Louis CK on Returning to Comedy and His Infamous Leaked Set

The thing I'm excited about is to bring it back to my stupid plug, but the garden show. I haven't been... I used to do it, it was normal to do the garden for me before, which is not a good thing. Like I remember Chris Rock saying to me once after a show at the garden, he's like, this is like a club for you where you try shit out now. Because I did it like five times in a week. I just take the subway, take the C train up, do the garden and leave. Like I don't party after I just do shit out. Right, right, right. That went away and I hadn't been there for a while, but now to me this one show there is like this very exciting thought. Yeah. To just do one. And the set of Prepare For It is not a rock star set. It's pretty gritty. It's pretty... I mean it all kills. It's similar to what I saw at the creek. Yeah, I've been working on it since, so there's a lot of new stuff. But it's the idea of being surrounded by these 18,000 people in this elite arena and saying some of this stuff. But also knowing that I've crafted it, so it's not just reckless. You know what I mean? Right, right, right. I'm really excited about it. 38 years in coming I don't get that excited. But I'm really excited about it. I'm excited for it too. I love that you've made this return and then you experienced a bunch of resistance, but now it's kind of gone. Yeah, just might keep doing it. Just keep doing it. Yeah, and now you're doing shit that's really being recognized. Like you want to fucking Emmy. Yeah, I've got a Grammy. I've got to want to come up with a Grammy since I came back. Yeah, yeah, that was nice. It's amazing. It's nice. And I think you want a Grammy for the special. It's very funny, but I think the next one was... I think Sorry was even better. Thank you, man. I really do. Sorry was amazing. That got nominated for a Grammy, so we'll see what happens. Sorry. I hope it wins. Yeah, we'll see. I'd love it if you won two years in a row. I want to see people get crazy. Like fuck it. You know, whatever. Oh shit. Whatever. I loved it. I got so angry when people were calling out your... that leak set. Yeah, yeah. When people are mad. Because to me it was like, that's what he's always done. This is great stuff. Not only that, you hadn't even stand up in 10 months. I'm like, this is the seeds of a fantastic hour. And you're only seeing like literally the first couple of times he's even said these things aloud in public. I literally was having a conversation with another comedian and came up with the bits and went on stage and did them. So it was the first time I'd done them. And I just got so excited to be back on stage because I had taken a long time off and there was resistance coming back. But I was in a club with my crowd for the first time. And so I was... The only thing I regret is it was reckless because my life was very precarious. Things were tough and things were tough for my kids. So that created a bigger, huge stink bomb than anything else that had even happened. The set did? Yeah, the set was really, really hard. So given how things were, I probably could have made jokes about a couple other things. I don't believe I did anything wrong. You did what you always do? I've always done this. The way it works is I say stuff that is the wrong thing to say. I hear the resistance to it and then I work with it and work with it. It takes a few shows for it to be a safe bit to do. But there's a few audiences that... And that audience actually didn't mind it. But it's not for regular consumption. It's like watching somebody practice piano and going like he sucks. It wasn't supposed to... I think it's really bad that we don't have these barriers anymore. Where there's speech that's for these few people, we're going to have a fun conversation where we're going to get a little crazy. It's not for the whole world to see. Well, what was infuriating to me was people that know that. They know what you're saying. And they went after you. And I was like, you motherfucker. There's people that I won't talk to this day because of that. I was like, I'm not talking to you. Unless you want to make some big public apology or you want to apologize to me and tell me why you did it and what real feelings of insecurity and jealousy. But Tim Dillon put a great post on his page about what's really going on. He put a great post on his Instagram. And that's when I became friends with Tim Dillon. He wrote, you're getting a bunch of people that are mediocre comedians and that are attacking him not really because of what he's saying, but because he's great. And because they hate the fact that he was getting any attention at all and that should be theirs. And now they find some chance to move up in the social structure. That's what it felt like to me. To me, all of that is totally true. And it makes me understand it. In other words, it makes me feel sympathy. It makes me go like, all right, that's what you need to do. That's what you got to do. I would prefer to hang out with somebody who doesn't need to do that. But I get it. I can't be around them because you can do that again. You can do that again. Sure. It's like having a snake in the room. You can have a snake in the room as long as you put the lights on. Aside from my shit, the thing that was a drag to me about comedy in the last few years was people who, any comedian who's out in the world saying that comedian shouldn't be saying these things, that's a traitor to comedy. They always suck. They're not a real comedian. None of them are good. They've learned some tricks so they can seem good and they might have a big audience. But they don't love this. And that's a fucked up thing to do. It's a fucked up thing to do and it's always coming from a place of jealousy. Yes. And also it's always happening to somebody who's already deeply besieged. Somebody who's already the whole world. Of course. When you see the whole world coming down on somebody for something they said and then you go, man, I'm going to say the same thing. Exactly. That's about you. That has nothing to do with how you really feel about what they said. It has nothing to do. It's just that you want to be heard in your circle saying it also because you see that you can get a little something from it.