Jake Johnson to star in, Ben Stiller to produce comedy 'The Dink'
Aug. 18 (UPI) -- New Girl and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse actor Jake Johnson will soon be seen in the Apple TV+ sports comedy film The Dink.
"Excited to partner with @appletv on this one," Johnson wrote on Instagram. "I love the movie. It's a ton of fun. So many funny performances."
Johnson plays "a washed-up tennis pro who, desperate to save a struggling club and earn his father's respect, is compelled to break a sacred vow and do the unthinkable: play pickleball," the streaming service said in a press release Monday.
Mary Steenburgen, Ed Harris, Chloe Fineman, Aaron Chen, Patton Oswalt, Chris Parnell and Christine Taylor co-star in the series, which is being produced by Ben Stiller.
Stiller and Apple TV+ previously collaborated on the sci-fi dramedy Severance.
Josh Greenbaum -- whose credits include Will & Harper, Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar and the upcoming Spaceballs 2 -- is helming The Dink.
No release date has been announced yet.
Ben Stiller sinks hands, feet into wet cement TCL Chinese Theatre
Actor Ben Stiller places his hands in wet cement flanked by his daughter Ella and son Quinlin (L) during his hand and footprint ceremony in the forecourt of the TCL Chinese Theatre (formerly Grauman's) in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles on December 3, 2013. UPI/Jim Ruymen | License Photo
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Movie review: 'Splitsville' finds humor in polyamory complications
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Newsweek
an hour ago
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Marc Maron on 'Panicked': 'Everybody's Fair Game,' From Trump to Liberals
Marc Maron poses in the Getty Images Portrait Studio Presented by IMDb and IMDbPro at SXSW 2025 on March 10, 2025 in Austin, Texas. Marc Maron poses in the Getty Images Portrait Studio Presented by IMDb and IMDbPro at SXSW 2025 on March 10, 2025 in Austin, IMDb "I do not think it's comics' responsibility to do anything but be funny." Marc Maron doesn't hold anything back in his new HBO comedy special Panicked. His philosophy: "Everybody's fair game." The comedian and actor, most recently appearing on Stick (Apple TV+), targets both conservatives and his own base. "My people are generally liberal people, but I take them to task a bit, too." While he says conservatives are "using anti-wokeism to dismantle the liberal democratic state," he also points out how progressives "annoyed the average American into fascism." His willingness to be critical extends inward and informs his new material. "There's a part of me that's a little more vulnerable underneath all the noise." But for fans of his award-winning podcast WTF With Marc Maron, this shouldn't be a surprise. "It was sort of the Wild West" at its outset in 2009, but Maron sees much of current podcasting as having "lowered the bar for entertainment in general.... Everyone's chasing whatever their freedom of speech may be. It's kind of boxed in by social media platform expectations. So how free are you? What are you doing there?" SUBSCRIBE TO THE PARTING SHOT WITH H. ALAN SCOTT ON APPLE PODCASTS OR SPOTIFY AND WATCH ON YOUTUBE Editor's Note: This conversation has been edited and condensed for publication. You don't hold back in this special, on Trump, progressives, etc. And right from the beginning. What made you want to not hold back? Well, I don't know that I ever have. I also know my audience to a degree, though I did make choices around the tone of that stuff. I do comedy three, four nights a week sometimes at the Comedy Store in L.A.. And I see people up there not talking about it. I'm like, "What are we doing?" It used to be like, "Hey, do you have to talk about politics? Is politics really that funny?" I've always talked about it. But I do think that it's beyond politics now. It used to be you'd be lucky if you saw the president on TV like four times a year. And that wasn't that long ago. So now it's like 20 times a day. So if you're paying attention, you have to reckon with even just that fact. And I think there's an arc to this special, and there has been to my other specials, I feel like over time, especially the last two specials, there is really almost a three-act structure to it. And I thought like, look, let's get this out now. My people are generally liberal people, but I take them to task a bit, too. I really shifted the tone of the opening thing to be kind of what is happening as opposed to this is bulls***. So I could bring people in. Obviously, I'm not going to bring people who are cult-like believers, but I was very conscious of the tone to just be like, "What's going on," you know? As opposed to "You f******." So that was all choice, but I really think to answer your question, it was like, well, let's deal with this now and then we'll get into the other stuff. Marc Maron on HBO's 'Panicked.' Marc Maron on HBO's 'Panicked.' Karolina Wojtasik/HBO Do you think comics have a responsibility to address the current political situation? Or Trump or anything, considering the state of the country? No, no, absolutely not. And I don't think it's everyone's cup of tea. Look, comedy is a beautiful form where you and only you can decide what you want to do and dictate how you want do it and you have complete control and a lot of room to really decide who you want be up there. It's a beautiful thing. So no, only a few people can do it [political humor]. I happen to be a person that is culturally sensitive and relatively sophisticated in terms of politics, in terms of being able to talk about it. So it's always been kind of a component. But I think now things are meshing and I think that some things had to be dealt with in terms of how comics are being used or choosing to use their comedy as as platforms for some very sort of unsavory s***. I don't pull any punches on that stuff because to me it's always been part of the cultural fabric. If you're going to be a cultural commentator, which I am, only half of what I used to be, then everybody's fair game, including comics, politicians, or whatever. So, no, I do not think it's comics' responsibility to do anything but be funny. Well, speaking to you not holding back, you have this line in the special about progressives having to work on their buzzkill problem, which is so, so true. What was it about progressives and liberals that made them a good source for comedy? I think I stated pretty clearly in that the problem is that there is no real unified left. There's centerish Democrats, some lefty Democrats, you know. They want things to be okay. But this idea that the left has an agenda, it's a very fragmented business, and there is no unifying principle where everybody's all on the same page in terms of how we do this. Everything gets kind of minutiae'ized, people lock into their causes and that becomes, they hang everything on it, they're righteous about it. But does it do anything in the big picture? I don't know. The problem with the left is all the infighting and everybody's arguing about what should be platforms, what's more important? And I dealt with that years ago at Air America and stuff. I wasn't going to Bill Mahr it and accuse them, I do in a lighthearted way, but I am not an anti-woke person. But I do think there is some fun poking to be had at people that are overly committed to very small things and that's what justifies their political existence. So I thought that was right for comedy. And I think that line, which I came up with like, two days before I shot the special, that we annoyed the average American into fascism, I was so happy I got that line. I think that says it all. And I think the way I ride the line with that stuff is that progressives and liberals can see themselves in what I'm saying and take themselves down a notch. I often think of the balance between how my blue-collar parents would react to modern, progressive politics, the sometimes policing of language, like what you were saying about using the R word. Well, yeah, but the point of that was it was never not allowed. And it remains now. So this idea that that wasn't allowed because of cultural pushback, I totally believe that whatever was going on, with what they call the woke triggering thing, would have found its level, naturally. I think that it would have played itself out. There was even signs of that with how Netflix handled [Dave] Chappelle where, you know, when the bean counters are like, "Well, we're not going to lose much when we alienate these people," which isn't good, but there's a balance to protest and corporate reality. They're using anti-wokeism to dismantle the liberal democratic state. And it used to just be like, I want to say these words. And the bottom line is, you can always say them. It's like when people talk about boycotting Spotify because of Joe Rogan. I understand it, but also, as a gay person, I also know sometimes I do have to work with people who I likely don't agree with or, conversely, don't support me. Well, I think what the big loss is in the age of authoritarianist America is doubling down on intolerance. That becomes dangerous for people who are marginalized or vulnerable. The idea of like, shut up, suck it up thing. If that's how you're going to use your free speech and you know, "We don't have to put up with your sh** anymore." Then don't be on the base level in language. Democracy doesn't work without tolerance. Marc Maron on HBO's 'Panicked.' Marc Maron on HBO's 'Panicked.' Karolina Wojtasik/HBO In watching your special, even though I'm not overly political, I still feel very connected as an audience member. What is it about crafting jokes like this that gives you the freedom to go in any direction you need to go in? I feel like that was always the journey for me. I used to do a joke years ago that I loved about homophobia. That these guys who are just homophobic and anti-gay, and I think that one of the ways to solve that would be maybe all guys suggest, you have to get it in the ass once and it should be a thing that happens. Like a government office where [when] you turn 18, they knock on the door and your mom's like, "Honey, the man's here." Just so they can base their opinion on a reality. I mean, it's dramatic, and obviously there are non-penetrating people, but the idea was to, there is an inclusiveness to it. It's just a matter of having the guts to maintain my point of view at risk of possibly alienating or not being quite right with the language, with the idea of telling the old guy that, to turn a Nazi, I think that's relatable on either side. And it's an interesting take as a straight guy. But it is inclusive. What is really taking risks in comedy, which isn't just saying the R word or saying something so filthy that people are shocked. It's like, where's the menace? What's the balance of what you're capable of exploring? And when does a scenario enable you to do that? And it just sort of happened with that. Do you find that how you craft your material for a special has changed as you've gotten more of a name, more high profile, as you've gotten more attention over the years? I don't know if that has anything to do with name or profile, because I never really registered that as being a lot or enough. It's really more about me as a person. What have I learned? What matters? What doesn't matter? As I get older, what do I really give a sh** about? And as a comic, what can I do? What risks can I take? And I think over time, me talking about myself, probably kind of plate spinning and more neurotic. But as I get deeper into myself, I think that the last special, From Bleak to Dark, offered me the opportunity, tragically, to try to wrap my brain around grief and death and loss in a funny way. And I think working those muscles or figuring out how to do that has really opened up a whole other area for me to take comedic risks, which I think we see with the trauma bit in this one, and then revisiting grief at the end. But I also think my neurotic problems, or my patterns of behavior, at least have solutions now, so I can move through them differently and make them more relatable, because I used to assume that everybody when I was younger was angry and bitter like me, but they weren't. But I do think that everybody, more people certainly than we'd like to admit, have experienced trauma, has parents with dementia, has their own compulsive problems. So to figure out a way to kind of make that accessible is just part of my personal growth more than my stature as a comic. How does anxiety impact your own creativity? I think I explore it pretty thoroughly in this special. I did the thing about the cat and the Prozac, right? You make decisions once you get to know yourself well enough around what you can put up with, whether you should put up with it or not, whether it is who you are or whether it is a symptom of something and is it something you want to treat? I think that I've dealt with that a bit. I think a lot of my creativity comes out of things that make me want some combination of things that make me afraid on an existential level, but also habits and compulsions that I've sort of grown to rely on to relieve that stuff. So it's all a big combination of how do you make yourself existentially comfortable either innately or through behavior. And I don't think that all my comedy is fed by anxiety because there is this level of me—I was writing about this yesterday—there's a part of me that remains unchanged. And I think it's a very young part of me and it's something that is intrinsically mine and that I'm reluctant to share in some ways, but I have been able to access it comedically. Like I have a hard time with it intimately, with individuals, but for some reason in a room full of strangers, I'll take those risks. And I think that there's something deeper than just anxieties. I think I speak from that place with the trauma bit and certainly with the grief stuff at the end. I think there's a part of me that's a little softer and a little more vulnerable and fragile underneath all the noise, which ranges from minor anxiety to rage. Actor/comedian Marc Maron speaks onstage at WTF with Marc Maron - LIVE Comedy Podcast during the 2012 SXSW Music, Film + Interactive Festival on March 11, 2012 in Austin, Texas. Actor/comedian Marc Maron speaks onstage at WTF with Marc Maron - LIVE Comedy Podcast during the 2012 SXSW Music, Film + Interactive Festival on March 11, 2012 in Austin, Texas. Cassie Wright/WireImage Your podcast, WTF with Marc Maron, really changed the game in the podcast space. It not only reignited your career, but it became a template for what was possible with podcasts. So, what do you think is the current state of podcasts? Well, I mean, I've never been a careerist person. I didn't have the foresight or the discipline to really think of career in general. I'm not a career thinker. I wanted to be a comic. And I thought that you get to a certain place where things come along with that. But that was the only real thing. And that really wasn't working out by the time I started. I mean, I was working, I was known, but it wasn't a career. So the career kind of happened, I guess. Is fortuitously the word? Around the cosmic timing of doing the podcast and having the chops and whatever particular innate talent it is to resonate on that type of microphone. But I mean, it feels like the state of podcast now is, I have a lot of thoughts on it. At the beginning, it was sort of the Wild West, and it was an open form. It was an open format. You could do whatever you wanted, not unlike comedy, but with more production, especially when it was all just audio. And I think at the beginning, there was a sort of movement where it was kind of populous in that everyone thought they could do it. And it's the same with comedy now. And now, a lot of people do it for a lot of different reasons. Some people are doing it just because their brand will enable them to have another cash flow, by capitalizing on who they are, whether they're good at it or not. But ultimately, it's created a lot of yammering and once everyone went to video and once old school mainstream show business started to collapse in on itself, people were really able through bubbles and tribalization, able to build their own show business empires. And I think podcasting facilitated that and that is good. I think that in another way, podcasting helped people get their voices out there and niche markets and really do interesting stuff, but also lowered the bar for entertainment in general. I think that you have as much, if not more, unique and interesting content with interesting personalities and talent, but then you have a much larger portion of two to three white guys sitting in front of microphones talking about the last time they sh** their pants as adults. So you have this large contingency of like afternoon drive time radio that seems to speak to a lot of it, which I think lowers the bar and then you do have other stuff, but I think it opened the doors to people having more control of the type of show business they wanted to do. And I think it brought a lot of people that may not have thought that they had a profound amount of talent, but at the very least could sit and talk to other people. I can't tell you whether it's good or bad. There's a lot both and probably more bad than good. So then what do you say to that young comic who comes up to you and wants to start a podcast? What advice do you give them? Well, that timing is great. And that you're going to be up against a lot. I am too old to know what it really takes, and I've never been a guy who produces content for content's sake. We live in sort of a post-publicity world, in terms of other ways of tried-and-true ways of getting you and your being and brand out there. And it's all on you. So if you're going to do it, it seems that I wouldn't want to do it now. To what you have to do to sort of surface is a full-time job you have before you even get to the podcast. In terms of social media, in terms of creating content that grabs people enough to bring them to you. And I think what we lose in that, again, is lowering the bar of what these art forms were or what these broadcast forms were, because of this need, this desperate need to somehow grab people's attention and hold it for long enough, to keep it for a long enough for you to turn a buck out of it. So I would say go ahead, I guess, do what you can, but it's not the world I grew up in. And it's not the world where people spend a lot of time trying to create interesting and provocative content or sort of hyper-personalized and well-articulated, comedic voices. I mean, everyone's chasing whatever their freedom of speech may be. It's all now kind of boxed in by social media platform expectations. So how free are you? What are you doing there?
