Ken Rogerson on CNN, At Giggles This Weekend

In a Boston scene that was known for being wild, Ken Rogerson was wilder than most. The 80s boom is often described as a free-for-all of incredibly funny people, several shows a night, and copious amounts of drugs and alcohol. Rogerson recently spoke with CNN about the scene, and I followed up with him to fill in a few more details. He’s still one of the funniest guys in town, and you can catch up with him at Giggles in Saugus this weekend.

I know this is something that a lot of the comics who lived through joke about with each other, is there any hesitancy about talking about it too much, or mythologizing it, to those who weren’t there?

No hesitancy at all about talking about it. For those of us who lived it, it happened. It was a very special time in the comedy world and we were a part of it. There were three clubs on the same street for a while. We made lots of money and hung around with some of the the funniest comics ever. Personally a lot of it was wasted on me because of the booze and drugs. I was never really aware of what a special thing we had going on. The drug part was the tragic part. I always make it a point when talking about the madness, funny though some of it may be, that it never ended up fun for me. The end of every drug and alcohol run was horrible. I want to pass that on to the new comics. None of tht shit makes you better. You just think it does.

Do you think Boston was any worse than other cities in terms of the partying and drugs?

Boston was worse than a lot of towns for partying cause there were more of us and we made more money. But quite honestly whatever town I was in I found people and comics to get fucked up with. We just did it on a grander scale.

Do you think people sometimes lose sight of the fact that there were so many legitimately funny people here when they focus on that aspect?

None of the people that were involved do.

You talk about stopping as a sort of epiphany – were you able to stop that quickly?

That epiphany took twenty-five plus years to happen.

How much different is your creative process now than back in those days?

I never really had any creative process. I snorted blow and wrote shit down. Some of it worked. some of it didn't. I enjoy writing and doing stand-up now, more then I ever did back then. Mostly I was about the party back then. The comedy paid to keep the party going. Today I sit and write and re-write and work on the things, other then stand-up, such as acting and screen writing, that I should have concentrated on back in the day instead of waiting for the dealer to show up. It's a million times more fun now and I'm in better shape physicaly now, then I was twenty or thirty years ago.

Boston Comedy Interview: Sam Brown On the Whitest Kids U'Know Final Seaon

Sam Brown from Whitest
Kids U'Know

Tonight on IFC, The Whitest Kids U’Know begins its fifth and final season as a TV sketch group entity. They will remain a loose group working together, but there are too many outside projects and concerns tugging at the five individual members to keep it going. As Sandwich native Sam Brown told me, it’s hard to keep a sketch show fresh, and it’s time to move on. The Kids did manage to sneak a full-length movie into the show, called The Civil War On Drugs, a portion of which will end each episode. They’ll be screening that on its own Monday in LA at the Steve Allen Theater.

Brown’s comedy career started in Sandwich at the local cable access channel, where he was part of a show called TV Galactica. He met the other Kids in college in New York, where the troupe started and went through various permutations before settling with Brown, Trevor Moore, Zach Cregger, Darren Trumeter, and Timmy Williams. For a little more about them, read my profile here or see my video interview with Brown after the Kids’ 2009 show at Great Scott.

I spoke with Brown by e-mail about the new season and what’s next.  

How did you decide this will be the final season of Whitest Kids?

It was a lot of stuff. My whole thing is when writing sketch you are constantly coming up with funny ideas that get shot down because there's an SNL sketch you never saw that’s like it, or a Kids in the Hall sketch, or a State sketch, etc. I think this is something that happens to anyone writing a lot of sketch. Well after doing five seasons and over a hundred sketches a season I started to notice I was having more and more sketches shot down because we already did a sketch like that.  I think we were successful at keeping it fresh up till now so it’s good that we didn't push it too far.

Is the group staying together to work on other project, like feature films or touring?

Think of it like what Jackass did where they stopped doing a show on MTV. They still went on and did their own TV shows that involved each other and every few years they would get together and do a movie.  

How hard has it been to keep doing the show given everyone’s individual schedules?

It’s tough and its only getting tougher. Now Trevor has his Fox show [Breaking In], we all live in three different cities and Timmy has kid on the way.  Scheduling is the reason we haven't toured more.

Will you be screening The Civil War On Drugs as a complete film anywhere else besides LA?

Hopefully we will. I'm really happy with how it came out and my ideal outcome is that ten years down the line the Civil War on Drugs is seen as its own thing. 

Was Civil War written to be broken up at the end of a series of episodes, or was it meant to be a feature film?

The Civil War on Drugs was an idea we came up with a long time ago for a movie. Way before we had a TV show even.  At the time a lot of people told us that it would be hard to get a studio to pay for you to make a civil war pot comedy.  That’s one of the things that made the it the perfect story to make into a movie within the show. We're making the movie that people told us we couldn't. For that I think it was important to write it all as a movie and worry about cutting it up into segments later. I've watched it as segments though and think it’s successful as both. We'll see though. Maybe we're just stubborn. 

Did you approach this season any differently since it’s the last?

A little. I mean we weren't 100% sure that it would be the last season while we were in production but we were conscious of the fact that it could be. I think the only real difference it made was when writing the Civil War on Drugs. We knew we wanted it to end the season, so when we got to the ending it made a difference that it wasn't only the end of the movie but possibly the end of the series. As that, I think it works.

Have you been performing frequently on your own as a stand-up?

I actually had to make a new years resolution to start doing stand-up again. I had been doing it for about five years now but when I moved to LA a year ago, I got lazy and didn't end up really doing it out here at all until recently. It's been good though, I didn't realize how much I missed it.

Has the transition to stand-up been difficult? Some people seem to think you can use some of the same disciplines as sketch, but some see them as completely different.

Stand up is a lot scarier for me because in a sketch group you have other people to laugh at the jokes before you perform it live. You don't know exactly how they'll do but you definitely have a sense.  With stand up you don't really have any idea how your jokes will work till you tell them in front of an audience for the first time.  There's been times where I've said something I thought would be great and it'd flop and there have been times when I've told a joke that I was certain would fail and it would get a huge laugh. That's also part of stand ups charm to me. You never know.  All that being said, there have been times where I've flopped at both and at least at sketch I've had four other people commiserate with.

What other shows are you producing?

Trevor and I are in the early stages of writing something for a network.  So early that I think it'd be jumping the gun if we started to talk about it.

Are there any videos floating around from TV Galactica?

I think there is an outside chance that at the Sandwich Cable Access Television station there is a 3/4" tape cassette that they no longer have the decks for, collecting dust in a dark corner. My mom is friends with the manager there so I was able to give it a quick look but no luck.  I bet one day if I get famous the tape will surface. That's what I'm working towards.

Any plans to perform in Boston, either as a group or just yourself, doing stand-up?

I'm sure when we do a tour we'll play Boston.  That’s where all my friends and family are.  Plus that show at Great Scott's was one the more memorable ones on the last tour. Now that I’m thinking about it, it was after that show we went to the Middlesex Lounge where my brother works and about fifteen minutes before the bar was closing they set up the mic and Timmy and I did an impromptu stand-up show. There was hardly anyone there and I could barely stand I was so drunk but I got some jokes off and made some people laugh. That was what eventually started a series of monthly stand-up shows I did there with Boston comedian Rob Crean. Maybe next time I'm going home we'll set up another one of those.

Patrice O'Neal On Leaving Boston, Plus A Preview of Tonight's Elephant In the Room Special On Comedy Central

When I first spoke with Patrice O’Neal in 2001, he was already in New York, already drawing attention at the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal, on his way to better things. His first one-hour stand-up special, Elephant In the Room, debuts tonight on Comedy Central. O’Neal started out in Boston. He grew up on Dorchester and moved to Roxbury when he was 17, and threw himself into stand-up after heckling an act at a club called Estelle’s. He thought he was funnier than the comic onstage at the time. So, unlike most hecklers, he got up and proved it.

O’Neal didn’t leave Boston happy. He got to a certain level as a middle act, and then couldn’t break through the headlining scene and had to leave. A lot of comics from Boston have faced that dilemma. But O’Neal went on a local radio program and spewed a lot of venom at club owners. The way he describes it, he “pretty much had a falling out with everybody in Boston.”

“I officially walked over and tore the paper bridge with lighter fluid and lava shoes,” he told me in 2002, for a story for the Boston Globe. “I’ve had a chance to make amends with certain people. It was just a young black dude lashing out at what he thought was an old white dude thing.”

The scene has changed in Boston since O’Neal left. There is more diversity, there are more women and more minorities in the scene making a name for themselves. Probably still room for improvement, but it seems a vast improvement from O’Neal’s days.

“In Boston, there’s one black or two blacks,” he told me. “There’s always ‘the black guy at the time.’ Jimmy Smith was the black guy, and then Carl Yard and Gerald Bennett was the black guy. I came along, I was the black guy. And then after I left, Dwayne Perkins was the black guy.”

O’Neal told me that he loved Boston. He didn’t want to leave his mother and his girlfriend, but when he left, he felt he was pushed. In a sense, that was probably true, but it was the same for Eugene Mirman, Brendon Small, or any number of comics who had to leave to find a bigger stage. If you’re looking to get the attention from TV or film, the opportunities are few in Boston.

Now O’Neal is a headliner with his own TV special, and by 2002, he had also changed his attitude toward his Boston exit. “I outgrew that whole anger thing,” he said then. “I felt like I was thrown out of Boston. I don’t think that anymore. It was the best thing that could have happened to me. It wasn’t a conspiracy.”

[NOTE: I’ll be addressing the question of why comics leave Boston in a story next month, after the redesign is launched on March 1.]

Onstage and off, O’Neal is gruff and direct. Which is why he has been a favorite on the Opie and Anthony show on satellite radio. He makes no excuses for his point of view. “I have a very misogynistic viewpoint on life,” he told me in 2006. “Somebody has to.”

“On regular radio, it’s so inhibited, you can’t be honest at all,” he said then. “Fuck the swearing, just honesty in general is hard. You’re offending everybody. But cable radio, people are paying for it. You can do anything you want.”

O’Neal likes to use profanity (“Sometimes a good well-placed swear expresses it for you,” he said), he is sarcastic and off the cuff, and he clearly enjoys making people uncomfortable. That applies to O’Neal the comic and O’Neal the person, and it’s what you’ll get if you tune in tonight.

“I’d rather be sarcastic than to just sit around and talk about my favorite cheese, you know?”

Here’s a preview of Elephant In the Room (Comedy Central, 10PM).

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On tonight: Louis C.K.'s Hilarious

Hilarious debuts tonight
at 10PM on Comedy Central.

Louis C.K.'s latest stand-up special, Hilarious, makes its Comedy Central debut tonight at 10PM. If you have Epix, you may have seen the special when it aired in September. It also played at the Kendall Square Cinema that month. You may want to wait until Tuesday, though, when Comedy Central releases the full-length, uncensored DVD, and also the CD version.

Hilarious has been well reviewed -- you can read my thoughts here from September -- since its debut at last year's Sundance Festival. And C.K. is already working on the next special, his fourth hour since 2007's Shameless, a breakneck pace by most stand-up standards. He is also now filming for season two of Louie on FX.

Myq Kaplan on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson tonight

Myq Kaplan, everybody.

Myq Kaplan will be performing on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson tonight (Tom Selleck is the other guest). And if you don't have a DVR but do have insomnia, you can stay up and watch David Cross on Carson Daly.

Some other notable TV appearances by Boston comedians this week: Mike Birbiglia in on Carson Daly Tuesday, and Greg Fitzsimmons will be promoting his new book, Dear Mrs. Fitzsimmons: Tales of Redemption From An Irish Mailbox, on Letterman Friday. Jim Norton will be on Chelsea Lateley on Thursday, a couple of days before he hits Boston Saturday for Comics Come Home.

Bo Burnham's Words Words Words, taped at the House of Blues, debuts tonight



Bo Burnham's Words Words Words
tonight on Comedy Central

Those who saw Bo Burnham tape his new comedy special, Words Words Words, at the House of Blues in May got a glimpse of a comedian taking a couple of steps forward. The special airs tonight at 11PM on Comedy Central. And that will show part of the story, but not all of it.
Burnham was already a YouTube sensation when he recorded his first “Comedy Central Presents” at age 18. He was clever, a little blue, and had a dorky white boy trying to be hip appeal. His story has been told frequently since then – the Hamilton native who made videos in his bedroom that led to a hit album, working with Judd Apatow, and a mountain of accolades and exposure.

So it’s a relief to see his wordplay is getting smarter, his premises are getting more inventive, and to see that he is completely aware of how ridiculous his sudden fame is. All of that is in the material on tonight’s special. Burnham has a tour and an MTV show coming up, so I’ll save some of the more specific ideas for then, but I was impressed with what I saw, and I’m hoping that translates on tonight’s show.

Don’t get me wrong, Burnham hasn’t ditched the silly, scatological stuff that caught people’s attention in the first place. But you can see him turning that over a bit, trying to add something to his repertoire, whether it’s Shakespeare references or parodying stand-up itself.

The thing you probably will never see are all the retakes Burnham had to do after going through the whole show, how he seemed genuinely sorry addressing the crowd and asking for their patience. He did throw a couple of jabs at the Comedy Central crew for having to repeat a few things, but he did a good ob keeping the audience involved, which is important if you want them to look alive while you tape something to punch into the rest of the show.

Words Words Words is also out on CD October 19.

Bill Burr's new special, Let It Go, debuts on Comedy Central Sunday

Bill Burr: Let It Go debuts Sunday at 11PM on Comedy Central

It’s hard to remember the last time I saw Bill Burr fail onstage, partly because I don’t think I’ve ever seen it happen. The closest I think I came was watching him pull laughs from a grudging crowd at The Comedy Store in LA a couple of years ago (I talked to him about that and a number of other things for FunnyGrownHere in May). But he did make them laugh, something a number of other comedians, big names and small, couldn’t do on that bill.

Burr is as solid as any comic in the country right now, and his new one-hour special, Let It Go, gives you a good taste of that. The title refers to Burr’s self-professed anger issues, over everything going home for the holidays to another man asking if he wants a cookie.

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That might seems a bit frightening, like Burr could snap at any minute, but he’s not that kind of comic. He’s not Sam Kinison, whipping himself into a frenzy, staring past the audience and screaming into the abyss. No, his tone is more self aware, and his anger is the opposite of self-righteous. More like a highly amused, “I can’t believe what an asshole I am.”

He talks about being sarcastic to his girlfriend, and even takes a shot at motherhood – “Women are constantly patting themselves on the back for how difficult their lives are and no one corrects them because they want to fuck ‘em,” he says. Bring that kind of sentiment into a normal conversation, you might want to duck.

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But more often than not, Burr is his own favorite target. He admits to thinking about suicide, maybe once every couple of weeks. And never over anything big, like a girlfriend leaving. It’s the little things that catch him, like forgetting he’d agreed to bake a pie, something he doesn’t know how to do, on Thanksgiving Dar. “Whenever I know the next four hours of my life is going to suck, I think about,” he says.

He takes a well-directed shot at male bravado, how everything smart or sensitive is “gay” to the super masculine. That’s why guys drop dead at 55 over nothing. “It’s literally from five decades of suppressing the urge to hug a puppy, admit a baby’s cute, say you want a cookie,” says Burr. “You gotta just keep pushing it down.”

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It’s these kinds of observations that keep him from marrying, and from wanting to go home for Christmas at ago 40. He doesn’t want to face questions again about what he does for a living. “So,” he says, feigning the voice of an uncomfortable relative, “you’re just going to tell jokes? Talk about disease and wish it on people?”

Hopefully, yes.

Preview: Louie Episode Four - So Old/ Playdate

Louie Episode Four
So Old/Playdate
11PM EST FX

Louie finally gets lucky tonight, but it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. He lodges a common complaint onstage, that he’s feeling old and has lost his sex drive. But then he’s approached by an attractive 26-year-old blonde who is attracted to the fact that he’s old and he’s given up. And that he smells a bit. Maybe like failure.

The concept is funny, short, and over when it needs to be. No need to drag it through the whole episode.

Second scene is Louie at a PTA meeting, something it might be hard for fans of his stand-up to imagine. The parents all argue about how the kids should be spending their time (Dancing? Sleeping?). “This place is stuck in the 70s,” says one parent. “Who still teaches math anymore?”

Louie brings up the fact that school sucks, and that’s how it’s supposed to be, to dead silence. It’s a concept apparently no one has considered, but one that bonds him to fellow single parent Pamela, played by Pamela Adlon. Louie and Pamela immediately set up a playdate for the kids, and wind up drinking wine and talking about life and parenting, often with the kids nowhere in site.

The conversation would be a real downer if Louie and Pamela weren’t both enjoying the opportunity to finally talk to another adult who wasn’t spazzing over some new age topic.

Adlon, who also played Louie’s wife on Lucky Louie, is an consulting producer of the series, and it’s obvious she and C.K. work well together. Their scenes together make you wonder what could have been if Lucky Louie had gone to a second season. Their repairing is a happy occasion.

Interspersed in all of this are short segments of Louie with his therapist, a deadpan rude and absurd David Patrick Kelly (yes, the same David Patrick Kelly who once taunted, “Warriors come out and play-ee-ay!”).

Like many of the people from whom Louie seeks advice, he is not only no help, he makes things worse. Maybe Louie is depressed because he’s fat. Has he ever thought about death and gotten an erection? No, but thanks for mentioning that you have.

There is no big moment in episode four like the poker game in episode two or the fight with Nick Di Paolo in episode three, but the playdate comes close. But really, there doesn’t need to be. The laughs are there, and having one “big moment” per episode would start to drift into formula, something episode four helps to break up a bit with a few more segments in different settings.

Looking forward to episode five, and hoping to get that to preview for you again.

When you see the episode, leave your comments below. I am enjoying the series thoroughly so far, but I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Preview: Episode Three - Dr.Ben/Nick

Louie Episode Three
Dr. Ben/Nick
11PM EST FX

Nothing in Louie’s life can be easy, not even a simple doctor’s appointment. Tonight’s episode opens with Louie talking about his body, and his advice on how to have the body you want. “You just have to want a shitty body,” he says.

Louie’s doctor is played by Ricky Gervais, a master of humiliation, and he’s in fine form giving Louie a physical. Even a routine check-up can be nerve wracking, undressing in front of strangers or, worse, a guy you know who happens to be a doctor with an overdeveloped sick sense of humor. The last place you want to encounter slapstick comedy is during a rectal exam.

I’ve probably given too much away already, even for an episode preview. But I could probably describe exactly what happens and it wouldn’t dull the impact of Gervais’s performance.

This episode is again split into two parts, the second of which centers around a political argument between Louie and Nick Di Paolo. If you know both comics, you know their views are sharply opposed, but you also know they’re great friends.

You get to see both onstage, both doing politically themed comedy. Louie has a wonderful riff on the term “Indian Giver,” after which Di Paolo rips on Obama and white guilt. Sitting around after the show, the argument boils over, and a physical fight erupts. Watching two comedians fight is pitiful experience, and after an accident, they wind up in the emergency room.

Similar to episode two, this episode shows how volcanic friendships can be, with conflicts over real world subjects, and how personal bonds will trump those every time. Louie and Di Paolo wind up cracking each other up and taking aim at the people around them in the emergency waiting room.

Their walk home feels just as genuine as the poker game scene from episode two, which also starred Di Paolo. That’s because there’s real history there, and that’s what’s showing up onscreen. Louie and Di Paolo both have Boston roots, and they’ve played the same rooms for the same people, and shared their ups and downs together. You could never in a million years find that kind of chemistry through random casting.

There’s a one-two punch developing with Louie. Two segments, one that’s way over the top, awkward, and hilarious, and one that’s equally funny, but more real. You never know which one you’re going to get first. But you can always count on the funny.

Louis C.K. finds a perfect fit at FX

When HBO canceled Lucky Louie almost four years ago, Louis C.K. thought he’d never have a better job again. He’d had near complete artistic freedom to create the show, and a good relationship with the network. He didn’t have to make the kind of sitcom he dreads, with one of the three or four basic formulas networks are still clinging to.

Lucky Louie was profane and realistic to C.K.’s own experiences, and he got to hire a bunch of friends that would never quite fit into a traditional sitcom, like Danvers native Nick Di Paolo. With staples like Friends, Everybody Love Raymond, and Frasier recently retired, there was talk that Lucky Louie might be the shot in the arm the format needed.

Ask C.K., and he’ll tell you he just wanted to do a good show, inspired by classics like All in the Family and The Honeymooners. “To me it’s like, sitcoms had been perfected to this point where they weren’t shot in front of an audience any more, they were putting this little kind of perfectly timed laughs between these kind of Harvard graduate written jokes, and it just didn’t feel like fun anymore,” he said in a conference call with media last week.

“So I wanted to go back to kind of a messy, ruckus, a more like—I’m not a good speaker,” he adds. “You know, you talk, they laugh and the next person talks. Like they’re feeling more like a performed stage show, which is what sitcoms originally were.”

It didn’t work out. Not every critic hated it, but those who did were particularly insistent. Robert Bianco of USA Today called it “smarmy” and accused C.K. of just trying to shock his audience. Matthew Gilbert at the Boston Globe saw that HBO and C.K. were trying to “usher an antique sitcom format into today’s risqué standards,” but also called it “lousy series.” TV Guide, Variety, Entertainment Weekly – many were unimpressed.

There were accolades – from the Chicago Tribune which called it “subversively hilarious” and the New York Times, which called it “nifty, light, and kind.” The ratings weren’t bad, but it wasn’t enough. HBO pulled the plug and C.K. went on a stand-up binge – lucky for comedy fans – recording three specials in three years, the last of which, Hilarious, made its Sundance debut in January.

Four years later, C.K. is in a position he never thought he’d be in again.

Tonight, C.K.’s new show Louie debuts with back to back episodes at 11PM (EST). He has even more creative control than he did before, even though there may be a few more restrictions on specific words. And the show itself is infinitely better, finally capturing what makes C.K. one of the funniest stand-up comedians in the world right now.

“I remember after Lucky Louie was over that the main thought I had was, ‘I’ll never see that kind of creative freedom again.’ But this is nuts, because they literally don’t know what I’m doing. They have no idea what I’m shooting, what I’m writing.”

He’s not kidding. Where Lucky Louie was shot on a soundstage in LA, C.K. films Louie himself with his own team in New York. There are no script meetings with the network, no writer’s room, and not even an official cast. C.K. writes the show himself and shoots it around New York with his own crew, and then shows the finished product to FX.

“It feels more like an independent film the way that we run it, and it kind of comes together,” he says. “We shoot pieces without knowing what episode they’re going to belong to. The network is completely MIA. They don’t do anything until they watch the episodes when they’re finished being edited. So it’s just us making a show. So I think that’s the biggest difference. Besides that I’m doing a single camera show now instead of multi-cam.”

C.K. says he knows he’s earning that freedom on an episode by episode basis. “If I turn in two bad episodes in a row, they’ll come visit me and they’ll want to read the scripts and they’ll want to visit the set,” he says. “They have that right, contractually, but they’ve laid off so far because they’re happy with what they’re getting this way, which is that they leave me alone.”

Many will point out the similarities to Seinfeld, at least in format. Each episode shows C.K. in New York, dating or hanging out with friends, interspersed with footage of C.K. at New York City comedy clubs like the Comedy Cellar or sometimes Caroline’s.

But the similarities mostly end there. “We’re as different as night and day as far as what we talk about,” says C.K. Louie’s point of view comes from a single dad working as a comedian and trying to raise two young girls, a reality that Seinfeld’s show about nothing wouldn’t have addressed.

And there is no typical set-up and resolution in a half-hour format. Every particular idea is given its own space, and if it’s something that can be addressed in just a few minutes, then it begins and ends there.

“In the same way that stand-up gives you the freedom to choose how long you talk about something or just drop in one word about something, it’s kind of like a collage, an eclectic kind of a form. This show, I wanted it to feel like that. I wanted it to feel almost like a stand up set,” says C.K. “It’s sort of herky-jerky different, different lengths of pieces, different … on things, different reasons and tones for talking about things or showing things.”

There will be plenty of Boston-centric cameos from people like Robert Kelly, who plays C.K.’s brother. But each character will come and go a bit more naturally in the series, and there is no set cast.

“It feels like when you cast a show up front, when you do a series, you’re making a series of bets that you kind of have to stick by,” says C.K. “You hire eight people, or whatever it is in a cast, and you just have to really hope they stay compelling and interesting, and if they don’t, you still have to service all those people. That’s actually how you talk about it in the sitcom writers’ rooms, is we have to service these characters, even if we don’t like them.”

You’ll see Kelly and Di Paolo in recurring roles, but not every week. Di Paolo will be playing himself.

“I only hired Bobby to play my brother for one episode just because I felt like having him for that one episode, but he was really good and compelling and pathetic, so he’s in two more, I think,” says C.K. “Nick is in three total. Nick DiPaolo and I were roommates back when we were both struggling stand ups in the early 90s. He’s still a struggling stand up, and that’s only because he’s a miserable guy. He’s never happy in success, either. But anyway, Nick and I have a very easy rapport.”

A less recognizable Boston name is Kimberly Barlow, who plays an ex-girlfriend from home with whom Louie reconnects on Facebook. C.K. says he looked at about 300 actresses from New York, but couldn’t find anyone who felt like a Boston girl from back home.

“We actually went to Boston and had a very cheap casting session there on like VHS tape,” he says. “Kim was so authentic and so real, and I think we pretty much blew her mind by flying her to New York and giving her this huge part in the show. She stepped up, though, and she was awesome. I often get comments about her, that she seemed really real, and she was. So she was my favorite Boston rescue.”

C.K. says his freedom also extends to subject matter, a very important point to him. “I feel like there’s no story I can’t tell,” he says. “The tricky thing about my situation is that if you write a script and they flag something as, you can’t do this, you at least save time. Because they don’t see anything until it’s been shot and cut, I run the risk of shooting things that they will then not approve, because they do have a Standards and Practice department. But the woman who runs it is an extremely intelligent woman, and she’s great. I kind of know what her limits are.”

The result is a show the feels like Louis C.K., sounds like Louis C.K., and looks like Louis C.K. in all of his awkward, thoughtful, rough, and profane glory. “It’s not perfect, my show,” he says. “I think that’s the trade off. It’s not slick and perfected, but it’s really from the gut. Stand-up is like that. You say er, um, a lot, and you don’t cut it out. You get caught picking your nose on stage, but when you hit, you really hit. So I’m hoping that’s what the show is able to do.”

Preview: Louie Episode One - Pilot

Louie
Pilot
11PM EST FX

Louis C.K. has finally found a television vehicle that reflects who he is a stand-up comedian in Louie. It is at times profane, uncomfortable, thoughtful, and hilarious. There are laughs of all kinds. There are little smiles when he tells his kids everyone is having French toast despite the fact that their mother doesn’t make them eat it. There’s nervous laughter when he tries to kiss a first date at the door on the way out. And the biggest laughs when the show finds Louie onstage doing stand-up

The show focuses on C.K. as a stand-up comedian trying to raise two young daughters in New York City, a scenario straight out of his personal life. “That’s the only thing I’m comfortable with in life anymore,” he says onstage during the opening stand-up bit. “I know how to raise a couple of kids.”

There are two parts to the pilot episode – a field trip to the botanical garden that never actually happens, and an extremely awkward date – both framed by footage of Louie onstage at the Comedy Cellar, one of C.K.’s haunts in New York City.

“I volunteer not because I’m a good person, but because you have to,” says Louie about his kids’ public school. “Because nobody works there.”

Cut to the bus ride. The driver doesn’t know how to get to the gardens or what to do when the bus breaks down when he literally hits an underpass. Louie is legitimately shocked by the lack of diligence, and equally unsure of himself when he’s thrust into a leadership role to fix it.

“Hey man, what do you have to do to be a bus driver? Nothing? How can you be so god damn irresponsible when you’re transporting peoples’ children?”

The outrage is real, and justified, but it’s not coming from some high-handed lecture or morality play. Louie is afraid because they’ve broken down in Harlem, and his immediate solution is horribly inappropriate, relieving him of the high moral ground. That makes the point that much more effectively.

The second segment – the show doesn’t weave all of its plot points into a nice little sitcom basket – shows Louie going on one of the most awkward dates ever committed to film. He does everything wrong from the start, dressing up too much, not planning a romantic evening, and smiling uncontrollably when his date looks at him. None of it is really his fault – he just can’t help himself.

This is one of the best points about the show. In a traditional sitcom, Louie would wind up at home in front of the TV or talking about the date with friends. Here, the woman is taken away by the most literal and absurd form of deus ex machina you’re likely ever to see on television. Then we see what the real Louis C.K. would have done after a date like that – write some sharp, original stand-up comedy about it.

There is a sensibility to the pilot unlike anything else on television (see Louis C.K. finds a perfect fit at FX for his thoughts on this). Before he broke into TV, and before it was an easy and popular thing to do, C.K. was making short films. The pilot has that same roving feel as a stand-up set. It can go anywhere, alternate between gritty reality and flat out odd, and begin and end whenever the subject demands it.

This is clearly a better show than Lucky Louie, C.K.’s attempt at twisting the traditional sitcom format on HBO, and it deserves a much longer look than the single season C.K. got from that. Lucky Louie is dead, long live the real Louie.

Preview: Louie Episode Two -- Poker/Divorce

Louie
Episode two: Poker/Divorce
11:30PM EST FX

If you weren’t already convinced that Louie was going to be a fascinating watch, this should be the clincher. The cold opening is a bunch of guys sitting around a table playing poker. Stop there, this could be scene from any one of a thousand sitcoms over the last half century.

But then you see who’s at the table – Louie, Jim Norton, Eddie Brill, Nick Di Paolo, Hannibal Buress, and Rick Crom. This isn’t your usual cast of sitcom characters, and they’re talking like they would if you walked in on them at the Comedy Cellar. They are busting each other’s chops, insulting each other’s mothers in vulgar and inventive ways.

Then the conversation turns to the one gay comic at the table, Rick Crom It starts as a free for all about gay sex, punchlines flying, and Di Paolo protesting he doesn’t want to hear the specifics. But then it turns into a poignant discussion about the word faggot, and the associations it conjures for gay men.

At one point, the room gets quiet, and Crom talks about the medieval connotations of gay men being burned, but not on a stake, which would be too good for them. They were thrown into the kindling below instead to burn. There’s a long and troubling history associated with the word, and, Crom reveals, for some gay men, the word brings that up every time.

Again, C.K. avoids trying to take the high moral ground. Everything devolves into jokes again quickly, with everyone participating. And Crom leaning over to smooch Di Paolo’s head. The end result isn’t a judgment, it’s a bunch of guys bringing up a serious topic, showing their differences, and getting along. If only people behaved like that more often in real life.

And that’s all before the opening credits, which aren’t really opening credits, because they happen nearly eight minutes into the show. Nothing is taken for granted in this show. Everything falls where it feels right.

The second half of the show deals with life after divorce, set up by Louie onstage riffing on the topic. That’s followed by a short montage about the day of the divorce, with Robert Kelly playing Louie’s brother. Kelly gets some great mileage out of hammering the negative into Louie, telling him he’ll die alone under a thin blanker, actually asking him to picture it. (Kelly was only supposed to be in one episode, but C.K. says he’ll be back).

Louie then flashes back again, to his high school sweetheart, Tammy Wickilinis. Feeling a bit alone, he digs her up on Facebook, and decides to meet her face to face. Obviously, things have changes, and Tammy isn’t the cute little Tammy she once was. But C.K. avoids the obvious here, as well, and what could have been either a cliché or complete sap turns into something hysterical and sweet.

The laughter continues over the closing credits back at the poker table, and you can tell its genuine for everyone in the scene, just as Louie is genuine all around.

Video: A peek at FX's Louie

Louis C.K.'s new show, Louie, premieres on FX on June 29, and the network has released a couple of new promos for the show. I've seen the rough pilot, and this show is much more in tune with C.K.'s outlook and captures his humor much better than did his HBO show Lucky Louie, as Jon Stewart notes below on C.K.'s Daily Show appearance.

Video promos taken down as per agreement with FX.

Louie, A New FX Original Comedy, Premieres Tuesday, June 29
at 11PM ET/PT only on FX. These videos will be removed from the site on July 9, as per agreement with FX.

For good measure, C.K.'s hilarious appearance on The Daily Show last night:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Louis C.K.
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Juston McKinney: Stuck in A Middle Class Hole

Juston McKinney started his comedy life in Boston years ago, moonlighting from his job in Maine's York County Sherrif's Department to do comedy. He eventually moved to Boston to do stand-up, before moving off to New York and L.A. Now he has a home in New Hampshire, the state where he was born, within driving distance of this weekend's gig at the Kowloon on Route 1 in Saugus (Dave Rattigan and Donny Soares are also on the bill).

McKinney maintains a high comic profile, touring with Blue Collar: The Next Generation in 2007, and until recently hosting an Sirius-XM show from his home. His new hour special, A Middle Class Hole, will debut in May or June (the date is still being worked out), and will be released shortly after that as a CD/DVD. He also plays the Palace Theatre in Manchester, NH on March 6.

A few thoughts from McKinney:

What’s the story behind the name of the special, A Middle Class Hole?

Most of the material on this special comes from my being stuck in this middle class hole, of home ownership, marriage and kids. We saved our money so we could put a down payment on a house. We bought our house in August of 2006, which we now know was the exact peak(to the month!) of the real estate market. My neighbors are in the same situation, no one can move, we live on a cul de stuck.

Do you think the material on the special will surprise people who know you mainly from the Blue Collar tour or from past Comedy Central appearances?

I don't think so. It's still pretty blue collar.

How do you feel about appearing on the Tonight Show as part of Conan O’Brien’s all too brief run?

I was happy I got to do it. I guess I'm part of a small number of comedians who have done the tonight show with both Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien. For whatever that's worth? I guess a weekend at the Kowloon!

How important is the Manchester, NH show on March 6, considering you live part time in New Hampshire? Will that feel like a home town crowd, do you think?

Everything is riding on my Manchester show, if I don't sell enough tickets I may have to put one of my boys up for adoption, I'll even throw in my wife. All kidding aside being a new Hampshire native it is always fun working in Manchester and the Palace is an awesome venue.

Does Boston feel like your comedy hometown, since that’s where you got your start?

Yes I consider Boston to be where I started. Being from New Hampshire and Maine you didn't have any places to get on stage so Stitches in Boston was the first place I ever performed....and bombed.

Will you get back to the radio show at some point?

I loved doing my weekly radio show on Sirius XM and it lasted about a year but it just got to be very time consuming. I would in the future like to do it again when I can find the time.

Do you think you’ll draw some folks from New Hampshire or Maine at the Kowloon, since it’s not far from the northern border?

Definitely a lot of my friends from up north look for a reason to hit Route 1 in Saugus because they go right by a strip club. The only question is whether they end up blowing off my show or not.

FX moves Louie to June, pairing it with Rescue Me

Louis C.K.'s new sitcom, Louie, will no longer debut April 1, as announced earlier this month. FX now plans to debut the show sometime in June, with Denis Leary's Rescue Me serving as its lead-in, creating a block of shows created by Boston comedians.

From the FX press release:

“Louie is a brilliantly funny and original series, and we are excited by the critical response to the show,” said John Landgraf, President and General Manager, FX Networks. “Even though it is a drama, Rescue Me has always been regarded as one of the funniest shows on television and it will provide an outstanding, compatible lead-in for Louie. We successfully used Rescue Me as a lead-in for the majority of the first season of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. We believe in Louie and want to provide it with the best possible platform for success.”

Note: The videos from previous posts on Louie will be taken down by the end of the week at the request of FX, and hopefully replaced soon.

Joe Wong's Letterman spot 2/12

Joe Wong returned to the Late Show with David Letterman last night a television veteran, less than a year after making his television debut on the show in April of 2009. Another solid set, with an inspirational message to those who don't like to wash their hands.

More video from Louis C.K.'s upcoming Louie

Louis C.K.'s new FX sitcom, Louie, doesn't debut until April 1, but FX is generating an early buzz with new clips, like the one I posted last week. It's hard to tell from these clips what the actual show will look like once we get to see it 22 minutes at a time (this one's only 20 seconds), but my guess is that this show will hit even closer to home than Lucky Louie.

C.K. won't be able to get away with quite as much in terms of language and nudity, but FX has been loose enough with shows like Nip/Tuck and Rescue Me to imply C.K. will have more than enough freedom with which to tell the stories he wants to tell.

Video has expired as per agreement with FX.

Joe Wong back on Letterman Friday

Joe Wong taped his second appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman on Monday, which will air Friday. Contacted by e-mail, Wong reports that all went well. “The second time is slightly easier,” he said. “I am more familiar with the stage and the theater. I felt that the crowd loved it. I'd have to watch it Friday to know better. I am never calm enough right after a show to judge it.”

Joe won’t have much time to celebrate. He’ll be headlining The Comedy Club at Cheers on Friday and Saturday, running home to watch the spot Friday night. “I like agonizing over a bad set alone (kidding),” he said. “I want to stay at home as much as possible because I am traveling more and more these days.”

In case you missed it, here’s Wong’s Letterman spot from April of last year.

A preview of Louie, Louis C.K.'s new FX sitcom

Louis C.K. announced his new sitcom, Louie, with a hilariously off-color video on LouisCK.net in November. Here we have our first look at the show, which debuts April 1 at 10PM on FX. If Lucky Louie was an autobiographical show about marriage and kids, Louie looks to be equally autobiographical, this time about a single dad trying to raise two kids.

Here's the clip (note: I can only keep this on the site until April 8, when I will have to take it down at the request of the network).



In other Louis C.K. news, his new stand-up special, Hilarious, get a warm reception at the Sundance Festival last month, the first stand-up special to debut there. Here's a report from Ain't It Cool News, plus bonus clips.

Leno Replacement Suggestions

I shot this video last week (originally intended fro another site) before the news became official that Andover native Jay Leno would be moving to the 11:35 time slot, bumping Brookline native Conan O'Brien's Tonight Show back by a half an hour. Since NBC will now have five hours of airtime to fill, I thought I'd give them my suggestions. The video is on my new YouTube channel, FromTheCrawlspace, which will feature odds and ends from my own music and comedy. I'll post something here every so often.