WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 700 Part 2 - Louis CK

Episode Date: April 21, 2016

It's a two-part 700th Episode extravaganza. First, Marc and Julia Louis-Dreyfus talk Seinfeld, SNL, Second City, Larry David, Woody Allen, Veep, being a mom, and getting older. Then for Part 2, Marc's friend Louis CK stops by to spill the beans on everything that went into making and releasing his series Horace and Pete. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. of our 700th episode. Non-celebration, but amazing conversations.

I hope you listened to part one with Julia Louis-Dreyfus. And now part two was sort of a surprise conversation. I knew I was going to talk to Louis, but I didn't know I was going to talk to him for an hour and a half or so. And so we now have this amazing talk.

There's no ads on this one uh it's just me and louis talking about horace and pete and and i watched them all there's nothing really like it uh it's a combination of theater and television and and uh there's a type of of risk taking by actors you've uh you've come to know and love and by louis himself who who self-released this on his website and financed it himself and conceived of it himself and he was coming over and we had talked a bit about horace and pete just candidly when he came over once just to hang out and he told me the whole story of it and and we we we regretted not recording it. But now that it's out and people are getting it, you can now get it over there at louisck.net.

You can get all 10 for like 30 bucks. And now he's excited to finally talk about where it came from, the process he went through, what he had to learn, what he had to do, how it all came together. was i've never actually seen him this excited and this focused he'd been sitting on this for months and now there's been all this weird press it's weird louis went on stern to discuss you know the risks he took uh and and then i don't know why sometimes that the press needs to spin things negative or needs to wait and pounce to try to bring somebody down. There's no canceling the show. Louis had put out an email about it being finished because he did the 10.

It was an insane undertaking. And then they reframed that and they listened to his stern and said, it's a failure. He tanked and he's canceling it. It was a mistake or whatever. None of it is true. And it's disappointing when a creative person takes a tremendous risk. And just by familiarity or commitment to old systems or resentment against the artist or need to get a headline you know it it gets diminished and that becomes viral the truth of matter is is that everything was is really going on plan uh as

louis had intended it he financed it himself for very specific reasons which we talk about and where it came from uh and how he did it we talk about it it. And yes, he's my friend. But the truth of the matter is you watch this fucking thing. It does something that certainly TV has never done. It parallels the power of theater. And it was very, you know, insanely and well conceived

by an artist who is my friend, Louis, who needed to do something new with his creativity and needed to grow as an artist and took certain actions to insulate himself you know financially creatively and distribution wise to do exactly what he wanted to do and follow his creativity and his heart and it's a monumental thing that will set a standard for the future and i'm saying this as you look i don't need to blow smoke up my buddy's ass.

And I certainly don't need to celebrate Louis for no reason. I'm proud of the guy and I'm thrilled for him because he fucking did something amazing. And it might not be your cup of tea. It might be too much for you because it's some real gut punchy shit and it's some real dark shit. And there is funny in it,

but the funny is not designed to to to win in the in the struggle of horace and pete i'm always happy to see louis and i'm glad we had this conversation there's no ads on this one because it was sort of a surprise uh for me and also a surprise for you now uh in on our 700th episode so this this is me and Louis, primarily talking about creativity and the process of creating Horace and Pete, which I guess the only ad on this show is you can go get Horace and Pete for like 30 bucks at louisck.net.

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Louie, first of all, welcome to the 700th episode episode of my show i don't know if you knew that was going to happen you didn't no i would i know i know no i didn't prepare you for that like so like it's i'm putting you in the position to celebrate me and my success for a few minutes this is 700th 700th episode you keep having to say it both ways. Well, is that proper to say it's the 700th episode? Sure, I think it is. I'm excited you're here, but it was a surprise coincidence.

Thank you. Congratulations. Let me say that before I say thank you. I thought I would set it up like this. If I go like, I really appreciate you coming and doing my 700th episode. That means a lot to me. I'm glad you were able to make time.

Like it was planned. Right. No, listen, I'm very proud of you. You've done. I don't think you can do anything 700 times unless it's working. No. You know what I mean? Well.

Do you think there's 700 of anything that was just shitty yeah oh yeah well 28,000 trillions of most things yes that's right well you fell down those stairs um yeah i i'm very proud of you because uh this is a very meaningful thing that you do i mean you've uh had a lot of really important things going on in this garage it's crazy right yeah and now you deal things the president was there you know robin williams he was i was at his house that one yeah but i mean yeah by your podcast okay all right what i'm trying to say something nice here i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm just kidding uh yeah it's great i made some uh thank you great It's been great. Keith Richards.

Yeah. Yeah. Al Lubell. Al Lubell? Did you really do Al Lubell? See, that is a great thing. It's the greatest. The people that you've brought together under one thing.

It's really something, man. Yeah. I mean, oh, yeah. Yeah. They've all done it. They've all. Yeah. You know, it's weird.

I actually had some notes that I left inside. Hold on. Okay. He's actually leaving. You hear shit on the mic, but I'm not there. He just left the garage. I'm alone in the garage. He left.

He's in his house. And, okay, I'll play you a song, I guess. Okay. Well. Well. I remember when you played guitar publicly. I can't talk today. At the Montreal Comedy Festival.

I'm really fucked up. My brain's fucked up. You remember you did Cunty McShitballs? That's right. Cunty McShitballs. And I what wait why is in and everyone loved it it's the only time i ever played guitar on the stage and i and i witnessed it yeah people went crazy right yeah and you'd brought your guitar to do it i remember no i did is that possible no i wouldn't have taken my guitar that was the that was the night in in Montreal where Bob and Dave did the Farting Gary thing, wasn't it?

Farting Gary. Yeah, everybody was there. Yeah. Don Marrera was the host. Right. And I think you just made up that song, right? Yes. It was like the Ballad of Cunty McShipballs.

That's right. And everyone thought it was amazing. Yeah, whatever, man. Yeah. I don't know. What? I think it was kind of no it was i remember feeling really high after yeah because just because you sang and play guitar yeah that yeah right feels good no matter what happened yeah the bit was that uh i went on and i wore a suit right and i did the jokes i had then that were very sort of seinfeldian five five minutes on Letterman, clean jokes. Yeah.

And I was doing good. But we had planned this thing. So I had people planted around the audience. I remember one of them was Ginny Garofalo. Yeah. And as I'm doing my jokes that are landing solidly, people start yelling out, Conti! Oh, that's right. Conti!

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm like ignoring it. People want, Conti! Conti! Oh, that's right. Conti! Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm like ignoring it. People want, Conti! Conti! And then I get upset. I go, listen, I used to have this stage name, Conti McShitballs. Right, right. And I used to come out and play the guitar and do a whole character.

But I want to be a mainstream comedian now. I want to be clean and be on Letterman. I don't want to be trapped in this thing anymore. And they're just chanting,i conti and then even the audience who didn't know about it started chanting it yeah and then i'd rip off the suit and i'm wearing this black t-shirt and i and so he hands me a guitar right right and i sang this song my name is conti right oh that's so remember when no one knew who you were you could do things things. I could do stuff like that. You could do secret things. Yeah. But you did, you actually did that with Horace and Pete.

Now, here's the deal with that. Yeah. For me. Okay. Because you came in here and we had a long conversation about Horace and Pete and I was sworn to secrecy. We sat in this exact spot with even the microphones in front of our mouths without tape rolling. You're not taping, right?

You're not taping. And you told me the entire process with excitement yeah and you were you didn't know what was going to happen that's right and then you're like you know i you can't say anything to anybody right it was a big secret and you didn't record this right right right and then like a day later you're like damn we fucking should have recorded for later for any time yeah i could have didn't have to play top secret so dumb but uh but it was i was excited for you and i got excited and i watched your first episode and then i kind of slacked and uh and i knew you were coming today so i i watched them all and i watched them pretty much back to back like i guess i binge watched them i was locked in and at the end i did not feel great no i can't imagine you would yeah

it's not an uplifting show it's a down pushing the opposite yeah the opposite of uplifting yeah but but what struck me and i imagine what struck a lot of people of what like it was like it was there was it was so relentless yeah and bleak in a way. Because people, I imagine, ask you, is it a comedy? There's no way you can say it's a comedy. It's a tragedy. It's structurally a tragedy, right? Yeah, that's actually a very good observation because a lot of people say it's either comedy or drama.

But no, there's tragedies. Oh, yeah. Those are the two masks there. Right. And it's structured that way. It is. It's a tragedy without spoiling the end well because there's hope and hope is that there's no tragedy without hope

right um so yes it's tragedy but let's let's like i know you went on stern and you right now you're going to be doing a tour to to uh promote it yeah yeah so it only went out to the people in your mailing list and That's right. And only people who, like I retweeted, I talked about it on here. So it was a secret thing. That's right. Especially at the outset, yeah.

But the plan was always to do what you're doing now, which is to, you're now like, it's out, it's finished, I'm going to promote it. That's right. So the questions I have about it, like I don't want to rush, like I have a lot on my mind. Yeah.

Because I've known you a while. And my first reaction when I heard that you were on Stern, he said you got into debt and it was like millions of dollars. And everybody was like, Jesus, Louie's millions of dollars in debt. And I'm saying, I thought, and I've said this to people, this behavior is not unusual for Louie. The amount is different. That's right.

Because I've always. This is how he creates he just he needs to wipe the slate clean and be in complete financial fear and then he'll do something amazing it was a plan that's right right but they're just a higher money amount bigger money amounts and also um you know i just i i i figured that uh i i wanted to play with my own money. I didn't want to mess around with other people's money because the things I was doing were going to be very extreme. Not only the way the story was going to be told, but the way I was going to release it.

Everything I did was counterintuitive. And why would you want to involve anyone in that conversation? Yeah, I don't want to have to convince anybody of anything or risk their money when I know that I was taking a deep risk. Well, the thing, because you had not really said it, you just put your other show on hiatus. That's right. And I imagine you had to have a conversation with Fox about this. Yeah, of course. Yeah.

And what did you say to them? Okay. So like I told John Langreff at FX that I was going to stop doing Louis in May, I think it was late may and i i just told him that i didn't know i would ever make another one right and that i might right i needed to i needed it to be okay if i never do yeah i didn't want to owe it anymore right and it was a hard thing for him to hear yeah and uh it was unexpected i had told him i was going to do at least seven seasons like i kind of promised him that yeah i'm only saying kind of because i'm ashamed at how much i'd really promised it but uh anyway i told him i just creatively that's where i'm at and he respected it right and then

we made a we renewed my overall deal there to make other tv shows right like baskets yeah pamela's show yeah these other shows what's that going to be called? Better Things. Yeah. In the fall, it'll be on there producing it now. It's being made now. So I renewed that deal and he gave me a big bump and more, you know, better deal the second time around, so I figured, okay, I'm going to stop doing Louis, I'll work on these other shows for FX and see what else comes to me, you know?

Yeah. So I did that and then the summer happened and summer happened, and I really cleared my head. Yeah. And I'll tell you about this, sort of why I made the show, but you asked one question, so I'll get to that. Once I decided I was making this show, the- Horace and Pete. Horace and Pete. How realized was it in your head?

When I talked to them about it? Well, no, just in general. So you had that conversation, but you did not have Horace and Pete. How realized was it in your head? When I talked to them about it? Well, no, just in general. So you had that conversation, but you did not have Horace and Pete. Okay, I had no, I had no Horace and Pete in my head. Right. I figured I'm not going to do anything for a while. Right. And then I'm having my summer, and then I started thinking about,

what can I do for FX? Like, I want to make something for them. Yeah. I started thinking of show ideas in general. Yeah. One of them i thought of was albert brooks and me doing the animation show yeah and uh we're working on that and then i started thinking about just shows i like and things and i watched a thing called abigail's party yeah

abigail's party you can watch on youtube it's like the only place to see it now yeah michael lee the filmmaker genius amazing oh yeah oh. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Largely an improvisational filmmaker. Is that true? Well, a lot of his movies that are like Secrets and Lies. Secrets and Lies. Oh, there's so many that were so good. Incredible movies. Even Mr. Turner is a more recent one that nobody gave a shit about.

Yeah, Naked. Oh, my God. So he was a playwright in the 70s. It's like he had this whole other great career as a playwright in the 70s it's like he had this whole great career as a playwright right 70s where he wrote plays that's not that's writing right he wrote a pale play called abigail's party uh-huh and all it is is about four people in the suburbs of london or wherever in england yeah um their neighbors yeah don't know each other and they have um they have drinks yeah two hours hours of one scene,

four people having drinks. And you watched a production of the play? Well, what it is is they did a play, they did a TV version of the play and this was 1973. So it looked like All in the Family, any show that was shooting back then, Maud or something.

Right, but not unusual for British. I mean, they did a lot of theater. They did stuff like that. I think they did Pinter stuff. Yeah, right. You had Playhouse 90 or whatever it was. Right. But so they would, it looked like a sitcom and it was shot multi-camera.

You could tell there was somebody live switching the cameras. Right. And you have four characters talking. Audience? No audience. That was the thing. And it was funny. Right.

I was laughing out loud and there was silence. Yeah. But it's not silence. It's a soundstage. There's a living feeling to it. No. right i was laughing out loud and there's silence yeah but it's not silence it's like a state it's a sound stage there's a living feeling to it and it's performing you feel that you've seen a whole performance that never changed you utilize that a lot in horace and pete that's right so so so when i watched that i was like i this is doesn't exist in the american tv diet it doesn't exist anywhere anymore no but here's the thing even playhouse 90 yeah the way that was produced

was they'd take a play like a known play right you know eugene o'neill or something or whatever they take a known play and they would rehearse it for whatever probably weeks and weeks and hash it out the way that they dissect take a play and they dissect it whatever they do i don't know i've ever been part of that process but i know it takes a long time sure um but to me the idea was let's what if you made a series what if you made 10 episodes of something like this um that has a hybrid so it's episodic like television right but it's the medium feels like a play and yet also like a sitcom because it'll look robust the way a sitcom, multi-camera is a decent set.

I started thinking of this, right? After I watched Elbacill's Party, and I just started turning on like my whole body. I got so fucking excited. Now, had you had conversations with theater people?

Had you met Annie Baker at this point? I hadn't met Annie Baker. I was, what happened was I saw, I i think you just maybe you just emailed i saw the play the flick or the other flick yeah the only one of hers i ever saw and then you told me you had her on your podcast and i was like oh i saw that play that's a great play. And I thought I should reach out to her, uh, cause I,

I want to learn something from a playwright about this. Sure. Um, but I think I was already working on it at the time. I don't remember where I was in the process, but anyway, I started thinking, I started thinking,

I, I knew what I wanted it to feel like. Yeah. And I knew the idea of something that looks like a sitcom, the way a sitcom feels theatrical. Right. But with no laugh track. Right.

That already, a sitcom with no laugh track. I was like, dang, I want to see that. And also not the expectation to be funny. That's right. And not to write joke to joke. That's right. And then also taking from Abigail's Party, two hours of talking, riveting because you're really staying.

Okay. Like, so single camera movies they move on the cuts they move on a big music cue yeah or camera movement right or the ability to jump in time and space which is something you weirdly take for granted in movies well not unlike your show right on my show you're sitting you're talking to a guy you're watching a guy talk yeah and then within the same second you're seeing something at another time and place. Right. That's what moves single camera.

Yeah. Is the editing and the cinematography. Mm-hmm. In stage plays or in multi-camera worlds. No time jumps. No. Really. You move on the dialogue and on a moment a person's mood shifting in front of you, in front of the audience.

Yeah. Someone saying something to somebody else and that changing. A piece of news being revealed. A person entering the room. And also something accumulating, penting up for a long time. Yeah. I never played with this kind of shit before. Right.

I never did it before and I got so excited by it. And yeah, when I saw the flick, I remember her, nothing happens in the flick. It's three people that work in a movie theater. One set. And they just talk. Right. About life. With big pauses.

And sometimes about each other, long pauses. She writes them in. The pauses. Yeah. If you look at her script, she has a glossary of pauses. That's amazing. Like what they mean in the script, how long each one should be. I think there's three.

Yeah. Well, she was doing something that I had never seen before. And I took my 14-year-old daughter to see the flick. Yeah. And she's 14 and she watched, it's like four hours long. It's a few hours. Yeah. Two and a half maybe.

I think it gets up to three. Okay. Maybe. Yeah. So why did I say four? But it's a few hours yeah two and a half maybe i think it gets up to three okay maybe yeah so why did i say four but it's three about three something my 14 year old daughter loved it i mean she's a bright kid but even then you know uh does that mean something yeah it does and so okay so anyway i started thinking about this thing and i'm like well what's it about yeah and uh my buddy dino stamatopoulos was over and he and i had talked about doing a show in a bar someday and i thought like a bar is a good idea for a sitcom yeah obviously it's

been done right and then i thought well i want this thing to be a bar and a home two sets yeah and i wanted them to be connected so that you could walk from one to the other without cutting the camera. Because my first thought was we never cut. We never go. We never go. It's a one scene episode every time. That was my first idea, which I abandoned. Right.

After like three. Yeah, no, there's none that are not one scene. Except episode three is one scene. That's the only one that's one scene. Right. So anyway, then I thought, well well why would there be an apartment above a business well because it's a family business they live upstairs they work downstairs yeah so that's how i got to family business and then somehow the name um the names horse and pete just

came out of nowhere i don't know where i mean i thought who am i i'm not me i don't want to play me i wasn't even sure i was going to be in it. Yeah. And then I started thinking about things like, I could do an episode that's three hours long. Sure. I could do an episode that's 10 minutes long. Right. I could do whatever I want, not on television, not on FX. I started testing this idea against everything that I need, I'm required to do for FX, what their needs are, which are not, those are their needs.

Right. The ad breaks. Yeah. Forget it. Can't do it. Intermissions whenever you want. Right. But on this show, if I had to do an ad break every five, you know, four, five ad breaks,

forget it. Having one episode that's an hour and another one that's 30 minutes, big problem. Right. Not as big on FX as than anywhere else, but still a problem. Right. The language, cunt, nigger. Yeah. I just knew I was going to fly around.

Yeah. So I thought, and also then the main thing, I didn't want to promote this show and I didn't want to give the audience a big head start. I didn't want them to smell it before they got to it. No expectations. No expectations at all. No knowledge or expectations.

Right. That, forget it on FX. Forget it. So I go, I look and i realize well in my my overall deal i've got an out i can do something on my website it's the one place i can do something else right but that's because they think it's going to be a stand-up special or you know a cooking show with me and my mom i mean what would i do right and at the time site yeah and when i started to conceive this i thought this, this will be little. Yeah.

And then I thought about a TV studio that I worked at for my show. I shot these David Lynch episodes in a TV set. Right. In the Penn Hotel in New York City. Oh, when he was the network. The late night. The late night guru guy. Guru, yeah. Yeah.

So I remembered that studio and I thought we could shoot there. And I went a little crazy. I called my producer, Blair Briard, and I said, uh, find out if the Penn Hotel is available for January. And, uh, she said, okay. She called back and she said, it is, but we're going to have to put, if you want it, you got to put a deposit down. Uh, whatever it was, $200,000.

Yeah. Like do it. Just put the money down now. I didn't have anything written. I didn't know who's in the show. Nothing. I said, grab the studio. But here's the thing.

You wanted incentive. I'm smart because, yes, because it was incentive. But since I took the studio, about five different productions offered us money to walk away from it because studio space is rare in New York City. Right. So I could have just speculated and made a profit on that money. They would have paid the rent and given me like $50,000

just to walk away from it but as it turned out we wanted the studio okay so uh then i steve buscemi called me yeah we're friends out of nowhere he and i did a benefit together for the mayor uh this made in new york thing and he's a fire he was a firefighter and he is very active in 9-11 charities yeah so i asked steve one day hey if you ever uh give me an opportunity to help you know yeah so he called me and said hey we're doing this thing for the firefighters if you want to do it and i said sure and then he said how you doing and we'd never really chatted i'm like oh i'm all right what are you doing ah boardwalk empire's over just sitting around i'm like oh well i'm

doing all right i'm writing something we hung up yeah and then i called him immediately back said hey do you want to be on a tv show with me yeah and he's like well maybe and i said meet me in new york tomorrow yeah and i drove into new york yeah he came into the city from upstate yeah were you out on the island i was out on the island yeah and i said uh i had the names horace and pete in my head that's all you had yeah and he said and i knew it was a bar and it was a family bar i was starting to come together yeah and i said i think maybe you're my brother yeah and he said yeah i like that sounds good yeah he said i want to do this i explained to him what i was at and i was like it's for my website i'm going to do it very cheaply i'm not going to tell anybody about it yeah i said if you get another project you can just tell me you can't

do it yeah and he was like okay i want to i want to do it and i said if you want to have any ideas you can tell me what they are let's just try to start doing this so he said okay and then i thought we're horace and pete and once i saw him and me as brothers, the lineage of the bar came to me really fast. I was like, it's a bar called Horace and Pete's. Yeah. And it's always been in the family. I like that idea. Yeah.

But if we're Horace and Pete, why is the bar called Horace and Pete? Well, because it was always called that. Generations. Generations of Horaces and Pete's. I like that idea so much. So that's all you got so far. So I got the ideas and I kind of know what I'm, I know what I want it to be. And then,

and then I, I, I saw a picture of Edie Falco in a magazine. She's like one of those closeup of her whole face, taking up the whole page. Edie Falco has stopped. Nurse Jackie is over. Like Boardwalk Empire is over.

HBO's number one drama guy just stopped and I got him. Yeah. I've got him. Yeah. Edie Falco, Nurse Jackie, Showtime's number one comedy. Yeah. Just ended. Yeah.

She says in the interview, I love episodic television. It's my favorite thing. I don't like movies. I like TV. Yeah. And I'm not looking for new work. I'm going to see what happens. And they asked her, would you ever be in a comedy?

And she said, no, because comedies don't run deep enough and i looked at her face in the magazine i said you're going to be on my show i said it out loud like a psycho and so then i wrote her into i started writing there's always the big test is does it right yeah i've had a million ideas and i sit down and nothing comes so i sat down and i wrote the first episode and i got this oh the other idea was does it right does it right that's the way i look at it yeah so i thought about the other idea i had loosely years ago was joe pesci should be in a sitcom that was another idea i had joe pesci should have a sitcom and you met him right well this is before i'd never met him right and so i created the character for him being Uncle Pete. Yeah.

And then I thought Jessica Lange, I sit next to her a lot at award shows. Yeah. I like Jessica Lange. So I mentioned her. Just coincidentally? Well, because we're both FX people. She was on Horror Hotel. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I told Steve Buscemi, what about Jessica Lange? He's like, yeah, I like her. She's great. Yeah. I thought about Aidy Bryant because when I'm on SNL, she's my favorite cast member. I don't know if they're all great, but she's great. So I just sit down and I put all these people in this bar and I just start, I open the bar in my head.

Figure out who they are. You don't really know who they are yet. I know that we're brothers. I know that she's our sister. I know he's our uncle. Okay. I know who everybody is. Yeah. And I just i know that she's our sister i know he's our uncle okay i know who everybody is yeah and i just opened the bar yeah in the morning and i just start writing what happens and i just have a saying just shit to each other i talked to steve about

his character yeah we had approached the idea that he's a guy who needs medication uh-huh and that he's writing that line and it's painful for him and without it he's in a violent place yeah so i start writing and the voices are very fucking real to me and the place feels very real to me um and and i just it get it got really intense really quickly yeah uncle pete comes in and he's hilarious to me and i'm just writing and writing and then and then sylvia walks in it's like it was happening and i was like a stenographer just taking down notes you know and uh the first episode just was a very uh i don't know how to describe it as like an eruption you know right um and i finished it and i was like god damn i really love this and And you grounded everybody.

The first episode, the characters are deep. They're three-dimensional, and they live in the place. That's right. It all happens that first episode. Other characters come in, but I think the sister, the daughter, the brother, the uncle, and you primarily. That's right. You're dug in.

Kurt's there, and Steve Wright's there, but they're Kurt and Stephen Wright. Nick. Yeah, Nick. A little less than Nick. That's right. And I thought, well, there's a lot of things happening in this episode that don't feel like good first episode of a TV show ideas.

Like everybody starts really yelling at each other. And there's a very intimate- That's why you're writing yeah there was this is a very intimate and private um conversation right and a fight inside of a family yeah and if you don't know these people this family it's asking a lot of people to watch them in this kind of conflict immediately yeah i'm not saying a lot in the way of introduction about each person and every time i thought of something like that i thought that this is what happened this is what happened in this show for me this feels real and it's okay and i've got 10 episodes to explain

everything and if people need to be told and fed everything right away they'll go away and that's okay with me right feels right right and um and so i just kept writing and at the end of the first episode i thought i didn't explain horace at all i really got writing and at the end of the first episode i thought i didn't explain horace at all i really got pete well the horse didn't do anything and i thought to myself i have a feeling horse is never going to do anything and this is your character my character and i thought when i thought of my character i thought i did the thing of playing a divorced dad who's really showing up for his kids yeah you know what i mean yeah that's your phrase too because when i had kids you were like you said to me this is you're doing great because i'd had

kids for a while right and i said yeah i'm my dad and you go and you said yeah but well not all of us thought you were going to show up for this and i realized that showing up is like an active for a man showing up as as a father is an act. It's a choice. Yeah. For a woman, it's a default. I mean, that's culturally speaking. But so I thought I played that guy who showed up for the kids and stayed in and divorced.

And I want to play a guy who makes terrible choices and is a mess. You know, somebody who's distant from his children, who blew it with his kids. And also, the one thing I noticed throughout this whole thing knowing you for as long as i have is that holy shit this is unique louis listening a lot that's right i also wanted to sit and listen to people i want to be somebody that people listen to i don't mean that as an insult but i mean but it's not your that's not your natural way it's not not. That's right. You're right. And you were challenging yourself. Yeah. So I wrote the first one and I thought,

damn it, this is important and good and this is definitely what I'm doing next. But you didn't ask yourself for meaning. You didn't require that from what you were creating. Because when you do something that's 10 episodes, how you explained it as being inspired by theater, that all makes sense and your intentions all make sense right but i i assume that you wrote this not unlike other things you let it happen that's and did not uh interrogate

it afterwards well afterwards yeah but not during right because i don't write things like this with intention to tell people an idea right like because i feel this so i'm going to get to disguise it in a story right often when i write something i look at it after and go man it taught me something or i learned something from it or not taught but i i it made me reflect right how many episodes did you write before you started the casting well so so i had i had okay so i had written Steve. Steve was in. I had started to try to get Joe Pesci to do it. I went to his house.

You did? Yeah, I went to his house in New Jersey. Now, you're at a level now where people are like, you're a guy. I can get folks on the phone, yeah. Yeah, so you go to Joe Pesci's house. I went to Joe Pesci's house. And... That must have been great. It was one of the greatest things ever yeah it was really great

and i already i by the time i wrote i think i'd written two and this is for uncle p uncle p yeah i'd written two yeah and i started to know where the show was headed and i started to know everyone's backstory i'd started to understand the family i really knew them and yeah i didn't like have the sense of like i want to say this about people right i did tell myself before i started writing um something i want to think about when i write this show is that there's a tension inside of everybody between the safety of being alone yeah and wanting to be with other people that when the closer you get to other people you get a warmth of community,

but you get scared because they can hurt you or you can hurt them and let them down. It's just sometimes worse. And sometimes you don't have control over either of those things. You never do. And then the other, but the safety of aloneness is, is,

is despair. It's very sad. So every, I've always feel myself moving from to the person away from them, you know, or towards myself, away from myself, towards myself. And that there's something interesting about that and that a family is that because a family, you have no fucking choice.

And a bar and a family are the two opposite sides of that spectrum. You are fused to your family. But a bar is a family are the two opposite sides of that spectrum you are you are fused to your family but a bar is a way to be around other people where you're not with them they don't you don't owe them anything yeah and i started going it's also an escape yeah and from your own actual life yeah and and also like it's a place where where uh you know intelligence and things get compromised. I mean, you're serving people liquor. That's right.

So naturally, there's a slippery slope of what's revealed and why people are there and all that stuff. That's right. And some of that you don't even have to speak to, and I don't necessarily think you did, but most of the people you covered. Yeah, so I started thinking about stuff like that. I started going to bars to see what it's like during the day, day drinkers. Like at one in the afternoon i'd go to a bar uh i went to mcsorley's in seventh street

which is really interesting because that's been in the same family since the 1800s and so i learned a little bit about that if i talked to them right and the convict actually in the later episode uh had worked at what was mcsorley yeah probably right right so uh most bars i found they just have this the music on and nobody can hear each other this this conversation people talking during the day they just have the fucking music on so that people can talk privately and no one can hear each other right and that was kind of disappointing i couldn't really eavesdrop on anybody because everybody was you know but you could feel it i could feel what it was like and i and also somebody sometimes somebody's at a bar and there's people with them that they're strangers yeah and they'll go like uh you know

yeah i um um i my dad raped me and uh now i work in finance and people just kind of shrug yeah because it's anonymous you know it's it's it's not alcoholics anonymous it's alcoholic anonymous yeah it's active like it's bar behavior yeah that happened yeah so i got interested in that idea and then i thought of this thing of like hey if we make the show every week we could throw it up really if we do this multi-camera yeah we could if we can learn how to make a good line cut yeah that you can live with um we could show throw the show up like the week we did it and talk about, well, there's about to be an election year. I had no idea what kind of an election year we were headed for.

Right. When I was writing it. Right. I didn't know what the fuck this was going to be. Yeah. Anyway, so all this was scrambling around in my head and I wrote a second episode. Yeah.

And now I'm just walking around thinking about Horace and Pete all the time. And every time I finished writing, I'm very emotionally wrought. Like I'm, it was affecting me. Yeah. And I just knew I had to do it. And then I went to the Emmys in September.

Yeah. And, uh, Edie Falco had a seat open next to, she was sitting there with the seat open next to her. So I just sat down next to Edie and I said, uh, Hey, we've met just hello a couple of times. Yeah. Right.

I said, I'm writing a TV show. I want you to be in it. It's me and Steve Buscemi. And she said, sure. You know, times. Right. I said, I'm writing a TV show. I want you to be in it. It's me and Steve Buscemi. And she said, sure. You know, like, please go away. Like, I was freaking around a little, I think.

I said, well, how can I get you to read it? And I said, I don't want to talk to your agent. I don't want to tell anybody that exists. It's a secret. And I'm not going to ask you

to promote anything on the show. I just want you to do it. And she said, okay, well, she gave me her address where her mailbox is. Yeah. And the next, when I got home from the, oh, so then I, then I turn around and there's Jessica Lange standing there. Yeah. And I asked her the same thing and Jessica was like, yeah, you know,

I'll look at it, sure. Yeah. Everybody was down. Yeah. And then when I got home, I gave, I made an envelope with the scripts, just like the old days, you know. Yeah. And then when I got home, I made an envelope with the scripts, just like the old days, you know? Yeah. Put my phone number in it and wrote her a letter, dropped it at her mailbox place, said, this is for Edie. She said, just tell them it's for Edie.

Yeah. Gave it to her, gave it to them. Two days later, I got a text that said, hi, this is Edie. I'm in. When do we start? She's just like, I want to do it. And I was like, really? She said, yes, absolutely. You sent her two scripts. Two scripts. She was like, this is Edie. I'm in. When do we start? She's just like, I want to do it. And I was like, really? She said, yes, absolutely.

You sent her two scripts. Two scripts. She was like, I'm doing this. And then I had lunch at Cafe Reggio with Jessica Lang. Yeah. And she said, well, I hope you do more with her, the character. Yeah.

But I'll do it. Right. Because I'd only written a little bit for her. So now I've got Jessica Langange and Edie Falco. And Steve Buscemi. Totally committed, although just verbally. Yeah. To do the show.

And then Joe Pesci passed. What was it like hanging out with him? Joe was, he's a very raw human being. Yeah. He gave me a cigarette. Yeah. And he goes, don't ever let anybody tell you he's a bad for you that's a fucking lie like he really thinks it's a lie that cigarettes are bad for you and uh

i was at his i spent time with his family and uh he takes care of them he's a caretaker kind of a guy but he's also fiercely protective of his privacy he doesn't like being famous yeah um and he's a good guy i mean i all i know is my time with him i had a great time at his house he's really hosted me nicely gave me a lot of advice very paternal advice talked to me about the character at length of uncle pete and eventually passed and said you can have everything i've said to you did it help you yes there's a huge monologue in this show by alan alda yeah who Who plays the part I had written for him. That is, Joe said that to me about going down on a woman about oral sex.

Uh-huh. And I just couldn't believe it. When he said it, I was like, Joe, that's going to be in the show. And he goes, ah, yeah, you can have it. And I sent him, after he said no, I still sent him a couple of scripts and he would call me and he'd go like listen you fuck like he called me one day you fucking you dummy you're gonna write Archie Bunker again this fucking character has no depth he's a fucking idiot and it's been done so are you gonna listen to me I'm like yes Joe tell me what's wrong with Uncle Pete and he'd tell me stuff and

I learned from him. It was great. Anyway. So how many people do you go out to before you get all the, how'd that work? Okay, after Joe, I went to Jack Nicholson. Jack Nicholson. Just because you felt like it? I met him at Lorne Michaels' house. Yeah.

And Lorne's been very nice to me over the years, and he- Did he know about this project? Yeah, he did. He begged me to get uh financing from somebody but I said I can't he's like it's not no one's going to congratulate you for paying for it no one and I was like I know I just don't have to talk anybody into the shit I'm doing yeah and he's like you know they'll just give you money there's people who just give you

money I'm like I don't want to do it he's like all right but so I asked him for Jack Nicholson's uh phone number and uh he said no but i'll pass something on to him so he gave him the scripts yeah and jack uh called me and said no but when you got that i get personal nose now that's where i'm at but but you but your phone rings my phone rings and this this says, I'm looking for Louis C.K. I said, who's this? I'm calling for Jack Nicholson. If it's not you, I'm hanging up now or something like crazy like that. And I was like, yes, it's me.

So Jack comes on and he just says, I just wanted you to know the writing is terrific, but I'm not going to do it. And I was like, oh, well, you know, can I convince you? He's like, you know what I did today? I went out to the tree in my yard and I sat under it and I read a book. And when I was done, I went back inside. And I was like, all right, it was nice talking to you. But anyway, we chatted for a while. But he said no.

And then I thought of Christopher Walken. Right. And his agent is also Eie Falco's agent. Yeah. And Edie's agent had been sworn to secrecy. I'm really impressed, by the way, with all the agents of everybody. These are all Hollywood agents. None of them told anybody about the show.

Yeah. So Edie's agent, Tony Howard, gave the script to Chris Walken, who said that he really liked it, but that he thought it was too easy for a guy like him to play this part. Right. He's done guys like this. Yeah. He said, tell Louis, why don't you get somebody who you would never expect to do this? Yeah.

And I'm like, yeah, I could see that. And she said, how about Alan Alda? Said Tony Howard. And I said, I don't think so. She said, why? And I said, I think Alan is the greatest. Yeah. But he's not right for this.

And she said, well, meet him or let him read it with you i go i'm not going to do that talent all the either hire alan alda or i leave him alone yeah she said alan loves to work and i'll give him the script just let me let him read it so she's doing an agent's job yes yeah so he read it and he wrote me an email and he said i really love the material i'd love to talk to you about it and if it's not right for me or I'm not right for it, I'd love to find that out as quickly as possible. Right. But let's talk.

Yeah. So he came over my house. Yeah. And he's a great guy. Yeah. And he's really serious and into his work. He's a real artist. Yeah.

And I'm trying to see Uncle Pete in him. Yeah. I was like, so how would you play it? He's like, I don't think about it that way i don't intellectualize it i just start doing it like he wouldn't tip his hand right i was like fuck how's this guy alan alda gonna go and cocks his niggas and piss ants like what yeah it's not him alan alda's not that guy he's not that guy at all this it could be a huge mistake yeah

but then I'm looking at him I'm like Alan Alda's in my house yeah I love every single thing he's done yeah everything

yeah and he wants this yeah so I said let's just do it and he went really I said

yeah I want you to do it he said are you sure I said yes yeah and he left and then Tony called me and said Alan's concerned he says you gave him the part but he doesn, are you sure? I said, yes. Yeah. And he left. And then Tony called me and said, Alan's concerned.

He says you gave him the part, but he doesn't think you really want him to do it. I said, I want him to do it. And so anyway, I could, I'm talking too much, but I had, so I had all the big four. Yeah. Steve, Edie, Jessica Lange and Alan had him cast. But he hadn't done a read-through. Hadn't done a read-through. At this point, I had read four.

I had killed Uncle Pete. I hate to give a spoiler, but I'll do this one just to tell the story. I killed him in episode four so that Pesci would do it because he said 10 episodes is too much. Yeah. And after Pesci walked away, I was like, four actually makes sense for him. This makes sense for the character this character being such a looming figure yeah and then dying is a huge great thing to do to who's left right nice void yeah yeah voids are fucking great for tragedy and drama yeah so uh so i so oh and then Alan was going to Australia right after episode four.

We already had it scheduled at this point. So it worked out. Okay. So now, uh, I realize, and meanwhile, the FX deal that I've been putting together where I'm about to sign it, it's final. They're being really nice to me. Yeah. Generous amount of money.

Really decent terms. Yeah. And I realize this is not a little webisode series. Yeah. You've got four major actors. I have four huge actors. One of their Emmy award winning actresses, Jessica Lange.

And that's not on FX. And I'm about to sign this deal and I'm in it. Yeah. And I just walked off of the air on FX. And you got to tell them. I was like, this is fucked up. I legally don't have to tell them, was like this is fucked up i legally don't

have to tell them but there's no way you want to have that tension i can't do it yeah and it was so i mean my stomach was my stomach lining is just i'm just shitting it out and i'm like i gotta have this conversation i had it many times in my head yeah and i thought god damn it God damn it. This is not, there's no good version of this. You know, for at one point you start trying to say, how can I say this? And then you go, this is no good way to say it. Right. Because I have to make the fucking show. Right.

And I have to make it this way. Yeah. And I have to make it, I'm not telling anybody. Right. This is all the only way to do it. So I called John Landgraf and I said, listen, said listen man i said i'm about to sign this deal with you and make it final yeah i need you to know about this before i sign the deal i didn't ask him can i do this show i said i'm making this show yeah but you need to know it before we sign

the deal if and i realize that this is really, but it's creatively what I believe in. Uh-huh. So I don't have a choice and I want it. I want to do this. So whatever you do with the deal, I really want to make those shows for you on the network, but I'll, I'll understand whatever you want to do with the deal is I'll understand. Yeah. I hope you decide to sign the deal. Yeah.

But I can't have you sign it without knowing about this. Yeah. I hope you decide to sign the deal. Yeah. But I can't have you sign it without knowing about this. Yeah. So he said, well, this is a lot to, you need to give me some time to digest this. But you didn't tell him about the show? No, he asked me what's the show about. Yeah. Because I think he wanted to know that I wasn't doing just Louis on my own network. Right.

And I told him it's about a bar and two brothers that own a bar. And that was satisfying to him that it wasn't doing just louis right on my own network right and i told him it's about a bar and two brothers that own a bar and that was satisfying to him that it wasn't the same ground yeah um and he said all right let me think let me think about this and then he called me like a few days later and he said walk me through deciding not to do louis and then deciding to do this like just take me through and i told him basically the story i just told you yeah and he said uh i don't want to get in your way and i like the work we do this. Like, just take me through. And I told him basically the story I just told you. Yeah. And he said, I don't want to get in your way. And I like the work we do together. So let's just, it's fine.

And I was very glad that I did that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so then I'm writing. And I've got more cast together. And we get the studio. We start talking about what the bar looks like. Yeah. The more and further I went into it, and I'm telling John Landgraf now everything.

Like I told him I'm killing Uncle Pete. I'm telling him all this stuff. And after a while, I see him chuckling and going like, listen, I'm so glad you're not doing this on my, you know, like it just was like, why would he want to be taken for this ride? Right. But eventually he said to me,

not only am I supportive of this, I'm really, I'm rooting for it. I love, and he was just into that i was doing things this way yeah so okay annie baker i called her i wrote an email yeah and said i really love your play and i thought maybe because i thought maybe i want to help writing this because you don't write this with somebody yeah and i also thought i'm doing this as a collaboration on stage maybe i could collaborate when i'm writing it right so i wrote her and i said do you maybe want to work on this thing with me and and she was in iceland she wrote back and said hey i'm a fan of your work and let's meet so we met i gave her the first three scripts i know the first two yeah and she loved them and she said this is really great and i said well will

you write on it with me like be a writer on the show and she said, this is really great. And I said, well, will you write on it with me? Like, be a writer on the show. And she said, I don't know if I can do that. And she went away a bit and thought about if she could write. And she came back and said, I don't think I can do that. Like, write for you on your show. Right. And I said, I'm glad, because I don't think I could let you write on my show.

I don't think anybody else could write it. I said, can you just come to my house sometimes and sit with me? The way that I use help as a writer have somebody sit on my couch and just be there to talk to you who do you use like vernon vernon chapman uh stephen wright did it on my episode on my series louis yeah um pamela has done that for me pamela adler yeah um on this thing i didn't have anybody vernon i had ver Vernon was helping me that way. But so Annie's great contribution to the show was that after two episodes,

I decided I wanted to do an episode where two people talk for the whole episode. Yeah. And you never walk away from it. And at this point, most of them are around 30 to 40 minute long. The first one was 65 minutes. Right.

The second one was 45. Right. So I wanted to do one where it's two people talking. And my first idea was it was two people in the bar that aren't connected to the characters. Just like two patrons of the bar talk for 30 minutes, episode three. Right. And Annie and I talked about it. And she said, I think it needs to be people on the show.

But maybe you introduce a new character. Yeah. And so I started thinking of that. And then I thought of this woman who I met at the Emmys also. Yeah. Who's a brilliant actress. I don't want to say her name. And I thought she could maybe do it.

Right. And she likes me. Yeah. And I thought, what if I think of something for her? So I came up with this idea, this area. And I started telling Annie Baker this idea. The ex-wife. The ex-wife.

Yeah. And this thing about a confession and people sharing culpability and we both were like, this is really fucking exciting. And it was through dialogue with Annie of talking about it and describing to her

the area I wanted to go into and her saying, yes, you got to do that. You got to go into and her saying yes you gotta do that you gotta do that and annie said very early on i feel like this starts with a shot of this woman who's a new character and you don't know who she is yeah and you don't know who she's talking to and and you also like don't even though you know the actress it takes a minute to identify her oh definitely because she's you know dressed down, it takes a minute to identify her. Oh, definitely. Because she's dressed down. Well, that's an interesting thing.

There's no makeup. Because the original actress is somebody you would have gone, boom, you would have known who that is. Right. Literally through the entire episode, which was really one of the best performances ever anywhere in my recollection. I think that's true. I do too.

And I'm like, is that Laurie Mecham? Is it her? I don't even know if it's her. Who is that? Is it a New York actress? I could not identify her that's right for for almost the whole thing until i until i saw the credits that's right and and like when you watch that thing i know that i i see that other people have responded in similar ways than i have you're like what the fuck like you know the you can't even explain that performance where it came from, but you

know, the detail that you gave her to work with was, was insanely nuanced. Well, the place I had gotten to with this, like, well, so what Annie and I talked about was the idea of an ex, uh, a divorced couple that have, have a lot of distance. Yeah. Their kids are grown up. They have no reason to talk anymore. Right. that have a lot of distance.

Yeah. Their kids are grown up. Right. They have no reason to talk anymore. Right. And that one of them did, I always had this idea in my head that Horace did something terrible to break up the family.

Yeah. Just awful. Right. And that she's the victim of that. Yeah. So she is now in her later life doing something terrible in her new family. And also significantly older than you.

So the backstory of you unfolds. Which came because the actress who I wrote it for was older than me. And I thought, well, that's interesting to me. Horace is younger than his wife. That's not a reason, but it's part of what went into his not handling the marriage and being a father. He was a young father. Right. And so that idea,

and when I started setting that up, I thought she comes to him to ask him how to handle doing a terrible thing because he did one to her. I thought that's fucking huge. And that's where Annie and I were at. And I thought, I know where this is going generally.

Now I'm just going to go write it. Sent her away. It's the last time I saw Annie on the project because until we shot the thing months later because she had something going on in her life, I couldn't get her again after that. So I sat down and she had given me this thought of the woman's face and you don't know

who she's talking to. And I thought, okay, let's let her talk for a while. And and so i started telling the story and this is what it was like to write this show i sat down and i start telling the story through her voice yeah of um where they were at this house and what it was like and why they went there it comes out of nowhere you don't know why she's telling you don't know anything you don't know a single thing if If you're watching in order, you're just like, what's happening? The power of this show to me and the way I wanted to do it, especially once I started writing it, how vital it was that it be a secret

was because of the episodes like this where it was like, you won't know why you're looking at this person. You won't know how long you're likely to look at them. You don't know who they're talking to. You don't know how many episodes this show is. You don't know what this show is. It's only two episodes deep into it. You don't know who they're talking to you don't know how many episodes this show is you don't know what this show is it's only two episodes deep into it you don't know why you're watching it i i i knew that people would call like we had to when i first put the show on the air huge amounts of press called my eight my my publicist who honestly said i don't know what the fuck you're

talking about because i didn't tell him it. I wanted him to be credibly ignorant. He knew no idea. Okay. Right. You mean when you dropped it. Yeah. When I first dropped it. So if you're a person watching this, you're just like, you saw one and you're like, I

don't know. Did you send him a nice bottle of wine or something? He's great. He handled it very well. Okay. And then the second episode you go, okay, I guess there's a rhythm. Yeah. I guess it's episodic.

The first one's like its own thing. Yeah. yeah first one is like its own play yeah and then the second one is like i guess we're gonna watch these people for a while yeah it's kind of a holding pattern episode yeah then the third one you go when who the fuck is this she's been talking for 10 minutes yeah and i don't know who she's talking to and i'm getting a boner from her story and she looks really upset and nervous i don't know why all these things the stirring up questions in somebody's head exciting all their fucking brain with wonder and confusion these are great feelings to feel from a tv show yeah they don't exist because they want to land you safely in every single moment right now right so this was a great opportunity for that so she's talking i'm writing it and i'm on pins and needles because i'm watching this scene as i'm writing it

not for laurie no not for laurie for somebody else but i'm i'm in my head thinking about this thing that she's laying there and that he drives up yeah and and that she spreads her legs open and that was an axe she didn't spread them for him she spread them for her own uh luxury of of aloneness and that here he comes and now what do i close them here comes this man this old man and i'm letting him look and do i open my eyes and every single little detail of that was freaking me out as i rush on the wall dude what's that the paintbrush yeah the frame i mean that was like i lived all these moments as i was writing them this just the paintbrush and she's like trying to touch herself and yeah i'm like and i i mean i was getting hard while i was writing it yeah

and and uh and then i finally get to where horace goes, why are you telling me this? And then the tension breaks and she goes, well, you know, I never thought about what you went through during that time. And Horace is like, what the fuck? This is a funny way to bring this shit up. We never talked about it. We just broke up, you know? Yeah. And then I thought, go to the bathroom, Horace.

Just go to the bathroom. Everybody calm down for a minute. And that's where I started putting intermissions in the show. Right. Intermission. Yeah. Come back. All right.

So he starts telling her the real truth. Right, and you're filling in all this backstory. About Horace, about Horace, who you've been watching. Right. And that's how you fill it out, by listening. That's right. And then by addressing it. That's right. And then by addressing it. That's right.

All of your stuff is relatively minimal in terms of your vocal engagement. Yeah, I don't say very much at all. Right. But you cry, you react, you listen. And in the episode where you play your own father, that is a completely different set of challenges as an actor. Yeah. And also, what I always wonder about something this expansive is, are you considering the psychology of these characters?

Like, when you look at Horace as an adult, from the get-go, do you believe he had an abusive childhood, or is that something you discover? Well, I think that there was an abuser was the head of the household right and that that was the cycle of the family and uh i mean i grew up with a dad who hit everybody he just hit everybody yeah that's what a family was like when i was growing up and the mother hit just out of desperation right and the kids had strange relationships of trying to sort of comfort each other and stay away from each other and stuff like that so i knew that that was a backdrop i knew that that's part of what drove these kids apart and that's part of what drove horace and pete together but even the detail of of the pete character's childhood with the glasses and the

filling of the glasses yeah well where did that where the fuck did that come from? Okay, so... You're establishing that he had mental problems early on. It was a big deal to me that Pete had a mental... That he had a disorder. Yeah. And I gave that a lot of thought. I talked to a guy who works in a doctor of abnormal psychology um to ask to just run some of this shit by him yeah and he checked most of it he said the stuff

that you have there's some that's accurate and the stuff that's inaccurate is is in the right ballpark and borrowing from other types of you know what what I mean? Like you said, it all makes sense. Right. So Pete, yeah, to me that thing of Pete going, having this madness that he fights against and that he really, that his nature, his nature is that he's just a good guy. Yeah. He's a caring guy. He's courageous.

Yeah. He's vain, you know. When he says to his date, I know the left side of my face is handsome you know he he's got a good heart and strong confidence as a person but he keeps getting shattered by this fucking madness inside of him yeah and uh that's a really hard terrible thing it's just a bad toss of the dice yeah and i don't think most people end up beating it in the end right and i kind of knew right away when i was writing this i think this shit's gonna take pete i don't think

pete's gonna make it on some level he's not gonna make it yeah and i was really hard because i really got a lot of i got so involved in these things every time i wrote an episode i i tried not to make phone calls or talk to anybody because i would start talking like the characters and stuff like yeah but anyway, but about the glasses. So when I wrote the last, the last two episodes, I wrote the first eight. I just wrote them on a schedule, one after the other, because it was just coming out of me.

Then I got to episodes nine and 10 and I was, and I knew what they were going to be. I knew what was going to happen in the end. And when I wrote episode eight, pete gets some bad news um i sent it i gave the the cast the scripts as soon as i wrote them because they had to shoot next week no no this is before i wrote them all ahead of time okay okay um so this is like in october and what and now now knowing you and and knowing the stuff that you've taken chances on previous and some of it not being made how how impulsive was it how much editing was there once you when you did a draft well when i when i did i would write i don't do a lot of rewriting in my life at all but i thought i

gave a lot of forethought i thought very carefully about these things before i wrote them yeah i worked harder on these scripts than i've worked on anything in my life yeah i wrote the first eight and then i i sat down and thought out nine and ten yeah and when i wrote eight and it pete gets this bad news i gave it to buscemi who wrote me and he said or i think he called me and he said he said look i i i don't i don't have high hopes for pete after reading this and he said it doesn't seem like he's got much of a chance in life and uh after we killed uncle uncle pete yeah anything could happen right and i just want you to know that that's okay with me because at this point i thought we're on season one this is season one and this is also the guy that made trees lounge that's right that's right this is his wheelhouse

this is a guy who's done he's got an incredible body of work yeah so he uh he said that and i thought yeah i don't know because i it was hard to think of like i don't want to take this part away from steve i don't want to take his character into this terrible place because i want to i'm hiring all these people they're all taking a chance on me edie and steve and jessica and alan are all they're giving me of the first quarter of their year which is a lot from actors of that caliber. And I thought, I want to do this show for years. That's what I originally thought.

But every time I took a big dramatic or tragic turn in the show, I thought the only thing that keeps you from doing that in a sitcom or any series is that you need to stay within the margins on a series so that the show stays the same so it can stay on the air. The decision to not make big moves on a series so that the show stays the same so it can stay on the air right the the decision to not make big moves on a television show is an economic decision to make more product but as a writer you just want to be able to say i don't give a fuck what happens to anybody as long as it's important as long as it works in the writing yeah so i thought about nine and ten i was like oh fuck i know how this i know this how this ends i know what happens at the end yeah

i don't want to do it i don't want this to end like that i don't want it to but i have a feeling it's gonna it's gonna happen so i stopped writing at eight i said i'm not gonna write nine and ten yeah i want to start making the show and see if i can come up with a better nine and ten uh-huh that gives the show longer life and and gives the characters a better outcome um so we started making the show and i'd once in a while i'd go back to nine and ten and it just kept so you're shooting week to week you're doing you're knocking them out all right so i've been having people come to my house the whole cast they come to my house and they read yeah the big four yeah and then people like

mark normand lisa uh trager yeah it's just a comic who started at the Cellar recently. Yeah. I liked them, so I had them come to read the parts at the bar. Liza, I didn't know as well as I was going to put on the show. I was like, couldn't you come and read one line, but read a bunch of other characters? Liza Traeger. She's a comic. I never, I just, I like her.

Right. Michelle Wolfe, really funny, strong comic, funny voice. Come on and read this part. You know, and Tom Noonan, who I'd used in my other show. Great actor. Fucking great actor. Got him involved. Stephen Wright, Kurt Metzger.

So I started, but I didn't tell them what they're doing. I said, just come to my house on Monday. And then out of nowhere, we get Burt Young. Yeah, exactly. Burt Young. So they all come and they sit down at my table and we all read and over the whole fall i read the episodes again and again read them as much as i could i had this thing in my head from um all that jazz the movie sure where he's running a dance again and again and he's like

bent over at the waist with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth he watches them pour their hearts out yeah and then he just goes do it again do it again and i thought i gotta be that good on this He's like bent over at the waist with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. He watches them pour their hearts out. Yeah. And then he just goes, do it again. Do it again. And I thought, I got to be that good on this. And I did it to myself on the scripts. I'd read through them, do changes, cut little things, make it better, make it better, make it better.

I just, I thought, I said, this has to be fucking great. So I worked like that. And then now it's time when it gets to be uh january we've worked really hard we haven't made anything we haven't made a single fucking thing yeah um and i try to figure out this workflow how do we make the show how do we actually do this yeah how do we deliver the show on a weekly basis right uh obviously i'd left spots like a lot of dialogue at the bar was like tba because i wanted to see what happened in the news and we would run that like tuesday i figured we'd figure out what we're going to talk about in terms of current

events right so that's generally what i did so um that would run through kurt and that's right yeah so we've got four cameras and a control room and i'm the director and i'm used to directing myself but i need a live switch i need the cameras to be switching from one to the other in a way that we're going to be able to use on the air. So we start rehearsing it. And every time anybody, I'm looking over at the cameras. Every time somebody talks, all the cameras come over to that person. Right. And then another person talks and they all go over there.

Yeah. It was fucking madness. And we're not Saturday Night Live people. I mean, they know what they're doing. We don't know how to do it. So I sat in the control room the first week and I sent the cast home and replaced them all with stand-ins and ran the scenes with stand-ins yeah and i there was these uh highlighters sitting and i'm sharing this because i want to open source the show because anybody who wants to do this should be able to do right

um there were these highlighters on the counter of the control room um all colors so i had four highlighters one for each camera and what i did was i colored the the the dialogue on the script yeah with the color of the camera that should be covering that dialogue oh yeah walk through the show and every time that a camera's position switch is like next to the dialogue yeah i wrote you know um a single on ed so that's what camera one's assignment is yeah and then the next time you see camera one if that assignment has changed you go three shot ed right you know right what you created a system that's right and i invented one right i had so many times during making this show where i thought it can't be done the first week i was like we can't do this yeah no one can make a show this fast of this breadth we can't do it um but we figured it out um and after

the first one we realized we all know how to do this now right so working with real pros yeah oh and i mean the actors fucking forget and when and when did you, whatever skeptical feelings you had about Alan. Oh, yeah. So, Alan, the first time we read the first two scripts, I took a bunch of fucks out. Yeah. Because I thought he's not going to be able to say these things. Because Alan Alda. Yeah, Alan Alda.

And he came with a whole other guy and he read it. And I was like, this guy had pins and needles in my body as he read it. And then we read episode two, which I hadn't edited. And he said, fuck and cocksucker and all this stuff. And I was like, you know,

this guy's incredible. This guy's like, and he was wearing these big glasses. And I was like, God, I hate this guy so much. I hate him. Cause we were reading a lot of the scenes for me and him.

And he's being mean to me. And I'm like, fuck, I hate uncle Pete. And I couldn't believe it. And I said mean to me. And I'm like, fuck, I hate Uncle Pete. And I couldn't believe it. And I said to Alan one day, I'm not going to talk to you about this character or anything. Just do what you just, you know what you're doing.

So, you know, let's just enjoy ourselves. And that's the way it went. I never had to talk to him. I had very few, you always want to be able to help a little. And direction is a good beacon for people. So I was able to tell Alan sometimes like, you you know here's a way to go with it and he would always be grateful for that right but he invented that fucking character it's not what i had in my head it was something a billion times better yeah and he just every time he showed up it was better and

better in the week of the show when he walks in and you know the whole thing I had with music and stuff was about turn on the jukebox in the beginning let the show feel like oh

you're watching the show right you don't know what it is you just got an email from me this is the show right you put it on

yeah I don't know what the fuck this is these two guys are dancing they look like idiots yeah Stephen Wright walks in puts his own napkin down and gets a drink it's just dead they're sitting there drinking coffee

nothing's going on what is this shit and then somebody walks in and puts music on the jukebox and now it's getting lively okay the place filling up okay so this is going to be a show about a bar and it's going to always have music coming out of that jukebox. It's going to be live. They're talking about football. Right. And then this guy walks in and unplugs the jukebox and the place dies.

It just, it dies. And then it's dead till he dies. I mean, it's dead like that. And for most of the series, it's dead. Yeah. So that's who Alan was he was this joy killer you know and at the same time i knew there was a time where he really made the bar sing he made it great right you know he tells the baseball story about horrors it's like this thing he used

to be able to tell stories like nothing and make horrible story it's terrible it's so vicious but you know you were able to service a lot of the things that you know you struggle with and are important to you uh cultural conversations about race about gender about sexuality about politics uh you know about the the bleakness of life about how life changes and how people change i mean all that stuff is there yeah yeah so you know in looking at the the span of it you know you you were able to use am Amy Sedaris in almost an angelic way. She was an angel. Right. And I didn't know that.

I didn't know she was going to be that. Oh, you didn't? No. And I feel like I didn't service the question you asked me about the glasses because I was taking too long to get there. Well, it's just a detail. But okay. So when I was ready to, I realized I have to write 9 and 10 now because there's no escape

from 9 and 10. They are what they are. I realized that 10 didn't have a lot of content. It wasn't actually very much. I just knew what happens at the end. And then I thought, um, what if we go back to 1976 in Horace and Pete's? 2016, 1916 when the bar was open and now let's

go to 1976. Yeah. I'm in the middle. Bicentennial quarter. Yeah. Yeah. And I thought, um, what if we go to the day they left? What if we go to the day that Horace and Sylvia were taken away and Pete was left behind?

Which is sort of what informs the whole story. Yeah. And so I thought, okay, and then it's- You're playing your father. Edie, your sister, is playing your mother. She's playing my mother and Pete's going to play Uncle Pete as uh-huh as a young man great job on that he did he was amazing so and then i thought then when you get a whole new set of barge patrons and this time it's fuller and it's more alive like in 76 it was fun it's not fun anymore right that's what i wanted active conversation not threatening

not foreboding not malignant immediately i knew george wallace yeah and then i thought about colin yeah colin was great and i and i met with colin and he told me about two hours of stories not malignant. Immediately I knew George Wallace. Yeah. And then I thought about Colin. Yeah. Colin was great. And I met with Colin and he told me about two hours of stories of New York in 1976 when he lived in Brooklyn at the time. Yeah, yeah.

It was great because he said to me, your bar was on Court Street. Yeah. Like he put my bar, he said it was on Court Street near the municipal buildings downtown. And he told me all about having a girlfriend in trump village yeah in 1976

and so i extracted all this shit from colin he credited to him because he told me great stories like the one he tells about gang members chasing each other and i wrote his character uh and then i thought about david blaine who'd i run into once in a while yeah um like i do an magic trick and freaking out uncle pete right um and then i thought there should be also an old guy like we had and then i thought about burt young and i asked my agent just call burt young's agent and tell him we have this you just sit in a stool you'll say some shit i don't want to send him a script and he said yes burt young you know his his guy's name is horace and my guy's name is horace so he memorized the script in the and and he

thought all my uh lines were his lines oh which was fine yeah because sometimes we both say something at the same time which is funny yeah and also he was better than i there's a bunch of my lines most of the things that he says old horse were my lines i just let him have them yeah okay anyway so uh the the abuse yeah and the glasses yeah so i'm playing this guy who uh abuses everybody in his family yeah and i've never done that yeah and i don't know how someone does it yeah and every time i would sit alone i'd make sure no one was looking and i'd read the lines out loud and i couldn't do it hurt uh well I thought I can't I'm not this guy it was just I couldn't authentically go like you mean what are you doing right

like a mom what am I gonna try sound like I'm from Brooklyn right what are you doing we got a little Austin in there yeah a little bit and so then I thought I might have to replace me yeah and that's weird if I'm the only one not playing right right so then he comes to set one day and we just look at it. She goes, can I ask you about the 76 stuff? And I said, yeah. She was great at talking about the material. So I said, let's read it out loud.

So now I'm looking at Edie, who I've been working now with for eight weeks, who I've gotten a tremendous amount of respect and affection for, who I really love and I believe is my sister from all the time of playing the parts. And now I look at her, she's my wife. It's easy to feel that way.

I love her, I trust her. Right. And it's easy to be mean to her. Right. I just go, what are you doing? You know, you fucking liar. It was easy because I trusted her. And I realized that's what abusive people do.

They just go, oh, she loves me, she loves me she loves me fuck her fucking whore yeah it was so easy it was horrible grabbing her but i remember when we were rehearsing and i was dragging her by the back of the hair through the bar i i was saying everybody uh i'm dragging a national treasure by the back of her head you know it. I felt terrible. But in filming it, it was easy to do. It's brutal. Yes, it is. So then this kid, I thought Pete's going crazy.

He's just going crazy at 13. He has no control over it. Mental problem. That's right. Something, he gets a thing in his head, he can't get rid of it. So I thought of this, these two details. One is that he ripped the faces out of some pictures

and then hid them. And the other is that he gets told by somebody he's got to fill every glass with water in the house before the sun comes up. That was just a device you came up with. That's all. And then there was this thing, the way the kid did it, of like, you know. He's very good. Yeah. And he's laying the glasses out in rows.

Yeah. That kid was so goddamn good. Yeah. I walk up to him and I said to, all I said to him was when I take my glasses off, you know, you're going to get hit. Yeah. Cause we did versions where I did a stage slap and I'm like,

I can't do it. I can't do it. Yeah. So, um, I take off my glasses and the way he stops, uh, it's horrible.

And then you cut away and just hear no. Yeah. You just, you're slapping and no. Yeah. So, okay. Um,

anyway, when we did that and we did the last episode, I got really wrecked by it. It was really hard. Well, you could see you getting wrecked throughout it. Yeah. It started to chip away at you. That's right. So, for me, in my experience of it,

it's got nothing to do with who me and you are, but seeing it as as a piece it seems like you you did some uh like a a version of the the great american tragedy that the that you know you created this masterpiece of of what what feels like theater and and then you you know sort of redefine the parameters of television but i i think that does a disservice to what you did in a way. That you shot it so beautifully and so specifically that the experience is theater.

The space in it, you let things sit. And this is not stuff that I know for you is easy. It's not easy for you to listen. It's not easy for you to cry. It's not easy for you to be abusive. So the challenges for yourself were huge. Well, they were. And the listening is the one, is the big one.

Because I didn't make myself cry in any of these scenes. It's not written when she's telling Horace about her son, about his son, who doesn't speak to him. It's not written that he cries. There's no reaction written. It's just her lines. And when she said them, I just bawled. I couldn't control it. Yeah.

And on every take, we do have three takes, but I really lost it when she's telling me about my son and how he's happy. And wait, what about Laurie Metcalf? Were you just astounded? Okay, so the woman who I wrote it for couldn't do it. Yeah. And I started thinking of people, and Laurie Metcalf's name kept coming up.

And I knew that she was a great actress. Yeah. And I wasn't sure it was her. And then I saw a piece from her show called Getting On. Yeah. And I saw her do this. I don't remember what the scene was about, but it was just great. Yeah.

And I was like why why didn't i she's perfect there's nobody else that can do it and then i got panicked because i thought now i'm probably not going to get her because now that i know it's her you're not going to be able to get her yeah this is way back in october before we started shooting and so i don't remember exactly when but so somebody got her the script. I emailed her. I tried to get it to everybody personally because I didn't want anybody to fucking know about the show. So I wrote her and said, please don't tell anybody about this. Please read it and please do it.

Yeah. We can do it on a Monday. She was in a play. Yeah. So she wrote me back and said, I'm already memorizing it. And I said, great. I'm so excited. And I never spoke to her again never met her

she just took the part yeah and then that was it for that then episode three because episode three was just me and her talking yeah there's nothing to do yeah there was no logistics to it so but you had no experience previous to the scene of what she was going to do with no idea no where you were just sitting there going yeah so so so episode one episode two and putting the show out absorbing the reaction from the show all of the freakish life of all of that yeah now it's time for episode three and i'm like fuck i gotta do episode three now that's laurie that's right laurie's doing it fuck i hope this is good. I don't know. I never talked to her. Yeah.

I probably should have brought her in a few times. So she came the Friday before we shot, we shot it on Monday. She came in on the Friday before and she sat down and she read it with me. And I thought, Jesus motherfucking Christ. Yeah. This is really huge.

Yeah. This is a huge thing and i don't i didn't know it because i hadn't looked at the script yeah i don't know the lines right and she needs me to just catch and throw and toss back yeah that's all i have to do and i'm not ready to do it yeah and god damn it i didn't know what this was. I forgot about it. Yeah. And when she read it, I was like, she's vulnerable. She's ashamed. She's turned on.

She's scared. God damn it. And I thought, this is the biggest thing I ever did is just this one stupid dialogue. I've never, this is the most important thing I'll ever do. Right. And we're doing it on Monday and I'm really tired. Yeah.

And so over the weekend, I got as many people as I could get to come over and read with me. I just got, I never do, I don't prepare. Yeah. People came over and read it with me.

I had to know it perfectly. I read it again. To be there for her. Just for her. I got nothing i have to do but not fuck her up because she needs to do this all of a piece yeah and the hardest talk about listening yeah 10 minutes of looking at an actor telling you a story when you're not on camera where you're just trying not to derail them yeah so yeah i took all weekend worked worked worked

worked worked worked on it and on monday it was like a closed set, like when you do a sex scene. That's what I told the crew. No one unnecessary on set. Quiet. And I set up the shots and the sort of game of how to shoot it. And then she came in and then we sat down and it was dead quiet in that fucking place. Oh, Alan Alda coming in at the end. We had shot that already because

you'd left town yeah yeah so we sat down and did it the first take i figured we'll get a few takes in first take we kind of had it i mean she kind of nailed it on take one and i was like god damn it laurie okay let's do one more second one it's far better far better and uh that's all we ever did in the first half of this episode is one is two takes and then we the third we did another one of the second half the dialogue between me and her and when she told me about my son being a good man and making good choices i just i couldn't i just felt so many things you know and i couldn't hold it in and that's when this show started to shift for me because i was really getting involved emotionally as an actor without trying i didn't have to go

and think about sad things i just opened up to these people right and that speaks a lot to you know you know your experience with your mother and being there for your mother. That's right. And having two fucking sisters. Three. Three. Yeah.

Like the amount of emotional space and the sort of the gift of these characters to the women in this show is sort of mind-blowing. Like it's a beautiful thing, but I think that comes a lot from stuff that you really haven't reckoned with publicly no it's true your relationship with women is complicated and it's it goes back to when you were a nothing that's a child that's right it does and i think that i was able to dig deep that right because it was about family. Right. And here I have this daughter on the show who, you know, I thought about my daughters when I did Louis.

But in this case, I thought about my sisters. Right. Because my family, my dad doesn't, we don't have a relationship with him. I don't have one with him. At all. Yeah. And so that's who Horace's son is, is really me. Yeah.

I'm playing my dad a little bit right and then um but i have one sister who stays in touch with him yeah and i hope i'm not divulging anything private but i asked her once because she's has a hard time with him yeah but she stays in contact and i asked her once why do you do that why do you put yourself through it because i don't she said well he's part of me your parents are part of you and uh i feel like if i can accept him not forgive or even like right but if i can accept him and and be open to him in my life that means i can accept and be open to parts of myself that i have a hard time with and i thought god damn it that's such a strong choice

that's a brilliant thing to be able to do I can't do it yeah willfully admit I can't do it yeah I'd rather just avoid and shut down right so that's who 80 is she's really my older sister right and uh that she just goes it looked at I'm gonna tell you how I feel if you want to be around me you're gonna have to listen to what i have to say right um but uh so that's who she was yeah uh anyway yeah it was it was very intense and after three we then we then we killed uncle pete and him telling pete about eating pussy is his last words was uh all joe pesci's thing yeah he turned it into this thing joe pesci started by telling me you don't eat pussy because it makes you into a schmuck and even women that do it he doesn't like

them yeah uh but then he says but that's because love is love is you face each other and you come at the same time and nothing nothing is uh or and nothing else is worth it yeah hold out for real love yeah joe pesci said that to me yeah and so for uncle pete to say that to him don't ever do that son don't ever eat a pussy and then he shoots himself and i'm sorry for the spoiler for whoever's listening but that's the only thing you really spoiled no it's the one thing but but the thing about it is is like people's expectations of you and giving you the the leeway that to have this experience and put it put it out there is that the comedy of it you know it services the tragedy yeah it does not save it you're like that's very well put and and you know you know

kurt's great steven's great uh you know nick is great but yeah but even kurt who is is probably the most comedic comedic character he's also a lonely guy in the show too, I think. No, I know. And he's very Kurt. Like, I know Kurt. Yeah, yeah. But like, you know, his energy, his exuberance,

his joyful cynicism is about the funniest it gets. That's it. That's really it. Yeah, that's it. And it's dark. It is. But there's also one beat that you have,

you know, after the first encounter with the African-American woman who you don't know, you know, what first encounter with the uh with the african-american woman who you don't know you know what she is yeah yeah yeah when she leaves and you have that moment before you walk in the bedroom i don't want to give it away because it's right it's so clearly a comic that's moment that's right you know after she leaves right and edie falco comes in yeah so okay so she you know here's the thing with that one was a good case of where I didn't, where this, I felt the story was being told to me rather than me telling it.

Yeah. Because the point of that to me was Horace hooking up with somebody, you know, one night stand. And the one night stands in life that are very mutually. Good. Yeah. And also mutually. You know what it is. are very mutually. Good. Yeah. And also mutually. You know what it is.

Negotiated. Yeah. Everybody's cool. Yeah. What's going on. Right. And that when she wakes up the next morning and goes like, and she's just like, I didn't mean to stay over and horses have some eggs.

And she says, and then I'm leaving and horses. Yeah, please do. And then they're able to sit together because they both know no one's going to get snarled here. But then you get into that conversation that you have, which I've never seen it played that way. Well, because I thought what's interesting, once I got them sitting down, I didn't know what I was going to have them talk about. But I thought, here's an interesting thing. Two people who have been intimate, which means they can tell each other something. But they have negotiated a, we are never going to see each other again yeah which means they can tell each other things right without fear yeah that's a big

deal right and i thought horace is a guy who if you ask him three questions about his life you find out something terrible yeah that's a fucked up way to go through life right you know what i mean yeah hey you got uh i mean just. Nobody, and they're eating eggs. They don't really even want to talk. You got, are you married? No, divorced. Do you have kids? Yep, two.

Yep. Really? How old are they? And the fucking, and it all comes out. You can't even answer that question for Horace without this horrible truth coming out. And so he tells her, and to me, that's what the scene was about.

It was about that. And then I started to figure, okay her and to me that's what the scene was about it was about that and then i started to figure okay well then we'll start landing the scene by talking about sex and just that she enjoyed it he enjoyed it you have a nice dick thank you you have a nice pussy uh thanks it's uh it's right i i had to put it where my dick used to be i had to make that joke yeah it's just a joke yeah and then i went huh as horace in my head i was like uh yeah that's funny hmm yeah and then the conversation took off from i didn't know the scene was going to be about that i didn't intend to write that scene i really didn't and then once i started having that conversation with myself in my head about halfway through i talked to vernon about it. And he said, well, wait a minute, though. If someone is transgender, they have to tell their partners.

And I was like, really? They do? And then I thought, that's so interesting that he thinks that. Yeah. That's so interesting. So I had that out in the conversation. Right, right, right. But I got to give Vernon credit because when we shot that scene, you know, it was intense.

Yeah. And the last take we did, I thought we were done. Yeah. I was like, we did it. And then Karen Pittman, who played the woman, said, I'd love one more. And I said, you don't need one more. She said, I don't think I have it at all.

And I said to her, I don't need you to feel satisfied like as an actor. Yeah. You gave it to me. She said, just let me do one more. I said, all right. So we did it. That's when we, we used the last one. Right.

That she wanted. Yeah. And it's far better than the one previous. So she gets credit for that. But right before we did it, there's something I've started to do in directing when I'm in the thing. Yeah.

If you're doing a last take, it feels like a last take. Yeah. Do something that the person didn't expect. Like walk towards them when you haven't for five takes or to walk over and like put your hand on their shoulder something that makes them do something really honest yeah but anyway he he got in my ear and said you should say this one thing and he fed me that line right at the right which one right before the one you're talking about the thing i say oh yeah um anyway

because it was like it was like in this in the way you're talking about, the thing I say to Edie. Yeah, because it was like, it was like in the way you structured this show, even if something's funny, you're not writing jokes. There's no, it's not. No, there's none. It's all just mechanics of the story and then it's these feelings.

And I kept getting blindsided by feelings, like in that scene. So Edie wasn't supposed to be in that scene. Yeah. But there was this thing where she's got cancer. Yeah. And there's a timeline to her cancer. Right. And i've been talking to edie about that kind of stuff and so i said is that the scene where she tells you she has cancer it's the no it's the scene where

she tells me she's she's healthy that she made that she got a good a card of you know that's right that's right that's right so i said to her the day before hey you know what you're not supposed to be here tomorrow for the karen pitman scene but come anyway and come in at the end and tell me you got that you're cured yeah and i just figured it's a story point yeah and i'll go hey terrific yeah so uh she said okay how do you want me to say it i'm like just however you would say that yeah that you got good news yeah and she goes all right so i forgot it i forgot i told her yeah i honestly forgot yeah until we're shooting the first i think we shot we didn't do any rehearsals of that yeah until we're shooting the first i think we shot we didn't do any rehearsals of that because when we rehearsed the scene i didn't have that in

it right so we're shooting the scene with karen pittman and um and that then she's about to leave and edie walks in and i forgot that i told edie to be there yeah and then it's like weird because she's there with this woman i was just with yeah and then And then the Karen Pittman leaves and I go to Edie and she looks weird. Yeah. And I'm really in a real place. Yeah. And I said, what's up with you? And she says, I've got good news.

And I go, what? She says, I'm okay. And it fucking hit me like a ton of bricks. Yeah. I've never experienced something like this. She said this thing to me and I was like, that's my sister. And I was afraid to even consider the possibility that she was dying. Right.

And she's going to be okay. And now I'm upset that she was dying. Yeah. It hit me so hard. I mean, I'm getting emotional now. Yeah. I fucking lost it. Yeah.

I just like, i started to cry and then i wanted to hug her and i thought i can't she's not like that i can't do it yeah my sylvia doesn't like to be hugged right so i just kind of stood there and she stood there kind of gasping yeah and then we hugged awkwardly yeah that was unbelievable yeah and then that then that line that Vernon gave me was just perfect. It was perfect. It was a pretty outstanding line. Yeah, no, it was great. So, yeah, that was another time I got really hit hard.

Well, I saw you going through it. But do you feel when you look at this thing, outside of whatever the finances are, none of that's important to me. Me neither. Because you're going to be fine. Yeah. So when you look at this thing, do you feel like you've exercised something? Yeah, it was a big deal.

But can you identify what was this doing inside of you? I don't know, man. I feel like it wasn't just me because we all shared this thing. Right. Every week we would sit down with a new script and we would talk about it and then we'd run through it and we'd go, wow. Tuesday we would just burn through the script, like on the set. Just burn through it again and again.

And then we slap on microphones like on our chests and let the cameras watch us do it so we could start to get a sense of how to shoot it. So had a real community you had a family yeah exactly and i had uh theater these yeah and we're like work working through it and starting with not knowing it and saying what do i say like first we would do it on book everybody's staring down at the script so we just are all hearing it but no one's connecting because you're not looking at anybody you're looking at a script then you put the scripts down and you read through it and you look at each other uh but then and you have these big moments but then you see someone just die on camera because they forgot their lines i mean not on camera but we go uh what do i say here yeah and then you get peace and through

it and then we go to lunch then we come back put the microphones on now everybody kind of starting to know it and then we would talk about it and go like wow this one's really uh i'd written the months before so it was like i was discovering each one with the right right the actors and then i would be like uh all these tracks in my head running at the same time because it's like steve buscemi walks in the room and he starts doing this scene and i'm like i'm feeling all these things about my brother yeah and i'm also thinking god damn it is this guy turning in a great fucking performance yeah and how does he know all of his lines i don't know any of my lines he's so gives a shit about this crazy thing i wrote um and he loved him and edie

and alan all of them loved working on it and they would tell me this over and over again that they loved working on it and then the show would go out and the world would see it the little world that was watching it yeah and the way that people were expressing their appreciation most of the people that write sort of like tv um yeah recaps were let were ignoring it but a couple were recapping it and i would read those yeah and um i got a lot of emails and I was reading them. I don't read emails. Yeah. I was reading them cause they were all very profound and people were very upset by what they were watching.

Yeah. And compelled by it. And I thought this is really a fucking big, small and big. Yeah. Um, and it, we just all knew we were doing the bar felt so real to me.

That fucking bar that Amy Silver, our old friend from the bartender at the paradise in the eighties. Yeah. She designed it. She built this bar that lived for us. Yeah. Um, and your, your, your guy, Paul, you know, is on. Paul, my guy, Paul, uh, Kessner.

Uh, and, and, and the, and the big, a big thing that happened was the editor. Cause I always edited my own show, but I let her have it, and she really earned the job on episode three, because she stayed on my face when she was telling me about my son, and I was crying, and when I saw the edit, she doesn't cut away from me once. It's a really long reaction shot, and I was like, defend that. That's indulgent, and she said, I can't do it any other way.

She said, you have to. She said every time I watch this, it makes me feel all these things. And when I cut to her, I don't feel them in this one thing. So I started this thing I do with an editor now, which is she does something I don't like. And instead of saying, change it, I say, why'd you do it? And she tells me something. And I go, well, I hadn't thought of that. And I let her have it.

So she started shaping how the show feels but never editing never shoring up never shortening moments only shifting around where the cameras are because they're all in isolated record and uh and putting the pieces together you know i mean jesus paul simon making the song for me that made me cry every time i heard it and then he shows up in the last episode he shows up in the last episode and then the way we used america you know paul and i would become pals at that time and um he told me he said the sound of silence yeah that paul simon said this to me on your show is really deafening it's really hard to take he said put a little music in there make it come out of the jukebox yeah i. I said, well, I got to get that music somewhere. And he goes, well, why don't you use your favorite song?

And he was being nice because I had told him that America is my favorite song. And I said, can I have it? He said, of course you can have it. He gave me America. But yeah, and then when it came down to that and when Pete had left for an episode and he was gone, there was this episode about Pete being gone. Yeah. pete had left for an episode and he was gone there was this episode about pete being gone yeah i was such a mess that week because i missed steve and i was scared for the character and i was mad at myself for writing what i did about him um so you're having this very real

personal struggle with the creative with your creation yeah while you're acting in it yeah so i don't know why where it all came from you know? And I did something I never did as an actor, which is I resisted feeling anything. I was like, I don't want to feel this. It's too much. Yeah. Like, I really did. I was like, I don't care if the show's good or not.

I can't let these feelings out. It's too much. Well, the personal catharsis of you engaging this way, you know, and having these- Yeah, I'm sorry I keep going. Very real experiences. No, no, no, it's great. The thing that was important to me, and one thing about the way way i did it was i didn't want to have to tell people like i promise you this will be funny i promise you this will be good even i just

wanted to lay it out there but the vice say if you want to watch it you can watch but all these things you're talking about the life of the show and the life that you lived in it and these performances and this collaborative experience and and courage of making it a tragedy definitively. Yeah, it really is. You know, is something that it's not been done. For me, like, it's a weird thing that my experience is, like, this should really, like, this should be two days of theater. Like, you should put this up.

Right, right. On Broadway. But that's the funny thing is that this is exactly what it belongs as. It's just this 10-part thing that you watch. No, I know that. I know. I know. But the theatricality of it.

Yeah, yeah. To have that experience where you let these pauses happen and you let these things be open-ended, you let these emotions happen, and you let these horrible people, some of them, you have their time. Well, like the scene with Laurie, I thought that what I learned from writing that one was that you've got a big issue between two people with a lot of freight ends to it and a lot of conflict and a lot of hurt and the two of them try to figure it out and one person says here's four ways to approach it that could help you and the other person says I can't do any of them

because I just I love too much or I'm too scared right and then the other person goes well then don't do any of it and just keep doing it keep doing it and the other person goes yeah i guess that's what i'm going to do and kind of fuck you but also how you doing and then just walk away but you need to download i mean that's it that's it that's a conversation sure that's how people talk to each other once you've lived a lot of life yeah especially when you get in your 40s and 50s and beyond yeah you get to a point where it's like, we can exchange a few words, but we're not going to fix nothing. Right.

It's all dug in. Yeah. And you never could have fixed it. All you can do is like chat for a few minutes with somebody who's sort of walked the same roads as you and compare notes. I do it every week. Yeah, exactly. And it can hurt real bad sometimes yeah and i still i'm

i'm like in a weird place of mourning from this show yeah i still like you can see i get like emotional about it and i i cry about the show a lot it's a relationship yeah it is it really is i miss it a lot you know yeah and i want to do it again i can't i i knew that at one point this is a 10 act play and it's going to be over. And there's ways we could continue, and that bar's in storage, and I've thought about writing other things, and I might.

You know, this last, this kid horse at the end. That's, I don't know if you know who that was, but that's Angus, not Angus. Yeah, Angus T. Jones. He's the kid on Two and a Half Men. Oh, yeah? He's the boy of Two and a Half Men. Oh yeah? He's the boy of Two and a Half Men. Oh,

I didn't know that. Yeah, he's, he walked off of Two and a Half Men, number one show on television for 12 years. Walked off of it because he felt a moral conflict with the show, because he's a Christian. And I found that really fascinating,

that somebody walks away from a huge job because he doesn't feel right about it. And, uh, and that made me think about Horace and my show, the kid, this kid who, and his son who doesn't speak to him, who judges him so much that he won't speak to him. Right. Thinks he's such a terrible man that he's not worth his fucking time, his own father. Yeah. Just like I am with my dad right that's who i am and i thought about that and i talked to angus on the phone and i said i want you to play a scene you have three lines he's in colorado like i want you to fly in and play this one scene does he act anymore no i mean not much not really and i said uh i'm i i want you to play a guy in a world that's very

amoral but you're not in In your mind, you're moral. Yeah. And we talked about the idea that when you make yourself moral, you separate yourself from other people because most people aren't. So you isolate yourself. And he came and he played that part. So there's ways forward with it,

and I don't know if I'm going to take them. I may leave it where it is, but one thing I know for sure is that I'll do something like this again. Right, that's it. Well, that's the important thing. Yeah, I will do something just like this again you've you've outdone yourself and you've taken yourself personally and creatively to this other level and you've

you've discovered amazing truths and the only thing that matters to me is that i can keep doing it and all i need for that is for to get close at least to going being like it never happened financially yeah and then uh and then I'll put it on somewhere like Netflix where a lot of people can see it and sample it. They won't have the experience that other, that they had, the people. The people.

They'll never, no one will ever see it the way they did. Yeah. Until I do it again. Yeah. Which is this, nobody will ever see Horace and Pete that way again, that you don't know how many you're going to see.

You don't know what the next one's going to be. You don't know when you might see the next one. I mean, for the first few weeks, nobody knew it was going to be every Saturday. I didn't promise that. Yeah. That'll never happen again. Or that something like this would never exist

and then it did. That, no matter what I do, I'll never get that back again. I'll never get the thing back of posting it on my website and sitting and watching Twitter. Yeah. And then sending out the email and seeing Twitter. Somebody writes.

What the fuck? What the fuck is this? Does anybody get this email? What the fuck is this? And I'm like, it's 68 minutes. So they haven't watched it yet. 20 minutes in people are like, I saw the whole thing. It's great.

They couldn't have. They couldn't have. They were just that eager to say something. But just to watch the world take it in, and it was such a fucking wonderful thing. It was worth all of it. So I'll do it again. I don't need to make money on this.

I don't need to. I like a lot of people to see it. Yeah. LouisCK.net. LouisCK.net. It's $31. You can just watch the whole season. Just fucking, like, I don't get it.

$31, that's a week of coffee. I don't understand how people prioritize things. They can't, like, can't, you know what I mean? People want to feel like it's fair. This is why. And I understand it now because I've studied this. Yeah. It's not that they feel like that's too much money.

I can't afford it. It's that they don't want to be ripped off and they want to feel like it's on equity. The thing that they didn't think through, which why would they, is that I'm on the head of the stream of this thing. I'm like down in the mountains in the stream. And most shows make their first round of revenue on ads. Yeah. And then by the time they get to Netflix, they've made some profit already.

Yeah. But I don't have that. This was the first. The people watching it they're the first run people right and that had value to some people and they watched it anybody who didn't have value to i didn't care to convince them yeah or to advertise to them or promote right could have easily yeah but i thought it's better to let it grow exactly the size of people that it really belongs to. And also, just by nature of it, you know fundamentally it's not for everybody.

No, it sure isn't. It would have been a real mistake to get out in front of this show and say, this is going to be great. It's going to be funny. Yeah. And have billboards and shit like that. And especially because I was coming from a place. This is a weird part of it. I had a show on for five seasons.

It was nominated for Best Comedy series the last three yeah we won a bunch of emmys over the years so i realized my the success of my show was going to hurt the next thing i do it's going to hurt it it can't help it it's going to bring too many eyeballs and expectations to it. And especially once I realized what this thing was. Well, but you did. So I thought if I bury it deep in a fucking mountain and it has like a little beep beep signal, like only the people will come to it who are likely to like it. But also, you know, you, you know, you, you created the space to allow yourself to grow creatively. You did what an artist does. You like, you like, because this business

is built on people repeating themselves. Yeah. Even your show. Very good point. Structurally, it became not predictable, but it's like there was

a stylistic predictability to it. Yep. And that's what made it, what made people kind of like, oh yeah, that's Louie. That's right. That's right. So in order to disengage from that,

you had to disengage from it. That's right. I had to completely. Right. to disengage from that, you had to disengage from it. That's right. I had to completely. Right. And then start from somewhere so far away from the center and just quietly drop it. Not even ask people to watch it. What the? Just tell them it exists.

Well. Then I'm not asking for nothing. I'm just making it. And you guys come if you want. Well, you're the real fucking deal, Lou. I love you, Mark. I love you, too. You did a great thing, buddy.

And you know that you know there's not many real artists around and Jesus Christ there's a bunch there's a bunch no but I mean nobody's paying attention no no but like but but but just you know I don't want to discredit anyone's art and I know there's a lot of real artists but to be at the statue you're at and to you know afford yourself and take the risk to find the freedom to take a tremendous risk on so many levels and really insulate yourself long enough and thoroughly enough to do it and execute it. Not everybody does that.

Well, it's a short life. And if you keep repeating your success, you're living shorter time. Like in other words, you're going to end up looking back at your life in sections. And so not in years. So for me, it's like the years I did Louis. Yeah.

And that's one. Yeah. That's a one thing. Right. Then there's the Horace and Pete. Right. That's one thing. Yeah.

If I did Louis for 15 years, that means I got less. Do you understand what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to do more. I wanted to make more. I want to do a bunch of shows before I die. I'm 48 and most people make it to you know 80 if they're good so

i ain't got that many left you know i know i mean either i'm having a hard time knowing what to do with my mornings yeah like i like exactly like you know what yeah it's a it's an interesting and uh and and it's a luxury problem in some ways given our position it definitely is and i don't know i don't think it's but it's an earned luxury sure because you know a lot of people that are coming up they look at guys like you and guys like me and they go well look what they got yeah i mean they don't have to they don't have to worry because look what they got look at the opportunities they got yeah we worry all the time but but how did we get to this place we do have advantages and the luxury of some choices right but how do we get those?

What do we do to pay into those? Were we born with that? No. We fucking slogged it with no hope of reaching this. I know. For each of us, about 25 to 30 years of just running in place and building skill. And not knowing if anything was going to work out. Not knowing if it was going to work out and thinking actually the odds were

very against yeah and you and i both suffer from ptsd from our early careers that we're only now starting to reckon with that's an investment and that's a commitment and it started a long time ago yeah so for me it's like every time i know anybody who's been doing this like like 10 years and they go well it's just not fair i don't get opportunities you just haven't hung in there long enough oh i know why wouldn't it take years and years and years and years and years and years and years and years and years and years to be great to be a fucking to get to make tv for a living yeah insane right payoff it should take that long it should take there'd be less garbage that's right that's right a lot of people get it pretty quick but you can tell they got it quick you You can. And then you can see them go away.

And then some of them come back. I always love those guys. The guys who get the big breaks, you know, like Kevin Hart and Bill Burr, you know, who got sent up the flagpole, didn't work out. They went back to the grind, come out bigger than ever. That's a real story. If you can get through that, if you can hit and die and then come back, you are something. That's what Chris Rock did.

Chris Rock did SNL. That's the biggest break you could ask for at the time. Yeah. Fucking stunk on SNL during a time where SNL stunk. Yeah. And then he disappeared. And I was like, that's what happened to Chris Rock. Yeah.

And then there was, I think you might've been with me when he came to Caroline's to headline for an hour. So we went, oh, let's go watch Chris Rock do an hour. Yeah. And then there was, I think you might've been with me when he came to Caroline's to headline for an hour. So we went, oh, let's go watch Chris Rock do an hour. Yeah. And, uh, and I mean, while we're like, we're sitting around New York, like, uh, why doesn't somebody give me something? Yeah. Yeah.

I'm funny. I got 20 funny minutes. I want to do Letterman. Yeah. And then, uh, we, we sat in the back and watched him do an hour. And at the end of the hour, everybody's on their feet and all the comedians are bent over with their heads in their hands going, what the fuck am i doing with my goddamn life right god damn it is that guy good so you know he yeah you know but yes though the the

hitting and then dying and well i'm fortunate that i'm still waiting to hit which is a great feeling you have hit you're kidding you've offered something build yeah all right buddy i love you go do your show man thank you You've offered something. This won't build. Yeah. All right, buddy. I love you. Go do your shows. Thank you. He's a character, but he's also a very prolific and brilliant artist, that guy. And reckon with that. It's an impressive thing, and I'm proud of the guy,

and I'm proud of me, and I'm proud of you all, and again, thank you for being with us for 700 episodes, and I'm just going to continue doing what I do. I hope that's okay with you. Is it? Boomer lives! almost anything. So no, you can't get an ice rink on Uber Eats. But iced tea, ice cream, or just plain old ice? Yes, we deliver those. Gold tenders, no. But chicken tenders, yes. Because those are groceries, and we deliver those too. Along with your favorite restaurant food, alcohol, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. you must be legal drinking age.

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