Those of us who make stuff and try to get people to care about it are motivated primarily by connecting to an audience. Ok, sure, money too, but there isn’t any. Not really. If you wanted to make money, you’d go to law school or start an HVAC company. But when you make a movie or a record or a painting or a comedy set… or a podcast… the main thing you’re trying to do is bridge the gap between you and the people who are paying attention. That’s what makes standup comedy such a gladiatorial proposition - one person and a microphone and their ideas simply trying to make the other human beings who are listening to laugh. A laugh, after all, is an involuntary reaction, a real laugh anyway. So these women and men walk out into a room filled with 1500 people or 150 or 15 and say: I’m gonna tell you this story, and it’s going to be such a unique lens on something you already understand that your body will literally respond without you telling it to. And most of the time it doesn’t work. But the amount of bravery required to try to do that is superhuman. 

When you want to do something like be a comedian or a painter or a writer or a musician, it becomes the primary thing that really matters to you, at least at first. You get older, maybe you have a family, but until you’re rich enough to buy a fleet of impractically vintage cars, it is your North Star. And I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but you won’t be.

The thing is, whether or not you’re successful at it feels like a referendum on your value as a person, because making real art of any kind requires you to distill who you are and what you think into a concentrated powder, and then when you try to get people to taste it and their reaction is “yeah, no thanks,” then it feels like they’re personally rejecting YOU. I have felt this millions of times, and it’s hurtful and infuriating, but it’s like complaining about the weather. It simply IS. So we all try to reshape and reframe what we do and put it back out there with a tentative “How about this one?” When it hits, even in a room of 15 people - no, ESPECIALLY in a room of 15 people - it’s so intoxicating that it makes you want to chase that high forever. And many of us do.

(There are spoilers in this next part.)

But “Macroscope”, to me, isn’t a story about comedy. Comedy is its location, but it’s a story about breaks. What does it mean to be successful? How “big” do you have to get to feel like you made it? When Marty is getting ready to tape his special, he’s already been on The Tonight Show, he’s been in a movie, he’s touring all the time - hasn’t he already made it? But as he says a few times in the script, he doesn’t want to be Dave Mortimer, he wants to be Steve Martin. (This is not just because Dave Mortimer is a guy I made up and Steve Martin is a national treasure, but you know what I mean.) How many people need to laugh at your jokes for your jokes to matter? How many people need to watch your movie? How many people need to download your podcast?

We thought it was important to find an actual standup to play Marty Catalano. And that person also needed to be able to, obviously, be a convincing actor. I was a fan of Nate Craig’s standup special Live At The Green Mill (I mean I still am, but I also was), and when we got connected by a mutual friend and I sounded him out on the idea, he immediately struck me as the right guy for the part. Nate is obviously very funny, but he’s also a real one - there’s no fake showbiz patter in his act or in his persona. For the host of the fictional public radio show “Macroscope”, we really hit the jackpot with Jon Cryer. Jon and I met in the run-up to the Ambies, and he said some very kind things about our show and couldn’t take them back when I asked him to be a part of it. The truth is, there are a lot of show business people who are constantly doing a status check on whether or not you’re doing them a favor or the other way around, and I’m very happy to tell you that Jon is sincerely an incredibly nice and generous guy who absolutely crushed his role in this episode. Our brilliant casting director Marika brought in some Chicago legends for the other roles - Rusty Schwimmer as Marty’s agent, Carole Kingfisher (you may remember her as the narrator in S1’s “Varmint Rifle”), Celeste M. Cooper as conflicted network exec Sandy Rhumagai, Joey Slotnick as comedy legend Dave Mortimer, and the brilliant Landree Fleming as Julie Jefferson. Chicago over everything, you guys. How incredibly lucky we are to have people this talented on our show.