The Joke’s on Louis C.K.
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
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Q. You’ve spent the last several months on a tour where you sold tickets only through your Web site. How did that go?
A. Boy, did that work. It was so satisfying to get that done. The special, I didn’t need to do anything. I just made it and offered it. But the tickets were really tricky. The big ticket companies make exclusive arrangements with these rooms. They pay them just to not work with others. So if a company gives you 30 grand a year to stay away from anybody else, you need it. We didn’t attack their territory. We just went to places that they didn’t care about.
Does it matter that what you’ve achieved, with your online special and your tour can’t be replicated by other performers who don’t have the visibility or fan base that you do?
Why do you think those people don’t have the same resources that I have, the same visibility or relationship? What’s different between me and them?
You have the platform. You have the level of recognition.
So why do I have the platform and the recognition?
At this point you’ve put in the time.
There you go. There’s no way around that. There’s people that say: “It’s not fair. You have all that stuff.” I wasn’t born with it. It was a horrible process to get to this. It took me my whole life. If you’re new at this — and by “new at it,” I mean 15 years in, or even 20 — you’re just starting to get traction. Young musicians believe they should be able to throw a band together and be famous, and anything that’s in their way is unfair and evil. What are you, in your 20s, you picked up a guitar? Give it a minute.
I heard Darren LaCroix[1] describe a Comedy career like that is a 4-yr education, just like college. 4-years starting from the initial point of getting on stage for the first time. Hundreds of gigs, some unpaid. Bombing on stage, driving to some gigs two-hours one-way. Working from 5 min. of material to 15 min. to being an opening act to headlining. And eventually you become seasoned enough that you can handle any crowd, deliver your routine, focus people's attention, entertain the audience, enlighten them, make people laugh enough that they forget and escape the reality of their lives... like a professional.
Darren makes $5k+ as a keynote speaker per gig and he did say that the $5k is not for the 30-min or hour he speaks - it is for the thousands of hours he put in (the 2-hr drives, the bombing, the 3/4 empty audiences in small clubs) to get to the point where people know he is going to deliver an inspiring, humorous message to the delegates at a business convetion.
As for a comedy special on HBO - 1 hr of material. That's the equivalent of making the major leagues.
[1] http://www.angelfire.com/az2/D3tmLeadership3/DarrenLaCroix_S... Technically, he is not a professional comedian now but he applies comedy to business and public speaking training.
That reminds me of this story by Chuang Tzu:
Cook Ting was cutting up an ox for Lord Wen-hui.
At every touch of his hand,
every heave of his shoulder,
every move of his feet,
every thrust of his knee,
the ox came apart with a zip.
He slithered the knife along with a zing,
and all was in perfect rhythm,
as though he were performing
the dance of the Mulberry Grove
or keeping time to the Ching-shou music.
"Ah, this is marvelous!" said Lord Wen-hui.
"Imagine skill reaching such heights!"
Cook Ting laid down his knife and replied,
"What I care about is the Way,
which goes beyond skill.
"When I first began cutting up oxen,
all I could see was the ox itself.
After three years I no longer saw the whole ox.
And now -- now I go at it by spirit
and don’t look with my eyes.
Perception and understanding have come to a stop
and spirit moves where it wants.
"I go along with the natural makeup,
strike in the big hollows,
guide the knife through the big openings,
and follow things as they are.
So I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon,
much less a main joint.
"A good cook changes his knife once a year,
because he cuts.
A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month,
because he hacks.
I’ve had this knife of mine for nineteen years
and I’ve cut up thousands of oxen with it,
and yet the blade is still as newly sharpened.
"There are spaces between the joints,
and the blade of the knife has really no thickness.
If you insert what has no thickness into such spaces,
then there’s plenty of room,
more than enough for the blade to play about in.
That’s why after nineteen years
the blade of my knife is still as newly sharpened.
"However, whenever I come to a complicated place,
I size up the difficulties,
tell myself to watch out and be careful,
keep my eyes on what I’m doing,
work very slowly,
and move the knife with the greatest subtlety,
until -- flop!
the whole thing comes apart
like a clod of earth crumbling to the ground.
"I stand there holding the knife and look all around me,
completely satisfied and reluctant to move on,
and then I wipe off the knife and put it away."
"Excellent!" said Lord Wen-hui.
"I have heard the words of Cook Ting
and learned how to care for life!"
Some professions, (like entertainers, businesspeople, sports stars) are simply much more valued in this society than others. And even in the valued professions, the odds are you could easily work your ass off for decades and fail because of the tremendous competition -- there's no shortage of kids who want to be rock stars or play in the NFL... very few actually make it, despite putting in the time.
Listening to different opinion isn't a poll, isn't it?
it cannot be true that this is what you think the story is about
Most people look down on butchers (and most other blue collar workers), while idolizing entertainers (and other people who make a lot of money).
"a single entertainer can entertain millions, whereas a single butcher cannot feed nearly as many"
Even per capita, butchers and other blue collar workers are going to be making far less than even a mediocre entertainer. When was the last time you saw an individual pay $30 to $200 (and up) for a butcher to ply his trade?
And yes, you can easily pay between $30 and $200 for a butcher, though usually only hunters and ranchers will know about that: http://ranchersmeat.com/Items.html
Even for those of us who just buy meat, rather than providing our own dead animals to be processed, we probably end up spending more money on meat than on any particular form of entertainment.
But in contrast to the last sentence of CK's quoted there - music is different. It's not a long way to the top at all. It's a short way to the top, it's just that not many make it out of the huge amount trying. Look at how young so many of the top 40 are - these, by and large, aren't people out of their 20s.
He's helping to pave the way for this to become "the norm". If a few more big name entertainers followed suit, suddenly those contracts with TicketMaster and the like would stop looking quite as advantageous to the venues. The consumers would become familiar with this.
Interesting how the internet is changing this rule. Bo Burnham [1] became a famous YouTube comedian at the age of 16. When he started touring, his shows immediately sold out and he got a deal with MTV for a TV show. Apparently this annoyed some comedians because he didn't pay his dues [2].
But good stand-up comedy for teenagers is almost non-existent. Good media for teenagers has been historically lacking, too old for cartoons but too young for adult TV.
Add to that the tech savvy of kids, and whst we're seeing now is a that teenagers are in a kind of feeding frenzy of media consumption. It's like a content gold rush.
In a few decades I expect those markets will saturate and it'll be harder to break in to them.
I am starting to notice people mentioning white people's race - which I just don't get. If someone does not position/think of themselves as a "color X", why bring it up?
Also - Woody Allen and Seinfeld are jewish comedians. While they are certainly white, it's probably as relevant as them being male or human. Ie a person can obviously have overlapping identities, but if one identity is shared with 15m people and the other with a billion, the former one matters more.
I am not sure what to make of your "big genetic advantage" comment however having educated parents can definitely be considered an advantage in some circumstances.
There are a lot of poor, underprivileged white people in the country, but racism is not logical.
[1] Stuff like this is taught in class: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-th...
[2]http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-f-will-schools...
So your argument is that if a particular race of people had it a little easier than other races, there wouldn't be any poor people in that race?
On the whole, the white male does have a slight advantage.
Honestly, if you want to be on top in 10 years, spend your weekends toying with bitcoins, drones and/or 3D printers.
These areas will give birth to the new Facebook, and it's mostly white males who are playing with them right now. Get into it now, don't come whining in 10 years when a Hollywood movie is made about it and it suddenly becomes cool.
But the point is we didn't work to build it. Merely being born were I was gave me extremely high odds of being amongst the richest people in the world.
At most you could claim my ancestors "worked to build it", but that's still a massive stretch - the main reason for the wealth I grew up around was oil and European imperialism.
I prefer to teach our kids culture.
Why should I feel proud that I am from the same country as Isaac Newton? Or shame about the bombing of Dresden? I had nothing to do with either of those things.
You are a dick when you refuse to recognize when you are privileged and act to reinforce your privileged position.
" if you want to be on top in 10 years, spend your weekends toying with bitcoins, drones and/or 3D printers."
how many black kids- or poor kids in India, for instance (consider Ramanujan) do you think are going to have the OPPORTUNITY to spend their weekends toying with bitcoins, drones and/or 3D printers?
There's a REASON it's mostly white males who are playing with those areas, and it's not "White Men Work Harder".
African mothers work harder than anybody else, walking tens of miles everyday to bring home water to their kids. Where's their well-deserved advantage?
The existence of 5-odd billion non-white people around the world isn't really discussed :)
Marxist Academics believe x. Hacker news readers are intelligent. Being intelligent means believing in x.
I see what you did there...
Even though in this context, absolutely nothing, Louis C.K. has discussed being white in his stand-up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG4f9zR5yzY (NSFW audio)
Interpretations vary, of course. I think he's underhandedly criticizing the discussion of white privilege; other people who saw that special with me disagreed.
Arguably, it's that ambiguity that gives depth to that bit.
What will be worse is that he has not paid his dues - learnt both the emotional resiliency of near continuous rejection and the ability to handle the hundreds of different situations that occur on and off stage.
At 16 he may be talented and appealing to the right demographic, but most likely he will need to trust some mentor and learn those lessons we all need to - success is a limited subset of the phase space of life. Failing - everyone does it in their own way
This is a strategy IAC uses with a lot of their companies, including Ticketmaster. Barry Diller started out at Paramount Pictures, so he brings with him the same type of thinking that fuels the MPAA and RIAA. "The solution isn't innovation, let's just keep people doing whatever they've been doing. If we have to sue our customers, so be it."
I think it's awesome when guys like Louis C.K. go outside of the system and as a result end up gaining a lot of leverage and power as a result. I remember Trent Reznor doing the same thing.
This is a great lesson about entrepreneurship but is only half of the story. Ultimately he was able to get himself into a position where he had an upper hand in negotiation, and it took a unique vision and a ton of work to get there. This is where every business person wishes to see themselves.
But, in the process of getting there he was working within the system to learn it inside and out. He was also practicing and increasing his story telling skills and discipline so that he knew how to do it himself. Eventually he learned he could disintermediate his fans from the ticketing/venue/media system because he had enough knowledge of how it all worked.
"I do not need you." is the goal, but you often get there by coming up within the system. There is a crucial moment where you know enough to do it yourself and have the vision, energy, opportunity, skill and luck to grab it and run with it.
> “I’ve got maybe 10 years to ladle the butter into a jar for my kids and then die”
I think it started with him saying his career would be over in a year. Last year when I saw him he said "two, maybe three years tops" before people would forget about him, and now I guess he feels a little more confident that he'll be sticking around for a while.
I don’t think you should ever say anything that you’re going to have to apologize for later. If the heat gets hot, just let them get mad. How did somebody make you apologize? Did they literally hit you on your body? Let them be upset. It’s not the worst thing in the world.
I wish more people had this view, particularly in the political arena. Be who you are, courageously. Let people see your authentic self. Nobody trusts politicians because they are chameleons: they say something to one group, and then turn around and apologize for it to another group. It's so transparent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8vh2MwXZ6o
Integrity in the face of judgment.
I remember reading that a comedian who gets 10% of the population to like him is a well-known millionaire, while a politician who gets 45% of the population to like him isn't a politician because he loses elections.
Politicians, especially high-level ones, need to reach 50.1% of voters, which usually means pandering to the median with bland pablum, because bland pablum can appeal to almost everyone, whereas courageous personality will often make 33% of people love you and 66% hate you.
One could also say that nobody trusts politicians because the level of public discourse has fallen to the idiocy one sees on TV that's called "debate". It's all part of the same vicious cycle involving many parts: Sensationalist vapid news media. Sensationalist vapid politicians. Half-baked legislation. Incensed public that feels less invested in society.
It all goes around in a slow cycle. It's like we're on a helicopter that lost power, and we're autorotating down to the ground.
A: Another reason I was willing to do it there was because I had told them I have to be able to sell it on my site. At first HBO was like, “We can’t do that.” And I said, “Well, let’s not do it then.” The power I had was to be able to keep saying: “I’ll do it myself. I do not need you.” They took a while on that one.
I think this doesn't get the press it should yet, but it will. When Louis C.K. discovered he didn't need the networks to distribute his comedy shows, and then proved it, it was like a tiny squirt of water starting to come out of the side of a dam.
Jeff Dunham comes immediately to mind; IIRC, "Arguing With Myself" was done without the help of any network. I don't know if his later DVDs were done that way or not, but that was nearly a decade ago.
Either way, giving the finger to HBO, Comedy Central, and all the others is a good thing.
Another reason I was willing to do it there was because
I had told them I have to be able to sell it on my site.
At first HBO was like, “We can’t do that.” And I said,
“Well, let’s not do it then.” The power I had was to be
able to keep saying: “I’ll do it myself. I do not need
you.” They took a while on that one.
Nice, an unbiased interviewer. These are the best.
(I don't know much about the comedy business, though...maybe there just aren't many people who put in as much time as Louis C.K.)
There are plenty of funny comedians who don't make it big (Eddie Pepitone comes to mind) and work hard, but you can't describe how to get lucky, all you can describe is how to not fuck up opportunity.
I'm curious to know why you feel that way.
I'd have preferred him to take a position: "I think I have a better way for the industry to work" or "Don't infer too much from my success, it's a red herring". Or he could just say that he's only focused on his brand and not the industry at large.
Louie's talent as a comedian is something he's built over many many years. He's obviously not the first, and definitely not the fastest to rise to critical acclaim ... so arguably, you could make the case that there's nothing special about what he's accomplished there ... just that he's currently very highly thought of in the comedy world.
What he's done is pair the timing of that success with a different business model for his personal brand than had previously been applied to the world of comedy - and he's done that with a technological solution that really anybody CAN replicate.
He booked venues that weren't beholden to large ticket companies giving him the freedom to record and resell his performance. He hired his own crew to record those shows. He hired people to build a website for $32,000 to distribute those shows, and he asked people to pay $5 instead of stealing them online. Then he used the success of that experiment as leverage for the deals he struck for his tour and with HBO because they wanted him more than he needed them.
Really anybody could have (and still can) do what he's done, but there's few short-cuts to the talent part. But I guess since I'm commenting here, I've "canceled my subscription to being a good person".
Not only is he arguably the absolute best in the world at his craft, he is also the most disruptive and innovative. I don't believe the latter can be argued.
Seems like so many comedians start off drawing from a real place with their comedy, become super famous and rich, lose that source, and their work suffers for it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R37zkizucPU
He says his first hour of comedy took 15 years to build up, and he hated all of it. Then he heard an interview with Carlin where he said every year he threw all his old jokes away and would have to come up with a new hour of material, forcing him to get to the core of what was important and real (or something)... And that's when Louis says his career took off.
/louiscknerd
Yes.