Paramount is making a documentary about the return of Louis CK
The documentary will look at how CK has "come back in his own way"
Aux News CK
If you ever needed a clear example that so-called “cancel culture” isn’t real and that certain people who have been accused of—or admitted to—misconduct have zero problem maintaining a similar level of success to what they had before, just look at Louis CK: After The New York Times published accusations from multiple women who said that he had a habit of exposing himself to female colleagues and forcing them to watch him masturbate, he admitted that the stories were true and pledged to “step back and take a long time to listen.”
That “long time” ended up being less than a year, with CK eventually going back to comedy and making movies like nothing had happened. He even won a Grammy earlier this year. Now, Paramount is developing a documentary about Louis CK and his return, with Paramount TV head David Nevins saying at Edinburgh TV Festival (via Variety) that he doesn’t think “the social change that #MeToo has brought about is resolved at all” and that now there’s “a bit of backlash against #MeToo [over] who has to go away and who’s allowed to come back.”
Nevins also noted that CK is “a slightly different situation” from Harvey Weinstein, adding that he’s “a great, great comedian who has come back in his own way.” That sounds oddly sympathetic to CK and/or the situation he put himself in, but Variety reports that Nevins also said that this documentary “will involve the New York Times reporters who broke the story that Louis CK had been accused of sexual misconduct by five women.”
We don’t know what that involvement will entail or literally anything else about this project, like who is making it or where it will end up (Variety implies Paramount+ but The Hollywood Reporter says Showtime), so we’ll see how that all goes.
186 Comments
Remember in that episode of Louie when he tried to rape that woman he had been crushing on, and he chased her around his apartment trying to force himself on her until she just gave up and said fuck it?I thought that was the documentary of Louis CK.
You know Hollywood, always trying to reboot shit.
Yep, that scene was fucked. It’s right around the time I stopped watching.
No one cares uggo
was that Pamela Adlon’s character?
Poor bobby hill
You leave my beautiful Marcy Runkle out of this!
There’s lot of very weird stuff that was right under the surface and is unwatchable now… when he goes on fake FoxNews to debate masturbation, saying “it’s harmless it doesn’t hurt anyone”
I still cringe when I think about the scene where Louie had to urgently poop and couldn’t find a place in all of New York City to do so.
And proceeds to tell the female news anchor that he’s gonna masturbate while thinking of her and there’s nothing she can do about it.
This is him saying “look im untouchable. Hey girls, enjoying this too?”Then he got called out and now he’s back richer and more popular for it.You can’t reform this. You can’t fix this.
o yes, that was the first episode i watched. coincidentally, it was also the last episode i watched.
Was that really an episode?
Judging from these replies, I guess it was.
Ew.
Yes.And I actually really liked Louie but that scene was super creepy.
The best part about Louis CK being held accountable for his actions was, obviously, the vindication of his victims and, essentially, the ruination of his career. But the next best part was the AV Club shutting the fuck up about how wonderful his shitty, self-indulgent slogfest show was. Jesus. It was always awful.
And all the while AV Club was nonstop slobbering about the genius of Louis CK, credible rumors about CK’s actions were circulating. AVC wouldn’t touch them. But now they condemn Elle Kemper for not knowing a pageant she was in was racist 20 years before she was born
In retrospect Louie is a lot like Woody Allen’s work. Really well-done, singularly realized filmmaking that also serves as a giant flashing neon sign for the artist’s particular gross get-down.
Also like Woody out of ideas.
Said scene opened with Pamala Adlon jokingly saying don’t jerk off on me. Yeah…….
I’m not defending him or anything, but I really think that whole scene was just so Pamela could have her amazing punchline: “You can’t even rape well!”
She must really be committed to comedy!
She was brilliant in the show, along with the girls that played his daughters, and basically every guest star. Fuck him for jizzing all over their work, too
Yep. And AV Club’s former lead tv critic and current Vox wokescold Emily St James called it “a fascinating half-hour” and praised it for the insight into the mind of someone who would consider an act of sexual violence. Wonder if St James still feels the same now
Sounds like a total wankfest.
It’s no fun unless you have an audience
I know it’s not the point, but what’s the get-off or kink in having (or making) someone watch you play with yourself?
I suppose it all goes back to the old “Rape/sexual assault isn’t about sex, it’s about power”, but I don’t get it.
Exhibitionism is a pretty well-known kink; heck, we live in the age of unsolicited dick pics. If you gathered all your female friends and asked who’d been unwillingly shown a man’s junk I’d be amazed if nobody raised their hand.
I’d probably also have a few less female friends.
The dick pick thing is always amazing because it’s been going on longer then people realize. My wife and I met over Yahoo dating way to long ago and even then men were sending her pics of their dick over slow ass email. And the thing is most women think dicks look weird. They aren’t attractive. At best you might be happy to see size but most guys aren’t smart enough to include a ruler for scale(and let’s be honest, most guys sending them don’t have a lot to impress with anyways.).
“I suppose it all goes back to the old “Rape/sexual assault isn’t about sex, it’s about power”, but I don’t get it.”
No, you do get it, you’re just being a cunt.
As long as you’re not in the first four rows.
“Smashing watermelons” yeah right!
I’ll probably watch it.
especially a captive audience
You must be SO happy about this AV Club!!! This will provide you with 35% of your content for the next six months.
Cancel Culture is very real. Louis CK is just not an example of it. He did some horrific stuff, confessed, and took major professional consequences. That’s all fine.
No fuck off, he’s doing better than ever like most “canceled” entertainers do
For the love of Christ can everyone stop pretending that cancel culture “isn’t a thing” just because it doesn’t always result in the targeted person disappearing from public life *forever*?
Regular people, people who aren’t famous, get cancelled and it results in lost jobs, lost friends and sometimes suicide. It’s the sort of cancelling that happens far more often than this celebrity-level stuff. It’s not a fucking joke, it’s not a myth, and it’s fucking madness-making to have people act like it doesn’t exist.
In the US mainstream version of justice, people get away with shit all the time. That doesn’t lead anyone to come to the conclusion that the US justice system “isn’t a thing.” They can talk about its flaws, and about its pluses and huge huge minuses, but they don’t say it doesn’t exist.
I’m absolutely down for a debate about whether Louis CK came back too soon, and when would be too soon, or whether any time would be too soon if he hasn’t made amends to the women he harmed. That’s an interesting convo. Arguing whether or not cancel culture exists given the fact that Louis CK is back feels like arguing whether or not climate change is “real” or not, since sometimes it’s cold outside.
Right-wingers are just mad the people being canceled now aren’t gay teachers or socialist actors, but genuinely shitty people.
I suspect a lot more gay teachers have been “cancelled” than genuinely shitty people. (Maybe not if you restrict the scope to the start of the #MeToo movement, but even then, I wouldn’t want to bet on it.)
You need to be quiet
Agreed. It’s this fucking rebrand that drives me crazy. This country has been been trying to cancel whole ethnicities and philosophies since its inception, but now that it occasionally includes sexual predators and outspoken racists, it’s a brand new thing that we’re supposed to be very concerned about.
as long as you Admit It Exists, we can at least have a conversation. i would begin that convo by saying there’s *plenty* of us lefties who are resolutely opposed to cancel culture because of the way it plays out in movement spaces, and the impact that has on our communities, whether the people in question are “genuinely shitty” or not. (some of them are! i don’t support punitive justice or the carceral state!)
I wouldn’t say it isn’t real so much as the term has no utility in good faith debate. Deniers on the left seem to be using it to mean “the complete and total destruction of someone’s life and career” and conservatives coined the phrase to mean, in practice, “any negative consequences resulting from a person’s words or actions advocated for by liberals.” It was disingenuous bullshit from the jump, and if you discuss a new situation without actually using the phrase, it wouldn’t be that hard to get 95% of people to agree that it’s sometimes important for people to face consequences when it comes out that they’re sexual predators or engaging in otherwise problematic behavior — not even necessarily for punitive reasons! — but that not every incident calls for the same severity of response. I can’t think of a situation where invoking “cancel culture” would be likely to improve the quality of the discussion or lead to a MORE reasonable outcome.
That’s what conservatives do. Trying to cancel “socialists” since the ‘50s, calling D&D occult, trying to remove music with “inappropriate” lyrics, etc.
Louis C.K. and others are merely meeting consequence since our society has so little for sexual assaulters of those in positions of power.
RIGHT!It’s funny how conservatives are the only ones actually pushing cancel culture.And then they see currently normal situations where shitty people face consequences, and businesses and people are allowed to support what interests them through their money… LIKE ANY CAPITALIST SOCIETYAnd conservatives go FUCKING MENTAL about cancel culture crying because we aren’t forced to endure them if we don’t want to…
I think “Cancel culture doesn’t exist” or “isn’t a thing” is meant to be shorthand for “as long as you’re rich and/or famous (and most likely white and male).
it’d be so much better for my heart and, i believe, online discourse if people said that when they meant it. that being said, i’m not sure that’s true all or even most of the time. but like, “the latest in a long line of examples that cancel culture only really works on the socially vulnerable…” would be a very different (and far more accurate) lede.
You might be on the money with that one.We haven’t really heard from Rosanne in a few. I’ve no idea if that’s by her own choice or not.
The problem with so-called cancel culture is people never shut up about person X coming back too soon from the Cancel Cube or whatever.
Anyone “cancelled” can do whatever they want. They can hide forever. Start doing shows again in a year. It doesn’t matter because this isn’t a system, it’s chaos.
It’s up to the allegedly cancelled person. If CK wants to get back out there and do his thing, fine. He’s not breaking any laws.
In the actual justice system, some people serve less than 10 years for killing another person. Does anyone really think that CK should stay out of show biz for at least that long, or longer? If so, how is that opinion even justifiable?
“Regular people, people who aren’t famous, get cancelled and it results
in lost jobs, lost friends and sometimes suicide. It’s the sort of
cancelling that happens far more often than this celebrity-level stuff. It’s not a fucking joke, it’s not a myth, and it’s fucking madness-making to have people act like it doesn’t exist.”But enough about how conservatives view roughly 60% of their fellow Americans.
For real saying cancel culture isn’t real is about the threat that right wing pundits at Fox News cry about whenever there’s a slow news day. If Gina Carano can get movies at right wing streaming service then she turned her getting cancelled into a marketing stunt. Cancel culture isn’t real insofar as companies have brands to worry about and if you don’t align you’ll get the door, which has always been a thing, especially at places like Disney.Yes people have lost their retail jobs after being horribly racist online and then getting doxxed. It reflects poorly on a company and free speech is a 2 way street. Free speech does not mean you can say anything you want without repercussions, it means people can respond with their free speech(including firing racists) in response to yours.This is what cancel culture isn’t real means and as pointed out above affects just as many “woke moralists” as closet bigots and white supremacists if not moreso. Many jobs have political boundaries and taboos and it often swings so far in both directions, often times overly sensitive in the christian direction when it comes to things like education, cancel culture just became a buzz word when LGBTQ allies and the feminists and the like started to wield it in their favor by bringing attention to the egregiances of powerful people or the blind spots in media portrayals and corporate business and hiring practices.Cancel culture isn’t real it’s just corporate or trying to save their own ass and not lose customers by trying to appear to do the right thing. They don’t always do it. The people are just using capitalism to hold companies and powerful individuals accountable.
But what about the flip side? I’m in an ultra conservative area. I work at a public school. If I say I support LGBTQ rights, or that Black lives do indeed matter, parents would complain and I could be fired. That sounds like cancel culture to me. Don’t forget that Florida, South Carolina, and Texas exist.
Yeah it goes both ways. My point was probably being lost in the shuffle as I’m not espousing it as a good thing or not, just a thing.
Republicans shout at the right for using “identity politics” when they invented the damb thing.
Is firing somebody considered protected speech?
The way laws are currently being interpretted, yes. Corporations generally have more rights than people. If you have a problem with that, then we have issues with our system not cancel culture.
I guess maybe it’s inherent to the argument that “regular people are getting canceled,” but I always struggle to see a connection to anything real there. I’ve seen people in my local artistic and professional communities get taken to task for clear, patterned, abusive behavior; but any instance of someone becoming the victim of a “witch hunt” and getting pilloried for unintended behavior is nothing new and part of the fucked-up human social dynamic, public shaming that you can see in the McCarthy Hearings or Salem Witch Trials.
Almost like you’re describing something other than cancel culture…
I think I’d ask you to parse the phrase more. My general take is that everyone at every point on the political spectrum is capable of vindictive, self-aggrandizing behavior, but when people on the left indulge in that, we use pejoratives like “cancel culture,” “woke,” or the now quaint-sounding “politically correct.” Embedded there is the tendency by people in positions of (at least relative) social or institutional power to deflect accusations against themselves or people with whom they identify. So spurious accusations get mixed in with genuine attempts to hold people in power accountable, and a movement gets defined in public perception by a few bad actors. Some people should be “cancelled,” and bad behavior by people who have the means to escape accountability is prevalent to the point of being endemic. It’s true some people get unfairly accused or shunned, but I don’t think those instances are so common they need to define the entire conversation. My problem with phrases like “cancel culture” is they are so thoroughly weaponized by people invested in their own power that they’ve lost any inherent meaning. And they become so ingrained, eventually people who agree with the goals of something like #MeToo start using them and reinforce the defensive narrative. I don’t know. I don’t have a solution, I just think these little catchphrases end up doing a lot of damage from within if we’re not careful.
Cancel culture isn’t real because it’s a catchall term used for anything from mild Twitter criticism to sexual predators being fired from high-profile roles.
Sure, some of the things people call “cancel culture” are happening, but there is no singular cancel culture trying to force people to disappear if they dare post an inappropriate Tweet. There isn’t even a singular cancel culture keeping sexual predators off screen.
“Stop saying cancel culture isn’t real just because we keep having to chance the definition of the term since it never seems to line up with reality!”
Nah.Here’s the thing: Yes, ordinary people lose their jobs and such for saying shitty things sometimes. But 99% of the time, the people moaning about cancel culture don’t give a shit about those people. They only want to talk about celebrities who end up getting what amounts to a six month vacation before they inevitably come back, having learned absolutely nothing. At this point, getting cancelled is almost a good career move for some of these people.
“99% of the time, the people moaning about cancel culture don’t give a shit about those people” — i think you hang out with different people than i do. the people i know who have been canceled, and who fear being canceled, are left-of-center activist or activist-adjacent types. i know a white woman who asked a black person on instagram if he’d be part of a “diversity panel” or some such thing. he had a thing in his bio (that she didn’t read) that said he wanted to be paid by white people for doing political work like that. so, she screwed up. he posted about it, directed people at her, she got doxxed, got texted to the point of needing a new phone number, lost her job, had to start over, and experienced real trauma.
you might think that’s good, or bad, or complicated, or indifferent. but it *happened* and it’s part of a pattern, and “cancel culture” is the name we have for that pattern.
tucker carlson can misuse the word for his own ends, it doesn’t mean the thing that the word describes does not exist. that’s not how words work. right-wing hacks misuse “socialism” “communism” and “feminism” all the time — those things don’t cease to “be a thing” because of it.if people don’t want to use the term “cancel culture” for it, go ahead and call it something else when you talk about it. and when i say “cancel culture” you’ll know what *i* mean by it. and we can all agree that it *is* a thing.
“the people i know who have been canceled, and who fear being canceled, are left-of-center activist or activist-adjacent types.”
Nope.
Now you’re blatantly lying. Thanks for coming though.
Yeah, when Fox News devotes 40 stories a night to complaining about the latest millionaire celebrity who got “cancelled” for saying the n-word onstage or whatever, they are totally doing it out of concern for “left-of-center activists.”There is a world of difference between ordinary people navigating these sorts of difficult and often morally thorny issues, and rich Hollywood assholes who think having to take a 3 month vacation because they groped a teenager or something. And no, the word for both those things is not “cancel culture,” because cancel culture has become a right wing buzzword which is used EXCLUSIVELY to defend the rich and powerful from any sort of consequence whatsoever. That’s why everyone has heard of what happened to Louis CK and no one has heard about what happened to this lady you know from Instagram. Because any story about ordinary people is going to be buried and ignored if it’s pitted against a story about a celebrity, and that’s what you’re doing when you insist on labeling both of these totally different situations as “cancel culture.”Zero “cancelled” celebrities have been doxxed, lost their jobs (for more than a few months, and even then, they can afford it) or experienced anything but the mildest of consequences, especially in the long-term. These are not the same situations as ordinary people who have actually had life-damaging situations happen to them, and pretending that they’re the same thing just trivializes those people’s experiences.
You’re such a dumb/wrong piece of shit
My wife and I work at a public university in the south that prominently displays crosses, including on its official seal. She has been told not to teach “critical race theory” or she will be fired (she teaches American Government). If that’s not us being threatened with cancel culture, I don’t know what is.
“If that’s not us being threatened with cancel culture, I don’t know what is.
Being told you will be fired if you don’t do what your employer tells you to do is not being canceled, moron. That’s NOT DOING YOUR JOB.
It’s odd odd that when people claim that cancel culture doesn’t exist, it’s usually because they’re complaining that someone who they think should be cancelled hasn’t been cancelled.
Cancel culture doesn’t exist AV Club keeps repeating is fucking rich coming from same website that says “OH great. Ellie Kempler has a racist past”
It’s ironic how people tend to say that cancel culture doesn’t exist when they’re complaining that someone who they want to be cancelled hasn’t been cancelled.
Cancel culture is *literally* about famous people.
It’s wild. This writer says “cancel culture isn’t real” but then immediately describes Louis as making a “return” … a return from what lol, being cancelled?
I’m not concerned about being cancelled because I conduct myself in a respectful manner to people and don’t treat anyone unfairly. Most of the complaining I’ve seen about it comes from the right wing, who are just ever so concerned that their personal philosophies of hatred and prejudice might one day have a personal cost.One thing we agree on, I find it more interesting to talk about actual ideas and things that have happened than the media buzzwords of the day, so, here is your opportunity to get me on your side: Who has been unfairly cancelled? Do you have any examples to back up what you’re saying?
I’m ready to ride a Columbus Day float to the premiere of Louie’s next film with Woody Allen and Dave Chappelle riding shotgun.
Weinstein!
Nah fuck that guy.
I don’t think you’ll have a say in it.
I wouldn’t say he’s come back “like nothing happened”. He’s come back as an anti-woke grumpy old guy tailoring his comedy to right wing dopes who still laugh at “I identify as X” jokes.
so you admit that identifying as “X” is a joke.
It is, quite literally, the Right’s one and only “joke”.Saying the Right uses it as a joke does not mean that it is funny.Also, saying that the Right uses it as a joke does not mean that the statement is universally a joke.Also, congrats on literally just providing your own entry in the “one joke” club. You officially qualify as a Right Wing Comedian.
Right wingers ARE a joke, they don’t need to tell them. You seem like a very angry person. You forgot to call me a Nazi. -50 WOKE points.
I have no idea how you get anger from any of my responses here. I haven’t called you anything except a Right Wing Comedian, which as I mentioned, by telling an interpretation of the only Right Wing Joke, you officially are. I don’t make the rules, pal. Your welcome package is in the mail.
I didn’t use it as a joke anymore than you did my good fellow. You must be MAGA Comedian too! Dems da rules amirite? Hyuck!
I have no idea why you responded to me in the first place. You’re just spinning your wheels, not saying anything.Are you lonely? Do you need someone to talk to?
I identify as a chocolate bar. My pronouns are, “Her/She”.What were Michael Jackson’s pronouns? “Hee/Hee”.I’m coming out as binary. My pronouns are 101010011 and 111001101
Yo mama so fat her pronoun is “There”
Alright, save some for open-mic nite.
I mean not really. His stand up hasn’t really changed, some people leaked some material he workshopping when he started up again, which was not particularly good. But what comedian (male and female) hasn’t told new jokes that bombed / didn’t work in the past that they would cringe at today?
Well…except for the part where he hasn’t been “tailoring his comedy to right wing dopes…”, but okay.
In his last special he talked about how great it is that trans people get to be themselves these days. He isn’t really like what you think at all. In fact, maybe you don’t really know what you’re talking about
ew
Well, he hasn’t exposed himself to anyone in the last year, and might not do so in the future now that he knows that he can’t get away with it so easily. You could consider that a win.
That we know of.
Tell it to the women whose careers he ruined
You’ll have to list them
No one likes you
Kill yourself
Be big enough sociopath and anything is a “win”
Hey guys, we got Trump’s campaign manager here!
“cancel culture” is a very broad term and everyone has their own definition of what it means. Some people think it means just being criticized online. Others would like it to mean being cast from society for all of eternity and starving to death. The truth of it lies somewhere in between where a lot of talk online can lead to people losing opportunities and getting low key or even not so low key blacklisted from certain industries or gigs. I think it’s fair to say CK faced a lot of consequences, lost a lot of money and opportunities due to the entertainment industry needing to distance themselves in order to avoid the major backlash that had showed up in full force in the wake of Weinstein. Was he canceled? Depends on what your definition of canceled is.
Still others would like it to mean having one’s feet hewn from under them, bound, chained and cast through the Doors Of Night.
I’d be into that, minus the hewing and the casting.
“Cancel culture” seems pretty real as far as I can see. I think the debate is whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing. I’m guessing Louie thinks it’s a bad thing.
“Cancel culture” seems pretty real as far as I can see.”
Based on the zero people who have been canceled? Yeah, I definitely agree.
You know, there is an interesting documentary that could be made from this that explores the effectiveness of MeToo, the myth of cancel culture, and how the makeup of CK’s audience shifted more to the right when he returned. But this sounds like they’re going for an inspirational comeback story that’s borderline hagiography.
That would be interesting. He was my favorite comedian for a long time so when the story broke I was pretty upset as a fan. When he started testing the waters by doing small standup shows again I was interested, I wanted him to be redeemed. I naively thought he was going to do some redemptive standup about his behavior. And then he made jokes about the Parkland shooting and it was so disappointing. I felt so stupid (and I felt like a traitor) for wanting that from him and willing to overlook the crappy things he did.
Similar. When the rumors were still heavily swirling, I tried watching his latest comedy special (“2017″ at the time), and even though there was some good stuff in there, there was too much of a taint on him for me to enjoy it.It’s a shame too, because the “Dad” episode of Louie was one of my favorite episodes of any TV show. (Though I can still watch the Russian Tea Room scene with F. Murray Abraham. He’s funny as hell and CK barely speaks.)
I was so irritated because, to me, his image was of an incredibly flawed person who was trying to be a little better in the world. So much of his act and his show revolved around the world moving on from his oafish crudeness, and his efforts to keep up. So for him to come back and just go “geez it sucks when people get mad at you for your kink,” it felt like the joke was on me.
Some comics push the boundaries, they always have. It’s not going away. Just don’t watch or boycott. No one will ever agree on what’s funny. Find your niche.
He wasn’t pushing boundaries with that Parkland joke or any of subsequent routines. He was and is being cowardly and punching down which was never his niche before. He took the easy way out.
You need to watch/listen to the latest episode of Your Mom’s House Podcast and listen to him provide context for what happened with the Parkland set. It’s important to actually make an attempt to understand it, rather than just jumping to conclusions.
You’re uninteresting
This is not the post I expected this response to.
Ok
Pay no attention to that absolutely pathetic fuckstick. He pops in to troll specific threads (usually those related to “cancel culture” or trans issues) on an intermittent basis, has no sense of irony, and apparently can’t afford therapy.He’s Schrodinger’s Weird Dipshit: “based” and successful enough (his words) to be above these lowly “woke” commenters, pathetic enough to feel the need to troll them and take even momentary enjoyment from engagement with them.Maybe the little guy will learn, when he grows up.
A few points in rebuttal:1. I’m doubting CK’s audience “shifted more to the right” when he returned. He’s as popular as ever and I find the notion that he somehow still pulls massive numbers despite ostensibly losing left wing fans.2. MeToo has been effective but it also has resulted in overreach where it shouldn’t have been applied.3. Cancel culture isn’t a “myth”. It exists in this reality though some people are, in many cases, too popular to be completely canceled unless their sins are absolutely beyond redemption (e.g. rape).4. There was literally zero detail in Barsanti’s article on what this documentary will focus on or what the tone will be. Not sure where you got the idea that it will be framed as an “inspirational comeback story that’s borderline hagiography”, but okay.
Well, I suppose either documentary will come out in the editing room, depending upon how much footage they get.
Cancel culture isn’t a myth. My guess is that you just like when it happens to people you already didn’t like.
There’s this wide group of people who say ‘Louie now panders to a right wing audience’ say it to make themselves feel better. When someone does something they don’t like, they say, oh he’s part of the other tribe, now.His comedy hasn’t changed. The audience shift isn’t real, it’s just comedy fans. Less politics please. Why would one’s political beliefs have any influence on this topic.
This is just a projection of insecurities
When he made his comeback, his stand-up included jokes about survivors of the Parkland shooting, trans people, Asian men, and a lamentation about how he hates that the r-word isn’t acceptable any more.That sounds like pandering to a right-wing audience to me.
I don’t know. Sounds like it could be an interesting project. I’ll give it a look. Certainly not going to judge its merits without seeing it.
“Look at it and give it a chance!” – Louis CK about his dick
“Give piece a chance.”
Give peens a chance, come on it’s right there!
of COCK!
That the best you can do?
It was a low-hanging…uh…fruit…
I feel bad, I’ll show myself out.
Indeed. Barsanti seems to be making many (worst-case) assumptions in his article. It doesn’t even say CK will be involved in the documentary. The only participants mentioned are reporters from the NY Times that broke the story. An important quote from the Hollywood Reporter article: “It is going to deal with all the ‘where are we now four, five years later after the Weinstein story broke.” That sounds a lot different than charting CK’s comeback.
99% of articles about him leave out how his manager threatened these women into keeping silent after the fact. To me this is crucial to understanding what he did and why he was cancelled (sort of). He never exposed himself to, say, female execs at HBO. It was strictly comedians, female actresses and other women with significantly less power than himself. It’s not that what he did was just “gross” or “inappropriate”; that could almost be justified in a no-holds-barred medium like stand-up comedy. It’s that he lorded his power over these women like a rapist.
No one cares what you think about anything
You should get that tattooed Memento-style.
Sure seems like you do lol
I think most (at least a lot) of your abusers and predators have some idea of who they can or cannot get away with their shit.
Like a lion doesn’t go after the biggest stag in the herd, he chooses the slower, weaker ones.
If you boycott Paramount+ will anyone even notice?
Who was that, Confucius?
I would notice, because I wouldn’t be able to watch Lower Decks.Ahhh, I’m kidding. I’d just pirate it.
New season starts today!
That’s what I certainly would never do!
It would probably hurt the NWSL
With Futurama coming back again I don’t know why anyone even uses the term ‘cancel culture’ anymore.
Wow. It sure sounds like they’re going to make excuses for his behavior.
This sounds like a docu that would be completely masturbatory.
So because there are outliers – who have a massive following – like Louis CK who are seemingly uncancelable (or, at least, can’t be canceled permanently), “cancel culture” isn’t real?The amusing thing about articles like this is that there is a seething undercurrent that wishes the subject was permanently canceled but is horribly bothered that they haven’t been.
“That ‘long time’ ended up being less than a year”That actually does seem like a long time to “listen.” Have you ever listened for a year?
I wish Barsanti would take some time just to listen for awhile. He sure isn’t good at speaking!
Thanks for giving me a safe space and a judgement free forum. Its been a long, difficult, sometimes surreal and soul crushing journey. Do you mind if I just sit here, take off my hat and jacket?
Take off your pants and jacket.
No, dickhead, you go right ahead and do that.
HOW DARE HE STILL HAVE A CAREER?!?!? P.S. of course we never wanted him to not have a career.
“If you ever needed a clear example that so-called “cancel culture” isn’t real and that certain people who have been accused of—or admitted to—misconduct have zero problem maintaining a similar level of success to what they had before, just look at Louis CK”That’s like saying murders aren’t punished because OJ got off.
No, it isn’t, because Louis CK one of the people that are pointed to as proof that people get canceled.
But you’re a disingenuous cunt and you knew that.
You know, Sam, for something that supposedly “isn’t real”, you certainly have wasted many years of your life adamantly defending this “imaginary” concept of Cancel Culture!
Lots of people have spent thousands of years talking about God, so…
Don’t comment on this please
Ok…
oh, damn.
History will judge this generation’s media culture and find it priggish, servile and stunted. LCK will come out ok in the final analysis; AVC not so much.
“LCK will come out ok in the final analysis”
Sure he will.
His last two specials he released were hilarious. He pokes fun at what he did. He knows what he did was really messed up.
How has he made amends to the people he hurt?
He can’t make amends. I just don’t think that that is appropriate to even try. If someone sexually assaulted me, I’d never forgive him and I wouldn’t want a personal apology.Louie can give money to sexual assault victim funds or some other charity. That’s all I can think of for him to try to make things right on the moral scale.
Can he make amends to the comedians for having his people threaten to end their careers if they told what happened to them? They were blacklisted for speaking out and that at the very least cost them a lot of work, can he at least pay them for lost wages?
Shocked and offended to learn that it is now mandatory for everyone to see the Louis CK documentary, even if they don’t want to. I mean, that’s what everyone’s upset about, right? Normal adults couldn’t possibly be frothing at the mouth over a film that they’re under no obligation to watch, could they?
No one is frothing. People are saying it’s pretty shitty to put someone who abused women on a pedestal. I’d rather the women comedians he intimidated and whose careers he damaged have a spotlight first.
An airtight, rock-solid justification for why you, personally, should not have to watch the documentary. But there are, of course, be people who will try to impose some sort of pressure campaign on Paramount/Showtimes/whoever to drop the documentary altogether. Those are the ones I’m taking issue with.
It’s a rock solid justification to voice one’s opinion, especially as we try to move to a society where predators like him are not enabled and admired.
I don’t think it’s an especially progressive opinion to advocate for taking something away from people who want it, when their consumption of it doesn’t affect you. But yes, people can say whatever they want. I just hope it doesn’t result in what they’re looking for.
You don’t think it’s progressive to express the opinion that someone who abuses women and damages their careers should not be rewarded in that career path? And that we should be working toward a system where abusers are not enabled and glorified? LOLOLOL. You may want to look up the definition of progressive. By your measure, it’s not progressive to say Trump sucks and shouldn’t have a job in politics because there are those who want him to.
That was a lot of words. Trump’s place in politics, of course, *does* affect others. So it makes perfect sense to work against that end result. A comic having a documentary on a streaming service most people don’t subscribe to does not affect someone as long as they don’t have to watch it. Which, of course, they don’t.
It’s perfectly OK to express opinions about rape culture and how abusers are nurtured and given second chances while the careers of those they have harmed remain damaged and how the abusive system chugs right along, welcoming the abusers back into the fold, never changing a thing.
Can we talk about I Love You, Daddy for a moment?
It’s not hard to track down on YouTube. I’m probably one of the few who watched it in full.
The film felt like Louis was rubbing our faces in what he’d done. At no point could you forget it.
What stuck out to me though was Louis’s character either ignoring the advice of the women in his life, or telling them how they should live their lives.
His daughter was being exploited by a famous filmmaker and yet Louis still somehow made it all about himself and his failures as a parent.
I don’t think it’s a story we needed, and Chloe Moretz said something to the same effect.
Great, you guys can fag out griping about this for like six months
I have to wonder what culture war points a person is desperate to score to have to sink to defending Louis C.K.But because the culture war is so pervasive now, you can’t just say someone’s a creepy slimeball asshole anymore without having to qualify whether he still retains value to one sociopolitical side or the other.
You might be overthinking it. Have you considered that people have independent thoughts and they sometimes express them and the ‘culture war’ is irrelevant
I mean, it could be an interesting documentary subject. No need to act like we know Anything about the POV it will take at this point.
The penalty for Public Lewdness in the First Degree in New York is “up to one year in jail”, so even if Louis CK were convicted, he wouldn’t have served that long for his first offense. In fact, her probably would’ve been given probation and forced counseling, pretty much exactly what he got. His career is nowhere near a “similar level” than where it was before. Where’s “Louie”? Where are his sold-out tours?He’s still mostly cancelled, and sadly it’s by liberals-in-name-only. Idiots who will go to bat for baby-murderers to get the vote but think a guy who jerked off in front of some women should never be allowed to earn a living for the rest of his entire life. It’s people exactly like you that make it easier for right-wing nutjobs to make “liberal” a dirty word. You should be cancelled.
He’s touring the world and selling about theater after theater after theater. He also just filmed a movie and leased the rights to at least three of his previous shows.
“so even if Louis CK were convicted, he wouldn’t have served that long for his first offense.”
He wasn’t though. You get that, right? Instead of spending a year in jail he spent a year not in jail.
How are you SO FUCKING STUPID?
HE. WAS. NOT. PUNISHED.
“Idiots who will go to bat for baby-murderers to get the vote but think a guy who jerked off in front of some women should never be allowed to earn a living for the rest of his entire life.”
Tell me you’re rapist while basically admitting you’re a rapist.
The AVClub does try to stir things up like trying to get Nathan Fillion in trouble for not saying anything bad about Joss Whedon. It gets clicks and in that way cancel culture exists because it makes a profit. But in CK’s case his people threatened the comedians he exposed himself to with blacklisting if they spilled the beans about him. Even if he asked permission at first that kind of threat after the fact is a much more real form of cancelling. Cancelling your career until you gaslight your experience.
“zero problem maintaining a similar level of success to what they had before”This obviously isn’t true in CK’s case though. Like I don’t want to defend the guy, but this is just a lie.
Yea it definitely isn’t true. His TV career is definitely not the same. He had his own show and a deal to produce pretty much whatever he wanted on FX in the mid-2010s (both Baskets and Better Things are shows he was an executive producer and co-creator of under that deal). None of that has come back. And his two comedy albums and one film he’s released since have been self-financed and produced.
No thanks. I don’t find him funny, or insightful, and his bits about his daughters are worse than creepy.
A lot of people seem more bothered by Louis being able to overcome his cancellation than by what he did to get cancelled. They’re threatened by the idea that someone could have the money and expertise to produce himself. Chappelle, Musk, C.K., Rogan, etc can platform themselves and those who believe they should remain pariahs can’t handle it.
Reading anything about Louis CK from the AV Club is like reading a celebrity obituary: the article is 95% written at any given time, with all the foregone judgments, and only a few dates and proper nouns are added at publishing time.
Hard pass.Hmm…that could also be the title…
“If you ever needed a clear example that so-called “cancel culture” isn’t real and that certain people who have been accused of—or admitted to—misconduct have zero problem maintaining a similar level of success to what they had before, just look at Louis CK”First sentence in and it’s utter nonsense. The guy was set to host SNL whenever he wanted and have annual Netflix specials for the rest of his life. Now he can’t do any of those things anymore and he has to self-fund everything he does. There is absolutely a cancel culture, but you folks need to realize that there is also an anti-cancel culture that fights back against this nonsense. Happy for Louis