LOUIS C.K. LIVE AT THE COMEDY STORE (on VOD) - Success = The Wrong Kind of Asshole: TEA TIME WITH THOMAS ZACHARY TOLES COLUMN

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Louis C.K.’s Success:
Becoming the
Wrong Kind
of Asshole

By Thomas Zachary Toles


The Film Corner's
Tea Time Columnist

Louis C.K. struck comic gold by combining [George] Carlin-esque condemnation of Western society with unfailing self-deprecation. Louie argued that society is horrible precisely because of the things that he and all of us privileged assholes love so dearly:

Because we wait in line for a Cinnabon at the airport we arrived at.

Because we congratulate ourselves for thinking of doing nice things without ever doing them.

Because immense suffering far away can be easily justified so long as we get to write YouTube comments while we shit.

Louie didn’t place himself above these depraved aspects of American life; he participated in them. Louis C.K. was not better than America; he was a true American asshole.

In Louie’s newest special, Live at the Comedy Store, he argues that self-awareness is more important than self-love. Good advice. Hard to follow when you’re America’s comic sage. Glowing with inconceivable success, Louie is slowly becoming the wrong kind of asshole.

In Louie’s best routines he remains entrenched in the very problems he decries. In Chewed Up (2008), Louie revels in his whiteness in order to confess his complicity in oppression. “If [race] was an option, I would re-up every year. Oh yeah, I’ll take white again, absolutely.” Rather than attacking white privilege directly, he celebrated it, revealing how fiercely attached all white people are to their racial advantage. Through Louie’s admission, white listeners were given some self-awareness about all that they have to be thankful for, and all they owe.

Louie’s technique of identifying with the oppressor to bring light to the oppressed is also found in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twain’s book is written so as not to clash with a racist reader’s sensibility while delicately inviting the reader, along with Huck, to see the escaped slave Jim as a complex human being. This is somewhat ironic because, in Live at the Comedy Store, Louie mocks the excessive use of “nigger” in Huckleberry Finn. The bit has an element of condescension to it that rarely appears in his earlier work.

In the past, Louie has been rightly suspicious of white people’s hypocritical tendency to falsely censor “nigger” with "the n-word.”

“That’s just white people getting away with saying ‘nigger,’” he proclaims in Chewed Up. In his latest special, however, Louie more conservatively encourages the audience to jeer at Huckleberry Finn's careful use of such bold language. The bit's dismissiveness is atypically shallow and simplistic, edging towards the biggest threat to Louie’s enormous talent: self-righteousness.

Perhaps pride is inevitable for the most successful and beloved comedian imaginable. Certainly there was no way Louie could pretend to still be broke, to never get laid, and to live a lousy life. He has inventively worked around the handicap of success for a time: in one segment he admits that the only reason he can resist being as deplorable as a parent who hits their kids is because he has money. Nevertheless, a troubling awareness of his own eminence has quietly seeped into his work.

Louie, a show that long wowed me with its Lynchian weirdness, has recently fallen victim to this very issue. Louie writes, directs, edits, and stars in the show and what once seemed like thrilling individualism has begun to feel moralistic. After five seasons one wonders why Louie must have total control over this show.

“So Did the Fat Lady” from Season 4 is a perfect example of the problem. In an extended monologue, Vanessa (Sarah Baker) voices all the bullshit that overweight women have to deal with in daily life. Louie’s character awkwardly transitions from naivety to empathy by the speech’s end, and the episode concludes with him compassionately taking Vanessa’s hand (as per her meagre request). But we know that Louie wrote this monologue, that he directed himself to feign naivety only to be converted by his own words, to be commended for having the generosity to make such an episode at all. Louie empowers himself more than Vanessa. The old Louis C.K. would never have had the motivation to take Vanessa’s hand. He would have mumbled an excuse and walked away like the asshole he is.

There was something more human, funny, and frightening in that old asshole, in the person who vividly saw the world’s atrocities but was powerless to resist his self-serving urges. Through Louie’s flaws, we became a little more disturbed by our own selfishness and a little more sympathetic to the people we so frequently reject.

Louie was Dostoevsky’s Undergound Man, an intelligent screw up with agonizing self-awareness. Success has lifted him from clumsy indulgence towards knowing wisdom, robbing him of his brutal edge.

Louis C.K. is still a terrific comedian. He still makes me laugh.

He used to make me hurt.

LOUIS C.K. LIVE AT THE COMEDY STORE is available for a mere five smackers by clicking HERE.

Klymkiw Watches TV (HBO Canada) - JOHN LEGUIZAMO'S GHETTO KLOWN - Review By Greg Klymkiw

John Leguizamo's Ghetto Klown (2014) **
Dir. Fisher Stevens, Starring: John Leguizamo

Review By Greg Klymkiw

There's no denying the fact that John Leguizamo is one of the most versatile and accomplished character actors in the movies. For many years, since his humble beginnings in the theatre, he's presented several live autobiographical one-man shows that have generated great reviews and solid box-office on the New York stage and beyond. His most recent work has been shot by Fisher Stevens, the Academy Award winning director of The Cove. He handles the proceedings of capturing last year's live performance at the New Jersey Performing Arts Centre in lovely Newark, New Jersey, and does so with stout yeoman work. It's strictly camera jockey shot-calling, though, and certainly doesn't have the cinematic force of Spike Lee's helmsmanship of one-man show Mike Tyson: The Undisputed Truth.

Alas, it's really the material here that does in John Leguizamo's Ghetto Klown. Seeing as Leguizamo wrote the material, the finger of blame points in his direction.

This latest Leguizamo dive into his past life is often very funny, but much of it feels self-indulgent in all the wrong ways and its mere 93 minutes breezes along nicely only during its first half, but by the second half, the piece feels like it's running out of steam and/or spinning its wheels.

What works, of course, is Leguizamo when he's cooking. He begins with his childhood, relating a handful of knee-slappingly hilarious tales of avoiding bullies by using his humour, charming his teachers with his talent and driving his Mom and (especially) Dad, utterly round the bend with his hyper antics. The focus, ultimately, are his early years when he discovered acting, studied with famed coach Lee Strasberg and graduated to the big leagues of Hollywood. The funniest tales are his gigs with Brian DePalma - notably opposite Sean Penn in Casualties of War, the harrowing war drama about the gang rape and murder of a young Vietnamese woman at the hands of American soldiers and then, his villainous turn opposite Al Pacino in the Cuban gangster thriller Carlito's Way.

Leguizamo's impersonations of DePalma. Penn and Pacino are right on the money and the most hilarious tale involves his run-ins on the set with Pacino. Given the subject matter of the former DePalma title, Leguizamo holds back wisely and saves his anarchic style for the latter title.

His stories revolving around old pals, early girlfriends and family are often delightful. Though he overdoes a kind of shrill, borderline sexist impersonation of the female characters, his tales of Mom are pretty genuine and loving. It's his impersonations of his father who, by Leguizamo's account was a nasty, abusive sonofabitch, that begin to take on a sour tone and border on creepily uncomfortable. So too are his stories of early relationships with women.

As the movie progresses, Leguizamo and his material both take on a kind of macho bitterness that loses its punch. The show feels often cruel and condescending. Cruel, by the way, is almost always a good thing, but toss in condescension without the right balance and you just sit numbly as the whole Tower of Babel crumbles under the weight of an almost immoral form. Leguizamo's overwrought reminiscences get mean-spirited and worst of all become just plain unfunny. Perhaps there's something missing in the transition from live performance to how it's captured up close by the camera that's at fault here. The jockeying is competent enough, but the mix of mediums doesn't do the material a whole lot of favours. Witnessing Leguizamo's ugly, sneering tone just plain wears you down, though the audience in the theatre is lapping it up. The distance of one's ocular perspective probably accounts for the divide, though I tend to think my own response to a genuinely live version might, due to the material alone, not veer to0 far from that of the film.

What becomes almost intolerable is when he self indulgently focuses upon his bouts of depression - many segments of which have him blaming his Dad. Here he veers from whining, to simpering, to full-on roar-of-a-lion (as rendered in pipsqueak fashion) - back and forth to beat the band. By the time Leguizamo recreates an encounter with his father showing up unexpectedly backstage during a performance wherein he's been especially cruel in depicting Dad, I pretty much felt like throwing in the towel. A portion of this encounter is supposed to be moving, but given how cruel-minded his jabs at Dad have been throughout the proceedings, one actually sides with an alleged abuser over this nasty, self-indulgent knob.

Given that Leguizamo spends good chunks of time relaying his drug use, booze guzzling and exhaustion from the toils of performing live, one keeps wondering if his depression and memories aren't being coloured by substance abuse. This might not be an especially fair response, but it's a whole lot more honest than Leguizamo is being with himself and the audience.

The production is clearly not without merit, but it's also seriously flawed. One wants to commend Leguizamo for exposing his occasional foibles and deep feelings of resentment towards his Dad, but after awhile it dives mercilessly into self indulgence of the most egregious variety.

Soon we begin to see that this talented "Ghetto Klown" had quite a few people encouraging him along his path to success - one which came pretty quickly and relatively painlessly. It doesn't take too long before you're wondering, "Who is this dick-wad and what's he got to complain about?" Leguizamo seldom takes the fall for his failings and is quick to blame others in his life for bad decisions. Even his depression, which is a real medical condition, loses its potential to move us.

Instead, I just wanted to punch the Klown in the face and send his ass back to the Ghetto.

John Leguizamo's Ghetto Clown can be seen on HBO Canada. For dates and times, visit the website HERE.