Tag: Louis CK

Louie CK now is losing gigs the way women who spoke up about his creepy nonconsensual behavior lost gigs.

The distributor of Louis C.K.’s coming film “I Love You, Daddy” said on Friday that it would not go ahead with its release of the movie. The announcement comes one day after The New York Times published a report in which multiple women shared their recollections of encounters in which Louis C.K., the Emmy Award-winning comedian, had engaged in sexual misconduct.

“I Love You, Daddy,” which is written and directed by Louis C.K., was acquired by the entertainment company the Orchard in a $5 million deal after the movie made its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. The film stars Louis C.K. as a TV comedy writer and John Malkovich as a notorious filmmaker who strikes up an uncomfortable relationship with the protagonist’s daughter (Chloe Grace Moretz) who has not yet turned 18.

How edgy.

Following preview screenings of “I Love You, Daddy,” several critics had remarked on its troubling sexual politics and how certain scenes seemed to be commenting on Louis C.K.’s own reputation for misconduct.

In an interview with The Times at the Toronto festival, Louis C.K. said: “The uncomfortable truth is, you never really know. You don’t know anybody. To me, if there was one thing this movie is about, it’s that you don’t know anybody.”

He would say that, wouldn’t he. He had creepy nonconsensual secrets, and from that he concludes that everyone has creepy nonconsensual secrets. You have to be pretty narcissistic to trap people into watching you masturbate, so you’re narcissistic enough to think everyone else is as creepy as you are. Wrong. Lots of people are not as creepy as that.

That link under the critics remarking goes to a Fast Company piece by Joe Berkowitz that is yet another confirmation that people knew about LCK’s creepy ways. It’s dated October 20, nearly three weeks ago.

After attending a screening in New York this week, I can guarantee that I Love You, Daddy–whose plot we’ll get to in a moment–will be viewed in a far more damning light when it’s released next month.

The film‘smostly rapturous reception at TIFF was already tainted by another discomforting news story. While promoting her Amazon series, One Mississippi, comedian Tig Notaro called on estranged pal Louis CK to “handle” the sexual harassment allegations against him. For years, stories have swirled that CK has a habit of forcing women in comedy to watch him masturbate. (Louis CK’s response has been to at first ignore the allegations, and then to dismiss them.) Tig Notaro simply made the rumors harder to ignore–not that it was ever okay to pretend they didn’t exist. After the Weinstein scandal broke, it’s now impossible–especially considering the subject of CK’s new movie.

I’m curious about what if anything Terry Gross will say about it, because she’s done a lot to promote CK. She mentions him often and she thinks he’s very hot shit. She also did a memorable interview with Tig Notaro; I would never have heard of either of them if I didn’t listen to Fresh Air regularly. Her attitude to LCK is worshipful, so I kind of think she needs to give us an ooops…especially since the rumors were out there.

I Love You, Daddy is a neo-screwball comedy about whether it’s truly possible to separate art from the artist. In this case, the artist is essentially Woody Allen, whose Manhattan CK’s film recalls in both style and substance. Louis CK stars as Glen Topher, an extremely Louis CK-like TV writer who worships at the altar of Leslie Goodwin, a Woody surrogate played by John Malkovich. Topher is willing to dismiss the (vaguely described) accusations of child molestation against proud horndog Goodwin… right up until Goodwin takes up with Topher’s barely illegal daughter, China (Chloë Grace Moretz). Meanwhile, another moral dilemma arises when pregnant actress Grace Cullen (Rose Byrne) seems interested in sleeping with Topher if he helps her cross over into comedy. It’s a film generously larded with provocation, something its creator has never shied away from.

Manhattan is the movie that turned me right off Woody Allen. The fact that the Woody Allen character played by Woody Allen was shtupping a high school senior played by Mariel Hemingway was only part of it – I was also turned off by the relentless self-admiration, the anti-intellectualism, the hostility. That was long before he took up with his longterm partner’s underage daughter.

By making a movie about the struggle to reconcile accusations against Louis CK’s Blue Jasmine director, Woody Allen, CK has also made a movie about the audience’s struggle with himself. This is a film that’s aware of its creator’s reputation. Lest that layer be lost on viewers, one scene finds Charlie Day’s wily sidekick miming masturbation (to completion!) in front of Edie Falco. (Another scene has Topher apologizing to “Women,” as in the entire gender.) All of this may have been intended as a boiling hot gumbo of catharsis, reckoning, and trolling–a playful way to comment on the allegations against him without actually commenting–but it no longer feels that way. Now that sexual harassment and sexism have dominated the discourse for two weeks–spilling out into every facet of the entertainment industry–Louis CK’s intentions look more self-serving. The film now plays like an ambiguous moral inventory of and excuse for everything that allows sexual predators to thrive: open secrets, toxic masculinity, and powerful people getting the benefit of the doubt.

Powerful men. Powerful women don’t get that benefit of the doubt so much.

Setting aside the awkward timing of a male-written movie with a reverse–casting couch subplot and a sidekick who is the human embodiment of locker room talk, the way the film regards open secrets is troubling. “That’s just a rumor,” Louis CK says about the allegations against John Malkovich’s esteemed auteur, echoing how he dismissed his own allegations in real life. “It’s a fucked-up, unproven story. He was never charged for that,” the character continues. Sure, it’s only a character saying so, and early in the film at that, but it’s also the opening salvo to a game of devil’s advocate the real Louis CK is in no position to play.

By the time his character says, “Never judge anybody on their private life,” accepts Les Goodwin’s creative notes right in the middle of a confrontation about maybe dating his teenage daughter, or takes comfort from another character declaring, “Everyone’s a pervert,” the audience has an idea of where he stands.

In making a case for not believing certain rumors, Louis CK is making a case for not believing women. Bill Cosby is a free man because people didn’t believe women. Donald Trump is the president because people didn’t believe women. Nobody might have believed the case against Harvey Weinstein if not for audio proof of him being disgusting to women. A policy of disregarding these kinds of rumors only protects the powerful men who stand accused. The real Woody Allen is surely aware of how dangerous it is for him if people start believing women. While prominent actors and directors publicly flagellate themselves for not speaking out about Weinstein sooner, even though they knew about his crimes, this man is worried that the avalanche of Weinstein accusers will lead to “a witch hunt.”

A worry we have seen before.

Is I Love You, Daddy even a good movie? I don’t know. Maybe if the 2017 audience knew absolutely nothing about the Weinstein scandal or Louis CK’s personal situation, they could evenly assess. It’s not Louis CK’s fault that the former is currently unfolding, but it seems intentional that it brings into sharp relief his own reputation. He sat through however many takes of Charlie Day pretending to masturbate in front of Edie Falco, knowing full well who it would remind people of: himself.

That takes quite a lot of nerve.

Actually the word on Louis CK has been out for awhile, but I guess before Harvey Weinstein Day it didn’t get much traction…though I bet it got plenty among his colleagues. Vanity Fair reported some of it last August and cited Gawker and Vulture stories.

Vanity Fair started with Tig Notaro.

Tig Notaro is ready to sever ties with Louis C.K. Despite the fact that he’s credited as a producer on the comedian’s Amazon series One Mississippi, which will soon debut its second season, Notaro is telling viewers that this is nothing more than a vanity credit for C.K.—one she wishes would disappear completely.

“He’s never been involved” in the series, she said in a recent interview with Daily Beast, adding that C.K. truly has had “nothing to do with the show.” (The Daily Beast points out that Notaro neglects to call out C.K. by name, instead referring to the Emmy winner only as “he” and “him.”)

This declaration should not be wholly surprising to Notaro fans. In April, she not only accused C.K. of plagiarizing one of her skits when he was hosting Saturday Night Live, but she also revealed that the pair “have not communicated in any way for nearly a year and a half.” One Mississippi premiered in September of 2016.

…

The conversation then pivots to rumors of sexual misconduct that have followed C.K. for years. In 2012, Gawker ran a blind item about a famous comedian who had forced female comedians to watch him masturbate. Later, comedians like Jen Kirkman and Roseanne Barr publicly addressed the rumors. Kirkman alluded to a “known perv” she went on tour with who made her life very difficult, without calling out C.K. by name. In 2016, Barr was more explicit, saying she’s heard stories about C.K. “locking the door and masturbating in front of women comics and writers.”

“I can’t tell you,” she continued. “I’ve heard so many stories. Not just him, but a lot of them. And it’s just par for the course. It’s just shit women have to put up with.”

While speaking to the Beast, Notaro says she previously had “an incident” with C.K. prior to the launch of One Mississippi, though she did not go into detail.

“We don’t talk since then. So as far as what he’s doing or what he’s done…” she continued, trailing off.

Some of it was out there; the Times crossed some Ts.

Emily Nussbaum on Louis CK and the whole damn thing.

We are all going to be writing pieces about how these scandals change the way we look at art—at Louis C.K.’s comedy, but also at the movies that were produced by Harvey Weinstein, or that star Kevin Spacey, or are directed by James Toback, as well as the TV shows and albums created by Bill Cosby. That’s a critic’s issue; it’s an issue for fans and philosophers. It’s certainly a particularly pungent question when it comes to a show like “Louie”—an auteurist sitcom on FX in which the main character is explicitly based on its creator, or C.K.’s independent streaming project “Horace and Pete,” which had a whole episode devoted to a female character talking about exposing herself in front of a man whom she wasn’t certain was consenting. C.K.’s standup is not merely confessional, it’s also focussed on sex and ethics, as well as on questions of decency, fatherhood, masculinity, and, at times, feminism. That’s why, for many of C.K.’s fans, he’s been more than a creative figure. He’s been a role model, too, specifically because he tells the kinds of stories that are taboo and shameful—his brand was telling the stories you weren’t supposed to tell.

As it turns out, other people have those stories, too. As far as I’m concerned, before we talk about art, we should listen to them. And we should talk about something else, something bigger, that extends far beyond today’s news story: we should talk about the many ways in which comedy itself (in sitcoms, in standup, on the tour scene) is a deeply sexist world, and not only because some people within it act in predatory ways. Back to the age of Johnny Carson and the Borscht Belt, aggressive misogyny has been a central ingredient to standup, a phenomenon that was difficult to speak openly about because it would make any woman who tried to do so sound uncool, like a prig and a censor—like the comedy-killer, not the comic. Tell the wrong story and you might lose a rare opportunity to be one of the guys, as all of these stories make clear.

It’s a satisfying irony that as these stories begin to get told, some of that telling is happening in art. There’s another television episode that came out this year that also struck me as based on the rumors about Louis C.K.: an acute, nuanced episode of “Girls.” Although I tried to hint at that fact in my response (in which I wrote that the character “feels like a familiar figure”), I didn’t want this vague I.D. to swamp my bigger point, about how much the episode captured these deeper questions about storytelling. In “American Bitch,” a brilliant artist pulls out his penis in front of a younger woman. She’s been sedated by his praise, and by a complicated mind game, a manipulation in which she ends up feeling complicit, despite all her best attempts to stay above the fray. She knows that if she tries to tell anyone the details of what happened, it will expose her more than it would him. Maybe, these days, that story could end in a different way.

I thought the same thing about that episode of “Girls” when I read the Times story – that episode which is the only one I’ve seen (though I’ve seen a few fragments of others). I thought that and also thought I was probably wrong, because maybe all episodes of “Girls” are like that. But yes: Louis CK sounds like the manipulative shit in that episode, or the other way around.

Louis C. K.’s turn.

In 2002, a Chicago comedy duo, Dana Min Goodman and Julia Wolov, landed their big break: a chance to perform at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colo. When Louis C.K. invited them to hang out in his hotel room for a nightcap after their late-night show, they did not think twice. The bars were closed and they wanted to celebrate. He was a comedian they admired. The women would be together. His intentions seemed collegial.

As soon as they sat down in his room, still wrapped in their winter jackets and hats, Louis C.K. asked if he could take out his penis, the women said.

They thought it was a joke and laughed it off. “And then he really did it,” Ms. Goodman said in an interview with The New York Times. “He proceeded to take all of his clothes off, and get completely naked, and started masturbating.”

In 2003, Abby Schachner called Louis C.K. to invite him to one of her shows, and during the phone conversation, she said, she could hear him masturbating as they spoke. Another comedian, Rebecca Corry, said that while she was appearing with Louis C.K. on a television pilot in 2005, he asked if he could masturbate in front of her. She declined.

Sweet of you to offer, but no thanks.

The stories told by the women raise sharp questions about the anecdotes that Louis C.K. tells in his own comedy. He rose to fame in part by appearing to be candid about his flaws and sexual hang-ups, discussing and miming masturbation extensively in his act — an exaggerated riff that some of the women feel may have served as a cover for real misconduct. He has all but invited comparison between his private life and his onscreen work, too: In “I Love You, Daddy,” which is scheduled to be released next week, a character pretends to masturbate at length in front of other people, and other characters appear to dismiss rumors of sexual predation.

At the same time, Louis C.K. has also boosted the careers of women, and is sometimes viewed as a feminist by fans and critics. But Ms. Goodman and Ms. Wolov said that when they told others about the incident in the Colorado hotel room, they heard that Louis C.K.’s manager was upset that they were talking about it openly. The women feared career repercussions. Louis C.K.’s manager, Dave Becky, was adamant in an email that he “never threatened anyone.”

For comedians, the professional environment is informal: profanity and raunch that would be far out of line in most workplaces are common, and personal foibles — the weirder the better — are routinely mined for material. But Louis C.K.’s behavior was abusive, the women said.

“I think the line gets crossed when you take all your clothes off and start masturbating,” Ms. Wolov said.

You’re supposed to do that on the subway in front of strangers, not in a hotel room in front of friends.

Goodman and Wolov told people about it the next day, figuring they should at least warn people, but Dave Becky got word of it and told them to stop. He’s a mover and shaker in their world, so that limited their career.

Ms. Goodman and Ms. Wolov moved to Los Angeles shortly after the Aspen festival, but “we were coming here with a bunch of enemies,” Ms. Goodman said. Gren Wells, a filmmaker who befriended the comedy duo in 2002, said the incident and the warning, which they told her about soon after Aspen, hung heavily over them both. “This is something that they were freaked out about,” Ms. Wells said.

In the years since, Ms. Goodman and Ms. Wolov have found some success, but they remained concerned about Mr. Becky and took themselves out of the running for the many projects he was involved in. Though their humor is in line with what he produces, “we know immediately that we can never even submit our material,” Ms. Wolov said.

So that’s great. He does skeevy creepy thing and their careers take a hit.

Tig Notaro, the comedian whose Amazon series, “One Mississippi,” lists Louis C.K. as an executive producer, is one of the few in the fiercely insular comedy world to speak out against him. Her career received a huge boost when he released her 2012 comedy album, about her cancer diagnosis. But their relationship has crumbled and she now feels “trapped” by her association with him, she wrote in an email.

Her fear is that “he released my album to cover his tracks,” she said. “He knew it was going to make him look like a good guy, supporting a woman.” Ms. Notaro said she learned of his reputation after they sold the series to Amazon, and a recent story line is a fictional treatment of the alleged masturbation episodes.

“Sadly, I’ve come to learn that Louis C.K.’s victims are not only real,” she said by email, “but many are actual friends of mine within the comedy community,” like Ms. Corry, who confided in her, she said.

…

Ms. Goodman and Ms. Wolov said that with other allegations swirling around the entertainment world, they could no longer stay silent. “Because of this moment, as gross as it is, we feel compelled to speak,” Ms. Goodman said.

Ms. Notaro said she was standing in support of those with the courage “to speak up against such a powerful figure,” she said, “as well as the multitude of women still out there, not quite ready to share their nightmares.”

Brought to you by The Harvey Weinstein Moment.