Originally published in the June/July 2011 issue

In Louis's Infiniti G35, on the way to get a bite to eat at the Comedy Cellar in New York.



LOUIS C.K.: I love this car. Cars and cameras are the two things I let myself be materialistic about. I don't care about other stuff. I used to fix cars, so I like cars a lot.

SCOTT RAAB: You worked as a mechanic. Were you any good?

LCK: I enjoyed it, but I wasn't good. I got fired.

SR: Why'd they fire you?

LCK: I wasn't showing up on time, mostly. And I was working really slowly. I think I fucked a couple of things up. To be a real mechanic, you have to have proper training and buy these beautiful Snap-on tools you pay for like it's your car.

SR: When you got fired, what —

LCK: It was really sad and humiliating and I felt terrible. I really admired those guys. They were very nice to me and they were very good people, honest, blue-collar hardworking guys, and I'm showing up at 11, because I was doing stand-up at night.

SR: You were never a college-bound guy?

LCK: Nope. Just jobs. I thought about going to NYU film school — that was this ideal to me. But I didn't make any kind of grades in high school. My mother was a single mom, putting my three sisters through college, and I was such a bad student that I knew I had no right to take her money. But I loved being in classes and learning. I took in a huge amount of what I learned, but I had a feeling of always being behind and being in trouble.

SR: Trouble trouble?

LCK: Yeah. I did a lot of drugs when I was in junior high school — that kind of trouble. But I got that behind me. I started working at local-access cable and doing stand-up by the time I was 17, 18. I used to do college shows and I'd see these kids living this life I didn't live, and it hurt sometimes. I used to regret it — sometimes I still do. [Parking the G35 and walking to the club.]

SR: I just watched Pootie Tang again. It was on On Demand.

LCK: It won't fucking go away, that thing.

SR: Come on. It's still a lot of fun.

LCK: There's parts of the movie I really do like. I hate the way the movie ended up, but the best thing that can happen to a director is to go through the worst possible version first — losing the thing, being humiliated, having it come out to terrible reviews.

SR: Roger Ebert said it should never have been released.

LCK: He said it's not a movie — it's like somebody took pieces of a movie and put it together. That's exactly what they did. I sat there going, Oh, my God, this is the most trumpeted my name's ever been. This is how I'm getting known, how I'm being introduced. And I'll never make a movie again. And I haven't.

[At the club.]

SR: You want something to drink?

LCK: Club soda.

SR: I'll get a Coke. [To Louis] Are you going to direct a movie again? Do you want to?

LCK: I'd love to. The goal is to get a movie made the way I do the show. One of the great things about Louie [his latest TV show] being my own production with my own company is FX gives us the money and goes away. The advantage is I don't need any of this financially. I make more in five nights of stand-up than I do in a whole season of the show.

SR: You still enjoy the stand-up?

LCK: Oh, I love stand-up. It gave me the ability to do this show the way that I'm doing it. I said no to this gig a few times until it was the way I wanted to do it. The only pitch I have to movie people is the same as this one: Just give me $8 million. I'm not telling you what it's about and I'm not telling you who's in it.

SR: Seriously?

LCK: Eight million bucks. It'll take about six months to finish it. But you don't get to know anything about it.

SR: What happened with Lucky Louie? I loved that show. Why'd HBO kill it?

LCK: I'm not sure. There's never one reason. I talked to Andrew Dice Clay a little while after it was canceled and he just shrugged and said, "Sometimes they got to get rid of something. That's the way it goes." And all the pain just disappeared.

[The waiter comes.]

Frank W. Ockenfels 3/FX

LCK: Can I get a cheeseburger?

WAITER: American or cheddar?

LCK: Cheddar. Medium rare, please.

SR: I'll have the Middle East Combo, but no baba ghanoush. [To Louis] So when you were 18 years old, you were already writing jokes?

LCK: I was trying to just talk. I didn't know how to do jokes. I was nervous and uncomfortable. I hated being onstage. I did a show one night and bombed — but I was honest, and I was trying, and afterward I was thinking about what had happened and I felt a tap on my shoulder and it was Steven Wright, and he said, "That was funny." Those moments were huge to me. If I see a comedian who's brand-new, I tell them, "Hey man, that's okay." I give them a little bit of encouragement.

SR: It goes a long way.

LCK: It means a lot. A few weeks ago, Chris [Rock] called and said, "You want to go to the Knicks game?" We went to Madison Square Garden, and we were right on the floor and it was — what's his name, Anthony? The new guy.

SR: Carmelo.

LCK: Carmelo's first game. We went up to that fucking suite where all these people were eating — politicians and mobsters and Chloë Sevigny. There's this spread of food, and I'm like, "Let's fucking eat." Chris goes, "Nah, let's get down to the floor." I'm like, "You're taking this shit for granted, Chris. There's roast beef and a guy with a hat serving it." I wanted it so bad. I was starving and he's like, "Who needs it?" And I'm like, "Are you kidding me? I'll probably never get here again."

So we go down, and I'm watching Carmelo, and I hear the song "Louie Louie" and I look up and I see my own face on the Jumbotron. And Chris says, "You know what, man, you've got your own show, and I'm on Broadway, and we're on the floor at Madison Square Garden. How fucking great is this?" And we high-fived and we just felt so good. Both of us, we're in our 40s — this shit could disappear instantly, never to return. And it will.

SR: You have to savor those moments.

LCK: When Lucky Louie went on the air, there was a one-month period where if I walked down these streets, a crowd would gather. Literally. It was crazy. I loved it. I'd sometimes walk up and down MacDougal Street to instigate it.

SR: Seriously?

LCK: I was going through a divorce. It was a good time to get some anonymous love. After like a month, it got to be less. And then it stopped completely. Now it's back — garbage trucks blowing their horn at me and stuff. I still love that.

SR: Do you always cut your burgers in half?

LCK: Yeah.

SR: Slop factor?

LCK: A little bit. I always tell my kids to cut a sandwich in half right when you get it, and the first thought you should have is somebody else. You only ever need half a burger.

SR: That's really wonderful.

LCK: I started thinking seriously about that kind of thing when I had kids and realized I had to figure out something to say to them. When your kid is being selfish or greedy and you want to help them not be that way, you have to find a way to articulate it and inspire them.

SR: My dad used his backhand. Do you ever think about how strange it really is that folks get a sitter and drive to your show and pay good money to sit and stare at you standing alone on the stage with a microphone in your hand?

LCK: When I get to a theater and it's empty, and there's no street traffic in the area, I'm like, Nobody's coming. I know we're sold out, but where the fuck are they going to come from? And then they start to show up. It's a surprise every time.

SR: There's an essential human interaction going on. My life is really going to be a lot better if you can make me laugh.

LCK: It's huge for people. Chris taught me something. He said, "If people see you do a great show on TV, and they come see you live and it's a whole other show, they will never let you go."

SR: You're right up there with him.

LCK: This year — I'm not sure — the goal is Madison Square Garden. I just want to do Madison Square Garden one time. I want that Boy Scout badge.

SR: So many stand-ups seem smart, but so few are men of scholarly accomplishment. Why is that?

LCK: You refine language. You've got to put things in a perfect way. You have to be economical, and yet you have to let shit string out. You have to know how to load a spring of tension and release it.

Me and Chris try to study a lot of different kinds of people, not just comedians. We both love Bill Clinton — Clinton is America's headliner. One of the greatest things I ever saw was him at Coretta Scott King's funeral. Jimmy Carter, George Bush Senior, Hillary — all these people making speeches, and then Bill Clinton goes on and he says, "Let's all remember that that is a woman lying right there." And he points at her.

It was audacious. "That is a woman who had her dreams and her pain and her passions," and I think he said "lust." He said really personal shit about her and you immediately heard the black people go, "Yes!"

He says, "There's her family — think about what they're going through today, and everything that's happened to them since their daddy got shot. The burden that must have been hers."

Holy shit. I hope to have any of that skill as a comic. He just found this short circuit. You try to have this nature the way water does — finds the lowest place and spreads the fuck out. That's what he did. [Louis checks a text on his phone.] Good. Okay.

SR: What?

LCK: Trying to find out when the show's going to premiere so I can go on The Tonight Show and all that stuff.

SR: That's the one you have to be on?

LCK: That's the highest-rated of all the late-night shows. Plus, Jay puts me on whenever I want. I really like Jay, and he's always invited me to come on. They don't have me on Letterman anymore.

SR: Why?

LCK: I don't know. I haven't been on Letterman in 15 years. I loved doing that show. Dave's my favorite. Dave's who I watch — I wrote for him. And I did the show five times or so, and I've been told that I'm not okay there anymore.

SR: There has to be a reason.

LCK: No one would tell me.

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