Everyone’s favorite comedian Louis CK dropped by Reddit today to answer some reader questions, and revealed a bunch of really personal stuff, from his favorite bit (“I really liked the duck vaginas joke”) to his least favorite memory (“Probably pissing my pants at school, everyone pointing at the giant stain in the front of my pants and laughing”). If you don’t have the time to tackle the entire thread now, click through for a selection of our favorite highlights.
On how he got so much creative control over Louie:
“I got it by demanding it and refusing to do the show any other way at all and by having the leverage that I was completely willing to walk away without doing the show and by agreeing to an extremely low budget so that they could offset the risk of giving me this freedom because they are risking less money.
“I have had conversations with them about very few moments in the show but zero battles.”
Some thoughts on his new $5 comedy special:
“I’m not going to say yet what it’s making. It’s so damn interesting though to be doing this. I feel like I have a front seat to a really cool… thing. I don’t even know what it is. I think it’s really interesting that i brought the price so close to stealing and made the movie so easy to get and made it so clear that it’s a human offering it that it sparked a debate about pirating.
“To steal from someone and not feel bad, you either have to be a sociopath or view the act differently. One way is to remove ‘Someone’ from the equation. You’re not stealing from a person. Big companies do a lot to help people view them as less than human. I heard a speech by Noam Chomsky who said that corporations are like super humans. They cannot be hurt like a human can and they never die. They are not susceptible to scrutiny or accountability. this makes them more profitable. If companies want to enjoy these benefits to some degree they have to live with what else comes with being not human. you miss out on compassion, forgiveness, camaraderie, empathy, trust all kinds of shit.
“The other thing is I can only do this because I’m an individual and I can decide what my risks are that are acceptable and i can make my own goals for what is success. So I forwent (is that a word?) a lot of conventional routes and tried this. I am risking and there may be a ceiling to the success, but for me it’s okay. I feel like as of this year, I make enough money as a standup my goal now is to bring the cost down for those who buy my stuff. I really mean that. It makes me much happier. Also I did see that there might be a tremendous upswing to this. I was really excited about this material and I though it would be really cool to just put it out there myself with a little electronic hat that only takes fives and just see what happens.”
His daughters’ reaction to appearing in his act:
“I spend a lot of time with my kids and I raise them for half their lives and I love them very much. I am a pretty patient dad. They have seen a few family friendly bits and they laughed like hell because they know I’m not like that. They get the humor in heightened anger over little things.
“If I was a distant or awful dad, then my act would be their nightmare.”
What he’d be doing professionally if he wasn’t doing comedy:
“The last jobs I had were fixing cars and covering football games for a local access TV station. As in driving the mobile van to the field, setting up three cameras, teaching depressed grownups and interns how to use them, and directing the game from the van and then wanting to kill myself.”
His religious beliefs (or lack thereof):
“I’m not an atheist. I think god is there and that he is watching and he made us. I just don’t give a shit.”
“I thought about what if I make another special like this one and I put it up for 5 bucks again and it goes gangbusters. It makes, say, 8 million bucks. I don’t know that that is even possible. I’m trying to find out what the potential is with this one.”
On his future film plans:
“I would love yo make more movies. That is a FUCKING HARD JOB though, dude. Just to get it made. You can’t even do anything else while you’re trying to get it made and then you probably won’t. It’s heartbreaking. Then it takes a good two years to make and finish the movie then it maybe won’t come out and then maybe it gets changed and worse than the movie not getting made, you made it, then it got changed into something you hated and then came out… If I can get a deal to make a movie the way I do my show, I’ll do it. Otherwise… no.”