Interview with Julie Seabaugh, Director of “Are We Good?”

Julie Seabaugh has covered comedy for 22 years, freelancing for Rolling Stone, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and The New York Times. But Are We Good?, her latest work, a documentary about fellow comedian Marc Maron's journey through grief, pushed her into completely new territory. The film premiered at Tribeca Festival as part of the Spotlight+ program, following Maron in the wake of the sudden death of his partner, filmmaker Lynn Shelton.

Seabaugh thinks about comedy differently than most critics. "I've always been attracted to the human context of how material is created, what's going on in that person's life," she explains. "How are they going to turn this into art? It's less for me about whether a joke is funny or not. That's a very superficial way of looking at it." She sees comedy as fundamentally human, inseparable from personal experience. The art form reflects who we are, how we process the world around us.

It’s a perspective that also aligns very closely with Maron's style. "Comedy used to be much more superficial: complaining about your wife and airplane food. Over the years, it's evolved into being much more personal. He was kind of one of the forerunners of that with the alternative scene in New York." Maron pioneered a style of "controlled vulnerability," writing material on stage through real-time interaction with audiences while sharing his personal failures and relationship struggles without filters.

Are We Good? is  more than a straight story about one comedian's personal tragedy. It’s a reflection of comedy's essential power in building connectivity. When the pandemic hit in 2020, Seabaugh was already watching Maron's Instagram Live streams with Shelton. "Two months in, she passed away very unexpectedly and suddenly, and he didn't even know what happened. It was an undiagnosed leukemia, but he kept doing these Instagram lives, and between those and his podcast episode remembering her, the stuff he was putting out was just really beautiful and touching and in the moment."

"I knew that even though he was threatening to quit comedy, that he would eventually be back, because it's something he needs, and he would be making brilliant material out of this. I was like, somebody ought to be documenting this."

Working with director Steven Feinartz, she began filming May 7, 2021, the first night Maron returned to the Comedy Store after the pandemic. Instead of her usual interview-driven method, she learned to step back. "I definitely learned to shut up and stay out of the way, and to really trust the subject to express themselves authentically instead of, 'Can you say this? What do you think about this?' Just let them be, and you'll pull the best stuff."

Her relationship to this project wasn't purely professional. "Grief and tragedy and just dealing with life in general is always something I've been massively attracted to," she admits, drawing from personal experience. "I have my own long history of depression and anxiety." This shared understanding of mental health struggles informed her approach to documenting Maron's vulnerability. 

"There wasn't really anything super intense that was cut. It's really all there. He didn't have a lot of say in the process when it was happening. He only watched it right at the end, before it was going to go to South by Southwest." When Maron finally saw the finished product, "he said he learned a lot about himself by watching it." Seabaugh's observational approach was grounded in listening and it gave Maron the space to reflect his truest self. 

Are We Good? platforms Seabaugh's ideas about comedy's social function. "The thing I like most about comedy is sitting in the back and watching all these different people laugh at the same thing at the same time. If we can agree on this, maybe we can agree on more stuff, so we'll go out and be better humans." The film extends this principle to tragedy, suggesting shared vulnerability creates the same unifying effect as shared laughter.

For audiences, Seabaugh hopes the film communicates something universal about processing loss. "Grief will never go away, but you can't let it completely consume you. It's about taking the best parts of, for him, the gifts that Lynn gave him. She made him believe in himself in a way that no one else had."

Are We Good? stands as tribute to Lynn Shelton and testament to the transformative power of bearing witness to pain. Like the sharpest comedy, it makes audiences feel less alone in their suffering while demonstrating how art can transform devastation into connection. Seabaugh learned to document rather than interrogate, creating something that honors journalism's pursuit of truth and documentary's capacity for empathy.