Louie (Louis C.K.'s show on FX)

I thought this was great but $5 was a little steep. Also what is with Buscemi sweeping all the time?

Steven Wright was great in this as well

And Alda is the dramatic glue that makes it work.

Some of you are aware that, last Saturday, I launched a new series on my site louisck.net called “Horace and Pete”. I’m writing now to tell you some stuff about it….

Horace and Pete is a new show that I am producing, directing, writing, distributing and financing on my own. I have an amazing cast: Steve Buscemi, Edie Falco, Alan Alda, Jessica Lange, Aidy Bryant, Steven Wright, Kurt Metzger and other guest stars. Also Paul Simon wrote and performed the theme song which is beautiful.

The response to episode one has been great so far and there are more coming. We are making them now and having a lot of fun doing it.
Part of the idea behind launching it on the site was to create a show in a new way and to provide it to you directly and immediately, without the usual promotion, banner ads, billboards and clips that tell you what the show feels and looks like before you get to see it for yourself. As a writer, there’s always a weird feeing that as you unfold the story and reveal the characters and the tone, you always know that the audience will never get the benefit of seeing it the way you wrote it because they always know so much before they watch it. And as a TV watcher I’m always delighted when I can see a thing without knowing anything about it because of the promotion. So making this show and just posting it out of the blue gave me the rare opportunity to give you that experience of discovery.

Also because we are shooting this show in a multi-camera format with an emphasis on a live feeling, we are able to post it very soon after each episode is shot. So I’m making this show as you’re watching it.

Okay so let’s talk for a minute about the five dollars of it all. If you’re on this email list then you’re probably aware that I always make an effort to make the work I do on my own as cheap as possible and as painless as possible to get. That’s why my specials are five dollars and that’s why I sold tickets to my last big tour here on the site, with our own ticketing service at a flat price with no ticket charges and we have worked hard to keep my tickets out of the hands of scalpers.

So why the dirty fuckballs did I charge you five dollars for Horace and Pete, where most TV shows you buy online are 3 dollars or less? Well, the dirty unmovable fact is that this show is fucking expensive.

The standup specials are much more containable. It’s one guy on a stage in a theater and in most cases, the cost of the tickets that the live audience paid, was enough to finance the filming.

But Horace and Pete is a full on TV production with four broadcast cameras, two beautiful sets and a state of the art control room and a very talented and skilled crew and a hall-of-fame cast. Every second the cameras are rolling, money is shooting out of my asshole like your mother’s worst diarrhea. (Yes there are less upsetting metaphors I could be using but I just think that one is the sharpest and most concise). Basically this is a hand-made, one guy paid for it version of a thing that is usually made by a giant corporation.

Now, I’m not complaining about this at all. I’m just telling you the facts. I charged five dollars because I need to recoup some of the cost in order for us to stay in production.

Also, it’s interesting. The value of any set amount of money is mercurial (I’m showing off because i just learned that word. It means it changes and shifts a lot). Some people say “Five dollars is a cup of coffee”. Some people say “Hey! Five dollars?? What the fuck!” Some people say “What are you guys talking about?” Some people say “Nothing. don’t enter a conversation in the middle”.

Anyway, I’m leaving the first episode at 5 dollars. I'm lowering the next episode to 2 dollars and the rest will be 3 dollars after that. I hope you feel that’s fair. If you don’t, please tell everyone in the world.

Meanwhile, we’re going to keep making Horace and Pete. We’re going to keep telling you the story.

I sincerely hope that you enjoy it. I’ll write you again later and tell you more about it. It’s fun to talk about. But for now I want to shut up and not ruin the experience of you just watching the show.

Enjoy episode 2 of Horace and Pete. We’re shooting it now. You’ll get it on Saturday morning.

The first episode of Horace and Pete was really hard to get through

I've been watching all of these in order over the last couple months and man this show is really erratic. And not in a purposeful, interesting way just in retrospect a lot of it feels really sloppy and half-assed, interspersed with moments of greatness and genuine inspiration. Also Louie more and more seems like a terrible person. Like, the character is just kind of gross and loathsome.

But the high points are amazing - the Tonight Show/David Lynch episodes, the Parker Posey/Chloe Sevigny arc, a bunch of the one off episodes like when he does the benefit for Seinfeld in the Hamptons. Still can't stand Pamela Adlon's character and their relationship, things just grind to a really unpleasant halt when that takes over.

woah just wait if you haven't finished the show yet

you think Pamela's annoying now

oh she's definitely worse once she returns

I complained about her upthread iirc

have you finished the latest season

I mostly like Pamela idk

yes I've seen the whole run

one thing that bugs me about Louie is how the character deals with his sexuality - he does this thing where he generalizes his own behavior as being universal to men, and then does a lot of self-centered, assholish stuff, subsequently shrugging it off as just being honest. And then there is this tendency within the show for women to throw themselves at him. The sex is often awkward or uncomfortable, but it is crazy how many times he just ends up banging whatever random female character shows up in the episode, whether it's Joan Rivers (which works, and that episode is great), or some rando from the club, or the model(!), or the aggro mom from the PTA meeting. It is a *long* list. After awhile it feels like sloppy writing: "gee, wouldn't it be funny if *this* kind of person had sex with Louie!"

totally agree, to the extent that i had to go find my posts to that effect:

in his stand-up there's a lot of stuff that's really self-loathing with regard to heterosexual relationships and put into general women/men terms, i often find myself thinking "nah i think this is just very specific to your issues, dude."

― festival culture (Jordan), Tuesday, December 2, 2014 3:31 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and i appreciate comedy and art that's vulnerable and specific, but it's precisely because it comes off as not self-aware that it bothers me.

― festival culture (Jordan), Tuesday, December 2, 2014 3:32 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah. I still think he's very funny and a guy whose work I will follow.

otoh while I'm usually loathe to confuse one's work/public persona with the performer and would hardly convict him in a court of law or anything, in retrospect there's stuff in his work that makes me think hmm, yeah those creepy sex assault rumors seem kind of believable in light of the way he handles sexuality in his work.

That is not fair.

Did they ever figure out how many people Hitchcock murdered?

Yeah, don't blame Louis, blame his writers.

that's a joke because he writes almost all of it himself, right?

(yep)

I mean I get the creepy vibes stuff, but it's tough to write about sex with any specificity in a way that doesn't involve your character having a lot of sex when he is basically the only character

how about just don't "blame" anybody for fictional content?

calm down I made it clear it's my personal impression, no doubt compounded by his own intentional blurring of his fictional/real self in his work. I'm not going to put him in on trial or anything.

Are people still not clear why men choose to pursue fame, or..

Understood, sorry.

It does gets tiresome though. This kind of speculation is what it means to be "put on trial" by the public—to the extent such a thing exists.

It's not harmless, and it does damage people.

If you are a single hetero male comedian w your own TV show, you probably will be dating lots of women on your show. Look at Seinfeld.

does his character have a tv show?

oh nm I see what you're saying, it's just the nature of the medium/topic

I mean what do you want him to write about, doing his taxes?

yup that's all single white guys do, fuck lots of random women + taxes

yeah, fuck taxes

C'mon, man, that's such a stereotype. I hardly ever did taxes when I was single.

I mean go to the club, obviously. Fuck the taxes.

Second ep moved at a glacial pace

steven wright is p. good in this

skipped the 2nd ep but the third was pretty impressive

p. impressive is an understatement.

just a massive leap in quality from the first two.

yeah the extended duologue format is a way better fit, plus Laurie Metcalf killed it

good lord yes.
metcalf is secretly among the greatest actors of her generation.
this third ep easily justifies all the fumbling of the first two and it was exactly what I was looking for from this exercise.

like "louie" i think there's more punch in having the show meander and flop around and then occasionally pull into something laser-focused and ambitious like this.

haven't watched the second episode yet and haven't heard a good thing about it. can I skip right to the third?

Yes, though i thought it was okay.
I like the lange character

I'd watch the second tho it meanders. Wright is good and it establishes a bunch of stuff which i imagine will pay off later. Helps a little even with the setup for the third, tho the first gets you most of the way there.

Watched episode 5 tonight. This has become my favorite non-TV, TV show right now.

Steven Wright is so great.

CK tells Howard Stern he's losing millions on this, the former seems basically unconcerned.

I ended up pretty much loving this, though it would have been way better had CK cast a real actor instead of himself (though he's sometimes fine)

everybody on this show sounds like Louis CK talking to himself so subbing in another actor would not have made a noticeable difference to me

louie pulled the interview circuit superfecta now of talking abt this on howard, maron, bill simmons, & Charlie rose in the span of a few wks