
They put out the fire,
and they came up and were very nice
and telling us how great it was
that they put it out.
And I was going to pay them some cash,
like, you guys did a job.
But then they were talking about
the N-words and the Jews
and all this [laughs]
And he goes, "You know what I mean."
I was like, "No, I don't."
And then later on, we're walking out,
he goes, "Hey, I got you guys
some sandwiches." We're like, "Fuck."
-Did you take the little? Oh, I did.
-No.
You did. What were you gonna do?
And he made us sit down.
-I'm so bad.
-What are you gonna do?
[Neil] How did it feel
when you drove up here?
[Cassidy] I was ready to cry,
but I'm not feeling anything,
which is weird in itself.
Maybe it'll come out later.
I'm just not feeling anything.
This fire happened,
and I couldn't do anything.
I didn't jump into action.
I folded like a chair. I was just
It just was like,
"I can't handle this anymore."
[siren wailing]
I have suicidal ideation all the time
since I was a child to deal with stress.
So this one was like, felt real.
It felt real.
Like, "Oh, this is it."
It was really rough.
It was rough. I went into
a mental hospital at one point. [chuckles]
I went to, uh, Las Encinas.
What's it called?
-It was the same one I went to first.
-[Apatow] Yeah.
Yeah, it was,
or they call it "Lost at Sea."
Jesus.
It really gave me six days of no phone.
-They put me on medication.
-[Apatow] Yeah.
[Cassidy] And, um, yeah, it was good.
If I'm gonna leave,
I might not see it again.
I was very proud of myself.
I think I did very well
throughout that. [laughs]
I was very proud.
Um, and
-[Apatow] For not melting down.
-Yeah, well, and I'm on meds.
I mean, that I think has really changed
my life the past,
I think it's almost 15, 16 years.
[Conan O'Brien] If you have a very active
and a worrying brain,
you're uncomfortable
a lot of the time in normal situations.
But when shit hits the fan,
you become calm.
[cheering]
[O'Brien] Something happens
where you're like, "Oh okay."
"I don't have to do the work
of worrying about it. It happened."
It's the thing
that's tormenting you inside is out now.
[Apatow] Yeah.
So in a way, she started those fires.
-That's my theory.
-[Apatow laughs]
It was her anxieties
that caused the Altadena fires,
and she should pay the price.
Hello, and welcome, fellow weirdos.
[audience laughing]
I still have some OCD obsessions
that pop up,
uh, and you can guess which ones
I've been having problems with
by which seminars you saw me attend,
you minxes.
[audience laughing]
BT dubs, by the way, the IOCDF,
uh, had a pre-meeting Zoom with me
before this speech,
to tell me they were anxious
about parts of my story.
[audience laughing]
[Maria] Hold for laughs.
-Very inspiring.
-Thanks very much. Thank you.
[woman] And you are hilarious.
-Yes, I am hilarious.
-[laughs]
[Gary Gulman] She had success.
She was on TV. She had TV shows,
but you learn
that the real things that matter is this,
and the friends we make.
And she's a great example of this.
I always say
little interactions are antidepressants.
[Maria] What is the doggie's name?
-This is Dee.
-[Maria] Dee!
[Gulman] She's created so many
of these little antidepressants.
So get out of the house,
because even that can help a little bit.
-No!
-[man laughing]
-What happened?
-[man laughs]
Tonight, we're doing a benefit show
to raise money to rebuild.
I don't know
what the future holds for PDA,
but I'd love to go back
and contribute to the community again
in, like, a similar way that we did.
We've already been, like,
looking in Highland Park
because we're sort of like, we need
[laughs] we need to be close to Maria.
-Thanks for doing the show.
-No, thank you for having me.
[Ron Funches] She is a true
net positive in this world.
I know countless stories of Maria
helping people through comedy,
and I'm sure outside of comedy.
Um, so I think overall, like,
Maria is just a true good human.
[Neil] Is there a way to articulate
what you've been trying to do?
Aside from entertain...
Yeah, I mean, think what the end result
or what I was looking for
is just to have a good time
and feel needed.
[chattering]
[Maria] And also,
all my dreams have come true.
Every single thing I've ever wanted
to happen has happened.
[Neil] You've gotten everything
you wanted?
[Maria] Yeah.
[Neil] What did you want?
I think that feeling of community
and being welcome.
Yeah, I don't need anything more.
[Neil] Really?
I don't think so, but I am
you are putting me on camera right now,
so I must need something. [laughs]
[audience laughing, cheering]
Thank you so much, uh,
for having me on this program.
I am myself, uh, I'm doing pretty well.
Uh, my parents both died.
Uh, yeah, no,
it was generational white wealth.
Uh, so unjust,
but they did die, so justice served.
[cackles] Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!
[laughing]
No, uh, I should never worry about money,
'cause, uh, you know,
we have plenty what we could do.
My husband and I,
we did a calculator online.
We could retire to Pahrump, Nevada,
in the middle of this sentence
if I would just stop Instacarting
individual cans
of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls.
[laughing]
So I went to my girlfriend's
in Debtors Anonymous.
Oh, what's Debtors Anonymous?
Well, it's pretend, and it's made-up.
And it's as if you went
to a bunch of Tony Robbins',
but they're all unintimidating.
They're about four-feet tall,
and they made suggestions like,
[accented] "Do you wanna go to Tampa?"
"Here's what you do, get an envelope,
put on it in big bubble letters, 'Tampa.'"
"And then any time you got a dollar
or some extra change,
put it in the envelope."
"You're gonna go to Tampa!"
[audience laughing]
And sadly, very sadly, you will.
[laughing]
I work for myself,
uh, so this is an S Corp.
[audience laughing]
I'm at work.
This is a tax ID,
452393745,
clocking in as a buffoon.
[audience laughing]
You guys, I hope,
uh, you participate in society.
Even if you're not good at it,
it's okay to be bad at everything.
Uh, especially when, you know,
everything's falling apart.
Look at me. Look at me.
I'm deteriorating as I speak,
and still I go on.
My current affirmation for this job is,
"How is it my fault?"
"They hired me."
[audience laughing]
Thank you very much.
[audience cheering, applauding]
You're not gonna remember me
telling you this,
but you're not alone.
-[upbeat music playing]
-Don't be afraid of the dark
There's nothing to fear
'Cause we're all terrified
Sink yourself into the dark
Desperation is normal
Call a hotline, confide
This is a very special moment,
because I want to officially
Yes.
release you from the documentary.
-Yes! Nice!
-[audience cheering]
-I'd like to thank you.
-Yes.
I'd like to thank your husband Scott.
-Yes. Yes.
-Yeah. How's that going?
Uh, well, uh
[humming falsetto]
Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
No, that's for the sequel,
to find out what that meant.
But I'm staying on my meds
And drinking plenty of Diet Coke
I'm sort of bulimic
I'm kind of a grump
No, I'm so lucky.
These guys did such an incredible job
and were so kindly, and you also paid me.
-Yes, that's true.
-Which is, get paid.
-Always.
-[audience cheering]
Yeah!
[Apatow] There's no ethics
in documentaries.
No. No.
I shop to numb feelings
I can't stand the sun
I guess I hate God
I don't like to run
Don't be afraid of the dark
Just call 911
If you wish you were dead
Hey! It's all right in the dark
Let professionals
Answer the voice in your head
[continues holding note]
[splutters]