Wednesday, January 2, 2019

Oh, Louie...

I've listened to the leaked tape of Louis CK's new stand up, and it's... disapponting. Some funny bits, but most of it is not. And next to Bill Burr he's my favourite comedian. Some commenters say "He's not PC!" Well, he never was. But usually he had a point. "He didn't apologize!" Apologies are not funny. He's there to tell jokes. And he's supposed to apologize at the beginning of each show? Hopefully he's just trying out stuff, and he'll lose most of these jokes for the real tour. But there's a bitterness in this material that was not there before. And as Marc Maron discovered during his divorce and career going nowhere period, bitterness is not that funny.

I still hope Louis CK can make a come back. At his best there is no one better. And the claim that he has turned into an alt right comedian is just silly.  But he peaked at his special called Hilarious, in my mind, and the later ones have been uneven. Frankly, I thought Horace and Pete was a lot more interesting, and it's a shame if he won't be able to do more work in that direction. Anyway... You're sitting in a chair in the sky.

4 comments:

  1. Louie's performances had a tinge of bitterness in the first place. I think at some level that was part of his shtick, now it just seems more pathetic and sad than anything else.

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  2. He went dark places in his comedy. Personally, I didn't find any bitterness in his older material. Just to do some speculation... He used to talk about his daughters and about how much he liked being their dad. Now they're both teenagers. If he has lost the closeness he used to have with them, after what happened, it could explain the more bitter jokes about the Parkland survivors and anti gun activists.

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  3. Horace and Pete was a great show with an amazing cast (also lots of cameos ). I wish it had been a bigger hit (commercially) so that he would have continued to write or produce shows of this caliber. I haven't heard the leaked tape but he was likely trying out material. A pirated version of his unreleased movie is also out there but hopefully someone distributes it legally.

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    1. I'm curious about the movie. I'd like to see it. And I definitely want to see the next special when he decides to film it. To see him live would be nice, but it probably won't be possible. Unless he tours France.

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