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

because he did it for the video of his special, which is more like a movie? still not a new thing, except that it was a big comedian selling it for a cheap fixed price.

i feel bad for jim gaffigan because i heard him on like three podcasts last week say he was following the LOUIE MODEL to self-release his new album, it's not like jim gaffigan needs to ride on louie's coattails, but if he doesn't say that people will accuse him of ripping off louie's invention or something

same reason why "the Radiohead model" was such a big term years ago, it's more about the fact that someone established did it and turned it into a big success rather than the model itself

Self-releasing the video was a big deal and basically unheard of for comedy specials, esp. given the success.

comedy has mostly been a cable thing, no?

yeah, this isn't 'self-releasing his DVD' it's 'skipping Showtime/HBO/Comedy Central entirely'

yeah, this isn't 'self-releasing his DVD' it's 'skipping Showtime/HBO/Comedy Central entirely'
--Kiarostami bag (milo z)

iirc, he got the idea to do a self-release because HBO was apprehensive about shelling out for his new special.

it's just weird to me that no one did this until 2012, especially in a sector that prizes control over one's career

uh.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/louis-cks-cbs-sitcom-will-now-star-ashley-tisdale,69762/

did i miss that somehow?

10-year old sitcom he sold to CBS is getting picked back up, his involvement is going to be minimal AFAIK

Tisdale is pretty good. I predict nobody will write about how much they hate this as much as they do "Girls".

probably no one will care about it enough to write about it

Gotta say I love how well the one-man approach to everything is working here. Like in the Heckler/Cop episode, the Matthew Broderick/"Your father is dead" scene and the gas station holdup one both seem like they could have been from a good episode of Arrested Development or Curb (respectively), but the heckler situation was something totally unique to this show, since it's designed to sort of make you feel bad for the lady, as Louie comes down so hard on her, just saying whatever nasty stuff he can think of, regardless of whether or not it makes sense or is even funny. It just feels very unscripted and awkward and the kind of thing that most every other sitcom would try to rewrite, but Louie just kind of leaves it as-is.

I didn't feel sorry for her at all, I have zero patience for drunk assholes who think yelling things at concerts or comedy shows makes them funny.

It's like when people at baseball games lean over the fence to try to catch the ball. YOU'RE NOT PART OF THE GAME, SIT DOWN.

absolutely, she was a pretty loathsome character (especially her line about Louie hating her because she's attractive, or whatever), but I think Louie's response was supposed to be a bit over-the-top, especially as most of his jokes don't even make sense

it's kind of a boringly 'easy' scene compared to something like the Pamela scenes where he's getting ripped apart by a woman who's as smart or smarter than him, though

https://twitter.com/#!/louisck/status/198213541168300033

A white person from New York likes Girls?! ;-)

perhaps this is my naivete but i have kind of thought of louis ck as ~~~~~~~something more than a mere white guy~~~~~~~~~~~~ for some time now

he is a mexican...tell hilarious jokes!

ah yes

the encore on the carnegie hall show is incredible

press sez 4 oscar winners in new season

my guesses

marisa tomei
joe pesci
whoopi goldberg
james cameron

the corpse of hattie mcdaniel

weird

his picture was a question on jeopardy tnite. no one got it tho.

One of those Oscar winners will be someone you'd never expect, like Cuba Gooding Jr.

one episode will have Juicy J, another will have DJ Paul

every episode will feature crunchy black

Seinfeld and Maron appear in the upcoming season.

gbx's point upthread about how tuning into this show is a must just to see what happens is totally OTM - I've never seen a show with so much diversity/fucking with expectations. You can tell his whole point is not to just make people laugh and lately I've been really appreciating that - great episodes of the Simpsons or Seinfeld make me laugh more but episodes of this (like the one with Doug Stanhope) just kind of stick with you; especially if you see them more than once

You can tell his whole point is not to just make people laugh

Hope so, given the dearth of laughs in a depressing second season (which I still loved). For a comedy, an awful lot of people died in horrible ways. Plus, his sister goes insane, the love of his life leaves him hanging to hang in France, he can't afford his dream home, he's menaced by trick or treaters, he has to grovel to Dane Cook ... show's gone even darker than I imagined it would.

I think it's to the point where you can't really just call it a comedy anymore. Dunno what you'd call it but even the first season was like that - the church/crucifixion episode had virtually no laughs at all! (outside of the standup bits, of course)

It was at least kind of ruefully funny, the church ep, plus it had Lil' Louie. But the scenes in season 2 where he has to come to the rescue of his sister ... that's just sad and heartbreaking.

it's an experiment

I *love* that church episode

me too

and him and his Mum getting donuts afterwards

it's portraiture

i still don't really 'get' the church episode

I don't even remember what episode that is so I really don't 'get' it.

What's to get? Definitely say through some traumatizing sermons as a kid, it hit a nerve for me.

1 of the pts louie emphasized in the commentary 2 the 'god' episode was the image/act of the custodian having 2 re-nail jesus 2 the wall at the end of the day

he doesnt mean it as symbolic or deep or w/e btw just like the guy being all eh ok i had 2 sweep the hallway and now i have to do this thing too

i mean i guess what i didn't 'get' was where the comedy was?

like given that this is ostensibly a(n often dark) comedy program i was sort of imagining that there was some (perhaps so dark as to be opaque) humor in the church episode

so when i say i don't 'get it' i just mean 'am i supposed to laugh somewhere or am i not supposed to be laughing, cause if i watch louie and don't laugh i just assume i'm missing the joke'

that's the joy of Louie!

I attended a Catholic school for many years (even though I'm a Jew!) and I can say that the episode was actually really accurate w/r/t the way these guys can scare these kids about religion; I went through the same stuff when I was 10! Those guys can be brutal. The actor who played the pastor was amazing. One thing I love about the show is that it has a lot of those real tense moments because it feels like it's a documentary; with most every other show you always have some sense of where things are going because of previous episodes, or just certain tropes or conventions that you see over and over, you know who's going to screw up, you know which problems are going to get resolved, you know who's coming through in the end - Louie really feels like it could go in any direction at any time, especially with all the surreal fantasy/absurdist scenes

um, guess who i met

well, not met. but i just found out i'm friends w/ louis ck's third grade teacher, who gave him the nickname 'ck' (he says) and also threw a pie in louis's face. apparently louis semi-obsessively drew pictures of people getting pies in their face, and my friend made note of it and, on the last day of school, threw a pie in his face. all the other students came over and scraped the filling off louis's face and ate it.