Louis C.K. New TV Show ‘Louie’

Maybe you know Louis CK from his stand up on Conan O’Brien, or noticed his role as Ricky Gervais’ best friend in “The Invention of Lying.” Or maybe you caught his short but sweet stint as a police officer on “Parks and Recreation”. Wherever you know him from, you’re about to see a lot more of Louis CK. The funnyman is gaining a wider audience thanks to his sharp brand of brave and brash comedy, his work ethic and for just plain being hilarious. Starpulse gets the scoop on his new FX sitcom, Louie.

Louis CK is not your typical comedian, and Louie is not your typical sitcom. “Every episode is different.  We don’t have half hour length sitcom stories that have a first act and a second act.” From talking to CK, you get a sense that he’s not a big fan of the Hollywood machine. “[With] New York actors [you just] pay them a check to come in and really work hard for a day. When you’re in Hollywood, you have to make agent to agent deals and you have to clear all these hurdles to get one of the seven people who a network will approve to be on a TV show.” New York City is close to his heart, which made it a natural choice for the location.

Louie

Aside from the NYC setting, Louie has a few Seinfeld-like similarities, including using bits of CK’s standup at the beginning and end of the episode: “I wanted it to feel almost like a stand up set.  It’s sort of herky-jerky different, different lengths of pieces, different reasons and tones for talking about things or showing things.” But one major difference from Seinfeld, the original show about nothing? “I guess I am trying to make [this show] about everything.”

After his HBO series Lucky Louie was cancelled, CK decided to try things differently this time. “This is shot in New York City by just me and my little crew, and so it feels more like an independent film the way that we run it, and it kind of comes together.  We shoot pieces without knowing what episode they’re going to belong to.  The network is completely MIA. They don’t do anything until they watch the episodes when they’re finished being edited. So it’s just us making a show. I think that’s the biggest difference.”

“I remember when I got the green light to do this show, and my daughter was asking me about it,” CK says when asked why he’s the only writer. “She was about seven at the time, and asked me: ‘Are you going to have writers on the show or are you going to write it all yourself?’ And I said, ‘I think I might write them all myself.’ And she said, ‘I think that would be easier because you don’t have to explain to all those people what you want to do. You can just do it.’ And she was right. Seven years old, she was very savvy about production.”

So how would CK pitch Louie to someone in 30 seconds or less? “I’d go, ‘Oh, I don’t know.  It’s just me, and it’s funny.  It’s just comedy.’ I’ve learned how to be funny in about 20 different ways over the last five years. That’s less than one way a year, which is not that good, and I’m trying to use them all.” Let’s hope that process takes a long time.

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