On Misplaced Admiration
I’ve tried standup comedy exactly once in my life. It was (I think) my freshman year in college – the school put on an open mic night, and I decided to give it a shot. I’d always loved standup, people told me I was funny, and college is supposed to be about broadening your horizons and trying new things. Leading up to it, I spent most of my time daydreaming about absolutely bringing down the house: firing off joke after joke in rapid succession, each one landing more perfectly than the last. In my mind, it was going to be an “I was there when…” kind of thing. About a day or so before the open mic, my roommate asked me what I was going to talk about, and I didn’t have an answer. I hadn’t even thought about it; in fact, I had no idea how to write jokes.
Like a lot of people, I’d always operated under the assumption that the harder you try to be funny, the less funny you are. But when I sat down to work out a routine, it quickly became clear to me that the punchline is the easy part. The hard part is in everything that comes before it: you have to set the context and get a large group of people with a million different opinions about things to occupy (or at least understand) your specific frame of mind. On top of that, you have to do it without any conversational input from anyone (unless you’re Jeff Dunham, who sucks tremendously); on top of that, you have to do it in such a way that people don’t get bored and miss part of the setup. If comedy were boxing, the setup would be roadwork: it’s not particularly rewarding on its own, but it’s necessary in order for the fight (i.e., the punchline) to go well.
So, to figure out what the hell I was going to do for that open mic, I started looking at clips of my favorite comics at the time, sort of a crash course in joke construction: Dave Chappelle, Pablo Francisco, Dane Cook (it was 2004, you liked him too then), and most importantly, Louis C.K. He’s been my favorite comic since I was 16, well before anyone else I knew had even heard of him. I owned an autographed copy of his “Live in Houston” CD; I read his travel blog about his trips driving across country with his dog Loona; I recorded one of his early Comedy Central specials and rewatched it constantly. (I was a very cool and discerning comedy fan, is what I’m getting at.)
As I got older, my comedy tastes changed – I once thought Pablo Francisco’s act was incredible, but when I listen to it now, it seems one-note and almost desperate, in a way. Dane Cook…you know. Louis C.K. was different, though. He was always willing to push himself and evolve, and as my taste in comedy matured, so did his act. He became known for spending a year crafting and fine-tuning 60 minutes of material, filming a special, and then throwing it all out and starting from scratch. It was something George Carlin used to do, and Louis’ decision to carry on that tradition was notable. It was a statement that no matter how successful he became, he was still a comic’s comic at heart, one who respected the craft. He would rather risk bombing night in and night out ironing out new material than stand on stage and get the easy laughs, the ones the audience knows are coming and are waiting patiently to play their part.
Louis once described his style as “like riding a wave of feeling.” There’s a methodical pace to it: his jokes build on themselves, steadily gaining momentum until the big punchline, when the wave crashes on the shore. A lot of comics don’t do that: they tell a short, briskly-paced story, they get the big laugh, they reset, and they do it all over again. That’s part of what made Louis unique.
Beyond that, though, it was his willingness to plumb the darkest corners of his own mind that made Louis an incredible comic and, eventually, brought him the success I always thought he’d deserved. Plenty of comics do self-effacing humor, but it usually feels at least partially calculated. They’ll pretend to be embarrassed or chagrined as they reveal something to the audience, but it’s a façade intended to make them seem more relatable. With bad comics, you can spot it almost immediately – the “flaws” (“I’ve put on weight,” or “This girl is too good for me, man”) aren’t unique or interesting. Good comics aren’t afraid to go deeper, because they’ve learned that even if an audience can’t specifically relate to the comic’s experience, the mere act of sharing that experience results in a much stronger connection than they’d get from revealing some surface-level problem that almost everybody has.
With Louis C.K., there never seemed to be a stopping point. On the contrary, the more uncomfortable his audience was, the more excited he became. Maybe that was a sign of things to come, considering that last November’s story in the New York Times confirmed the rumors that had long swirled around C.K. – specifically his predatory affinity for masturbating in front of horrified female comics. I’d heard the rumors before. The subject was never specifically named, but it was widely believed to be Louis. And so I continued watching his standup, following his career, rooting for him.
After the Times story broke and C.K. confirmed the accusations, I was disgusted, but having followed his career so closely over the years, I also felt pity; there was a strange, almost pathetic element to his behavior, especially in comparison to Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey, the illustrious company in which C.K. now finds himself. Weinstein and Spacey used their power and physical force to coerce unwilling victims into sexual acts. On the other hand, there was Louis, quietly honking off near disgusted female comics. It seemed desperate, almost attention-seeking, like a flasher in a strip mall parking lot. Of course, it’s a difference of degree, not of kind: what C.K. did was sexual assault. But once again, I was hesitant to just cast him aside.
That was in 2017, and C.K. stepped out of the public eye to “listen,” as he put it. I found myself wondering how I’d feel when (or if) he made his comeback, whether I’d ever be able to enjoy his comedy again. Plenty of people were finished with him for good the moment that story broke, and I don’t blame them. And I knew that my continued support for him would probably reflect poorly on me. But I felt I owed him one more chance.
His comeback tour started inauspiciously, with a surprise set at the Comedy Cellar. I understood why he did it: the low-key circumstances for his return probably seemed more appropriate than a widely-publicized event, and I doubt there was a “correct” way for him to begin his comeback. Nevertheless, the set was poorly-received. That C.K. either didn’t consider or didn’t care that his presence might ruin a perfectly enjoyable evening for a significant portion of the audience did him no favors, and though he could have softened the blow by at least addressing what had happened, he chose not to do so.
I didn’t fault Louis for his return to the stage. Very few of us would choose to abandon our life’s passion as penance for our sins. But I understood that the uproar surrounding his return was less about his getting another chance and more about what he’d decided to do with it. And I believed that Louis – with his capacity for ruthless introspection and self-flagellation – would pick up on that as well. Maybe he just needed to step back again and recalibrate.
Then audio leaked of his most recent set.
There were jabs at the kids who survived the Parkland school shooting and have since used their platform to advocate for stricter gun-control laws. There were jokes about gender-neutral pronouns. If you made a list of comics who could take on topics like this and actually manage to wring some humor out of them, Louis C.K. would be at the top or somewhere very near it. But this time was different. It was the kind of routine you’d expect from someone like Daniel Tosh, Anthony Jeselnik, or any other asshole comic who brands themselves as “just telling it like it is”: mean-spirited, bitter, punching down. There’s a reason the set was embraced with open arms by MAGA chuds: it had the same aggrieved, petulant undertone of every hacky right-wing comedian whining that they can’t say the n-word anymore because of “PC culture.”
Leaving aside the tone of the set for a moment, the jokes themselves were just…bad. The Louis C.K. I followed for years wouldn’t have gone anywhere near a stage with bullshit material like that. At his best, Louis dared you to look at any topic – no matter how sensitive or risqué – through a different lens, and you trusted that, with his help, you’d be able to find the humor in it. He would beat himself up every step of the way; he absorbed all your guilt and made it okay for you to laugh. And he did it all in such a way that, over the course of the bit, it was clear that the real butt of the joke was him.
This time, there was nothing to suggest that he felt even a shred of remorse about what he was saying. Louis’ old material challenged you in a meaningful way, but this wasn’t challenging – it was goading. It was belligerent.
I’d stuck by Louis for so long because no matter what everyone else was saying about him, I was sure that it was nothing compared to what he was saying to himself. I truly believed that he was, at heart, a thoughtful, considerate person, and that his onstage persona was an honest representation of the weird, dark thoughts that even thoughtful and considerate people have. I admired his willingness to exorcise his demons onstage, even if it meant subjecting himself to the hatred of a concert hall full of strangers. That inclination to bare his soul is what made Louis C.K. my favorite comic.
A few months ago, just after his Comedy Cellar set, my wife and I talked about Louis’ impending comeback. I predicted that his first full special in the wake of his self-imposed exile would be a tour de force – a comic genius like Louis C.K., given a full year to turn inward and examine himself in the wake of everybody finding out about (presumably) the worst thing he’s ever done? No more restraints on how deep he would be able to travel into his own psyche? How could it not be incredible?
Now, I’m not so confident – I don’t know anymore if the capacity for introspection that drew me to Louis C.K. in the first place is genuine or if it was just part of his act. What he did to numerous women over the years was horrible, and he deserves to reap the consequences of his actions. Nevertheless, I was willing to forgive him, because I trusted that he would go above and beyond to make amends for his actions and do whatever he could to make things right. It’s what I’d come to expect from him. Hell, if he does that, I’d still forgive him.
Louis C.K. isn’t asking for forgiveness. Whether it’s because he’s too stubborn to beg or because he doesn’t think there’s anything to forgive, I can’t be sure. But either way, I can’t help but question why I ever admired him in the first place.
You think you know a guy.