I've seen him live a couple times, and he's gotten up on stage and joked about how much more money he has than everyone in the entire room. I don't think he's hurting.
When comedians say things like this, it's almost always about manipulating their perceived status relative to the audience. That's why you'll see him say the opposite in other situations. It's all just playing games with status. To make different bits work, comedians either need to be perceived as higher or lower status than their audience, to garner the sympathy/revulsion needed to make the surrounding material come off properly.
EDIT: came up with a better way to state this: sometimes you need to be the underdog, sometimes you need to be an alpha-asshole.
Here is the superb Stewart Lee talking about this issue in a recent interview about his new series, which is mostly his standup:
What was Chris Morris's input as script editor?
"He really helped fix a particular problem. I noticed reviews saying that I was arrogant and condescending. I thought, 'That's interesting because it doesn't feel like that live'. In the room I'm able to fabricate some kind of struggle whereby the gig isn't quite working. I'm a lower-status character, so when you criticise someone you don't do it from a position of authority or strength - it doesn't seem arrogant."
How did Chris fix that on screen?
"I wanted some sort of device that would lower my status or make me appear to be under pressure. I spent days on end talking to Chris about different ideas to get that to work. We ended up with Armando Iannucci interviewing me throughout the series in a hostile way - criticising all the material and my role in the programme. That's cut in with all the stand-up and it works really well."
Here's an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2-qqtvsNDI
Very few people can manipulate a room like Stewart Lee.
The second show I saw sold out the Chicago Theater on another two-show night.
* Booking the venue
* Paying the venue staff
* Producing marketing materials
* Doing the actual marketing
* Transport
* Hotel
* Transport for the support acts
* Hotel for the support acts
* Fee for the support acts
* Fee for the support acts' agents
* Insurance
* Agency fees
Then of course the money he does take might have to support him and his family through months of zero income while he writes new stuff.
He's selling out shows and has been for at least ~4 years now. If the tours weren't lucrative, he'd raise the face price of tickets.
Sorry, I just don't buy the idea that Louis CK is anything but "pretty wealthy" at this point in his career. Which is great, because he's one of my favorite performers anywhere.
I'm a standup as well, not quite as large as CK but a number of tv spots under my belt etc.
But it's absolutely right. There's barely anything.
You're average split goes a bit something like this:
Depends where you are. On average a theatre takes around 30%. A bit less in Australia (eg Melbourne Comedy Festival) which takes about 20%-25%. A bit more in European theatres (eg Edinburgh Fringe Festival) around 40%-45%.
Booking / Ticketing fee is around $3-$8 per ticket. For the average show ticket price that's about 10%.
Management takes a flat 15%-25%.
Depending on the scale of marketing, on average it's around 15% of the show budget. The industry wisdom is at least 10% of every ticket should be spent on getting people.
If there is a huge promoter behind you, they sometimes take a stake in the show, usually around 30% - 60% and includes the marketing budget. It's not that you're trying to convince people. It's more like, if they don't know you're there, they won't come.
Then all the travel / accomodation costs.
That's if you're doing theatre shows. The other side of the coin is college campuses, corporate entertainment, which pay a flat rate. The largest gig I did was opened in a 30k seat stadium and I made $4,000.... so not a lot.
Plus you're always touring, unable to maintain relationships, getting heckled (few careers involve being openly sworn at by masses, it's not healthy for self-esteem), feeling like a self-promoting whore and constantly wanting to die because you're whole career is shouting into darkness.
That doesn't even include the opportunity cost. It takes 10 years to get to the point where you can reliably book a 1000 seat theatre. That's assuming anybody comes in the first place... Until then you're making nothing.
It's not uncommon to see someone sell out a show and walk away with very little.
Whilst what CK did is amazing. I don't think it can be done by most standups. I think it would have turned out differently if he didn't have a tv show airing already, basically he's at the top of his career.
The scary part is if standup isn't as as lucrative as it's made out to be. Theatre in general is even worse...
But hey, we're all rockstars!
I got started in standup about 10 years ago and went from doing 2-minutes at an open mic to MC at the DC Improv for Robert Schimmel in something like 4 years. That's 4 years of getting on stage every chance I got and trying to write material that was funny and current. It gets old quick. When it came time to make a decision about comedy (which I loved then and still do), it became more about opportunity cost (as you put it) and lifestyle factors. My next move was to go out on the road and to be honest, that life just didn't appeal to me. Add in the stress of dealing with club managers, never having enough money, and circulating among other comics with various levels of personal disfunction and addiction issues and I opted for a "boring" life in tech.
Show business is a tough life and it's the rare individual who can make a go at it and find success enough to have a "normal" life. My observation has been that the stress of the performer career/lifestyle leads to substance abuse faster than almost any other career choice outside of high finance.
The next time you see a comedian performing in a comedy club, consider this: unless he's the headline act, he probably made something like $50-$75-$150 for his performances for the entire night depending on how long he was on stage. If that sounds good for 20 or 30 minutes of "work", figure out how much time was spent travelling and writing material before you do your final calculation. Nobody gets rich off of middle money.
The "It's Always Sunny" guys as a comparison (also FX) do quite well, despite being obscure. As Louis does more seasons, I suspect he'll also become quite wealthy -- he's the only real 'talent' on the show that he stars in, writes, and directs -- which brings his share of the proceeds up dramatically.
He's really a shrewd businessman, despite the jokes about being poor (which are based on his personal experiences, so I wouldn't call them dishonest).
I saw him in 2008 and he packed the Vic.
He had an hour-long HBO special in 2007.
Lucky Louie was 2006. That's a top-billed HBO show built around Louis CK.
He's only just now getting "Dane Cook Famous", sure, but he's been spectacularly successful on the scale of "performing artists" for awhile now.
And edits. In his AMA on reddit yesterday, he revealed[1] that he cuts Louie himself. In season one, there was a second person that helped him, but season two was apparently all him. He could be oversimplifying, and presumably other people at least watch his cut to smooth any rough edges, but it seemed like there was minimal involvement of others in the process.
[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/n9tef/hi_im_louis_ck_a...
Also: you've seen him live, right? How much did you pay for the tickets? Both times for me, the face was over $30, and both times the house was packed.
Do the math on how many shows he does. He tours constantly; a new one every year.
I don't think he's hurting. I think he's "only serious" when he jokes about having more money than everyone in the whole audience.
extreme paraphrasing, but I'm sure you all understand.
and if he were rich: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO9PwbtlOIU
These were a while ago.
"I have NEGATIVE five dollars. That means if something is free, I can't afford it!" Heheh, love his shows.
Of course, some might be based on fact, but let's not assume whatever he says happened to him did happen to him, or even happen at all!
Did you watch that interview about his "everything is amazing and nobody's happy" bit? He said that the bitchy guy "sitting next to him" in the plane was actually him!
(I use "envy" as hyperbole.)