If I could speak to Louis CK or Kevin Spacey (“Hi, Jason, Louis here. Love your review of Satan’s Sadists. Would you be interested in interviewing for me for your website?”), I guess I would have to ask them about where they stand on the accusations against them and do they feel any remorse and whatnot.
What REALLY interests me though is what the hell is life like for a very high-profile disgraced person? Someone who was BELOVED one day and then DESPISED the next day after some seedy revelations. What’s it like going out anywhere? Do you not leave the house for months? Do you still go to your favorite restaurant? Do they treat you differently? Who were the people who returned your phone calls and messages? Who didn’t? Do you wear a disguise when you go out? What’s traveling like? How’s your love life? How did you spend Christmas? Do you search your name on Twitter?
It’s not sympathy. It’s curiosity.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I would never be hired to host Good Morning, America, but I think that a lot of people are interested in this topic. It’s why Howard Stern Show interviews sometimes make the news (Stern asks questions just like the above and it’s part of why he’s good at getting people to talk). It’s why Kevin Spacey’s weird video that I don’t understand has millions of views despite being shoved way down the search results by YouTube.
And it’s why a rough Louis CK workout set in a small New Jersey club recorded probably on someone’s phone is presently being scrutinized like it’s a newly declassified section of the Warren Commission Report.
I listened to it and I don’t think it’s as bad as they say. (I’m not going to link to it because the YouTube videos keep getting 86’d. Just go over there and search some combination of “Louis CK”, “2018” and “Governor’s”, the name of the club, and you should find it; the original clip is about 49 minutes long).
For one thing, as I said before, it’s a workout set. It’s a spitballing set, a rough sketch. It’s not a new Netflix special shot at Radio City Music Hall. It’s a half-baked piece of work in its early stages. And part of Louis CK’s process seems to be go out in front of small audiences and say outrageous, ridiculous things. It’s not even about provocation, exactly. It’s about hearing how it sounds and finding out if there’s a joke there. Sometimes there isn’t.
It’s not that dissimilar from this ten-minute set from 2004 on Louis CK’s own Youtube channel, a clip that he describes as “very fucked up jokes that I mostly never told again”.
There’s a terrorism bit in there that’s a light precursor to his new take on school shootings and that has Twitter now breathing fire.
I’d also like to add that we here at The Constant Bleeder (okay, it’s just me, but it’s fun to sometimes write in the “editorial we”; it sounds grander) do not take comedy seriously. Stand-up comedy is bullshit and I don’t need comedians to agree with me. I think if you’re looking for rational commentary about the day’s events, stand-up comics aren’t the first place or the second place or the third place or the even eighth or ninth place that you should go. Comedians sometimes fancy themselves as truth-tellers, but they’re every bit as susceptible to peer pressure and crowd-pleasing as anyone else in show business, maybe even more so because they actually face their audience and are often trying to claw their way up from live comedy and into movie and TV deals. In the end, I just want to laugh. I’m the kind of person who cringes when comedians say something that gets applause rather than laughs.
I don’t want salient points and feelgood moments. I want insanity. Comedy should not be a nutrient-rich, gluten-free protein shake. Comedy is liquor. You can mix it with this or that, but it’s never something that sounds good to your doctor. Comedy is not healthy. Comedy is a vice.
So, that’s how I approached this Louis CK thing.
I think stand-up comedy is mostly useless garbage, but I respect that this is unfinished work still trying to find its heartbeat.
Also, while I think that Louis CK owes an apology to the women he drafted to play a part in his fetish (Louis, I have a couple of weird fetishes, too, but YOU GOTTA GET CONSENT, MAN), he doesn’t owe me an apology. He probably doesn’t owe you an apology, either.
And on this leaked Louis CK set, I don’t hear a guy who’s angling for an “alt-right” audience, as his detractors seem to think. I also don’t hear a guy who believes that these jokes are going to be the ones that bring him back.
I hear a broken man.
His goose is cooked and he knows it. Does he know that it’s his own fault? I can’t tell. That might be something that he needs to work on for this set in progress. (He, like me, probably doesn’t think that the comedy stage is the place for apologies.)
He’s not trying to resurrect his bigtime comedy career. That’s a lost cause. What I think he’s doing is getting back into the groove as a creative person. Louis CK used to be all over the place. He was touring as a stand-up comic while at the same time writing and directing a TV series and eventually a movie that still hasn’t been released. He was creating at a steady clip and people were listening.
And I think that–that one raw little thing–is what he’s after. He’s not re-building a mansion. He’s planning only a modest house and this set is nothing more than a pile of wood and maybe not enough nails. He’s still figuring it out.
His gender pronouns rant? Yeah, it needs something.
HIs school shooting bit? Yeesh, there’s hardly even a joke there. It’s little more than an extension of his rant about the younger generation, as well as an ill-thought attempt to fit his misanthropy onto the idea of innocent, dead children. It’s like trying to take the tiny top to your water bottle and fit it onto the top of your wide pickle jar. It just doesn’t work. You need an alternate plan.
There are some good moments, though. His closing movie idea is hilariously fucked-up. It’s the kind of freak show that I’d watch in a second.
In more ways in one, that kinda thing might be why I’m still paying attention to Louis CK.