Tag Archives: Louis C.K.

Louis C.K. surprises fans with new web series ‘Horace and Pete’ [Update: Louie opens up]

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Wondering how comedian and TV star Louis C.K.’s spends his “free” time when his FX sitcom Louie goes on its extended hiatuses? He’ll perform standup, of course, and make it available on his website for five bucks. And now, apparently, he shoots another show and debuts it online without anybody knowing about its existence during production. It’s called Horace and Pete and it takes place inside an Irish pub run by Horace (played by Louie). Steve Buscemi (Boardwalk Empire) plays his parter Pete and the web show is rife with cameos including but not limited to Alan Alda (The Blacklist), Edie Falco (Nurse JAckie), Aidy Bryant (Saturday Night Live), Jessica Lange (American Horror Story), Rebecca Hall (The Town), and Steven Wright.

The black comedy skews dramatic and clocks in at just over an hour. It features an intermission where the characters discuss current events like the presidential race and the Super Bowl. Louie released Horace and Pete with little fanfare, simply posting a link to “a brand new thing from Louis C.K.” on his website and offering it up for $5. You can buy Episode 1 today, and it would appear that an additional three episodes are on the way. So…surprise!

Update (2/4): Louie has broken his radio silence regarding the release of his new show. Click after the break for more. Continue reading Louis C.K. surprises fans with new web series ‘Horace and Pete’ [Update: Louie opens up] →

Louis C.K. lets fans set the price for his new comedy special (Also: FX discusses ‘Louie’s future)

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Louis C.K. is back with a new comedy special release, Live at Madison Square Garden. As always, Louie is self-distributing it on his website, LouisCK.net. Typically, Louie charges five bucks for fans to download and save his audio and video comedy specials in popular file formats. This time around, though, he’s playing around with his groundbreaking and fool-proof system: he’s letting you decide how much you want to pay for it. The default price is set at $5, but you can lower that to a buck or raise it all the way to $85–it’s completely up to you. In the past, Louie’s made his specials cheap to get online to curb pirating. Wondering why he makes the barrier to entry even lower for the MSG special?

On his site Louie writes, “Price: so I didn’t know what to charge for this because a lot of the material was on my Comedy Store special and it was hard to get good sound because comedy is intimate and MSG is large, so there’s a lot of sound slapping around everywhere though the sound engineer and the mixer did their level best. So we have the price set to 5 dollars but you can lower it to 1 dollar or raise it to 85. that’s the maximum, because beyond that, I don’t want your crazy money. Not for this show.”

The comedian even went on The Daily Show last week (on Jon Stewart’s penultimate episode) to tell fans not to buy it in classic Louie self-deprecating humor. “It didn’t seem fair to really sell it,” he semi-jokingly told Stewart.

Repeated material and fuzzy mixing aside, Live at Madison Square Garden does contain new jokes, and if you’re into Louie’s smart, dirty humor then giving away a lousy buck to hear them sounds more than fair to me.

Jump after the break to learn the future of Louie’s FX original series. Continue reading Louis C.K. lets fans set the price for his new comedy special (Also: FX discusses ‘Louie’s future) →

Louis C.K. to air new HBO stand-up special Saturday, April 13

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Louis C.K. fans listen up: the dirty, dirty comedian is about to air his next stand-up comedy special on HBO this week. In Louis C.K.: Oh My God, Louie discusses such topics as the food chain, animals, divorce, strange anecdotes, broken morality, murder and mortality. The stand-up, which features brand-new material, was taped at the Celebrity Theatre in Phoenix. Written, directed and executive produced by Louis C.K. (per usual, he does it all), Oh My God debuts April 13 at 10PM on HBO, so set your DVRs accordingly.

Watch a trailer starring C.K. above, and after the break you’ll find a few more clips promoting the special. Continue reading Louis C.K. to air new HBO stand-up special Saturday, April 13 →

‘Louie’ will return for a fourth season in Spring 2014

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FX renewed Louie for a fourth season this summer, but you won’t see the comedian return to the airwaves for quite some time. Instead of premiering in late June as is tradition, Louie will come back in Spring 2014. Why the hold-up? In a conference call today Louis C.K. said he’s taking an extended break from the show for two main reasons: to focus on touring (which runs from this month all the way to February 2013) and to allot time to making the next season as creative, entertaining, and funny as possible. “The last three seasons have been this surge of fun and work and stories and it’s been great, but I want the show to keep getting better,” he said. “That’s my goal, and I don’t want it to be making the donuts, I want it to be something that comes from somewhere important and stays funny.”

Louie envisions his FX show to live on for nine seasons. The first three seasons have served as the first act of a trilogy, making season four the beginning of a new phase for the show. Following the splendid three-episode Late Night arc and the absurdity that ensued in the season three finale, I personally cannot wait to see what Louie has up his sleeve.

[Via Deadline; EW]

Louis C.K. promotes Tig Notaro’s raw stand-up comedy about her cancer diagnosis and other misfortunes

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Stand-up comic Tig Notaro was very recently diagnosed with cancer. Breast cancer in both breasts. And then her mother died. And she went through a breakup. All within the span of four months. So terribly tragic, yes? Well now it’s time to laugh about it.

Just days after Tig was diagnosed, she performed at a famous LA comedy club Largo, spilling her guts to a receptive audience. In attendance was a friend of hers, comedian Louis C.K. He enjoyed the set so much so that he offered to take the recording of it and sell it on his website. She agreed and now you can hear very raw, genuine, and yes, unexpectedly hilarious vent.

Louie shared with his fans why exactly he is selling someone else’s comedy on his website. The story is as follows…

Well, Tig is a friend of mine and she is very funny. I love her voice on stage. One night I was performing at a club in LA called Largo. Tig was there. She was about to go on stage. I hadn’t seen Tig in about a year and I said how are you? She replied “well I found out today that I have cancer in both breasts and that it has likely spread to my lymph nodes. My doctor says it looks real bad. “. She wasn’t kidding. I said “uh. Jesus. Tig. Well. Do you… Have your family… Helping?”. She said “well my mom was with me but a few weeks ago she fell down, hit her head and she died”. She still wasn’t kidding.

Now, I’m pretty stupid to begin with, and I sure didn’t know what to say now. I opened my mouth and this came out. “jeez, Tig. I. Really value you. Highly.”. She said “I value you highly too, Louie.”. Then she held up a wad of note-paper in her hand and said “I’m gonna talk about all of it on stage now. It’s probably going to be a mess”. I said “wow”. And with that, she went on stage.

I stood in the wings behind a leg of curtain, about 8 feet from her, and watched her tell a stunned audience “hi. I have cancer. Just found out today. I’m going to die soon”. What followed was one of the greatest standup performances I ever saw. I can’t really describe it but I was crying and laughing and listening like never in my life. Here was this small woman standing alone against death and simply reporting where her mind had been and what had happened and employing her gorgeously acute standup voice to her own death.

The show was an amazing example of what comedy can be. A way to visit your worst fears and laugh at them. Tig took us to a scary place and made us laugh there. Not by distracting us from the terror but by looking right at it and just turning to us and saying “wow. Right?”. She proved that everything is funny. And has to be. And she could only do this by giving us her own death as an example. So generous.

Just like everything else Louie sells on the site, you can download Tig’s audio-only performance for $5. Louie keeps a buck and the remaining four go to Tig, some of which she says will go to cancer research. Louie goes on to report that the comedienne “has since undergone a double mastectomy. She is doing well. Her doctors say her chances of survival are excellent.” So with all this said, now it’s time for you to sit back, relax, and indulge yourself in content matter you otherwise would think is dark, depressing, and despairing. But it’s not so bad, I promise, you will come out the other end with a finely tuned perspective on life…or at least a smile on your face.

Download Tig Notaro Live here. In the digital booklet Tig emphasizes that she “named this album “LIVE” as in “to keep not dying”–not “live” as in “I saw her live performance.” She continues, “This title not only makes sense to me considering the subject matter, it simply makes me laugh to think of having to correct everyone that pronounces it incorrectly.”

TV reminder: ‘Louie’ returns to FX tonight at 10:30PM (also, he’s going on tour)

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Louie Louie Louie Louieeeeeee. Sing it. You know you want to.

Tonight stand-up comedian Louis C.K. returns to your television screen in his highly lauded comedy Louie. The season three premiere is called “Something is Wrong” and the log line goes like this: “Louie has a challenging day.” This has got to be good. As you should be used to by now, C.K. wrote, directed, and edited the episode; you will see his name plastered all over the opening credits throughout the 13-episode season. He hit a high point in last year’s war-themed “Duckling,” and he’s still red hot following the massive success that was Live at the Beacon Theatre. Expect a bunch of guest stars to pop up throughout the season including Oscar winner Melissa Leo (The Fighter) and fellow comedians Robin Williams and  Jerry Seinfeld (the latter will help carry a three episode arc towards the end of the season).

Louie airs Thursday nights at 10:30PM on FX. Also premiering tonight on the cable network is the return of Charlie Sheen in Anger Management (9PM) and Wilfred season 2 (10PM).

In related news, C.K. is going on tour again soon. It starts on October 3 in Cleveland, OH and comes to a close on February 1 in Washington, DC. He’s following his previous means of success (read: Live at the Beacon Theatre) by directly selling tickets to his fans through his website. Tickets go for $45, no fees, no annoying emails.

In a blog post he explained, “Making my shows affordable has always been my goal but two things have always worked against that. High ticket charges and ticket re-sellers marking up the prices. Some ticketing services charge more than 40% over the ticket price and, ironically, the lower I’ve made my ticket prices, the more scalpers have bought them up, so the more fans have paid for a lot of my tickets.” He continued, “By selling the tickets exclusively on my site, I’ve cut the ticket charges way down and absorbed them into the ticket price. To buy a ticket, you join NOTHING. Just use your credit card and buy the damn thing.” And he means business. “Also, you’ll see that if you try to sell the ticket anywhere for anything above the original price, we have the right to cancel your ticket (and refund your money). this is something I intend to enforce. There are some other rules you may find annoying but they are meant to prevent someone who has no intention of seeing the show from buying the ticket and just flipping it for twice the price from a thousand miles away.”

That’s the C.K. way, and it rules. Click here to read the rest of his blog post and here to view the tour dates.

Update: He did it again, only this time he did it faster. According to the AP, Louis sold 100,000 tickets and raked in $4.5 million in sales in 45 hours. He shared his excitement in a tweet: “I guess it was a good idea.”

Louis C.K. releases new stand-up special on the ‘Net, launches a user-friendly website to self-promote it

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On December 10 comedian Louis C.K. released a new stand-up special to his fans. The special contains brand new, never before seen material and was shot over two performances at the Beacon Theater in New York City. Louie directed, produced, and edited the video himself, just like he does on his FX show Louie. Instead of working with a big company to promote and distribute the 62-minute special, Louie developed his own website to do all the heavy lifting. In an open letter to his fans and the public at large, he explained his “‘experiment” like this:

If I put out a brand new standup special at a drastically low price ($5) and make it as easy as possible to buy, download and enjoy, free of any restrictions, will everyone just go and steal it? Will they pay for it? And how much money can be made by an individual in this manner?

In a couple words, his experiment was a raging success. In just four days Louie posted a $200,000 profit. In the open letter he shared the costs that went into the making of the special; namely the production of the video ($170,000) and the construction of the simplistic website ($32,000). In the first 12 hours of the website being live, the special saw 50,000 purchases and earned $250,000, breaking even on the cost of production and the website. Three days later 110,000 copies had sold for a total of over $500,000. In the letter Louis goes on to explain how in a typical situation a big company would have charged customers around $20 for the special and restrictions like limited reply value, encryption, and international availability would apply. By self-distributing his special, Louie was able to keep the price of entry low, the purchase experience delightful, and best of all once it’s purchased you can watch it over and over no matter where you are in the world. Also, Louie made a crapload of money. In his own words:

I really hope people keep buying it a lot, so I can have shitloads of money, but at this point I think we can safely say that the experiment really worked. If anybody stole it, it wasn’t many of you. Pretty much everybody bought it. And so now we all get to know that about people and stuff. I’m really glad I put this out here this way and I’ll certainly do it again. If the trend continues with sales on this video, my goal is that i can reach the point where when I sell anything, be it videos, CDs or tickets to my tours, I’ll do it here and I’ll continue to follow the model of keeping my price as far down as possible, not overmarketing to you, keeping as few people between you and me as possible in the transaction.

Let’s hope that other comedians and even the entertainment industry as a whole takes notice of Louie’s grand experiment. A fundamental shift in the way companies distribute content to customers is needed if said companies want people to stop illegally torrenting movies, music, and TV shows. If they can figure out how to do it the Louis way, the world will be a better place for it.

Head over to https://buy.louisck.net/ and the But The Thing button to easily purchase the stand-up special via PayPal for five bucks. And if you’re interested in reading Louie’s candid statement, click here.

Update: In a new statement issued on the website, Louis announced that he hit the $1 million mark in sales. Insane, right? Now because he’s not a greedy man, here’s what he plans on doing with all the money. 250K “is going to pay back what the special cost to produce and the website to build;”  a “second 250k is going back to my staff and the people who work for me on the special and on my show;” 280k “is going to [four] different charities;” and Louis is going to keep 220k for himself. “Some of that will pay my rent and will care for my children,” he explains. “The rest I will do terrible, horrible things with and none of that is any of your business. In any case, to me, 220k is enough out of a million.” Read the statement in full here. Way to go, Louis.