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Giant.
Giant!
I'm just gonna wear the same thing I was wearing before,
but it's still inside out. I wear it inside out.
This is how you keep the men away at the mics.
You just wear lots of layers.
With the law of attraction and stuff,
you have to articulate things for them to come into existence.
Bye dog, I love you.
Be a good boy, please.
What else do I need? I'll bring that joint.
Dear Lord. Hm.
When I said I wanted to work with Louis or Dave Chappelle,
I should've been more specific.
Bye, everybody.
Bye!
As opposed to, like, how it all panned out.
See ya.
Not only do they talk about
you being the undisputed king of comedy
and people love this show, there are these... I mean, yours is deeper and broader.
Comparisons to Lenny Bruce, comparisons to Bob Dylan,
comparisons to being a sort of philosopher king.
Hmm, Jesus.
Do you wanna not talk about that? Because...
It should be...
...where does it come from,
and how do you see what you are?
I don't know, I mean, I'm just a comedian.
How do women still go out with guys, when you consider the fact
that there is no greater threat to women than men?
We're the number one threat to women.
Globally and historically, we're the number one cause of injury,
and mayhem to women.
We're the worst thing that ever happens to them.
Like, I think about flashers and how well they dressed, though.
You know, like, in my day,
you dressed up to go on an airplane,
and you dressed up to show a woman your dick, and I appreciated that.
Because when Louis C.K. tried to show me his dick,
he was just wearing a shitty black t-shirt and jeans
and it's like, listen you schlub,
you can't do a little outfit for me if you're gonna...?
You know?
My own personal feeling about him,
he's a top 10th of 1% insightful person.
He's able to make that funny,
and almost nobody else can do that,
and that's kind of the definition of genius, right?
So you're top 10th of 1% ability at something,
that no one else can do.
If you can do something that no one else can do,
that almost alone makes you a kind of a genius, even if it's something stupid.
Children who have nut allergies need to be protected.
Of course!
We have to segregate their food from nuts.
Have their medication available at all times
and anybody who manufactures or serves food
needs to be aware of deadly nut allergies.
Of course.
But maybe...
...maybe if touching a nut kills you,
you're supposed to die.
I thought of him as, like,
a misanthrope who loved people.
He saw the very, very worst,
like, least attractive parts of people, of humanity,
of the human condition, and then found a way
to be sympathetic to those parts of us.
There's one kid in my daughter's class who I hate so much,
and it's really fucked up 'cause I'm 44 and I hate a six year old.
And his comedy was so good at what it really meant
to open out your nasty, broken, dark heart
in front of thousands of people,
hundreds of people, every night.
I don't stop eating when I'm full.
The meal is not over when I'm full.
The meal is over when I hate myself, that's when I...
...that's when I stop.
He seemed to be brutally honest.
Brutally honest about himself,
and about his relationship with his kids,
in a way that we weren't used to seeing from comedians.
I like Mama's better,
because she makes good food.
And I love her more, so I like being there more.
-Alright, go and get on your PJs. -Bye, Daddy.
OK, baby.
The heart of Louis' act was,
I'm fucked up,
and in my fuck uppedness,
in my navigating through the world, I'm trying to do the right thing.
I don't always succeed, but I'm trying to be a good guy.
You know what's really sad about men?
That we can't have a beautiful thought about a woman,
that isn't followed by a disgusting thought about that same woman.
We're not capable of it.
That's how our brains work.
She's an angel,
and I want her to drown in my cum.
He would talk about how men are these creatures,
that have these irrepressible impulses,
that are clearly unpleasant for women to deal with.
Oh yeah, oh, what the fuck is wrong with me?
Goddammit.
And just being self-aware in a way that, you know,
to female fans such as myself, was very endearing.
He created a show that was really, like,
the beating center of the zeitgeist.
When Louis garners critical acclaim,
that is really what catapulted Louis C.K.,
from just a funny guy,
to a guy who got the full genius treatment from our culture.
Listen, I'm, I'm...
What? No. No, no, no, no!
-Just... -No!
Come on.
He did a lot of material that was borderline.
God, you can't even rape well!
But he did it from this persona of,
I understand that these things are wrong.
Wait, does it offend you when I say that word?
What word, hello?
No, faggot.
Yeah, does it bother you when he says the word faggot?
No, it bothers me when you say it, 'cause you mean it.
He became this, like,
unlikely moral conscience of the comedy world.
A lot of Louis' fans felt like we know a lot about Louis.
We know, like, what makes his brain tick.
We know the kinds of things he thinks about.
We know what pisses him off.
For, as disgusting as he painted himself to be...
...we felt like we understood his heart.
For those of you tuning in to see my interview
with Louis C.K. tonight, I have some bad news.
Then I have some really bad news.
Breaking tonight, five women are accusing comedian, Louis C.K.,
of sexual misconduct in a bombshell report from The New York Times.
The women say that the comedian would make
sexually inappropriate comments.
Some say he also masturbated in front of them.
Three more women report similar incidents,
one in the 1990s, one in 2003, and one in 2005.
Some of the women say they feared
career repercussions if they spoke out.
The news this morning about the comedian, Louis C.K.,
who has come out to say that the accusations against him are in fact true.
FX cutting all ties.
HBO and Netflix also dropping him from upcoming projects.
The release of his new film, I Love You Daddy, abruptly canceled.
He was said to appear on
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, but was replaced.
When reached for comment, Jesus said,
"Bla la la la la. I don't wanna hear about it, I was a big fan. Bla la la."
I need to, while you're here,
ask you for your comment on something quickly.
Your friend and colleague, Louis C.K., what was the impact on you
when you heard not only the accusations, but his admission?
Um...
...stunned, I think. You know, um...
...you give your friends the benefit of the doubt.
I tried to think of it in terms of, you know,
I've had friends who have compulsions
and who have done things, gambling, or drinking, or drugs,
and we've lost some of them. Some of them have died.
And you always find yourself back to a moment of, did I miss something?
Could I have done more on the thing?
And in this situation, I think we all could've.
It's a real mind fuck, you know,
because I... I love Louis, but Louis did these things.
Both of those statements are true, so I just keep asking myself,
"Can you love someone who did bad things?"
"Can you still love them?"
I can mull that over later, certainly, because the only people
that matter right now are the victims.
They are victims and they're victims because of something he did.
The Louis thing came out at the worst possible time,
which is right after the Harvey Weinstein thing and Bill Cosby.
I mean, this was a real wake-up call to a lot of America
about how awful men in power could be.
So he got swept into that.
I think it's gross.
What he did, I think was just gross.
It was gross if he did it to a man.
It takes on more ominous tones when he's doing it to women.
-Completely agree. -Yeah.
I mean, I'm not... I don't think he's anything--
-But it's not a crime, right? -No, no, I don't think so.
No, I think it's just sad.
It's nothing like Cosby, it's just pathetic.
Somebody would walk in and I would say-- Somebody well known,
I'm like, "What do you think about Louis?"
And they would say, "What do you think about Louis?"
He didn't assault anybody, he asked for permission.
I don't know, I still think he should be allowed to perform at the Cellar.
Because what did he do wrong? Ask for consent?
For non-contact in-- Like, what are you talking about?
When he came out and he said, "I did this."
He said, "I did these things, these women are all telling the truth."
I just remember thinking, well, that's the sign of somebody who--
Well we can work with that, you know what I mean?
Like, that's-- You know, what the hell else
are you supposed to do?
Every comedian has their skeletons,
every comedian has their shit in their closet that they don't want to come out,
I'm sure, you know?
And not just comedians, everybody.
But I felt like...
...there's just a lot of hypocrisy around it,
because... so many of us...
spend our careers trying to sort of hold the light up and be like,
"Hey, I'm telling the truth here.
"I'm the truth teller." You know?
But when it comes to telling the truth about one of our own...
...suddenly, we shut up.
Zero to 40 was fun.
You were born, bleurgh, you don't even know where you are.
Yeah, you had your first kiss.
Not right away, I'm just saying,
you had your first kiss during those years.
You had some masturbation, you had some sex,
you had some drinking, you had some driving.
Nothing good happens between 40 and 80.
I understand what's going to happen.
First, I'm gonna get that cougar chest, with the freckles,
and then I'm gonna die.
That's what's gonna happen.
When I have younger people ask me,
"How did you get where you are?"
And I tell them how long it took, they're like,
"Oh, I don't want that.
"Like, I wanna, you know--
"What do you mean you were 35 before you got your first job?
"When did you start?" "When I was 21."
"Yeah, no, I can't do that."
I was 21 or 22 out of college in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
I met this guy, Eugene Mirman, and he said,
"I run this open mic, I think you're funny, do you wanna do it?"
And he didn't know me from anything, he just thought I was a funny person.
And I just told a story that was very raw and vulnerable for me,
about when I lost my virginity.
But it broke the seal of, I think this is how I wanna do things.
Then I moved to New York, and got temp jobs, and did stand up at night.
My boyfriend at the time, was like,
"Oh, I really love this comedian, Louis C.K., let's go see him."
He used to have a totally different act than he did now,
it was very absurdist, and that's fine, you know, whatever.
He wasn't, like, my favorite comic.
Hey, mind if I get a quick interview?
I don't really feel like it.
It'll just take a second.
We both were on this cartoon show called Home Movies,
and the studios are in Massachusetts,
and we're both on the same flight, to Boston,
so we can go do this voice-over.
We're sitting next to each other and I think we are in First Class,
or maybe just planes back then were more comfortable, but he was drinking coffee,
he was drinking orange juice, and he had his newspaper,
and he was just ignoring me, which is fine, but I remember thinking,
"Of course he's not talking to me,
"'cause I'm just like a dumb kid, open mic-er,
"and we both happen to be on this show."
When we got off the plane, he said, "I'm renting a car, do you want a ride?"
So we're talking in the car and he's driving me through,
I think we sort of went through the town he grew up in, or near it,
and he very vaguely started doing a tour of, like, his sexual thoughts.
Like, that girl in that house had big tits, red hair
I was in love with her, used to masturbate and think about her,
stuff like that.
Am I scared?
No.
I would be now, but I didn't know about that stuff back then,
and I just remember thinking, it was the same thought I had when I auditioned for college,
and the Dean of Acting asked me to do the monologue again,
except do it this time like you've just been raped.
And I didn't know what that meant.
I've never been raped.
And then I remember thinking, "You naive child, this is the theater.
"This is how they talk."
So I had the same thoughts as Louis is like,
"Hey, I jerked off to this, and this girl's tits, and whatever."
I'm like, "Guess this is how comedians talk."
And it is, by the way.
But I think that's what people get confused by, when you tell them a story
of sexual harassment, like, that you were so sure what was happening
and you were laser focused and taking notes,
because 25 years later, you're gonna talk about it.
I just thought, like, whatever feelings I have about this,
that didn't even get to come up all the way...
...I'm wrong.
Later in life we're all living in L.A.
It's like 2003, 2004.
There was just this one night that I remember.
We're all in the same kinda shows together.
You know, Louis' like, becoming Louis.
He's like, doing his honest, confessional stuff.
He's not doing the absurd stuff anymore.
He's talking about his wife, and my daughter's a cunt,
and all that stuff that seemed really edgy and funny.
And he's like, "We're all going to the bar." And I thought,
"Oh, well he never joins us, but OK."
He's like, "I'd love to talk to you about your act."
Or something like that.
We go around the corner and the bar we go into has a bar level,
and then there's stairs, and you can sit up in this
groovy lounge and sit on floor pillows.
We get up there and we're kind of, like,
in this corner where if you're in the downstairs part of the bar,
you can't see what we're doing up there.
And so we just kept talking and, basically,
all that I remember is he said something about, "What if a guy asked you
"if he could jerk off in front of you, would you oppose that?"
And so many thoughts were going through my head, none of which were,
"He's asking me if he can pull his dick out and jerk off."
One of them was, "Oh, he's doing a bit and he's running it by me,
"and he's asking me what I would think of a loser, who would pull his dick out,
"or ask a woman if he could pull his dick out in front of her."
I remember some, like, riffing with him about this absolute loser persona
he was adapting in order to tell this joke.
What was the punchline going to be?
Maybe we would work it out together.
I was so oblivious that he was, like, "Are you fucking kidding me?"
You know, and I was like, "What?"
And he's like, "What did you think this was?
"Or what did you think I was asking?"
Something in that vibe.
He basically said something along the lines of, like,
"What? I like to jerk off in front of people."
And I was, like, "You mean you'd have done it, like, here?
"Like, in public?"
And a friend of mine came over at that moment and interrupted, thank God,
and Louis took out a picture, again, pre-phone cameras,
and just was like, "I was just showing Jen a picture of my daughter."
That's when I was just, like, ew, ew, ew, 'cause he wasn't.
So that was it, and, again,
I wasn't like, in a shower after, crying, like a Lifetime movie.
I was just like, "What the fuck was that?"
I knew, from then on, I didn't like him.
I didn't want to be around him, but it's just tough,
'cause you'd see, like, everyone you like and know hanging out with the dude.
And then it, like, didn't dawn on me at the time to ask my guy friends,
"Why are you friends with him?"
Like... isn't that weird, to know that he lives this double life
and you just kinda let it happen?
And I started to adopt the attitude of, like, for a while I was like,
"Yeah, it's totally cool that he does that."
'Cause I started hearing more stories, "Oh, he does it to everyone."
I'm like, "He is such a weirdo."
I just was like, I guess it's cool to act like that.
I mean, I was too old to think that way, but I did.
There was another time, when he got off stage, same club, same thing,
he was like, really becoming him and he came off stage,
and like, I'm not saying this to imply there was any physical abuse,
but he just sort of, put his hand on the back of my neck
and was, like, "I'm gonna fuck you some day." Something like that.
I am not saying he meant rape.
I think he meant we're gonna fuck some day, you know, like, consensual.
I just remember kind of looking around and...
...like, no one heard that, you know, and I was, like, "That's so weird."
I went on a date and I didn't know this guy very well, and I sneezed.
And I sneezed so hard that it shook my entire body
and I shit my pants.
And it was, um...
And then, a few years later,
I was on one of my opening act gigs in Florida,
and in order to be a headlining act, you have to work the road
and be an opening act for a long time.
And I got an email from him and, again,
I was just using the hotel computer, and he said,
"I see on your website that you're in West Palm Beach, Florida."
He's like, "I have a gig in Miami next week.
"If you just stayed in Florida you can open for me in Miami, and just come down to Miami."
And I just was really poor and had no money,
and I couldn't have afforded a hotel for five days,
and I would love to be his opening act.
I'd love to get that experience of being in front of bigger crowds
that are-- It was probably gonna be full.
But he said, "P.S., I'm divorced now, or getting divorced."
And I went, "Oh, I'm not gonna do it,
"because he probably wants someone that might, like,
"fool around with him, or sleep with him on the road."
That was, like, the first time with him that,
an instinct kicked in and I wasn't like,
"Oh my God, isn't it..." I kind of was, like, this isn't good.
You don't know how it affects you
because it's so weird and small,
that you don't know something's weird,
because you've been socialized in this world where men get to treat women however they want.
Guys, give it up for Jen Kirkman, let her hear it!
I don't know to be traumatized by what Louis did,
but I was bothered by it, I was disturbed.
As the years went on, and I had more of a sense of self, I went,
"Oh my God, that is so fucked up."
And this whole culture of people that think
it's normal, they're fucked up.
But that was really it.
That was the big ending to my story, until I talked about it.
You guys are awesome, have a good night, I'm Jen Kirkman.
So I got a call from my agent, before this.
And I had some pretty bad news.
Turns out I have aged out of both being able to play Mark Maron's girlfriend
on an episode of Maron,
and getting jerked off in front of by Louis C.K.
That's a joke, I don't have an agent.
I knew about the Louis stuff
because it was just, basically, an open secret in the comedy community,
but also one of those sort of, like, open secrets where
sometimes I would hear, "Well, he did it to this person, this person."
One time I heard he did it to men,
and I was, like, "That's interesting."
That ended up being just a rumor.
But I had just heard about this habitual behavior that had been happening
for a series of years, and not just to randos, I mean, to other comedians.
Also, I mean, I'm a fucking amateur.
I'm a fucking scrub.
If I know about this shit, everybody knows about this shit.
Someone's, like, "Oh he did it to these two girls,
"they did this comedy festival together in Aspen, this comedy duo."
I was like, "Well were they upset? What was the thing?"
The telephone game that was played was,
"Oh, no, no, no, it was a party and there was, like,
"a bunch of people in the room and everyone was doing their thing.
"Some people were drinking beer, some people were smoking pot,
"he was jerking off in the corner, like you do at a party,
"you know, everyone's got their own thing."
I would say an open secret is the sort of thing in which
people love engaging in discussion about it,
love being horrified by it, but it's like,
"At the end of the day, my hands are tied."
Ma'am, as I've told you several times already, this is a police matter.
Well it doesn't seem to matter to the police.
We had him on the show
because whenever you have a big, juicy guest spot,
and this was a love interest for the main character,
there's always, like, get the biggest star you can.
We took a different approach which was, like,
let's just get the funniest person, like, who cares?
It was the beginning of the second season
and the show was, like, teetering on the brink.
I don't think he's the reason that we stuck around and survived,
but he's one of them.
And then, at some point, and, again, I don't remember when,
or how, or who told me, but I started hearing those--
A story of him in a hotel room or something.
It was vague, and it was sort of, like,
it was confusing, there weren't a lot of details,
but I heard it then a bunch of times, like, and from different people.
If his name came up, that was a thing that people have said.
And then we, many years later, had this idea of having him come back for an episode.
Hey, Leslie.
-Dave! -Hey.
Oh my God, wow.
And I kinda didn't do anything about it.
We just kinda had him back and I pretended like I didn't know.
My attitude, when I look back on it,
was, well, that's not my problem.
Like, I didn't do that and that's something that had happened
somewhere else and I don't know the details, and I don't know if--
I don't even know if it's true or not, and so, it's not my problem.
2012, there's the Gawker Blind Item that said,
"This famous comedian masturbated in front of people."
Most people were assuming it's Louis.
I would hear, "This comedian knows who the women are.
"This comedian confirms it's true."
But most people don't read blind items,
and it didn't break his ascent, it's just sort of like,
a blind item happened.
You're exploding in a way that is--
You're now like an internet pioneer.
You've got the show, but then you've found a way to circumvent Ticketmaster.
You've figured out a way that people don't have to pay taxes on toiletries,
you've somehow...
Louis C.K., he's an elite comedian,
and he's been an elite comedian for 15 years.
These stories have been around for a while.
Everybody knows and I mean, and everybody kind of, casually knows really.
I mean, it's obviously, this jerking off comedian,
is obviously Louis C.K.
One time I was jerking off. This is another-- This is another aging thing,
I was jerking off and I looked at my penis,
and it was blurry,
because my eyes... are going, so I can't--
Because you're supposed to get reading glasses when this becomes blurry
and that's exactly--
That's the precise, fixed length.
In 2015, Gawker then elaborated with another report
from an anonymous tipster who reported that
he had emailed Louis C.K.'s website to say,
"It's messed up that you're doing this, you shouldn't."
And then Louis C.K. called this person directly.
The way I rationalized it,
I was always like,
"Well, they're not allegations with a name on them."
It's kind of remarkable how close to the surface all this was brewing,
and the cognitive dissonance it created with fans and critics
and journalists including, frankly, myself,
who were aware of this on some level,
at the same time that we were
evaluating and enjoying his work.
I Seem Fun, The Diary of Jen Kirkman, episode 90,
coming to you from Melbourne, Australia,
in a hotel room, on an iPhone.
I had a podcast at the time, every week, for my die hard fans,
where I just talked about what it was like touring.
I was doing this Melbourne Comedy Festival in Australia,
but I'm doing all these interviews.
You do press all day long.
Just confirming, for our audience,
when they come along and see you,
they won't get any sex stories or any swearing in the show?
Oh, there's some sex stories.
My act had very mild jokes
about my first time having sex, after being divorced.
I had sex with a younger man, I was, like,
39 or 38 and he was, like, 25.
I regret it now, but I exaggerated.
I was 37 when I got divorced.
I went on a date with a 20-year-old.
I thought, "I'm gonna be a cougar. Seems to be in style."
He was not legal to get into any bars,
so I took him back to my place.
I served him wine out of the glasses I got for my wedding.
I knew I would use those some day.
And all the reviews came out and people were calling my show "dirty",
in a derogatory way.
I was like, wait, I'm A, not even dirty,
but B, so what if I was?
I know a ton of guys that are way dirtier than me
and they're, like, getting lauded for it.
So here I am in my little hotel room, with my podcast
that maybe a thousand people listen to a week, you know,
not a lot of people, was like,
"I'll tell you what it's like being a woman in comedy." That was the episode.
I am so sick of being told I can't talk about my age.
I am so sick of being told everything that I can't do.
Well, you should see the way some of these men behave,
not on camera, not on stage, that is so appalling to me.
The fact that my art gets reviews that paint me as this nasty whore,
it really angers me.
If the problem with my act is you think it means something about me,
well you're wrong, it doesn't.
I'm not actually a problematic person
who's sexually harassing people.
If that is the problem, then you need to take these pervert guys to task,
'cause they're actually doing it in real life, and their act is kind of
a cover for it, or they're telling us who they are,
but you're not listening.
I have this friend, his daughter is 15, he's like,
"She's gonna start having sex. I don't know what to do.
"What if she has a bad sexual experience?"
Oh, she's gonna have a number of those. Oh yes, she is.
Her whole life is gonna be just walking through a blizzard of bad dicks,
just...
Ow! This dick just--
Jesus.
What the fuck, that was a big one.
Holy fuck, I'm just trying to get to work.
A very famous comic, probably at Cosby level at this point,
he is lauded as a genius, he is basically a French film maker
at this point, you know, new material every year.
He's a known perv, and there's a lockdown on talking about him,
and this guy didn't rape me, but he made a certain, difficult decision
to go on tour with him really hard, because I knew if I did,
I would get more of the same weird treatment
I had been getting from him and it was really fucked up.
What it's like to be a woman in comedy,
you hear these comments, you get offered dicks.
That's it.
And so this blog put a picture of me and a picture of Louis,
said something to the effect,
"Did Jen Kirkman call out Louis C.K. on her podcast?"
That was the first day of, like, the end of my life.
Like, it just snowballed after that.
And so then I took it down.
Articles were coming out, "What's Jen Kirkman talking about?"
It was lonely, lonely, bad time.
Louis at one point was, like, emailed me, like, "Call me."
I was, like, I knew what it was about and I was, like,
"No. We have to have this discussion over email."
And he's, like, "Look, I know what I did to you." And he named all the things.
I said, "Do you want to make a joint statement with me, then?
"That would really help, if you could just be like, 'Jen and I talked,
"'Yes, I did say these things, she's cool and I never did this to anyone else?'"
He's like, "I can't."
And I didn't see that as a red flag.
He's like, "I've just learned to handle this stuff.
"This is your first time going through it, but, like,
"you don't talk to the media, ever, and like, I have daughters."
I said, "You're right, you're right, your daughters, no, totally right."
He's, like, "Just let this go and it'll go away."
Every year, I had something good happening.
Then I had another special, I had another book, I had another tour.
Every single press was like,
"If she doesn't talk about Louis, we're not interested."
So I ended up not doing a lot of press for any of those things
because they only want to talk about Louis.
I have a lot of regrets about the way I handled things
but it was something I went through that I was not prepared for.
Like, thrown into a war with no battle training.
Nobody was fighting for me, nobody was, like,
"Leave her alone." Nobody was, like,
"You know what, I have to fucking say something, guys.
"I'm a successful man in comedy, this shit's true."
Even some women comics were, like,
"That's just Louis, he does that, it's funny."
So, I just, pfft, you know.
At one point I just lied and said, "Louis never did anything to me.
"All those stories are made up."
I didn't know what else to do, I needed it to stop.
We're in my home, sadly.
This is my, you know, wall of effects.
We got my Wood Man painting,
that I got at the Six Street Good Will, I enjoy.
The size of the clarinet relative to the rest of his body.
Here is a knife my friend Sarah found in a bush.
That goes there. This is just--
This whole apartment's got big "that goes there energy", you know what I mean?
Where it's, like, you put something,
and then three years later, it's still there.
It's incredibly dispiriting to see, like,
the retention rate of female comedians.
Most female comedians quit, because it's just a series of indignities
that they have to suffer their entire life,
to get less than 50% of what men get.
Just For Laughs quite possibly is the biggest comedy festival in the world.
They contacted me.
They were looking for somebody to write about the festival.
I knew someone who was an editor at Gawker.
I asked them if that would be fine,
if I went there on their behalf.
I knew that I wanted to write about the Louis stuff,
because I had seen people ignore it.
I knew everybody else knew about it,
and the fact that he was the biggest motherfucker in the game at the time,
people were unwilling to do anything to shame him publicly,
for what he had been doing for, like, 20 years at that fucking point.
Around the time that I went there, the Bill Cosby thing,
basically, it was undeniable that he had committed miscellaneous sex crimes.
And so I thought that I would just ask people,
that were going down the red carpet,
"How do you feel about the Cosby accusations?"
And they'd say, you know,
"I don't think they're accusations, I think it's true."
And then I would go, "Well how do you feel about the Louis accusations?"
And people that I know knew, because I know, would be, like,
"Oh, I don't know what you're talking about?
"Louis did what? What?"
"Hey, I don't know, I don't know."
Because, again, at the time he was the biggest comedian in the world.
You can't say shit about him because he's the one putting asses into seats.
I would say I asked it to maybe about, like, four or five people
before the COO, I believe now
he's the head of the Just For Laughs organization,
because the former one was ousted for being a sex pest.
He approached me and basically, like,
red in the face, started yelling at me that he had heard what I was doing,
what I was asking, and I could ask those sort of questions on my own turf,
but this was their turf and Louis was a friend of the Just For Laughs organization.
And so I start, sort of, tearing up
because, at the end of the day,
I'm really a comedian and I just got yelled at
by one of the heads of the biggest comedy festival in the world,
and threatened, basically,
for just simply asking a fucking question.
I wanted to ask you about the last interview on your show,
which I think was Louis C.K.
Yeah.
So from my memory, I think that was after some of the rumors
about Louis C.K.'s alleged harassment of female comedians
-had started to come out. -Whoa.
-it was just a thing circulating on the internet. -Wait, what?
I think this was after Jen Kirkman, for example, had talked about, like,
her knowledge of Louis C.K.'s alleged harassment of female comedians.
-At least people interpreted it that way. -Yeah.
There was an article on Gawker, I believe, about it,
and I just wanted to know, I mean, if this is the first you're hearing of it
maybe I already got my answer.
That there really wasn't a discussion about this, on the show, but...
So, wait, wait, wait, I'm a little lost.
So the internet said Louis harassed women?
So there was first a Gawker article,
and then there was a couple of Tweets by people,
-and I know this is all internet stuff. -So, pretty authoritative.
-I know that this is how-- -You know who you're talking to, right?
No, I totally get that and it's a fair point
that like, internet rumors are not, you know, court cases or anything.
I just wanted to know if there was any sort of discussion
about that on the show, if that was a thing on your radar?
No, uh, he's...
I-I-I didn't see the... Tweets.
Louis was directly asked about these rumors in 2016,
in an interview with Vulture, and so first he said,
"That's nothing to me, that's not real."
To say, "that's not real", it's almost, like,
denying the validity, or personhood, or standing of the person
who's even brought up that concern in the first place.
And then later on he says, "You can't expect every single person to like you,
"or have a positive opinion of you, and so I'm just going to focus on the work
"and not on my life."
Before 2017, he started moving into a role of more of a producer,
in addition to being a creator in his own right.
I'm grateful to Louis for telling John Langraf that I was a funny lady,
to do a show from a lady's perspective.
He used his power and sway in the business to get Better Things made,
which is Pamela Adlon's show.
In a fascinating way,
it's kind of Louis' mirror image as a show.
It's, like, the perspective of a divorced woman, as opposed to a divorced man.
Good evening, hello.
I have cancer, how are you?
He was there when Tig Notaro did the legendary set
where she came out and she says, "I have cancer."
He was, like, "Let me put it out."
He had a big platform,
so, that was a way to get a lot of attention to this thing.
Louis watched your performance and Tweeted, "It's the greatest stand up
"I've seen." That he has seen in his 27 year career,
what you did that night.
-Wow. -Absolutely incredible performance.
Thanks.
And then, after that, Louis C.K. was an executive producer
on One Mississippi, which is the Amazon show that Tig made,
based on the events that she described in that stand up set.
We're making an animated show now with Albert Brookes.
We make Pamela Adlon's show, Better Things,
Zach Galifianakis' show, Baskets, that's a big hit.
And Tig Notaro's show on Amazon.
So we make a lot of shows.
You say, well, Louis's not a studio head, but isn't he?
He's a comedy head of his comedy community.
That's a lot of power, 'cause he can put friends on the show,
he can not put friends on the show.
People are scared that they want to be on his side, for work.
My friend, Tig Notaro, I was over her house,
and we were talking, and she's, like,
telling me a story about Louis,
and then she was like, "Oh, by the way, have you, like,
"heard stuff about him? Like, I've heard stuff."
When we were moving towards doing the pilot
is when I saw sides of him that I hadn't seen,
and I shared that with other people,
and that's when I started hearing stories about the behavior.
I had been asked, in the press, what I thought
and I said he should handle it.
Hey, I'm just finishing up an email, come on in.
Oh, could you close the door, please?
-Oh yeah, sure. -Thanks.
Um...
I mean, I...
-I definitely want to get out of here. -Yeah, right?
She did an episode, on her show, One Mississippi,
where an executive masturbates in front of a woman.
People would ask her about that episode
and that's when people started to put the pieces together.
Even while these rumors are circulating and even building,
because there's more online attention,
he's continuing to build his career.
He even had this movie come to the Toronto Film Festival,
which seemed to go right up to the line of addressing some of these same situations.
Please welcome Louis fucking C.K.
I was there as a Hollywood awards season reporter
and Louis was premiering this film.
There was a lot of buzz about it.
You know, he was a beloved character.
-Hi, Daddy. -Hi.
Hey, China.
It starts with this teenage girl walking around
in almost next to nothing, and that's his daughter,
and she ends up being seduced by a 60-something-year-old man.
And then there are characters in the movie pretending to masturbate.
Oh, God.
I emerged from that screening
with my jaw on the ground.
I couldn't believe the movie,
given it almost seemed like a... a defiance, for him to write these scenes in.
I had a sit down with him and asked him, "Why did you do this?
"What was the purpose?" And he actually said,
"Oh, it means nothing, it's just coincidental.
"There're scenes in the movie, a character's pretending to masturbate,
"while these are the huge rumors circulating about me."
And with an absolute straight face.
We were sitting right across from each other,
at a not very large cafe table having this conversation.
You like looking at young girls?
Sure, who doesn't?
I mean if you had a choice between looking at a pretty girl your age,
or a retired bus driver, who would you choose?
I Love You Daddy
is almost explicitly about a Woody Allen type figure.
It's essentially a movie about how to deal with a problematic artist,
by someone many would now consider to be a problematic artist.
You know, you're really kind of close to
some things within the entertainment industry.
Tell us a little bit about, you know, why you wanted to tell this story.
You know, it just, um...
I guess I like to go up to electric fences and pee on 'em and shit on 'em.
I just...
Out of the blue, I get this email asking,
"Hey, do you want to see a screening of I Love You Daddy?"
And I was, like, you know what, I do.
It was very odd to receive this invitation.
After I saw that movie, and as I was driving home,
I just started crying, 'cause I thought he got away with it.
Not only did he fucking get away with it, he's, like,
rubbing it in all of our faces.
No one's ever gonna fucking care about this.
I just felt, like, as bad, perhaps even worse, than I felt at Just For Laughs
because so much more time had passed after that.
In 2015, I attended the Just For Laughs Festival as a journalist
writing on behalf of Gawker.
A profoundly flawed organization I miss desperately.
The organizers of the festival did not know the purpose of my presence
was a desire to get to the bottom
of Louis CK's numerous accusations of sexual impropriety.
The article where I talked about what had happened to me at JFL,
I just published on my own personal website
because I didn't think anyone would want to run it,
And then it ended up, like, getting hard traction online, like, people were sharing it.
And so Vice re-ran it.
I mean, I just got infinite fucking just hate from, you know,
fans of him saying that I was a liar,
that I was jealous, that I wasn't funny,
that he should sue me for libel, ETC., ETC., ETC., ETC., ETC.
I haven't, like, uploaded a video of myself doing comedy
really since this shit happened,
just because it was such a tidal wave of hatred
for these people violently disturbed by me
even suggesting that their king of comedy could've done something improprietous.
The argument is always, well, you know,
comedy is a meritocracy, just like the entire entertainment industry,
and you're just bitter because you're not as talented as my king,
you know what I mean?
There I stood alone, in the rain, waiting for a man who never emerged.
"I think what you're doing is so brave",
a friend told me, at the time.
"I'm so scared", I replied. "I still am."
And just a little lesson in there for you guys, do not call a woman crazy,
unless you want to see a woman go fucking crazy, OK?
Just don't. Just save yourselves.
If you wanna see-- If you want to tell a woman she's crazy,
just call her calm, it'll just throw us off
and the whole thing's dissipated.
Just go, "Hey, you're being really calm right now."
"Oh, thank you, a psychic told me I was calm once, thanks."
"What were we fighting about, I don't even know?"
I was interviewed by the Village Voice,
and it was this nice woman who was, like,
"So you've said all these conflicting things about Louis."
And I was, like, Louis is my friend and I believe him,
and if these women come forward, I will believe them,
but they haven't, so what do you want me to say?
And then New York Times calls me and they're, like,
"We're doing an article about Louis,
"and it's coming out next week."
I'm, like, "Oh good!"
Listen up, creeps of Hollywood,
we know who you are.
Weinstein isn't the only cool democrat lurking in Film Festival hotels,
waiting to play a jolly masturbation prank.
Women talk to each other, and we talk to journalists, and we talk to lawyers.
It's 2017, we don't have to put up with this shit.
We are coming for you.
This was a real moment in time.
Our phones were ringing off the hook,
and it felt like the dam was ready to burst.
And that was certainly true with the Louis C.K. story,
because there were these rumors but nobody knew the truth.
It felt like something we had to cover
because he's this very prominent comedian
blotted by some as this feminist.
If he's done this stuff and he's denied it...
...we just thought, "Well, let's see how much of a story there is there." You know?
The story that had become an unverified legend
in comedy circles took place in 2002.
Dana Goodman and Julia Wolov
are comedians from Chicago, they were up and coming.
They had a kind of, like, raucous, raunchy sort of humor.
And they got a spot at the Aspen Comedy Festival, which is a big deal.
After their show, they encountered Louis
and he asked them to come hang out,
have a drink with him in his hotel room.
They didn't think anything of it,
beyond, "Yeah, this guy wants to hang."
Aspen's a small town.
So, you know, everybody kind of, like,
gathers in hotel bars, hotel spaces,
because there's not many other places to go after the clubs close.
So when they got back to his hotel room,
they were still in their coats and hats and just bundled up.
And he said to them, "Can I take my penis out?"
They were, like, "What? No."
You know, they didn't consent, they just didn't know--
They thought it was a joke, and laughed it off.
But then he continued and he just got totally naked
and started masturbating in front of them.
They described themselves as being just, like,
frozen in that moment and not knowing what to do.
And then, when he was finished, they fled the room,
and he called after them, "Which one is Dana and which one is Julia?"
They told a lot of people what happened,
they couldn't believe that it had happened.
Dave Becky was Louis' manager at the time.
Word got back to him about what happened to them.
Their manager had a conversation with Dave Becky
and Dana and Julia's perception of that conversation
was that they were told to keep quiet.
They were able to get some work when they first moved to LA,
but overall, they didn't have the kind of career
that you might have envisioned.
Comedy writers who had such a hit following in Chicago and Aspen.
They didn't know if they could pitch themselves to shows,
or projects that Dave Becky was attached to,
which ended up being a lot of shows and projects
'cause he ended up being kind of a king maker in the comedy world.
If you get a reputation of somebody who's like
the squeaky wheel in this world, that cuts off your career at its knees.
We got the sense that there were gonna be other women.
We just sort of divvied up, you take this period of his career,
you take this, and we just started making calls.
It's a very tricky thing we're building.
You have a couple of people who are willing to go on the record
and talk about it, and then you approach someone else
and they say, "Well, who else have you talked to?"
And you can't say, but you can say something like,
"We have other women willing to go on the record."
You know, imagine how exposing that is?
You're just living your life.
Do you want to go in the New York Times
and talk about how Louis C.K. masturbated in front of you?
New York Times calls me and they're like,
"Do you want to be in it?"
I said "no", only because I thought
all the victims in the article were more physical.
That he actually jerked off in front of everyone, and I was like,
Then I'm gonna get harassed for, "Why is she in this article?
"He only said something." So I was just like,
"Please, please leave me alone, I cannot be in this."
So I declined.
We eventually found two other women willing to go on the record,
and a fifth who didn't want to.
As we talked to people, it became really clear
that there was a pattern of behavior.
I think there was some confusion in the early part
of this kind of reporting, where you thought, "Is Louis just a bad flirt?"
Probably. But that's not what this was.
You know, one of the things that helped frame my thinking around it
as I was writing it, was just, what if you worked in a bank?
And you were, like, a regional manager,
and you were in another office for a conference,
and another regional manager came up and said,
"Can I jerk off in front of you?"
"What?"
Like, that would be horrifying to you
as a professional in that context.
As a last step, you go to the subject of the story and you say,
"These are the allegations we have against you. What can you respond?"
"For Louis, one of the incidents
"of sexual misconduct involves two comedians,
"Dana Min Goodman and Julia Wolov,
"who told us that you invited them back to your hotel room,
"asked if you could take out your penis, then take off your clothes
"and masturbated in front of them.
"How do you respond to this?
"Rebecca Cory told us that in 2005,
"while she was appearing in a TV pilot with you,
"you asked if you could masturbate in front of her.
"How do you respond?
"Abby Schachner said that in a 2003 phone conversation
"she could clearly hear you masturbating as the two of you spoke.
"How do you respond?
"At the Chris Rock show, a female co-worker
"said that you masturbated in front of her in your office on a work day,
"while colleagues were on the other side of the door.
"How do you respond?
"The women we spoke to say that you have put them in an untenable situation,
"that they felt used by someone they saw as a gifted comic
"and a major figure in their field.
"Tig Notaro suspects that you released her album to shore up your reputation
"and distract from rumors about these incidents.
"What is your response to that?"
And we never got a reply.
We then heard that he canceled his appearance on Colbert...
...and that the movie's premiere was canceled.
I knew some of the names, but not all.
The fact that this is in print
solidifies something.
It makes it part of the public record.
You can't say you don't know anymore.
For his entire career, he kept it quiet.
How many rumors were there about him?
He got caught, the man got caught.
What's nearly unique about the Louis C.K. story
is that there is no factual dispute at the heart of this story.
About a day after it was published,
he put out a statement that said,
"These stories are true."
He didn't use the word "sorry",
but he wrote a whole essay
explaining that he knew he did something wrong.
He talked a lot about his own power
and how he abused the power that he had.
Good apologies,
you acknowledge in the apology
what you're actually apologizing for.
Like, what're you truly saying you're sorry you have done?
I think the short statement that he offered, did some version of that.
But, I mean, it's a process atonement, right?
I didn't know.
Right.
-What if I did? -OK.
That's the thing that bothers me.
What if I did?
What if I had known one of the women
who was making the accusations, and I don't.
I know they're in the comedy world, but I had not heard of them.
But let's say I did.
And one of them came to me and said,
"Ten years ago," or whatever, "Louis did this."
What would you have done?
Would I still have worked with him?
Would I still greet him, like, that's the part.
You can't answer that question.
I can't honestly answer, and that makes me feel shitty.
When the actual story broke,
and it was not just that story, but, like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,
I was like, well, the fact that I thought it wasn't my problem
is the problem.
That's exactly the problem, is that everybody was treating this
like it wasn't their problem.
And it takes, like, years of investigative journalism
and the courage of dozens of women to step forward,
at the risk of their own sanity, health, safety and careers,
in order to make it not a problem anymore.
Well, shit. Like, that is my problem.
They tried to kill Louis C.K.
They won't stop 'til that man is dead.
They're trying to kill Louis C.K., you know?
Who would have thought in 2018 I would be the most powerful Louis in comedy?
What did Louis C.K. really do? What did he do?
He jerked off in front of a few women, right?
Who hasn't?
For some of the women in the Louis story,
the comedy community did not go to bat for them in the way that they might have hoped.
I mean, there's just-- There's litany of things that are way worse
than whacking off in front of people.
which is not cool either, of course.
If we're gonna grade it on a scale of this,
to drugging and raping 60 women,
I guess if we must measure things that way, yes, this is less bad.
I don't know.
If nothing else, if you can find no compassion for him,
which I think you should, think about how his daughters,
who hear all of this stuff, feel.
Why don't you leave him alone for them, if you're so women empowering.
People saying, "What's the big deal?
"You were masturbated in front of.
"Why didn't you just leave the hotel room?"
Like, people questioning their experience over and over and saying,
"You're making a mountain out of a molehill."
If you don't run out the room
and go, "Excuse me, you don't talk to me that--
"You don't do that to me, excuse me." And leave.
But you stayed around 'cause you're like,
"Well, I thought maybe he was gonna give me a writing job."
Well, you ain't nothing but a ho.
If something horrible has happened to you,
why should it continue to hurt you when you bring it to light?
You know?
That to me is kind of the more interesting question.
and almost the more important one.
One lady said, "Louis C.K. masturbating in front of me...
"...ruined my comedy dreams." Word.
I got a phone call, it was the beginning of the new year.
Apparently Dave Chappelle came out with a special
and he brought up the Louis stuff.
People were watching the special,
and then they know that he's talking about me.
Louis C.K. was masturbating while I was on the phone with him.
Bitch, you don't know how to hang up the phone?
I became the joke.
To a certain extent, I felt like he wasn't talking about me,
'cause he got it wrong, like, I didn't say what he thought I said.
I think he took the spin out of Judd Apatow,
the dream killer tweet, and that's what he's took from.
And then I think later on,
became a Martin Luther King, having a dream,
you know, like, don't have a dream.
Well then I dare say, madam...
...you may have never had a dream.
Come on, man, that's a brittle spirit.
That is a brittle ass spirit.
That shit is too much, this is a grown-ass woman.
I don't know, I think initially I was pissed,
because, I mean, I remember when he was offered $50 million or whatever
and he didn't take-- You know?
And people had thoughts about that
and he lost his mind there for whatever reason,
I felt empathy towards him for that.
Because I thought if you're a creative person and you're giving that,
that would be very difficult.
But years later, Dave can say it's completely something different.
I just don't think he understands that
things are situational, it's not black and white.
"Hello, police? Yes, I am on the other line with comedian Louis C.K.,
"and I think that he is masturbating while I'm on the phone."
You know what the police are gonna say in Atlanta?
"Well, what are you guys talking about?"
It does bother me that, like, I'm not gonna live this down.
Like, this is gonna be, like, in my fucking obituary.
And it bothers me that this is, like,
the bigger, you know-- This is like my thing,
I haven't, like, surpassed this. You know?
I don't know what else will be mentioned, you know?
Besides, it's like...
Hey, Giant?
What? Come here.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm an artist.
Do you know I love children's poems,
And I always wanted to write, create for children.
And for a while, I was writing young adult books.
I think creating is part of my nature,
I think performing is definitely more of a challenge.
Let's see here, so...
Bob, I'm looking for-- They want to see embarrassing things,
to see that I was-- To validate me that I was once...
They want-- I don't know what they want.
They want me to find-- I hosted a children's show at one point in time.
Water is all around you.
You drink it, you swim in it, and if you had to live without it,
you'd be like a fish out of...
...well that is today's topic on Up and Running.
Let's see, I think it might be in here.
Yes. This is a bunch of stuff.
Ah, sorry.
Yeah, so there's this stuff.
Oh, my first thing I ever did, a body piece.
That was in college.
4, 16, '93.
So I think I always loved comedy.
Just needing to express myself.
After school, I went to Chicago,
because I saw a book about improvising,
and I started studying in Chicago.
The Second City is like a comedic institution,
it's where all these wonderful people have come from, you know?
Gilda Radner, Joan Rivers, Tina, Amy Poehler.
I think I auditioned for it and I didn't get it and then I auditioned for it,
and I rolled around like a meat ball and I got it.
I performed for two years with Second City.
I think it was Adam McKay or someone I admired, said,
"Don't lose your voice." And I got really scared.
I said, "What's my voice? What's my voice?"
I always thought of myself as more of a writer,
and creator, more than a performer.
From the ABC Broadcast Center in New York,
it's the Pepsi Stuff Dana Carvey Show.
-Can I help you? -Uh, two tickets for Dead Man's Highway.
-Yeah, two! Two tickets! -$60.
The first time I found out about the writing gig
for the Dana Carvey Show,
was via my boyfriend at the time, Jon.
And he told me about, that there was a thing,
that they're looking for writers.
I wrote up a little packet in my closet,
and I sent it to Brillstein-Grey.
My boyfriend, he went for an interview
with Robert Smigel,
and my stuff was on the top of his desk.
And that was just, kind of, exciting enough.
But then, a few days later, I got a phone call from Louis C.K.,
Louis, to, um, submit more writing.
I don't hear back, but Jon gets the job.
And then, I went to visit, and I know, one day,
we ate with Louis and his wife at the time.
And then, I ran into him for, like, a UCB thing,
they were doing something, and I was helping them.
And he seemed happy to see me, you know?
Then remembered something that I sent
in that second writing sample that he liked.
So, it was always nice when someone comment--
You know, they remember that thing.
Well, I moved to California.
Then, I ran into him again, the end of 2002,
or the beginning of 2003.
And he gave me his information
and where he was working, or his phone number,
to get in contact with him, or whatnot.
But I guess I created the show, because it was kind of
who I was afraid I was gonna be,
and who I think I am.
I called him up, 'cause I wanted him
to come to this show, 'cause, hey,
I'd just created my first solo show since I'd been out here,
and this is something I do,
and why not show what I've been working on?
And, uh, he started telling me,
very early on, um... It veered very quickly,
I didn't even get to say why I was calling, or whatever.
And then, he started talking about... my picture,
that he remembered that, you know,
Jon had it when he worked on the show,
and that, some of the things I had made Jon,
and he was commenting, and then it just started...
It was beginning to turn.
Where, he was talking about...
..what turns him on,
but it came in through how cute I was.
It just started getting into fantasy.
It just started getting inappropriate.
Yet, I thought I was being hazed, and I felt like,
at one point, he turned his blinds, I don't even know why,
there was something that happened, 'cause I'm only hearing.
Are you supposed to say, "Are you masturb--"
-That's a weird thing to say to someone you don't know. -I didn't say that.
If someone says, "Can I masturbate in front of you..."
-Well, he didn't ask me! -No, I know.
-He didn't ask me, he just started doing it. -Yeah.
But, when I brought up the show, I remember,
he kind of quickly skedaddled,
like, "Yeah, I'll see, really busy."
And I said... And this was what bothered me the most,
is that I said, "This isn't gonna be the last time we talk, is it?"
That was the part that felt extremely vulnerable to me,
that it just sounds weird, it seemed weird, even then.
It's like... I just felt duped.
When I got off the phone, I called up my friend, Stu.
He brought up Dana and Julia and I didn't know,
and I said, "Why didn't you tell me?"
And he thought I-- he thought I knew.
And we still fight about it sometimes.
When the article came out, I said,
"Why didn't you tell me?" If I would've known,
I wouldn't have been in that sit-- I would've known
that I was, you know, being duped.
It was one of those times...
...you know, where just-- where things in life happen,
and various things happen in kind of a sequential order,
that just, kind of, knock at your worth.
I moved back to Chicago for a short time, after that.
My dad had just died, I was a bit broken.
So, I hid for a couple years.
I'm a hider. I'm a hider.
So, I think it was, like, 2009,
I got a Facebook message from Louis...
...saying, "I think, you know, the last time we talked,
it was weird."
I said, "Yes, it was weird."
And then, am I gonna be around,
and I met him at Canter's.
The first thing I said is, "Do you have a problem?"
'Cause, you know, when I got off the phone,
I learned about two other people.
I said, "Do you have a problem?"
And he said, "No, no," and he-- he told me
his sob story about, you know,
what happened to him at Aspen.
Then, he told me his perspective, which was, you know,
he felt like everybody made fun of him,
whatever, he made himself the victim in that dynamic.
Although, when I left him that day, I said,
"Your children will always love you."
I said, "No matter what, you know, happens,
"your children will always love you."
'Cause my dad didn't do the most wonderful things,
and, like, I still love him.
So, like...
...that's why, you know, people do--
People don't always follow, you know,
they don't always follow the path of the norm.
But, you know, it doesn't justify hurting people,
or making people, you know...
You know.
I was at Wholefoods, I picked up an eggplant,
and this dude looked at me, and did me like this...
I was like,
"I do not expect that shit at Wholefoods."
That is some Trader Joe's shit.
I did not pay $13 for some grapes
to get sexually assaulted, asshole.
I'm at the Cellar one day, and someone starts talking to me,
and he said, "Hey, I wanted to ask you about the Louis thing."
It was very matter of fact, like,
"Do you think he's gonna come back?"
"Yeah, of course I do."
My reality is, usually,
white men get away with the stuff that they do,
'cause if they didn't, we wouldn't be
where we are today, right?
And that-- that was appalling to some people.
And I'm like, "Well, what world do you live in?
"Do you think they're gonna put him on a boat,
"and send him to an island and stone him?
"Like, what the hell do you--
"What society have you been living in?
"Why am I the only one that is,
"you know, subject to reality?
"Like, you know he's coming back, right?"
Louis's quiet period lasted about nine months,
and then he suddenly made an unannounced drop-in
at the Comedy Cellar.
The Cellar is like this locus of the comedy world in Manhattan.
It's the place where you can see an up-and-coming act,
and Chris Rock on the same night.
It's a comedians hang-out.
People talk about making it at the Cellar,
like, if you get past the booker,
that is considered the gold standard
of stand-up comedy.
I knew, at some point, I'm gonna have a predicament,
'cause I just knew he would wanna come back,
and it would be here that he'd wanna come back.
And then, the-- you know, the shit hit the fan.
It was-- it was nuts.
"Uncomfortable,"
"Disgusting," and "Frustrating."
That's how two women in attendance described
the atmosphere during Louis C.K.'s surprise stand-up comedy set.
One audience member called the club
-to object to the surprise set. -When, if ever,
is it appropriate for people accused of sexual misconduct
-to try and make a comeback? -A social media firestorm...
He could've waited two years, he still would've been OK.
Donate to the Me Too movement.
Go spend your time with women that have been crime victims.
Then, when somebody like Louis C.K. comes out,
he's changing the rules, he's testing the waters,
and he's saying, "I'm ready to come back."
Everybody I know, knows people...
...who've done things they should be ashamed of.
Everybody. Normally, in a moral world,
we forgive the people who apologize,
and admit that they did something wrong.
What's the criteria people have to meet
-to go on your stage? -No, I don't have a standard.
Right now, it's a case-by-case basis,
and I can't imagine every situation
that might come before me.
I don't mind living and dying
based on what the audience feels.
But, the people who are saying
that Louis shall not work,
they need to be questioned more closely,
-as to where they draw the line. -Mm-hm.
What's their world view? What are their standards?
How much evidence do they think is enough?
How long is enough? How long should somebody go without working?
What should they do when they're not working?
Should they become wards of the state?
Can they do some jobs, but not other jobs?
Is it OK for Walmart to hire Louis?
Or is he so radioactive that nobody shall hire him?
These are the tough questions.
These decisions have meaning, whether we like it or not,
whether you like it or not, the decision to have Louis C.K. on stage,
it has meaning.
And how much you, and the rest of us,
have to come to terms with that.
You can feel whatever you want about these things,
but the idea that you have the right
to impose on a private business,
who's employing a free person...
...to perform in front of people who want to see him,
in a free country,
that you feel that this is your business...
I think that's very, very dangerous.
And that is where I was really drawing my line.
People were tweeting me,
demanding that I didn't perform at the Cellar,
because Louis was performing there.
I was like, "How, um, awesome,
"for you to be able to make me the bad guy,
"and how often does that happen,
"when you try to make women
"responsible for the behaviors of men?"
Why can't we just let Louis go back to...
...writing jokes about how men are the gravest threat
to the safety of women.
But, he doesn't just write jokes,
he walks the walk!
And I think that is to be commended.
He's a performance artist.
So, he steps back, for nine months,
or whatever it was, and people are saying,
"That's not long enough. You didn't do anything."
Like, you gotta...
So, what-- what should someone do?
I wrote a tweet thread. It started by me going,
"I know I'll take some heat for this,
"but I feel this is a conversation that needs to happen.
"There's gonna be other men who experience these problems,
"and what is the path forward for them?
"Louis is right now on the vanguard of this,
"and I'm--" I think I said,
"I'm excited to see how he does it."
The pushback that I got from that immediately,
was overwhelming.
And I felt horrible.
I was like, "I'm not defending Louis's actions.
"I'm having, in public. a conversation
"that I feel like men are having in private, and women,
"are having in private, all over this country."
And saying, "How do-- How do we deal with this?
"How do we deal with this?
"How do we welcome people back,
"or not welcome people back?"
I apologized, and what I apologized for,
was not acknowledging the pain around Louis
is real for people.
And there's obviously hypocrisy coming from Louis, himself.
Like, I lost so much fucking money...
..in a day. In one day, I lost,
I'm not gonna tell you how much, but it was millions of dollars.
It was $35M, I don't give a fuck, fuck it.
-I'll tell you I lost $35M.
You don't tell people you have $35M,
but you can tell 'em you lost $35M,
because that shit is hilarious!
That's fucking funny.
He started to do more touring,
and they started to sell out.
I just love comedy. I saw Louis C.K.
-in Toronto last week. -Oh, yeah!
I heard about that, it came out of nowhere, how was that?
There were protestors, it was fucking nuts.
-Seriously? -Yeah, fuck all that.
He talked about, uh, the jerking off thing
-for, like, 30 minutes, it was hilarious. -Don't spoil it,
'cause I really wanna see when it's finished.
It was really funny, though. He's probably gonna
-release, like, an hour set. -Pretty soon.
-It's gonna be the biggest comeback. -Super dope.
How are you? How was your last couple of years?
How was...
How was 2018 and '19 for you guys?
Anybody else get in global amounts of trouble?
Anybody else...
I was, sort of, seduced into thinking that,
he could take a thing that he knew as an artist
he was doing as a person, and use that...
...in the art, in some way,
to create his own reckoning with his behavior.
You wanna talk about it? Should we talk about it?
Yeah, alright. Alright.
I don't mind-- I don't mind talking about it.
If you ever ask somebody...
..."May I jerk off in front of you?"
And they say, "Yes."
Just say, "Are you sure?"
That's the first part.
And then if they say yes, just don't fucking do it.
Just-- just don't do it.
Wait, what?
It was different than what his apology was.
He framed it as a kink.
You can't be the smart-guy comic
and be this stupid, you don't get both.
You all have your thing.
I don't know what your thing is.
You're so fucking lucky that I don't know
what your thing is.
'Cause everybody knows my thing.
Everybody knows my fucking thing, now.
Obama knows my thing, do you understand...
...how that feels?
He never talked about the repercussions
for the women, but he talked a lot
about the repercussions for himself.
"Now, the whole world knows
"my weird sexual hang-up."
I like jerking off, I don't like being alone,
that's all I can tell ya', alright?
I get lonely. "Where is everyone?"
It's just sad, I-- I like company.
I like to share, I'm good at it, too.
If you're good at juggling, you wouldn't do it alone in the dark,
you would gather folks and amaze them.
Woo!
Anyway, that's all I'm gonna say about that shit.
I think it was like an "Emperor has no clothes," sort of situation.
He came back, he learned nothing.
He didn't say anything profound about the experience.
There is this defensiveness around
and, in some cases, to it now, right?
What he will not be addressing.
I don't know if that's his best mode.
It's the opposite of what made him famous,
and what made him a great comedian.
Louis had a whole bit about
how the greatest threat to women is men, you know?
Louis could still do that bit and say,
"And I was one of those guys...
"...and let me talk about it."
And it feels like such a missed opportunity
that he didn't do it.
For the times he was willing to tell us
everything about who he was, and about his foibles,
there was still this one part of himself
that he was holding back, and, you know,
that goes back to the discussion of,
"Is a comedian just a joke teller,
"or are they a truth teller?"
Are the jokes supposed to be the truth,
or are the jokes just jokes?
He called his next special, "Sorry."
It's just such a big middle finger, you know?
And it's like, who are you really
giving that middle finger to?
You're pissed at all the people who got mad at you
for jerking off in front of people? Like, why?
Why are you mad at them?
Michael Jackson. Wonderful music.
Blessed us with wonderful music,
did some other things, too.
What-- Look, what's worse? A pedophile who makes beautiful music,
or one that doesn't?
This is the choices.
"No pedophiles" is not on the menu.
We simultaneously want too much of our artists,
but they also want too much from us,
in some ways.
They want to be thought of only
as these people who make things, even though,
the thing they make is entirely predicated on what people they are.
What kind of person they are.
"Sorry" was like...
You just see a man that's, like, zero fucks given.
Do you feel like... Do you feel like...
...because of what you've endured,
you transcended giving a fuck?
This is the way I look at my life before,
was that I just didn't think there was danger in the world, somehow.
So, now I do, and that's changed me a little bit.
So, that's the opposite of "no fucks given," in a sense,
but that's more about the way I live my life,
and the way I plan my life, now, but on stage,
that's holy, that's a holy place for me.
And I do think I got that back.
I love that you've made this return,
and then, you know, you experienced a bunch of resistance,
but now it's kind of gone, you know?
-Yeah, just, like, just keep doing it. -Yeah, and now,
you're-- you're doing shit that's really being recognized.
-Like, you won a fucking Emmy. -Well, a GRAMMY.
-I won a GRAMMY since I came back. -A GRAMMY, rather.
-It's nice! -That's amazing!
Did the GRAMMYs snub the cancel culture club?
It's ironic that the term "Cancel culture,"
which is reductive and stupid and misused,
is applied to a lot of people who have flourishing careers.
Like, these people are, like, they're all fine.
Louis won the GRAMMY for best comedy album,
and that album was the album he did where he's like,
"I asked everyone's consent and they said, 'yes'," and I was like,
"What are the fucking odds?" You know?
I believe he won the GRAMMY award,
because it's a secret ballot.
There is no way that the people who voted for him
to win that GRAMMY would've done so,
if it was gonna be reported in the papers,
their names, as having voted for Louis C.K.
How good did that GRAMMY feel?
It was nice! When I used to win awards,
I just found it awkward, I didn't really care about it,
-but this one was-- it was very nice. -I bet!
Didn't Dave Chappelle win awards for calling one of Louis C.K. accusers
a "brittle-ass spirit?"
Making fun of the victims is still...
...good for business.
Thank you for coming tonight
to the world premiere of Fourth of July.
Enjoy the movie, hang out for the talk afterwards,
I hope you like it, thank you very much for coming.
Goodnight!
I think it is somewhat unprecedented
just how much he has been able to restore
elements of his pre-2017 success.
I don't think he was intentionally trying to cancel-proof himself
when he was distributing his own stand-up specials,
or self-financing his own TV series,
but it's been fascinating to watch the culture,
kind of, catch up with that.
Louis C.K., go get everything he has.
LouisCK.com. Go to my website,
otherwise I can't do this anymore.
There's no other stream of income,
except my own industry.
You know, Louis is not on the Tonight Show,
he's not on TV and Netflix.
He created his own thing outside of the business.
The people who love Louis C.K. are still there.
I have never asked anyone to denounce him,
say he shouldn't work, I've just said,
when you see women that are hurting and feel like they're crazy,
because everyone's letting all these predators back,
while some people never had a chance,
it really hurts, especially...
...in this culture, where it just seems like nobody cares.
Ladies and gentlemen, Louis C.K.
For all the fans he's lost,
he's able to gain these new ones who don't care.
Maybe, they never cared.
But, now they see him as someone
who's waving the banner for people who don't care.
You're doing Madison Square Garden in the round.
Yeah, so I, uh-- so, I'm doing it on January 28th,
and I'm going to, uh, livestream it on my website.
It's also expensive, it's an expensive place.
-Renting it is about 400,000? -Something like that, yeah, I forget.
-To just rent it. -Yeah, it's astronomical.
They know they got you, 'cause you wanna play the Garden.
I mean, he's back, you know,
and, like, we all make mistakes.
You know what, I don't mind, whatever, you know?
I'm more or less looking more to give someone a second chance.
I feel kinda mad at him, 'cause I think it took away
-from what he could have accomplished... -Yeah.
...as far as his television shows,
he had movies that were coming out,
where could've been iconic.
I'm glad he came back, just as he should have.
There's no reason why he should've stayed quiet,
why he should've just disappeared forever.
I'm very glad you're here. I'm really grateful.
I know that, uh, it's not easy being my fan, these days.
Uh...
I know that, uh, all of you have one person
who doesn't know you're here.
There is that one person.
You know, I think everybody lives with a certain amount of hypocrisy,
and this is the amount that I've allocated for myself.
We all have to draw a line. This is one of my favorite things
that John Oliver says. People will often say,
"Where do you draw the line?" Can't listen to R. Kelly,
we can't do that, where do you draw the line?
Somewhere. You draw it somewhere.
You have to draw it somewhere, like, you can't have no line.
And maybe, tomorrow,
I will get a new piece of information.
And I will have to erase that line,
and I will have to draw it somewhere else.
The sort of ability to speculate about
what all could have happened to the many, many, many,
many people who have suffered at the hands of these men,
is long, and the longer you think about it,
the harder it is to-- to really care
what art these men make.
Because there's a bunch of artists who didn't get to do anything
as a result of, either, the incident having happened,
and they've got a lot of PTSD over it,
or they were literally not hired,
because they were prevented from getting jobs.
Cancel culture, for me, was...
It was all a ruse, you know, like,
homophobia, transphobia, racism, misogyny,
none of it went away, it's still here today, right?
People are making money, money, money, right now,
doing it, so what's the cancel culture?
Tell me what happened.
Since I gave up on the entertainment industry,
I pretty much only make money selling garbage on eBay.
Um, and by garbage, I mean, like, shit people don't want.
If you wanna make money on eBay,
and you wanna do it fast, spanks.
Because, as long as women
are, you know, capable of self-loathing,
which will be until earth ends,
they're buying spanks left and right,
all day, every fucking day, dude.
It's hard to draw a line, I think.
That's what makes it easy for people to be like,
"Well, I'm not doing anything bad,
"and this person's not doing anything bad."
But then, to kind of, like, stop there.
And I think Meg is someone that's, uh,
so moral, she won't work with anyone.
Meg has so much integrity, she hasn't worked in a year.
But at the end of the day, I don't wanna participate with the sort of people
who are willing to just blindly ignore their morality.
So, that's why I sell shit on eBay for a living,
and occasionally do comedy, when people will let me,
because I refuse to fucking participate in this shit.
This is my quick story about the wonderful time
that the very thoughtful, Louis C.K., asked my consent.
I get emotional thinking about it,
because it was so sweet of him.
When you say anything, as a woman...
...it is the scarlet letter, right? It just becomes
who I am, no matter how hard I try to fight it,
and what I'm told is, "You shouldn't have said anything."
I thought that could just be one part of me,
I do this, I do that, I might tell everyone
if someone showed me their dick, then I do this,
someone else showed me their dick, I might mention it.
I'm a well-rounded person.
And I'm talking about this,
literally almost 20 years later.
Why am I talking about it? I don't fucking know.
I don't want-- I'd literally be happy if I never thought about it again.
Um, but I guess, because culturally,
something hasn't changed, so here I go with my story.
I always put it this way. For women in comedy,
there's always a threat of rain,
so we carry an umbrella everywhere,
and men walk out the door and assume it's gonna be sunny.
We always have to think of something, be aware
that the men that work with us might be
trying to get something out of us.
It just changes things enough, that it taints...
...your experience.
Um, I said "taint," that's why I stopped.
I don't regret doing it.
At least I've gotten to that point.
People were coming forward to let people know
who people are dealing with, and not keep it quiet
and put other people in those situations,
was, for me, why you did it.
But, it's bigger than you imagine.
It's loud, it's hard, and you just have to manage,
after that, however best you can.
After the Louis article came out,
and Chapelle made fun of me,
I thought, "Ooh, I need to start expressing myself."
I need a voice,
and I can't do this with solo shows.
And so, I started doing stand-up in 2018.
And the same stuff that can take you down,
can be the same stuff that's a rise for the next thing.
Wow, can you believe it? It's March 4th!
March 4th!
And Dave, I feel like I would say something if I saw him.
I'd like to say, "I'm the person that you made a comment about.
"I'm the brittle-ass spirit."