Topic: Louie

[NoSleep]

I wonder if the one-hour closing episode is a precursor to lengthier episodes next series? I see others before have mentioned that the episodes seem to shoot by, but they're only 21 minutes long.

[chocky909]

I think that supposed 1 hour episode refers to a double episode, given that 22 minutes is a half hour slot in US schedules. The episode guide suggests there will be two seperate back to back episodes next week called "Gym" and "Night Out" but maybe they will be linked into one last double episode? I somehow doubt it and reckon LA Times got wrong end'o't'stick.

I think the last episode was pretty good but maybe more important for a US audience where religion is taken more seriously by more people. It didn't really challenge me the way previous episodes have and didn't have too many laughs. It was good to see his young mom feature though and the final doorstep shit sketch was well done.

[NoSleep]

Given that some of the previous episodes have been split into two (and accordingly titled), it may be that one of the parts is longer than 22 minutes.

[MALCOLM]

I'm chuffed to bits this is going down well in the states and has been recommissioned, I've been a massive fan of CK's since way back when he was first mentioned on CaB, and after getting to see him in person last year I've become a real passionate supporter of his act and want him to do well without compromise, which I think this is. Heck, if he can get the whole "we over-react to kid-fucking" and anti-heckler "you don't like rape?" sketch across then I think it's clear this is him doing whatever the hell he wants.

Isn't the theatrical stand-up movie due out soon? I think it's based on the excellent set he did at the Bloomsbury last year and shot uniquely from a single seat in the audience. Has had excellent reviews at the previews.

[Artemis]

Isn't the theatrical stand-up movie due out soon? I think it's based on the excellent set he did at the Bloomsbury last year and shot uniquely from a single seat in the audience. Has had excellent reviews at the previews.

It's been due out since the start of the year. I'm not sure what's going on with it; CK's site lists new screenings so it might be just a slow-burner on the cinema side of things. I hope he releases it soon too - I also saw him at Bloomsbury and he was as brilliant as I'd hoped he would be. I've read that every year he starts afresh with new material, so I wonder if he'll be touring again with a new set soon? I'll see him every time he visits if he carries on being as fantastic.

[Neil]

I love Louis CK, and was a massive fan of Lucky Louie.  I thought it was expertly put together, and I really loved how he told the audience not to laugh if it wasn't funny, putting the performers under more pressure.  No tedious laughter washes either, it was all as it happened.  The show itself was flat-out hilarious, one of the funniest sitcoms I can think of in recent years - more than that though, it seemed to be to be an updating of 'old-skool trad' comedy, and yet I can't remember quite how, now.  I think it was just the relaxed matter-of-fact way it dealt with grown-up issues and language, without ever being dreadfully self-concious.  All of this combined to make it devestatingly laugh out loud funny.

So I've been catching up with Louie all last week, and I have to say...it's fucking great, too.  It feeds in to my current belief about how 'naturalism' isn't as funny as trad comedy, but it's really watchable and interesting in a different way.[1]  I do get a bit sick of things having to look like a film, instead of a comedy, but it really works for Louie.[2]  I'm starting to get interested in directing, and in learning to appreciate it, and this does some really interesting things.  There are a lot of really tight, claustrophobic close-ups for instance, and a particular highlight has been the way the first psychiatrist session was shot.  It wasn't a wide two-shot, and it didn't cut between the two characters either, rather it focussed on one of them, then when he finished, it would pan over to the other character painfully slowly.  It gave a really deliberate, plodding feel to the scene that I loved.

While this isn't anywhere near as laugh out loud funny as Lucky Louie, it's still hilarious in places, and I'm very glad there's not too much reliance on dull awkwardness.  There are really interesting, bleak themes being covered, and the whole hopelessness is even communicated in the opening credits.  I also really admired episode 2, where the credits don't come in for 7 minutes - before that, you've got this thoughtful bit about the power of a word, specifically the anti-gay f-word.  Nik Drou pointed out the etymology given is actually incorrect, but it doesn't dilute the raw power of this segment for me, and I'm glad that Louie sets out to challenge people's thinking. 

Sometimes this show is incredibly challenging, I really admire what he's doing here.  I watched Dentist last night, and was just stunned by the first 10 minutes or so.  It later occurred to me that, while the show can often seem like disconnected bits joined by stand-up, there do seem to be underlying themes and a narrative, and I'm going to watch them again and give it more analysis.  I haven't read the whole thread, but I can understand why people see these bits as 'sketches' almost, but I think it's a more interesting format than that.

With Dentist, it starts out with a remarkably challenging bit of stand-up, and I believe Louis CK is doing a great job of meshing old-skool, audience-based comedy with a more naturalistic feel simply by including an audience.  In other words, the stand-up bits allow him to touch on such unsettling notions in front of an audience, which gives them a certain much-needed levity, but their reactions also underline how contentious these ideas actually are.

Then this episode switches to Stephen Root, as the wonderfully creepy dentist.  Louis' fantasy seems to be directly related to the stand-up segment, and I think it's a comment on how comedians seek to change people's minds through their art - he's exploring the apparent arrogance of that.  Suddenly, he imagines he has power so great, and a truth so direct, that he can turn Osama Bin Laden's world on it's head!  Then we get to the Tarese section, where he puts this into practice.  He's arrogantly pursuing her, despite her complete lack of interest.  He's absolutely, positively sure he can change her mind.

The Tarese segment had a great reversal, too.  She does seem like a complete bitch the whole way through it, but once Louis sleeps with the other, big girl, it becomes apparent that Tarese had him pegged correctly all along.  He was only interested (to the point of obsession) in her for the colour of her skin.

Brilliant show.  A really thoughtful, intelligent, funny mind at work.

1.

It's obvious that Louie isn't always even trying to be funny, anyway.

2.

Plus, there are moments where he steps away from reality, which is what naturalism needs to do - get a little broader when required - and that confounding of our expectations makes things like the helicopter scene even more poweful.  The episode where he gets stoned goes a bit over the top, but mostly manages to be a really accurate, interesting twisting of reality.  Really loved the coffee shop the next day, with everyone speaking a different language, to illustrate how foggy and hung-over his brain was.

[NoSleep]

Looks like it is two distinct episodes for the season finale.

[MALCOLM]

Well that was brilliant. I mean I really, really enjoyed that.

The first bit of stand-up about the shitting man right next to him and his daughters had tears rolling down my eyes, some of the funniest stand-up I've heard in a long time, dare I say it - I really enjoyed the Gervais sketch too. The last episode was just beautiful. From the depressingly familiar attempts at courting, to the tragic babysitters tears for him, to the genuinely heartwarming ending which provides a tiny glimpse of the man himself and his love for his daughters as evidenced by his various blog postings down the years.

Truly, truly excellent. The man's a genius.

[clingfilm portent]

Yep, lovely way to round out a great first season. I agree with MALCOLM, even Gervais couldn't take the shine away, and in his single scene served his purpose well. For all the near-the-knuckleness/edge of this show, ie there's at least one thing to turn off just about everyone I'd consider showing it to, there's a real heart that I just don't expect from every comedy that rolls through this screen. Sure, they attempt pathos with their lonely-guy-gets-the-girl storylines but there's just something really magnetic about Louis CK. He's managed to be the everyman that even (someone as detached from the real world as) I can root for. I tip my hat to the bastard.

[Big Jack McBastard]

This really has been the best thing on telly in ages, I had a little internal leap of glee when I saw 2 torrents ready to be nabbed a couple of days back.

[Little Hoover]

I've been catching up with this show, and had a similar experince to artemis where I didn't quite get it at first, and then stopped trying to put the show in a box and doing so really allowed me to appreciate it a lot more. The Bully episode was just fantastic in how much it seems to sum up humanity and yet doesn't seem to really offer any harsh judgments on people for it. Just accepts that there's an unbreakable cycle of people being fucked up.

Also this amuses me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7FRYqw_Xa4&feature=player_embedded

[alcoholic messiah]

Quite a while back I came across two lengthy posts from Louis CK (or a knowledgeable and committed impersonator), deposited in the comments sections of online reviews of Louie, and then completely forgot to post the links here[1].

The first one is about halfway down this page, and is in response to someone mentioning inconsistencies in the two different portrayals of his mother on the show. Excerpt:

The "Mom" episode was a character idea. a parent that is completely narcisistic. My mother is the opposite. But this show is not entirely autobiographical. Often it's not that at all. I just wanted to try this mom character and it worked well with the brother character I had developed. I also don't have a brother. I threw a couple of scenes at Robert Kelly and there was something so endearingly pathetic about him that I brought him back. When I started screwing around with this idea of having this awful mother, Robert's character fit into it perfectly.

The second post can be found about one-third of the way down this page, and is in response to criticism of the narrative cohesion between episodes e.g.

I think going into season two, CK needs to accept that on some level, this is a series, and the world has to have some consistency, even if the format doesn't.

Here's part of Louis' response:

I'm sorry guys. I guess this show, to me, is like i turn on my brain each week and show some stuff that's in it. Sometimes it's real and sometimes it's not. Some things and people I like to show again (for now) some I don't. Some I want to change because I'm showing them for different reasons from show to show. I don't have a writing staff. The network doesn't read my scripts. I don't "vette" the stories the way a traditional show does. This stuff comes right out of my gut. I work very hard on the show and the scripts are forged carefully. But I try to trust my impulses and never do anything because I think it's neccicary, if it isn't compelling. I've worked on a lot of shows where you find yourself writing and shooting things that you don't want because you feel the show "needs" them. And NOT doing things you want because you think you can't do them or it hurts the show. I refuse to do either of those things on this "series".

Series. I had a thought about that. I remember reading a book by Milan Kundera called "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting". The book reads like a collection of short stories, each with a different set of characters and settings. But In the introduction, the author explains that the book is a novel. He says that to him, a novel is a collection of related chapters that are related, put in a book in a defined order. In most novels, the chapters are related by the plot. In his they are related by theme and not by plot, but it still functions as a novel.

I didn't love the book but the idea of that stuck with me, though I forgot about it until just now.

Both posts are recommended reading, and contain plenty more insight into the creative process behind making the show.

1.

Sorry!

[amputeeporn]

A great find! Few things give me more pleasure than seeing Louis CK offer up his views on comedy. I read once that he loves taking bits of recording equiptment apart and seeing how they work; it seems consistent with the way he speaks about comedy and writing, particularly his own. The thought that his casual, easy charm is the product of decades of conscious and subconscious study is really interesting. Of course, it's always heartening to see a great comic backing up even these small details with solid reasoning.

[TotalNightmare]

and why not...
http://tv.gawker.com/5695214/that-time-louis-ck-got-a-vasectomy-and-went-on-joy-behars-show-immediately-afterwards

[alcoholic messiah]

There's an interview with Mr. Charlie Kilo here, conducted at a press tour earlier this month by one of the chaps whose online review of Louie provoked a personal response in the comments section.

Excerpt:

AS: Now one of the things that was great about the first season was you never knew what you were going to get.  Not only episode-to-episode, but even scene-to-scene.  But it did seem like there was maybe an attempt at balance - like "Dog Pound," which is one of your more overtly funny ones, comes right before "Bully," which is just so uncomfortable. Was that by design?

LCK: As far as the order of the shows airing?

AS: Yeah, or even just the pieces that were put together within the episodes.

LCK: Yeah, definitely.  I think about balance a lot.  I think about the show as an experience for the viewer and myself as a viewer sort of.  Right now I’m still writing.  We start shooting actually next week, but I’m still fighting to write more before. It's like you’re making snowballs for a snowball fight, and they're just gone in seconds.  So I have a board with cards of different colors according to where the scripts are.  My yellow scripts are the ones that are finished and in production, so I look at them and I know what I have left,  and then I make these cards that say what the show needs. Like what’s lacking.  One of them says "balls funny."  The "balls funny" card is really an intimidating card to me.  It’s really important.  So it’s "balls funny," "who cares," "really disturbing" is another card.  And one of them is, like, "cinematic jerk-off," I think.  That’s where I enjoy myself.

Other subjects covered include: the events that inspired the episode where he plays a cop in Matthew Broderick's film, the angry online response to the "God" episode, and tweeting "kudos to your dirty hole, you fucking jackoff cunt-face jazzy wondergirl" to Sarah Palin whilst drunk on an airplane.

[Neil]

Completely and joyfully failing to supress my reaction to that Palin twitter, on the bus.

[chocolateboy]

one of the chaps whose online review of Louie provoked a personal response in the comments section

Alan Sepinwall is more famous than Louis C.K., you TURBOT![1]

tweeting "kudos to your dirty hole, you fucking jackoff cunt-face jazzy wondergirl" to Sarah Palin whilst drunk on an airplane.

As sublime as that is, the rest of his "tweets on a plane" are about as funny as (most of the first season of) Louie.

1.	OK, he's not, but he should be.

[alcoholic messiah]

Alan Sepinwall is more famous than Louis C.K., you TURBOT!

Yes I know what an Alan Sepinwalls are, you neophytic oik.

[chocolateboy]

Yes I know what an Alan Sepinwalls are, you neophytic oik.

Well played, alcoholic messiah. You win this round, but rest assured, you - NOT NOW, MUM, I'M ON THE INTERNET! FFS, JUST LEAVE IT OUTSIDE THE DOOR!

[Pseudopath]

I don't remember this clip from the original series, so can only assume it's an outtake (or possibly a just-filmed bit of the new series). Still made me laugh like a loon though!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llKVV6EWX1g

EDIT: Bah! Just realised it's from Episode 8 (the pot-smoking episode).

[Yes]

Doug Stanhope in the next series? He just posted this to facebook:

Bad/Good News - Have to Cancel Dallas & Houston dates - Filming a part for Louie CK's show - BPT will be refunding your tix and will reschedule asap. San Marcos and San Antonio still on for May 21,22.

Excuse to watch it all again I guess.

[Big Jack McBastard]

Squeee!

[MC Root]

One-Man Show
No, really. Profane comic Louis C.K.’s unique experiment in television making.

http://nymag.com/arts/tv/upfronts/2011/louis-ck-2011-5/

[benthalo]

Thanks for the link. Well worth a read. I'm always fascinated by how people handle 'total freedom' in television, and that gives a really good insight.

[dallasman]

Thanks for the link! The season premiere airs June 23, hooray!