With my recent forays into comedy podcasts and Netflicks instant watch, I’ve been getting back into standup comedy in a serious way. I also recently discovered Louis C.K.'s show Louie. What I’ve been hearing in interviews with a lot of comedians, as well as with Louis C.K. himself is a lot about his importance in the standup era of the early 1990s. Now, back in the 1990s I watched a lot of standup comedy on Comedy Central, but I had no memory of Louis C.K. at the time. I thought it strange that such an apparently important comedian had gotten completely by my radar.
So I went on YouTube to look up some of Louis C.K.'s stuff. First, I discovered a segment from Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, which was one of my favourite shows at the time. I remembered the joke he told (about giving the finger to a couple of kids while driving), but I didn’t remember him at all. And the cartoon rendition of a white guy with red hair didn’t seem to match Louis C.K.'s persona as I currently know it.
Then I found a few other clips of his standup acts from the 1990s, and I was stunned. I didn’t recognize him at all. He seemed like a completely different person. Not only that, but I understood why I had no memory of him from that era. The young Louis C.K. seemed to me to have no persona or personality of his own, sort of a doughy, unfinished human being. His jokes were good, but he just had no presence or individual character or personality at all. His facial characteristics were as close to a featureless desert as any human face I’ve ever seen.
That’s a huge contrast to how I see him now. He’s definitely a unique presence as a performer now. So when did this happen? Has anyone followed Louis C.K.'s career continuously since the early 1990s? When did he get a personality?
When did he start having marital troubles with his wife? Because that’s when his jokes started getting funny. (Although they got a bit less funny after he got divorced.)
Here’s an example of early Louie. He really has no personality at all (at least on stage), and he doesn’t seem like the same person at all as the Louis C.K. we know today. he doesn’t even look like the same person, except for the red hair.
By the way, did you know that Louie C.K. is Mexican-American? That was a surprise. (His family name, Sekely, pronounced more or less like “C.K.”, is Hungarian.)
That quotation – and I’ve heard a lot of similar things – explains his choice of material, but it doesn’t really explain why I would never have recognized the young Louis C.K. and the current Louis C.K. as being the same person. Both physically and personality-wise, they seem to be completely different people, in a way that’s not true of most other performers I see.
I read this interview in Playboy where he talks about how, because he grew up in Mexico and the refrigeration was substandard, he drank only powdered milk until he was seven years old. So, even today, he has this different perspective on the cold jugs of milk that the rest of us pretty much take for granted.
For some reason, my opinion of him improved when I learned that stage name was just a way for him to clue people in to how to pronounce his unusual last name. Before, it seemed like a pretentious affectation.
Nobody finds their voice right away. From comedians I’ve heard talking about it, they say it usually takes 7-8 years to become “you” onstage (and that’s 7-8 years of doing it every night). It’s the 10,000 hour rule, basically. It just took him some time to find how to best represent himself.
Weird thing is, I didn’t realize that was Louis CK. He looks so different, I remember the routines, but I didn’t realize that was him. He has improved, but I still find him funny back then.
Physically, it’s a simple matter of a guy going from being thin and having hair to being fat and losing the hair. If the last time you saw an acquitance (not a close friend) was in college when he was young and looking good and then you saw him 20 years later when he had gone to pot, you probably wouldn’t recognize him. He looks radically different because he changed a lot physically. There’s not much more to it than that.
Personality-wise, I think the quotation is spot-on. I was going to say the same thing until I saw that quote. For the longest time, he had nothing to say as a comedian. He said funny stuff sometimes, but a lot of the time it was funny mainly because of his dexterity with profanity and the fact that he was willing to say things that other people were afraid to say. Then he had kids and he realized something that really resonated with people - having kids sucks. He started telling stories about his kids (most of the stories about his kids are based on real events) and people responded. He finally had something to say and he started enjoying himself on stage and that’s why there was such a big shift in his personality.
No, I don’t think it’s that simple. There are a lot of comedians I remember from that era that I recognize immediately, even though I haven’t seen an image of him in years. Not true of Louis C.K.
You want to have a WTF moment, go find an early clip of Jake Johannson. From then to now is truly bizarro land. He sounds exactly the same, and his delivery is still unique, but he truly looks like a different human being.
I agree that this same thing happened to Louie. He rolled into middle age with a pot belly, thinning hair, and he had actually lived life with a wife and kids. That sucked some of the life out of him, and he had more to draw from.
Damn I thought that joke about God re-using extras in the movie of your life was my joke. I realize now I probably stole it from him without even knowing that I did it or who he was.
He does look really different then and now, but once you tell me, I can see it’s the same person.
The funny thing is his delivery really hasn’t changed between then and now. It’s just that the material changed and became a lot more pointed and relevant.
This video, Louis’s tribute to George Carlin, basically goes over this sudden transformation. He had been doing roughly the same 1 hour act for 15 years. He listened to a thing about George Carlin talking about his process of doing standup, and Carlin said that every year he would write new material for a yearly special and then throw it away. That gave Louis the courage to change his material. Then one night he just decided to say stuff about his family, off the top of his head, and it took off from there.
That video of young Louis CK is striking. It’s his voice, his mannerisms, same timing and basically the same material, but a totally different person.
Acsenray, I had kind of a similar experience with him. All of a sudden everyone around me was talking about this comedian (he came to town, my friends bought tickets as a group, and I turned down the invite!), and I had no idea I was supposed to have heard of him, or especially that he was supposed to be hugely influential on other comedians. I guess he was, but I’ve really only become aware of his name in the last couple of years.
You’re noticing his personality more because his current material comes from his inner soul. Unlike his old act with absurdist humor, his new stuff is what a real person would say, which is how you get a real personality on stage.
As for his influence on comedians, he was one of the writers for the Conan O’Brien show when it first started out. He was more famous for that in the 90’s than anything else he did as a comedian.