This weekend brought the saddening news that indie filmmaker Lynn Shelton (Sword of Trust) died at the age of 54, and now frequent collaborator and partner Marc Maron (Maron) is paying tribute to Shelton on the latest episode of his podcast WTF with Marc Maron, which can be listened to in the player below.
RELATED: Beloved Indie Filmmaker Lynn Shelton Dies at Age 54
Maron’s decade-long podcast has received rave reviews from critics over the years for spending time working out raw, difficult and deeply personal emotions on the air, with the latest episode finding the comic choking back tears as he described intimate details of the last days of Shelton’s life. Some of what he said is as follows:
She was an amazing woman. She was an inspiration to so many people. So many people loved her. She was a very determined artist. Who just needed to put her expression out into the world in any way. She had tremendous love for people, for her friends, for her son Milo.
My relationship with her is—I can’t even explain it. But I gotta tell you, no one’s got anything bad to say about Lynn Shelton, that’s for fucking sure. She was amazing. Her movies were amazing. They are amazing. I’ve worked with her. Everyone who has worked with her loved her. And everybody’s reaching out to me now, and it’s really helping. I’m so glad that Lynn was so well-loved because now everybody’s saying “I hope that guy’s OK. How’s the cranky guy doing?”
So, this is what we do here at WTF the podcast. When somebody who’s been on the show passes away, we repost the episode. We take it out from behind the paywall and repost it. Not just out of respect or in memorial but as a portrait of the person, a reminder, a reconnection with an artist. A reminder of who they were when they were vital and alive and connected and expressing themselves and talking about who they were and how they expressed themselves. An audio portrait of that time.
Shelton began her career as an editor before transitioning to directing with the low budget indie We Go Way Back, which won the Grand Jury Award for Best Narrative Feature at the 2006 Slamdance Film Festival. She broke out with her 2008 comedy Humpday, starring Mark Duplass and Joshua Leonard as two straight friends who decide to have filmed gay sex on a dare, which earned a Special Jury Prize at Sundance and was later given a French-language remake titled Do Not Disturb.
Other films included Your Sister’s Sister starring Emily Blunt, Touchy Feely starring Rosemarie DeWitt, Laggies starring Keira Knightley, and Outside In starring Edie Falco. She was at one time approached by Marvel Studios to potentially direct Black Widow, but turned the offer down. Shelton also acted in several films for herself and others, including Colin Trevorrow’s breakout hit Safety Not Guaranteed.
Her many high-profile television directing credits include episodes of Mad Men, The Mindy Project, Master of None, Shameless, The Morning Show, and most recently four episodes of Little Fires Everywhere.
Shelton was a frequent collaborator with comedian Marc Maron, with whom she was in a relationship at the time of her death. The two were at work on a dramatic screenplay, and she had previously directed him in episodes of Maron and GLOW, the standup special Marc Maron: Too Real, and her final feature film Sword of Trust, for which we interviewed Maron in 2019.
(Photo Credit: Getty Images)
