All language subtitles for Sorry.Not.Sorry.2023.1080p.WEBRip.x264.AAC5.1-[YTS.MX]

Downloaded from
YTS.MX

Official YIFY movies site:
YTS.MX

Giant.

Giant!

I'm just gonna wear
the same thing
I was wearing before,

but it's still inside out.
I wear it inside out.

This is how you
keep the men away at the mics.

You just wear lots of layers.

With the law of attraction
and stuff,

you have to articulate things
for them to come
into existence.

Bye dog,
I love you.

Be a good boy, please.

What else do I need?
I'll bring that joint.

Dear Lord.
Hm.

When I said I wanted to
work with Louis
or Dave Chappelle,

I should've been
more specific.

Bye, everybody.

Bye!

As opposed to, like,
how it all panned out.

See ya.

Not only do they talk about

you being
the undisputed king of comedy

and people love this show,
there are these... I mean,
yours is deeper and broader.

Comparisons to Lenny Bruce,
comparisons to Bob Dylan,

comparisons to being
a sort of philosopher king.

Hmm, Jesus.

Do you wanna
not talk about that?
Because...

It should be...

...where does it come from,

and how do you see
what you are?

I don't know,
I mean, I'm just a comedian.

How do women
still go out with guys,
when you consider the fact

that there is
no greater threat to women
than men?

We're the number one
threat to women.

Globally and historically,
we're the number one
cause of injury,

and mayhem to women.

We're the worst thing
that ever happens to them.

Like, I think about flashers
and how well they dressed,
though.

You know, like,
in my day,

you dressed up
to go on an airplane,

and you dressed up
to show a woman your dick,
and I appreciated that.

Because when Louis C.K.
tried to show me his dick,

he was just wearing
a shitty black t-shirt
and jeans

and it's like,
listen you schlub,

you can't do a little outfit
for me if you're gonna...?

You know?

My own personal feeling
about him,

he's a top 10th
of 1%
insightful person.

He's able to make that funny,

and almost nobody else
can do that,

and that's kind of
the definition of genius,
right?

So you're top 10th
of 1% ability
at something,

that no one else can do.

If you can do something
that no one else can do,

that almost alone makes you
a kind of a genius,
even if it's something stupid.

Children who
have nut allergies
need to be protected.

Of course!

We have to segregate
their food from nuts.

Have their medication
available at all times

and anybody who manufactures
or serves food

needs to be aware of
deadly nut allergies.

Of course.

But maybe...

...maybe if touching a nut
kills you,

you're supposed to die.

I thought of him as, like,

a misanthrope
who loved people.

He saw the very, very worst,

like, least attractive
parts of people,
of humanity,

of the human condition,
and then found a way

to be sympathetic
to those parts of us.

There's one kid
in my daughter's class
who I hate so much,

and it's really fucked up
'cause I'm 44
and I hate a six year old.

And his comedy was so good
at what it really meant

to open out your nasty,
broken, dark heart

in front of
thousands of people,

hundreds of people,
every night.

I don't stop eating
when I'm full.

The meal is not over
when I'm full.

The meal is over
when I hate myself,
that's when I...

...that's when I stop.

He seemed to be
brutally honest.

Brutally honest about himself,

and about his relationship
with his kids,

in a way that
we weren't used to seeing
from comedians.

I like Mama's better,

because she makes good food.

And I love her more,
so I like being there more.

-Alright,
go and get on your PJs.
-Bye, Daddy.

OK, baby.

The heart of Louis' act was,

I'm fucked up,

and in my fuck uppedness,

in my navigating through
the world, I'm trying to
do the right thing.

I don't always succeed,
but I'm trying to
be a good guy.

You know what's really sad
about men?

That we can't have
a beautiful thought
about a woman,

that isn't followed by
a disgusting thought
about that same woman.

We're not capable of it.

That's how our brains work.

She's an angel,

and I want her to drown
in my cum.

He would talk about
how men are these creatures,

that have
these irrepressible impulses,

that are clearly unpleasant
for women to deal with.

Oh yeah, oh,
what the fuck
is wrong with me?

Goddammit.

And just being self-aware
in a way that, you know,

to female fans such as myself,
was very endearing.

He created a show
that was really, like,

the beating center
of the zeitgeist.

When Louis
garners critical acclaim,

that is really what
catapulted
Louis C.K.,

from just a funny guy,

to a guy who got
the full genius treatment
from our culture.

Listen, I'm, I'm...

What? No.
No, no, no, no!

-Just...
-No!

Come on.

He did a lot of material
that was borderline.

God, you can't even rape well!

But he did it
from this persona of,

I understand that
these things are wrong.

Wait, does it offend you
when I say that word?

What word, hello?

No, faggot.

Yeah, does it bother you
when he says the word faggot?

No, it bothers me
when you say it,
'cause you mean it.

He became this, like,

unlikely moral conscience
of the comedy world.

A lot of Louis' fans felt like
we know a lot about Louis.

We know, like,
what makes his brain tick.

We know the kinds of things
he thinks about.

We know what pisses him off.

For, as disgusting
as he painted himself to
be...

...we felt like
we understood his heart.

For those of you tuning in
to see my interview

with Louis C.K. tonight,
I have some bad news.

Then I have
some really bad news.

Breaking tonight,
five women are accusing
comedian, Louis C.K.,

of sexual misconduct
in a bombshell report
from The New York Times.

The women say
that the comedian would make

sexually inappropriate
comments.

Some say he also masturbated
in front of them.

Three more women
report similar incidents,

one in the 1990s,
one in 2003, and one in 2005.

Some of the women
say they feared

career repercussions
if they spoke out.

The news this morning
about the comedian,
Louis C.K.,

who has come out to say that
the accusations against him
are in fact true.

FX cutting all ties.

HBO and Netflix
also dropping him
from upcoming projects.

The release of his new film,
I Love You Daddy,
abruptly canceled.

He was said to appear on

The Late Show
with Stephen Colbert,
but was replaced.

When reached for comment,
Jesus said,

"Bla la la la la.
I don't wanna hear about it,
I was a big fan. Bla la la."

I need to,
while you're here,

ask you for your comment
on something quickly.

Your friend and colleague,
Louis C.K.,
what was the impact on you

when you heard
not only the accusations,
but his admission?

Um...

...stunned, I think.
You know, um...

...you give your friends
the benefit of the doubt.

I tried to think of it
in terms of,
you know,

I've had friends
who have compulsions

and who have done things,
gambling, or drinking,
or drugs,

and we've lost some of them.
Some of them have died.

And you always find yourself
back to a moment of,
did I miss something?

Could I have done more
on the thing?

And in this situation,
I think we all could've.

It's a real mind fuck,
you know,

because I... I love Louis,
but Louis did these things.

Both of those statements
are true, so I just
keep asking myself,

"Can you love someone
who did bad things?"

"Can you still love them?"

I can mull that over later,
certainly,
because the only people

that matter right now
are the victims.

They are victims
and they're victims
because of something he did.

The Louis thing came out
at the worst possible time,

which is right after the
Harvey Weinstein thing
and Bill Cosby.

I mean,
this was a real wake-up call
to a lot of America

about how awful
men in power could be.

So he got swept into that.

I think it's gross.

What he did,
I think was just gross.

It was gross
if he did it to a man.

It takes on more ominous tones
when he's doing it to women.

-Completely agree.
-Yeah.

I mean, I'm not...
I don't think he's anything--

-But it's not a crime, right?
-No, no, I don't think so.

No,
I think it's just sad.

It's nothing like Cosby,
it's just pathetic.

Somebody would walk in
and I would say--
Somebody well known,

I'm like,
"What do you
think about Louis?"

And they would say,
"What do you
think about Louis?"

He didn't assault anybody,
he asked for permission.

I don't know, I still think
he should be allowed to
perform at the Cellar.

Because what did he do wrong?
Ask for consent?

For non-contact in--
Like, what are you
talking about?

When he came out
and he said,
"I did this."

He said, "I did these things,
these women are all
telling the truth."

I just remember thinking,
well, that's the sign
of somebody who--

Well we can work with that,
you know what I mean?

Like, that's--
You know,
what the hell else

are you supposed to do?

Every comedian has their
skeletons,

every comedian has their shit
in their closet that
they don't want to come out,

I'm sure, you know?

And not just comedians,
everybody.

But I felt like...

...there's just a lot of
hypocrisy around it,

because... so many of us...

spend our careers
trying to sort of
hold the light up and be like,

"Hey,
I'm telling the truth here.

"I'm the truth teller."
You know?

But when it comes to
telling the truth about
one of our own...

...suddenly, we shut up.

Zero to 40 was fun.

You were born, bleurgh,
you don't even know
where you are.

Yeah,
you had your first kiss.

Not right away,
I'm just saying,

you had your first kiss
during those years.

You had some masturbation,
you had some sex,

you had some drinking,
you had some driving.

Nothing good happens
between 40 and 80.

I understand
what's going to happen.

First, I'm gonna get
that cougar chest,
with the freckles,

and then I'm gonna die.

That's what's gonna happen.

When I have
younger people ask me,

"How did you get
where you are?"

And I tell them
how long it took,
they're like,

"Oh, I don't want that.

"Like, I wanna, you know--

"What do you mean you were 35
before you got your first job?

"When did you start?"
"When I was 21."

"Yeah, no, I can't do that."

I was 21 or 22
out of college
in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

I met this guy,
Eugene Mirman,
and he said,

"I run this open mic,
I think you're funny,
do you wanna do it?"

And he didn't know me
from anything, he just thought
I was a funny person.

And I just told a story
that was very raw
and vulnerable for me,

about when
I lost my virginity.

But it broke the seal of,
I think this is how
I wanna do things.

Then I moved to New York,
and got temp jobs,
and did stand up at night.

My boyfriend at the time,
was like,

"Oh, I really love
this comedian, Louis C.K.,
let's go see him."

He used to have
a totally different act
than he did now,

it was very absurdist,
and that's fine,
you know, whatever.

He wasn't, like,
my favorite comic.

Hey, mind if I get
a quick interview?

I don't really feel like it.

It'll just take a second.

We both were
on this cartoon show
called Home Movies,

and the studios
are in Massachusetts,

and we're both
on the same flight,
to Boston,

so we can go do
this voice-over.

We're sitting
next to each other and I think
we are in First Class,

or maybe just planes back then
were more comfortable,
but he was drinking coffee,

he was drinking orange juice,
and he had his newspaper,

and he was just ignoring me,
which is fine,
but I remember thinking,

"Of course
he's not talking to me,

"'cause I'm just like
a dumb kid, open mic-er,

"and we both happen to be
on this show."

When we got off the plane,
he said, "I'm renting a car,
do you want a ride?"

So we're talking in the car
and he's driving me through,

I think we sort of
went through the town
he grew up in, or near it,

and he very vaguely
started doing a tour of,
like, his sexual thoughts.

Like, that girl in that house
had big tits, red hair

I was in love with her,
used to masturbate
and think about her,

stuff like that.

Am I scared?

No.

I would be now,
but I didn't know about
that stuff back then,

and I just remember thinking,
it was the same thought I had
when I auditioned for college,

and the Dean of Acting
asked me to do
the monologue again,

except do it this time
like you've just been raped.

And I didn't know
what that meant.

I've never been raped.

And then I remember thinking,
"You naive child,
this is the theater.

"This is how they talk."

So I had the same thoughts
as Louis is like,

"Hey, I jerked off to this,
and this girl's tits,
and whatever."

I'm like,
"Guess this is
how comedians talk."

And it is, by the way.

But I think that's what people
get confused by,
when you tell them a story

of sexual harassment, like,
that you were so sure
what was happening

and you were laser focused
and taking notes,

because 25 years later,
you're gonna talk about it.

I just thought, like,
whatever feelings
I have about this,

that didn't even
get to come up all the way...

...I'm wrong.

Later in life
we're all living in L.A.

It's like 2003, 2004.

There was just this one night
that I remember.

We're all in the same kinda
shows together.

You know, Louis' like,
becoming Louis.

He's like, doing his honest,
confessional stuff.

He's not doing
the absurd stuff anymore.

He's talking about his wife,
and my daughter's a cunt,

and all that stuff
that seemed really edgy
and funny.

And he's like,
"We're all going to the bar."
And I thought,

"Oh, well he never joins us,
but OK."

He's like,
"I'd love to talk to you about
your act."

Or something like that.

We go around the corner
and the bar we go into
has a bar level,

and then there's stairs,
and you can sit up in this

groovy lounge
and sit on floor pillows.

We get up there
and we're kind of, like,

in this corner where
if you're in the downstairs
part of the bar,

you can't see
what we're doing up there.

And so we just kept talking
and, basically,

all that I remember is
he said something about,
"What if a guy asked you

"if he could jerk off
in front of you,
would you oppose that?"

And so many thoughts
were going through my head,
none of which were,

"He's asking me
if he can pull his dick out
and jerk off."

One of them was,
"Oh, he's doing a bit
and he's running it by me,

"and he's asking me
what I would think of a loser,
who would pull his dick out,

"or ask a woman
if he could pull his dick out
in front of her."

I remember some, like,
riffing with him about this
absolute loser persona

he was adapting
in order to tell this joke.

What was the punchline
going to be?

Maybe we would
work it out together.

I was so oblivious
that he was, like,
"Are you fucking kidding me?"

You know,
and I was like, "What?"

And he's like,
"What did you think this was?

"Or what did you think
I was asking?"

Something in that vibe.

He basically said something
along the lines of, like,

"What? I like to jerk off
in front of people."

And I was, like,
"You mean you'd have done it,
like, here?

"Like, in public?"

And a friend of mine
came over at that moment
and interrupted, thank God,

and Louis took out a picture,
again, pre-phone cameras,

and just was like,
"I was just showing Jen
a picture of my daughter."

That's when I was just, like,
ew, ew, ew,
'cause he wasn't.

So that was it,
and, again,

I wasn't like,
in a shower after, crying,
like a Lifetime movie.

I was just like,
"What the fuck was that?"

I knew, from then on,
I didn't like him.

I didn't want to
be around him,
but it's just tough,

'cause you'd see, like,
everyone you like and know
hanging out with the dude.

And then it, like,
didn't dawn on me at the time
to ask my guy friends,

"Why are you
friends with him?"

Like... isn't that weird,
to know that he lives
this double life

and you just kinda
let it happen?

And I started to adopt
the attitude of, like,
for a while I was like,

"Yeah, it's totally cool
that he does that."

'Cause I started hearing
more stories, "Oh,
he does it to everyone."

I'm like,
"He is such a weirdo."

I just was like,
I guess it's cool
to act like that.

I mean, I was too old
to think that way,
but I did.

There was another time,
when he got off stage,
same club, same thing,

he was like,
really becoming him
and he came off stage,

and like, I'm not saying this
to imply there was
any physical abuse,

but he just sort of,
put his hand
on the back of my neck

and was, like,
"I'm gonna fuck you some day."
Something like that.

I am not saying he meant rape.

I think he meant
we're gonna fuck some day,
you know, like, consensual.

I just remember kind of
looking around and...

...like, no one heard that,
you know, and I was, like,
"That's so weird."

I went on a date
and I didn't know this guy
very well, and I sneezed.

And I sneezed so hard
that it shook my entire body

and I shit my pants.

And it was, um...

And then, a few years later,

I was on one of my
opening act gigs in Florida,

and in order to be
a headlining act,
you have to work the road

and be an opening act
for a long time.

And I got an email from him
and, again,

I was just
using the hotel computer,
and he said,

"I see on your website
that you're in
West Palm Beach, Florida."

He's like, "I have a gig
in Miami next week.

"If you just stayed in Florida
you can open for me in Miami,
and just come down to Miami."

And I just was really poor
and had no money,

and I couldn't have afforded
a hotel for five days,

and I would love to be
his opening act.

I'd love to get
that experience of being
in front of bigger crowds

that are--
It was probably gonna be full.

But he said,
"P.S., I'm divorced now,
or getting divorced."

And I went,
"Oh, I'm not gonna do it,

"because he probably wants
someone that might, like,

"fool around with him,
or sleep with him
on the road."

That was, like,
the first time with him that,

an instinct kicked in
and I wasn't like,

"Oh my God, isn't it..."
I kind of was, like,
this isn't good.

You don't know
how it affects you

because it's so weird
and small,

that you don't know
something's weird,

because you've been socialized
in this world where men get to
treat women however they want.

Guys,
give it up for Jen Kirkman,
let her hear it!

I don't know
to be traumatized by
what Louis did,

but I was bothered by it,
I was disturbed.

As the years went on,
and I had more of
a sense of self, I went,

"Oh my God,
that is so fucked up."

And this whole culture
of people that think

it's normal,
they're fucked up.

But that was really it.

That was
the big ending to my story,
until I talked about it.

You guys are awesome,
have a good night,
I'm Jen Kirkman.

So I got a call from my agent,
before this.

And I had some
pretty bad news.

Turns out I have aged out
of both being able to play
Mark Maron's girlfriend

on an episode of Maron,

and getting jerked off
in front of by Louis C.K.

That's a joke,
I don't have an agent.

I knew about the Louis stuff

because it was just,
basically, an open secret
in the comedy community,

but also one of those sort of,
like, open secrets where

sometimes I would hear,
"Well, he did it
to this person, this person."

One time I heard
he did it to men,

and I was, like,
"That's interesting."

That ended up being
just a rumor.

But I had just heard about
this habitual behavior
that had been happening

for a series of years,
and not just to randos,
I mean, to other comedians.

Also, I mean,
I'm a fucking amateur.

I'm a fucking scrub.

If I know about this shit,
everybody knows
about this shit.

Someone's, like,
"Oh he did it to
these two girls,

"they did this comedy
festival together in Aspen,
this comedy duo."

I was like,
"Well were they upset?
What was the thing?"

The telephone game
that was played was,

"Oh, no, no, no,
it was a party
and there was, like,

"a bunch of people in the room
and everyone was
doing their thing.

"Some people
were drinking beer,
some people were smoking pot,

"he was jerking off
in the corner,
like you do at a party,

"you know, everyone's
got their own thing."

I would say
an open secret is
the sort of thing in which

people love engaging
in discussion about it,

love being horrified by it,
but it's like,

"At the end of the day,
my hands are tied."

Ma'am, as I've told you
several times already,
this is a police matter.

Well it doesn't
seem to matter to the police.

We had him on the show

because whenever you have
a big, juicy guest spot,

and this was a love interest
for the main character,

there's always, like,
get the biggest star you can.

We took a different approach
which was, like,

let's just get
the funniest person,
like, who cares?

It was the beginning
of the second season

and the show was, like,
teetering on the brink.

I don't think he's the reason
that we stuck around
and survived,

but he's one of them.

And then, at some point,
and, again,
I don't remember when,

or how,
or who told me,
but I started hearing those--

A story of him in a hotel room
or something.

It was vague,
and it was sort of, like,

it was confusing,
there weren't
a lot of details,

but I heard it then
a bunch of times, like,
and from different people.

If his name came up,
that was a thing
that people have said.

And then we, many years
later, had this idea of having
him come back for an episode.

Hey, Leslie.

-Dave!
-Hey.

Oh my God, wow.

And I kinda
didn't do anything about it.

We just kinda had him back
and I pretended like
I didn't know.

My attitude,
when I look back on it,

was, well,
that's not my problem.

Like, I didn't do that
and that's something
that had happened

somewhere else
and I don't know the details,
and I don't know if--

I don't even know
if it's true or not, and so,
it's not my problem.

2012,
there's the Gawker Blind Item
that said,

"This famous comedian
masturbated
in front of people."

Most people were
assuming it's Louis.

I would hear,
"This comedian
knows who the women are.

"This comedian
confirms it's true."

But most people
don't read blind items,

and it didn't break
his ascent,
it's just sort of like,

a blind item happened.

You're exploding in a way
that is--

You're now like
an internet pioneer.

You've got the show,
but then you've found a way
to circumvent Ticketmaster.

You've figured out a way
that people don't have to
pay taxes on toiletries,

you've somehow...

Louis C.K.,
he's an elite comedian,

and he's been
an elite comedian
for 15 years.

These stories have been around
for a while.

Everybody knows and I mean,
and everybody kind of,
casually knows really.

I mean, it's obviously,
this jerking off comedian,

is obviously Louis C.K.

One time I was jerking off.
This is another--
This is another aging thing,

I was jerking off
and I looked at my penis,

and it was blurry,

because my eyes... are going,
so I can't--

Because you're supposed to get
reading glasses
when this becomes blurry

and that's exactly--

That's the precise,
fixed length.

In 2015,
Gawker then elaborated
with another report

from an anonymous tipster
who reported that

he had emailed Louis C.K.'s
website to say,

"It's messed up
that you're doing this,
you shouldn't."

And then Louis C.K.
called this person directly.

The way I rationalized it,

I was always like,

"Well, they're not allegations
with a name on them."

It's kind of remarkable
how close to the surface
all this was brewing,

and the cognitive dissonance
it created with fans
and critics

and journalists
including, frankly, myself,

who were aware of this
on some level,

at the same time
that we were

evaluating
and enjoying his work.

I Seem Fun,
The Diary of Jen Kirkman,
episode 90,

coming to you
from Melbourne, Australia,

in a hotel room, on an
iPhone.

I had a podcast at the time,
every week,
for my die hard fans,

where I just talked about
what it was like touring.

I was doing this
Melbourne Comedy Festival
in Australia,

but I'm doing
all these interviews.

You do press all day long.

Just confirming,
for our audience,

when they come along
and see you,

they won't get any sex stories
or any swearing in the show?

Oh, there's some sex stories.

My act had
very mild jokes

about my first time
having sex,
after being divorced.

I had sex with a younger man,
I was, like,

39 or 38
and he was, like, 25.

I regret it now,
but I exaggerated.

I was 37 when I got divorced.

I went on a date
with a 20-year-old.

I thought,
"I'm gonna be a cougar.
Seems to be in style."

He was not legal
to get into any bars,

so I took him back
to my place.

I served him wine
out of the glasses
I got for my wedding.

I knew I would use those
some day.

And all the reviews came out
and people were
calling my show "dirty",

in a derogatory way.

I was like, wait,
I'm A, not even dirty,

but B,
so what if I was?

I know a ton of guys
that are way dirtier than me

and they're, like,
getting lauded for it.

So here I am
in my little hotel room,
with my podcast

that maybe a thousand people
listen to a week,
you know,

not a lot of people,
was like,

"I'll tell you what it's like
being a woman in comedy."
That was the episode.

I am so sick of being told
I can't talk about my age.

I am so sick of being told
everything that I can't do.

Well, you should see the way
some of these men behave,

not on camera,
not on stage,
that is so appalling to me.

The fact that my art
gets reviews that paint me
as this nasty whore,

it really angers me.

If the problem with my act
is you think it means
something about me,

well you're wrong,
it doesn't.

I'm not actually
a problematic person

who's sexually harassing
people.

If that is the problem,
then you need to take
these pervert guys to task,

'cause they're actually
doing it in real life,
and their act is kind of

a cover for it,
or they're telling us
who they are,

but you're not listening.

I have this friend,
his daughter is 15,
he's like,

"She's gonna start having sex.
I don't know what to do.

"What if she has
a bad sexual experience?"

Oh, she's gonna have
a number of those.
Oh yes, she is.

Her whole life is gonna be
just walking through
a blizzard of bad dicks,

just...

Ow!
This dick just--

Jesus.

What the fuck,
that was a big one.

Holy fuck, I'm just
trying to get to work.

A very famous comic, probably
at Cosby level at this point,

he is lauded as a genius,
he is basically
a French film maker

at this point, you know,
new material every year.

He's a known perv,
and there's a lockdown
on talking about him,

and this guy didn't rape me,
but he made a certain,
difficult decision

to go on tour with him
really hard,
because I knew if I did,

I would get
more of the same
weird treatment

I had been getting from him
and it was
really fucked up.

What it's like
to be a woman in comedy,

you hear these comments,
you get offered dicks.

That's it.

And so this blog
put a picture of me
and a picture of Louis,

said something to the effect,

"Did Jen Kirkman
call out Louis C.K.
on her podcast?"

That was the first day of,
like, the end of my life.

Like,
it just snowballed after that.

And so then I took it down.

Articles were coming out,
"What's Jen Kirkman
talking about?"

It was lonely,
lonely, bad time.

Louis at one point
was, like, emailed me,
like, "Call me."

I was, like, I knew
what it was about
and I was, like,

"No. We have to have
this discussion over email."

And he's, like, "Look,
I know what I did to you."
And he named all the things.

I said, "Do you want to
make a joint statement
with me, then?

"That would really help,
if you could just be like,
'Jen and I talked,

"'Yes, I did say these things,
she's cool and I never
did this to anyone else?'"

He's like, "I can't."

And I didn't see that
as a red flag.

He's like,
"I've just learned to
handle this stuff.

"This is your first time
going through it,
but, like,

"you don't talk to the media,
ever, and like,
I have daughters."

I said, "You're right,
you're right, your daughters,
no, totally right."

He's, like,
"Just let this go
and it'll go away."

Every year, I had
something good happening.

Then I had another special,
I had another book,
I had another tour.

Every single press was like,

"If she doesn't talk about
Louis, we're not interested."

So I ended up
not doing a lot of press
for any of those things

because they only want to
talk about Louis.

I have a lot of regrets
about the way
I handled things

but it was something
I went through
that I was not prepared for.

Like, thrown into a war
with no battle training.

Nobody was fighting for me,
nobody was, like,

"Leave her alone."
Nobody was, like,

"You know what,
I have to fucking
say something, guys.

"I'm a successful man
in comedy,
this shit's true."

Even some women comics
were, like,

"That's just Louis,
he does that, it's funny."

So, I just, pfft, you know.

At one point I just lied
and said, "Louis never
did anything to me.

"All those stories
are made up."

I didn't know what else to do,
I needed it to stop.

We're in my home, sadly.

This is my, you know,
wall of effects.

We got
my Wood Man painting,

that I got at
the Six Street Good Will,
I enjoy.

The size of the clarinet
relative to
the rest of his body.

Here is a knife
my friend Sarah
found in a bush.

That goes there.
This is just--

This whole apartment's got big
"that goes there energy",
you know what I mean?

Where it's, like,
you put something,

and then three years later,
it's still there.

It's incredibly dispiriting
to see, like,

the retention rate
of female comedians.

Most female comedians quit,
because it's just
a series of indignities

that they have to suffer
their entire life,

to get less than 50%
of what men get.

Just For Laughs quite
possibly is the biggest comedy
festival in the world.

They contacted me.

They were looking for
somebody to write
about the festival.

I knew someone who was
an editor at Gawker.

I asked them
if that would be fine,

if I went there
on their behalf.

I knew that I wanted to write
about the Louis stuff,

because I had seen
people ignore it.

I knew everybody else
knew about it,

and the fact that he was
the biggest motherfucker
in the game at the time,

people were unwilling
to do anything
to shame him publicly,

for what he had been doing
for, like, 20 years
at that fucking point.

Around the time
that I went there,
the Bill Cosby thing,

basically, it was undeniable
that he had committed
miscellaneous sex crimes.

And so I thought that
I would just ask people,

that were going down
the red carpet,

"How do you feel
about the Cosby accusations?"

And they'd say,
you know,

"I don't think
they're accusations,
I think it's true."

And then I would go,
"Well how do you feel about
the Louis accusations?"

And people that I know knew,
because I know,
would be, like,

"Oh, I don't know
what you're talking about?

"Louis did what? What?"

"Hey, I don't know,
I don't know."

Because, again, at the time
he was the biggest comedian
in the world.

You can't say shit about him
because he's the one
putting asses into seats.

I would say I asked it
to maybe about, like,
four or five people

before the COO, I believe now

he's the head
of the Just For Laughs
organization,

because the
former one was ousted
for being a sex pest.

He approached me
and basically, like,

red in the face,
started yelling at me that
he had heard what I was doing,

what I was asking,
and I could ask those sort of
questions on my own turf,

but this was their turf
and Louis was a friend of the
Just For Laughs organization.

And so I start,
sort of, tearing up

because,
at the end of the day,

I'm really a comedian
and I just got yelled at

by one of the heads of
the biggest comedy festival
in the world,

and threatened, basically,

for just simply
asking a fucking question.

I wanted to ask you
about the last
interview on your show,

which I think was Louis C.K.

Yeah.

So from my memory,
I think that was after
some of the rumors

about Louis C.K.'s
alleged harassment
of female comedians

-had started to come out.
-Whoa.

-it was just a thing
circulating on the internet.
-Wait, what?

I think this was after
Jen Kirkman, for example,
had talked about, like,

her knowledge of Louis C.K.'s
alleged harassment
of female comedians.

-At least people
interpreted it that way.
-Yeah.

There was an article
on Gawker, I believe,
about it,

and I just wanted to know,
I mean, if this is
the first you're hearing of it

maybe I already
got my answer.

That there really wasn't
a discussion about this,
on the show, but...

So, wait, wait, wait,
I'm a little lost.

So the internet said
Louis harassed women?

So there was first
a Gawker article,

and then there was
a couple of Tweets by people,

-and I know this is all
internet stuff.
-So, pretty authoritative.

-I know that this is how--
-You know who you're
talking to, right?

No, I totally get that
and it's a fair point

that like, internet rumors
are not, you know,
court cases or anything.

I just wanted to know
if there was
any sort of discussion

about that on the show,
if that was a thing
on your radar?

No, uh, he's...

I-I-I didn't see
the... Tweets.

Louis was directly asked
about these rumors in 2016,

in an interview with Vulture,
and so first he said,

"That's nothing to me,
that's not real."

To say, "that's not real",
it's almost, like,

denying the validity,
or personhood,
or standing of the person

who's even
brought up that concern
in the first place.

And then later on he says,
"You can't expect every
single person to like you,

"or have a positive opinion
of you, and so I'm just
going to focus on the work

"and not on my life."

Before 2017,
he started moving into a role
of more of a producer,

in addition to being a creator
in his own right.

I'm grateful to Louis
for telling John Langraf
that I was a funny lady,

to do a show
from a lady's perspective.

He used his
power and sway in the business
to get Better Things made,

which is Pamela Adlon's show.

In a fascinating way,

it's kind of Louis' mirror
image as a show.

It's, like, the perspective
of a divorced woman,
as opposed to a divorced man.

Good evening, hello.

I have cancer,
how are you?

He was there
when Tig Notaro
did the legendary set

where she came out
and she says,
"I have cancer."

He was, like,
"Let me put it out."

He had a big platform,

so, that was a way to get
a lot of attention
to this thing.

Louis watched your performance
and Tweeted,
"It's the greatest stand up

"I've seen."
That he has seen
in his 27 year career,

what you did that night.

-Wow.
-Absolutely incredible
performance.

Thanks.

And then,
after that, Louis C.K. was
an executive producer

on One Mississippi,
which is the Amazon show
that Tig made,

based on the events
that she described
in that stand up set.

We're making an animated show
now with Albert Brookes.

We make Pamela Adlon's show,
Better Things,

Zach Galifianakis' show,
Baskets, that's a big hit.

And Tig Notaro's show
on Amazon.

So we make a lot of shows.

You say, well,
Louis's not a studio head,
but isn't he?

He's a comedy head
of his comedy community.

That's a lot of power,
'cause he can put friends
on the show,

he can not put friends
on the show.

People are scared that they
want to be on his side,
for work.

My friend, Tig Notaro,
I was over her house,

and we were talking,
and she's, like,

telling me a story
about Louis,

and then she was like,
"Oh, by the way,
have you, like,

"heard stuff about him?
Like, I've heard stuff."

When we were moving towards
doing the pilot

is when I saw sides of him
that I hadn't seen,

and I shared that
with other people,

and that's when I started
hearing stories
about the behavior.

I had been asked,
in the press, what I thought

and I said
he should handle it.

Hey, I'm just finishing up
an email, come on in.

Oh, could you
close the door, please?

-Oh yeah, sure.
-Thanks.

Um...

I mean, I...

-I definitely want to
get out of here.
-Yeah, right?

She did an episode,
on her show, One Mississippi,

where an executive masturbates
in front of a woman.

People would ask her
about that episode

and that's when
people started to
put the pieces together.

Even while
these rumors are circulating
and even building,

because there's more
online attention,

he's continuing to
build his career.

He even had this movie come
to the Toronto Film Festival,

which seemed to go right up
to the line of addressing some
of these same situations.

Please welcome
Louis fucking C.K.

I was there
as a Hollywood
awards season reporter

and Louis was
premiering this film.

There was a lot of buzz
about it.

You know,
he was a beloved character.

-Hi, Daddy.
-Hi.

Hey, China.

It starts with
this teenage girl
walking around

in almost next to nothing,
and that's his daughter,

and she ends up
being seduced by
a 60-something-year-old man.

And then there are characters
in the movie
pretending to masturbate.

Oh, God.

I emerged from
that screening

with my jaw on the ground.

I couldn't believe the movie,

given it almost seemed like
a... a defiance, for him
to write these scenes in.

I had a sit down with him
and asked him,
"Why did you do this?

"What was the purpose?"
And he actually said,

"Oh, it means nothing,
it's just coincidental.

"There're scenes in the
movie, a character's
pretending to masturbate,

"while these are
the huge rumors
circulating about me."

And with
an absolute straight face.

We were sitting right across
from each other,

at a not very large cafe table
having this conversation.

You like looking at
young girls?

Sure, who doesn't?

I mean if you had a choice
between looking at
a pretty girl your age,

or a retired bus driver,
who would you choose?

I Love You Daddy

is almost explicitly about
a Woody Allen type figure.

It's essentially a movie
about how to deal with
a problematic artist,

by someone many would
now consider to be
a problematic artist.

You know,
you're really kind
of close to

some things within the
entertainment industry.

Tell us a little bit about,
you know, why you wanted to
tell this story.

You know, it just, um...

I guess I like to go up to
electric fences and pee on 'em
and shit on 'em.

I just...

Out of the blue,
I get this email asking,

"Hey, do you want to see
a screening of
I Love You Daddy?"

And I was, like,
you know what, I do.

It was very odd
to receive this invitation.

After I saw that movie,
and as I was driving home,

I just started crying,
'cause I thought
he got away with it.

Not only did he
fucking get away with it,
he's, like,

rubbing it
in all of our faces.

No one's ever gonna
fucking care about this.

I just felt, like, as bad,
perhaps even worse,
than I felt at Just For Laughs

because so much more time
had passed after that.

In 2015, I attended
the Just For Laughs
Festival as a journalist

writing on behalf of Gawker.

A profoundly flawed
organization
I miss desperately.

The organizers of the festival
did not know
the purpose of my presence

was a desire to
get to the bottom

of Louis CK's
numerous accusations
of sexual impropriety.

The article where
I talked about what had
happened to me at JFL,

I just published on
my own personal website

because I didn't think anyone
would want to run it,

And then it ended up, like,
getting hard traction online,
like, people were sharing it.

And so Vice re-ran it.

I mean, I just got
infinite fucking just hate
from, you know,

fans of him
saying that I was a liar,

that I was jealous,
that I wasn't funny,

that he should sue me
for libel, ETC., ETC.,
ETC., ETC., ETC.

I haven't, like,
uploaded a video of myself
doing comedy

really since this
shit happened,

just because it was
such a tidal wave of hatred

for these people
violently disturbed by me

even suggesting that their
king of comedy could've
done something improprietous.

The argument is always,
well, you know,

comedy is a meritocracy,
just like the entire
entertainment industry,

and you're just bitter
because you're not as talented
as my king,

you know what I mean?

There I stood alone,
in the rain, waiting for a
man who never emerged.

"I think what you're doing
is so brave",

a friend told me, at the time.

"I'm so scared",
I replied.
"I still am."

And just a little lesson
in there for you guys,
do not call a woman crazy,

unless you want to see a woman
go fucking crazy, OK?

Just don't.
Just save yourselves.

If you wanna see--
If you want to tell a woman
she's crazy,

just call her calm,
it'll just throw us off

and the whole thing's
dissipated.

Just go, "Hey, you're being
really calm right now."

"Oh, thank you, a psychic
told me I was calm once,
thanks."

"What were we fighting about,
I don't even know?"

I was interviewed
by the Village Voice,

and it was this nice woman
who was, like,

"So you've said all these
conflicting things
about Louis."

And I was, like,
Louis is my friend
and I believe him,

and if these women
come forward,
I will believe them,

but they haven't,
so what do you want me to say?

And then New York Times
calls me and they're, like,

"We're doing an article
about Louis,

"and it's coming out
next week."

I'm, like,
"Oh good!"

Listen up,
creeps of Hollywood,

we know who you are.

Weinstein isn't the only
cool democrat lurking in
Film Festival hotels,

waiting to play a jolly
masturbation prank.

Women talk to each other,
and we talk to journalists,
and we talk to lawyers.

It's 2017, we don't have to
put up with this shit.

We are coming for you.

This was
a real moment in time.

Our phones were ringing
off the hook,

and it felt like
the dam was ready to burst.

And that was certainly true
with the Louis C.K. story,

because there were
these rumors
but nobody knew the truth.

It felt like
something we had to cover

because he's
this very prominent comedian

blotted by some
as this feminist.

If he's done this stuff
and he's denied it...

...we just thought, "Well,
let's see how much of a story
there is there." You know?

The story
that had become
an unverified legend

in comedy circles
took place in 2002.

Dana Goodman
and Julia Wolov

are comedians from Chicago,
they were up and coming.

They had a kind of, like,
raucous, raunchy
sort of humor.

And they got a spot at
the Aspen Comedy Festival,
which is a big deal.

After their show,
they encountered Louis

and he asked them
to come hang out,

have a drink with him
in his hotel room.

They didn't think
anything of it,

beyond, "Yeah,
this guy wants to hang."

Aspen's a small town.

So, you know,
everybody kind of, like,

gathers in hotel bars,
hotel spaces,

because there's not
many other places to go
after the clubs close.

So when they
got back to his hotel room,

they were still
in their coats and hats
and just bundled up.

And he said to them,
"Can I take my penis out?"

They were, like,
"What? No."

You know,
they didn't consent,
they just didn't know--

They thought it was a joke,
and laughed it off.

But then he continued
and he just got totally naked

and started masturbating
in front of them.

They described themselves
as being just, like,

frozen in that moment
and not knowing what to do.

And then,
when he was finished,
they fled the room,

and he called after them,
"Which one is Dana
and which one is Julia?"

They told a lot of people
what happened,

they couldn't believe
that it had happened.

Dave Becky was
Louis' manager at the time.

Word got back to him about
what happened to them.

Their manager had
a conversation with
Dave Becky

and Dana and Julia's
perception of
that conversation

was that they were
told to keep quiet.

They were able to
get some work when they
first moved to LA,

but overall, they didn't have
the kind of career

that you
might have envisioned.

Comedy writers who had
such a hit following
in Chicago and Aspen.

They didn't know if they could
pitch themselves to shows,

or projects that Dave Becky
was attached to,

which ended up being
a lot of shows and projects

'cause he ended up being
kind of a king maker
in the comedy world.

If you get a reputation
of somebody who's like

the squeaky wheel
in this world, that cuts off
your career at its knees.

We got the sense that
there were gonna be
other women.

We just sort of divvied up,
you take this period
of his career,

you take this,
and we just started
making calls.

It's a very tricky thing
we're building.

You have a couple of people
who are willing to go
on the record

and talk about it,
and then you
approach someone else

and they say, "Well,
who else have you talked to?"

And you can't say,
but you can say
something like,

"We have other women
willing to go on the record."

You know, imagine
how exposing that is?

You're just living your life.

Do you want to go
in the New York Times

and talk about how Louis C.K.
masturbated in front of you?

New York Times
calls me and they're like,

"Do you want to be in it?"

I said "no",
only because I thought

all the victims in the article
were more physical.

That he actually jerked off
in front of everyone,
and I was like,

Then I'm gonna
get harassed for,
"Why is she in this article?

"He only said something."
So I was just like,

"Please, please
leave me alone,
I cannot be in this."

So I declined.

We eventually
found two other women
willing to go on the record,

and a fifth
who didn't want to.

As we talked to people,
it became really clear

that there was
a pattern of behavior.

I think there was
some confusion
in the early part

of this kind of reporting,
where you thought,
"Is Louis just a bad flirt?"

Probably.
But that's not what this was.

You know,
one of the things that helped
frame my thinking around it

as I was writing it, was just,
what if you worked in a bank?

And you were, like,
a regional manager,

and you were in another office
for a conference,

and another regional manager
came up and said,

"Can I jerk off
in front of you?"

"What?"

Like, that would be
horrifying to you

as a professional
in that context.

As a last step,
you go to the subject
of the story and you say,

"These are the allegations
we have against you.
What can you respond?"

"For Louis,
one of the incidents

"of sexual misconduct
involves two comedians,

"Dana Min Goodman
and Julia Wolov,

"who told us that
you invited them back
to your hotel room,

"asked if you could
take out your penis,
then take off your clothes

"and masturbated
in front of them.

"How do you respond to this?

"Rebecca Cory told us
that in 2005,

"while she was appearing in
a TV pilot with you,

"you asked if you could
masturbate in front of her.

"How do you respond?

"Abby Schachner said that
in a 2003 phone conversation

"she could
clearly hear you masturbating
as the two of you spoke.

"How do you respond?

"At the Chris Rock show,
a female co-worker

"said that you masturbated
in front of her in your
office on a work day,

"while colleagues were
on the other side
of the door.

"How do you respond?

"The women we spoke to
say that you have put them
in an untenable situation,

"that they felt used by
someone they saw
as a gifted comic

"and a major figure
in their field.

"Tig Notaro suspects that
you released her album
to shore up your reputation

"and distract from rumors
about these incidents.

"What is
your response to that?"

And we never got a reply.

We then heard that he
canceled his appearance
on Colbert...

...and that
the movie's premiere
was canceled.

I knew some of the names,
but not all.

The fact that this is
in print

solidifies something.

It makes it
part of the public record.

You can't say
you don't know anymore.

For his entire career,
he kept it quiet.

How many rumors were there
about him?

He got caught,
the man got caught.

What's nearly unique
about the Louis C.K. story

is that there is
no factual dispute
at the heart of this story.

About a day
after it was published,

he put out
a statement that said,

"These stories are true."

He didn't
use the word "sorry",

but he wrote a whole essay

explaining that he knew
he did something wrong.

He talked a lot
about his own power

and how he abused
the power that he had.

Good apologies,

you acknowledge
in the apology

what you're
actually apologizing for.

Like, what're you truly saying
you're sorry you have done?

I think the short statement
that he offered,
did some version of that.

But, I mean,
it's a process atonement,
right?

I didn't know.

Right.

-What if I did?
-OK.

That's the thing
that bothers me.

What if I did?

What if I had known
one of the women

who was making
the accusations, and I don't.

I know they're
in the comedy world,
but I had not heard of them.

But let's say I did.

And one of them
came to me and said,

"Ten years ago," or whatever,
"Louis did this."

What would you have done?

Would I still have
worked with him?

Would I still greet him,
like, that's the part.

You can't
answer that question.

I can't honestly answer,
and that makes me feel shitty.

When the actual story broke,

and it was not just
that story, but, like, boom,
boom, boom, boom, boom,

I was like, well,
the fact that I thought
it wasn't my problem

is the problem.

That's exactly the problem,
is that everybody
was treating this

like it wasn't their problem.

And it takes, like, years of
investigative journalism

and the courage of
dozens of women
to step forward,

at the risk of their own
sanity, health, safety
and careers,

in order to make it
not a problem anymore.

Well, shit.
Like, that is my problem.

They tried to kill Louis C.K.

They won't stop 'til
that man is dead.

They're trying to kill
Louis C.K., you know?

Who would have thought in 2018
I would be the most powerful
Louis in comedy?

What did Louis C.K.
really do?
What did he do?

He jerked off
in front of a few women,
right?

Who hasn't?

For some of the women
in the Louis story,

the comedy community did not
go to bat for them in the way
that they might have hoped.

I mean, there's just--
There's litany of things
that are way worse

than whacking off
in front of people.

which is not cool either,
of course.

If we're gonna grade it
on a scale of this,

to drugging
and raping 60 women,

I guess if we must
measure things that way,
yes, this is less bad.

I don't know.

If nothing else, if you can
find no compassion for him,

which I think you should,
think about how his daughters,

who hear all of this stuff,
feel.

Why don't you
leave him alone for them,
if you're so women empowering.

People saying,
"What's the big deal?

"You were masturbated
in front of.

"Why didn't you just
leave the hotel room?"

Like, people questioning
their experience over and over
and saying,

"You're making a mountain
out of a molehill."

If you don't run out the room

and go, "Excuse me,
you don't talk to me that--

"You don't do that to me,
excuse me." And leave.

But you stayed around
'cause you're like,

"Well, I thought maybe
he was gonna give me
a writing job."

Well, you ain't nothing
but a ho.

If something horrible
has happened to you,

why should it
continue to hurt you
when you bring it to light?

You know?

That to me is kind of
the more interesting question.

and almost
the more important one.

One lady said,
"Louis C.K. masturbating
in front of me...

"...ruined my comedy dreams."
Word.

I got a phone call, it was the
beginning of the new year.

Apparently Dave Chappelle
came out with a special

and he brought up
the Louis stuff.

People were
watching the special,

and then they know
that he's talking about me.

Louis C.K. was masturbating
while I was
on the phone with him.

Bitch, you don't know
how to hang up the phone?

I became the joke.

To a certain extent,
I felt like he wasn't
talking about me,

'cause he got it wrong, like,
I didn't say
what he thought I said.

I think he took
the spin out of Judd Apatow,

the dream killer tweet,
and that's what
he's took from.

And then I think later on,

became a Martin Luther King,
having a dream,

you know, like,
don't have a dream.

Well then I dare say, madam...

...you may have
never had a dream.

Come on, man,
that's a brittle spirit.

That is a brittle ass spirit.

That shit is too much,
this is a grown-ass woman.

I don't know,
I think initially
I was pissed,

because, I mean,
I remember when he was offered
$50 million or whatever

and he didn't take--
You know?

And people had thoughts
about that

and he lost his mind there
for whatever reason,

I felt empathy towards him
for that.

Because I thought
if you're a creative person
and you're giving that,

that would be very difficult.

But years later,
Dave can say it's completely
something different.

I just don't think
he understands that

things are situational,
it's not black and white.

"Hello, police?
Yes, I am on the other line
with comedian Louis C.K.,

"and I think
that he is masturbating
while I'm on the phone."

You know what the police
are gonna say in Atlanta?

"Well, what are you guys
talking about?"

It does bother me that, like,
I'm not gonna live this down.

Like, this is gonna be,
like, in my fucking obituary.

And it bothers me
that this is, like,

the bigger, you know--
This is like my thing,

I haven't, like,
surpassed this.
You know?

I don't know what else
will be mentioned,
you know?

Besides, it's like...

Hey, Giant?

What? Come here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I'm an artist.

Do you know
I love children's poems,

And I always wanted to write,
create for children.

And for a while,
I was writing
young adult books.

I think creating
is part of my nature,

I think performing
is definitely
more of a challenge.

Let's see here, so...

Bob, I'm looking for--
They want to see
embarrassing things,

to see that I was--
To validate me
that I was once...

They want--
I don't know what they want.

They want me to find--
I hosted a children's show
at one point in time.

Water is all around you.

You drink it,
you swim in it, and if you
had to live without it,

you'd be like a fish out of...

...well that is today's topic
on Up and Running.

Let's see,
I think it might be in here.

Yes.
This is a bunch of stuff.

Ah, sorry.

Yeah,
so there's this stuff.

Oh, my first thing I ever did,
a body piece.

That was in college.

4, 16, '93.

So I think
I always loved comedy.

Just needing to
express myself.

After school,
I went to Chicago,

because I saw a book
about improvising,

and I started studying
in Chicago.

The Second City is like
a comedic institution,

it's where all these
wonderful people
have come from, you know?

Gilda Radner, Joan Rivers,
Tina, Amy Poehler.

I think I auditioned for it
and I didn't get it
and then I auditioned for it,

and I rolled around
like a meat ball and I got it.

I performed for two years
with Second City.

I think it was Adam McKay
or someone I admired, said,

"Don't lose your voice."
And I got really scared.

I said, "What's my voice?
What's my voice?"

I always thought of myself
as more of a writer,

and creator,
more than a performer.

From the ABC
Broadcast Center in New York,

it's the Pepsi Stuff
Dana Carvey Show.

-Can I help you?
-Uh, two tickets
for Dead Man's Highway.

-Yeah, two! Two tickets!
-$60.

The first time I found out
about the writing gig

for the Dana Carvey Show,

was via my boyfriend
at the time, Jon.

And he told me about,
that there was a thing,

that they're looking
for writers.

I wrote up a little packet
in my closet,

and I sent it
to Brillstein-Grey.

My boyfriend,
he went for an interview

with Robert Smigel,

and my stuff was
on the top of his desk.

And that was just,
kind of, exciting enough.

But then, a few days later,
I got a phone call
from Louis C.K.,

Louis, to, um,
submit more writing.

I don't hear back,
but Jon gets the job.

And then, I went to visit,
and I know, one day,

we ate with Louis
and his wife at the time.

And then, I ran into him for,
like, a UCB thing,

they were doing something,
and I was helping them.

And he seemed happy
to see me, you know?

Then remembered
something that I sent

in that second writing
sample that he liked.

So, it was always nice
when someone comment--

You know,
they remember that thing.

Well, I moved to California.

Then, I ran into him again,
the end of 2002,

or the beginning of 2003.

And he gave me his information

and where he was working,
or his phone number,

to get in contact with him,
or whatnot.

But I guess
I created the show,
because it was kind of

who I was afraid
I was gonna be,

and who I think I am.

I called him up,
'cause I wanted him

to come to this show,
'cause, hey,

I'd just created
my first solo show
since I'd been out here,

and this is something I do,

and why not show
what I've been working on?

And, uh,
he started telling me,

very early on, um...
It veered very quickly,

I didn't even get to say why
I was calling, or whatever.

And then, he started
talking about... my picture,

that he remembered that,
you know,

Jon had it when
he worked on the show,

and that, some of the things
I had made Jon,

and he was commenting,
and then it just started...

It was beginning to turn.

Where, he was talking about...

..what turns him on,

but it came in through
how cute I was.

It just started
getting into fantasy.

It just started
getting inappropriate.

Yet, I thought I was
being hazed, and I felt like,

at one point,
he turned his blinds,
I don't even know why,

there was something
that happened,
'cause I'm only hearing.

Are you supposed to say,
"Are you masturb--"

-That's a weird thing to say
to someone you don't know.
-I didn't say that.

If someone says,
"Can I masturbate
in front of you..."

-Well, he didn't ask me!
-No, I know.

-He didn't ask me,
he just started doing it.
-Yeah.

But, when I brought up
the show, I remember,

he kind of quickly skedaddled,

like, "Yeah, I'll see,
really busy."

And I said... And this
was what bothered me the most,

is that I said,
"This isn't gonna be
the last time we talk, is it?"

That was the part that felt
extremely vulnerable to me,

that it just sounds weird,
it seemed weird, even then.

It's like...
I just felt duped.

When I got off the phone,
I called up my friend, Stu.

He brought up Dana and Julia
and I didn't know,

and I said,
"Why didn't you tell me?"

And he thought
I-- he thought I knew.

And we still fight
about it sometimes.

When the article
came out, I said,

"Why didn't you tell me?"
If I would've known,

I wouldn't have been
in that sit-- I would've known

that I was, you know,
being duped.

It was one of those times...

...you know, where just--
where things in life happen,

and various things happen
in kind of a sequential order,

that just, kind of,
knock at your worth.

I moved back to Chicago
for a short time, after that.

My dad had just died,
I was a bit broken.

So, I hid for a couple years.

I'm a hider. I'm a hider.

So, I think it was,
like, 2009,

I got a Facebook message
from Louis...

...saying, "I think, you know,
the last time we talked,

it was weird."

I said, "Yes, it was weird."

And then,
am I gonna be around,

and I met him at Canter's.

The first thing I said is,
"Do you have a problem?"

'Cause, you know,
when I got off the phone,

I learned about
two other people.

I said,
"Do you have a problem?"

And he said, "No, no,"
and he-- he told me

his sob story
about, you know,

what happened to him at Aspen.

Then, he told me
his perspective,
which was, you know,

he felt like everybody
made fun of him,

whatever, he made himself
the victim in that dynamic.

Although, when I left him
that day, I said,

"Your children
will always love you."

I said, "No matter what,
you know, happens,

"your children
will always love you."

'Cause my dad didn't do
the most wonderful things,

and, like, I still love him.

So, like...

...that's why,
you know, people do--

People don't always
follow, you know,

they don't always follow
the path of the norm.

But, you know, it doesn't
justify hurting people,

or making people, you know...

You know.

I was at Wholefoods,
I picked up an eggplant,

and this dude looked at me,
and did me like this...

I was like,

"I do not expect that shit
at Wholefoods."

That is some
Trader Joe's shit.

I did not pay $13
for some grapes

to get sexually
assaulted, asshole.

I'm at the Cellar one day,
and someone starts
talking to me,

and he said,
"Hey, I wanted to ask
you about the Louis thing."

It was very
matter of fact, like,

"Do you think
he's gonna come back?"

"Yeah, of course I do."

My reality is, usually,

white men get away with
the stuff that they do,

'cause if they didn't,
we wouldn't be

where we are today, right?

And that-- that was
appalling to some people.

And I'm like, "Well,
what world do you live in?

"Do you think they're gonna
put him on a boat,

"and send him to an island
and stone him?

"Like, what the hell do you--

"What society have
you been living in?

"Why am I the only one
that is,

"you know,
subject to reality?

"Like, you know
he's coming back, right?"

Louis's quiet period
lasted about nine months,

and then he suddenly made
an unannounced drop-in

at the Comedy Cellar.

The Cellar is like this locus
of the comedy world
in Manhattan.

It's the place where you can
see an up-and-coming act,

and Chris Rock
on the same night.

It's a comedians hang-out.

People talk about
making it at the Cellar,

like, if you get past
the booker,

that is considered
the gold standard

of stand-up comedy.

I knew, at some point,
I'm gonna have a predicament,

'cause I just knew he would
wanna come back,

and it would be here
that he'd wanna come back.

And then, the-- you know,
the shit hit the fan.

It was-- it was nuts.

"Uncomfortable,"

"Disgusting,"
and "Frustrating."

That's how two women
in attendance described

the atmosphere during
Louis C.K.'s surprise
stand-up comedy set.

One audience
member called the club

-to object to
the surprise set.
-When, if ever,

is it appropriate for people
accused of sexual misconduct

-to try and make a comeback?
-A social
media firestorm...

He could've waited two years,
he still would've been OK.

Donate to
the Me Too movement.

Go spend your time with women
that have been crime victims.

Then, when somebody
like Louis C.K. comes out,

he's changing the rules,
he's testing the waters,

and he's saying,
"I'm ready to come back."

Everybody I know,
knows people...

...who've done things
they should be ashamed of.

Everybody. Normally,
in a moral world,

we forgive the people
who apologize,

and admit that
they did something wrong.

What's the criteria
people have to meet

-to go on your stage?
-No, I don't
have a standard.

Right now,
it's a case-by-case basis,

and I can't imagine
every situation

that might come before me.

I don't mind living and dying

based on what
the audience feels.

But, the people
who are saying

that Louis shall not work,

they need to be
questioned more closely,

-as to where
they draw the line.
-Mm-hm.

What's their world view?
What are their standards?

How much evidence
do they think is enough?

How long is enough?
How long should somebody
go without working?

What should they do
when they're not working?

Should they become
wards of the state?

Can they do some jobs,
but not other jobs?

Is it OK for Walmart
to hire Louis?

Or is he so radioactive
that nobody shall hire him?

These are
the tough questions.

These decisions have meaning,
whether we like it or not,

whether you like it or not,
the decision to have
Louis C.K. on stage,

it has meaning.

And how much you,
and the rest of us,

have to come to terms
with that.

You can feel whatever you want
about these things,

but the idea that
you have the right

to impose on
a private business,

who's employing
a free person...

...to perform in front of
people who want to see him,

in a free country,

that you feel that
this is your business...

I think that's very,
very dangerous.

And that is where
I was really drawing my line.

People were tweeting me,

demanding that I didn't
perform at the Cellar,

because Louis
was performing there.

I was like, "How, um, awesome,

"for you to be able
to make me the bad guy,

"and how often
does that happen,

"when you try to make women

"responsible for
the behaviors of men?"

Why can't we just
let Louis go back to...

...writing jokes about how
men are the gravest threat

to the safety of women.

But, he doesn't
just write jokes,

he walks the walk!

And I think that
is to be commended.

He's a performance artist.

So, he steps back,
for nine months,

or whatever it was,
and people are saying,

"That's not long enough.
You didn't do anything."

Like, you gotta...

So, what-- what should
someone do?

I wrote a tweet thread.
It started by me going,

"I know I'll take
some heat for this,

"but I feel this
is a conversation
that needs to happen.

"There's gonna be other men
who experience these problems,

"and what is the path forward
for them?

"Louis is right now
on the vanguard of this,

"and I'm--" I think I said,

"I'm excited to see
how he does it."

The pushback that I got
from that immediately,

was overwhelming.

And I felt horrible.

I was like, "I'm not defending
Louis's actions.

"I'm having, in public.
a conversation

"that I feel like men are
having in private, and women,

"are having in private,
all over this country."

And saying, "How do--
How do we deal with this?

"How do we deal with this?

"How do we welcome
people back,

"or not welcome people back?"

I apologized,
and what I apologized for,

was not acknowledging
the pain around Louis

is real for people.

And there's obviously
hypocrisy coming
from Louis, himself.

Like, I lost
so much fucking money...

..in a day.
In one day, I lost,

I'm not gonna tell you
how much, but it was
millions of dollars.

It was $35M,
I don't give a fuck, fuck it.

-I'll tell you I lost $35M.

You don't tell people
you have $35M,

but you can tell 'em
you lost $35M,

because that shit
is hilarious!

That's fucking funny.

He started to do more touring,

and they started to sell out.

I just love comedy.
I saw Louis C.K.

-in Toronto last week.
-Oh, yeah!

I heard about that,
it came out of nowhere,
how was that?

There were protestors,
it was fucking nuts.

-Seriously?
-Yeah, fuck all that.

He talked about, uh,
the jerking off thing

-for, like, 30 minutes,
it was hilarious.
-Don't spoil it,

'cause I really wanna
see when it's finished.

It was really funny, though.
He's probably gonna

-release, like, an hour set.
-Pretty soon.

-It's gonna be
the biggest comeback.
-Super dope.

How are you?
How was your last
couple of years?

How was...

How was 2018
and '19 for you guys?

Anybody else get in
global amounts of trouble?

Anybody else...

I was, sort of,
seduced into thinking that,

he could take a thing
that he knew as an artist

he was doing as a person,
and use that...

...in the art, in some way,

to create his own reckoning
with his behavior.

You wanna talk about it?
Should we talk about it?

Yeah, alright. Alright.

I don't mind-- I don't
mind talking about it.

If you ever ask somebody...

..."May I jerk off
in front of you?"

And they say, "Yes."

Just say, "Are you sure?"

That's the first part.

And then if they say yes,
just don't fucking do it.

Just-- just don't do it.

Wait, what?

It was different
than what his apology was.

He framed it as a kink.

You can't be
the smart-guy comic

and be this stupid,
you don't get both.

You all have your thing.

I don't know
what your thing is.

You're so fucking lucky
that I don't know

what your thing is.

'Cause everybody
knows my thing.

Everybody knows
my fucking thing, now.

Obama knows my thing,
do you understand...

...how that feels?

He never talked about
the repercussions

for the women,
but he talked a lot

about the repercussions
for himself.

"Now, the whole world knows

"my weird sexual hang-up."

I like jerking off,
I don't like being alone,

that's all I can
tell ya', alright?

I get lonely.
"Where is everyone?"

It's just sad,
I-- I like company.

I like to share,
I'm good at it, too.

If you're good at juggling,
you wouldn't do it
alone in the dark,

you would gather folks
and amaze them.

Woo!

Anyway, that's all I'm gonna
say about that shit.

I think it was like
an "Emperor has no clothes,"
sort of situation.

He came back,
he learned nothing.

He didn't say anything
profound about the experience.

There is this
defensiveness around

and, in some cases,
to it now, right?

What he will not
be addressing.

I don't know
if that's his best mode.

It's the opposite
of what made him famous,

and what made him
a great comedian.

Louis had a whole bit about

how the greatest threat
to women is men, you know?

Louis could still
do that bit and say,

"And I was one of
those guys...

"...and let me talk about it."

And it feels like such
a missed opportunity

that he didn't do it.

For the times
he was willing to tell us

everything about who he was,
and about his foibles,

there was still
this one part of himself

that he was holding back,
and, you know,

that goes back
to the discussion of,

"Is a comedian
just a joke teller,

"or are they a truth teller?"

Are the jokes supposed
to be the truth,

or are the jokes just jokes?

He called
his next special, "Sorry."

It's just such a big
middle finger, you know?

And it's like,
who are you really

giving that middle finger to?

You're pissed at
all the people who got
mad at you

for jerking off in front
of people? Like, why?

Why are you mad at them?

Michael Jackson.
Wonderful music.

Blessed us with
wonderful music,

did some other things, too.

What-- Look, what's worse?
A pedophile who makes
beautiful music,

or one that doesn't?

This is the choices.

"No pedophiles"
is not on the menu.

We simultaneously
want too much of our artists,

but they also
want too much from us,

in some ways.

They want to
be thought of only

as these people who
make things, even though,

the thing they make
is entirely predicated
on what people they are.

What kind of person they are.

"Sorry" was like...

You just see a man that's,
like, zero fucks given.

Do you feel like...
Do you feel like...

...because of
what you've endured,

you transcended
giving a fuck?

This is the way I look
at my life before,

was that I just
didn't think there was
danger in the world, somehow.

So, now I do, and that's
changed me a little bit.

So, that's the opposite of
"no fucks given," in a sense,

but that's more about
the way I live my life,

and the way I plan my life,
now, but on stage,

that's holy,
that's a holy place for me.

And I do think
I got that back.

I love that you've made
this return,

and then, you know,
you experienced
a bunch of resistance,

but now it's kind of gone,
you know?

-Yeah, just, like,
just keep doing it.
-Yeah, and now,

you're-- you're doing
shit that's really
being recognized.

-Like, you won
a fucking Emmy.
-Well, a GRAMMY.

-I won a GRAMMY
since I came back.
-A GRAMMY, rather.

-It's nice!
-That's amazing!

Did the GRAMMYs snub
the cancel culture club?

It's ironic that the
term "Cancel culture,"

which is reductive
and stupid and misused,

is applied to a lot of people
who have flourishing careers.

Like, these people are, like,
they're all fine.

Louis won the GRAMMY
for best comedy album,

and that album was the album
he did where he's like,

"I asked everyone's consent
and they said, 'yes',"
and I was like,

"What are the fucking
odds?" You know?

I believe he won
the GRAMMY award,

because it's a secret ballot.

There is no way that
the people who voted for him

to win that GRAMMY
would've done so,

if it was gonna be reported
in the papers,

their names,
as having voted for Louis C.K.

How good did that GRAMMY feel?

It was nice!
When I used to win awards,

I just found it awkward,
I didn't really care about it,

-but this one was--
it was very nice.
-I bet!

Didn't Dave Chappelle
win awards for calling
one of Louis C.K. accusers

a "brittle-ass spirit?"

Making fun of the victims
is still...

...good for business.

Thank you for
coming tonight

to the world premiere
of Fourth of July.

Enjoy the movie, hang out
for the talk afterwards,

I hope you like it, thank you
very much for coming.

Goodnight!

I think it is
somewhat unprecedented

just how much he has
been able to restore

elements of
his pre-2017 success.

I don't think he was
intentionally trying
to cancel-proof himself

when he was distributing
his own stand-up specials,

or self-financing
his own TV series,

but it's been fascinating
to watch the culture,

kind of, catch up with that.

Louis C.K.,
go get everything he has.

LouisCK.com. Go to my website,

otherwise I can't
do this anymore.

There's no other
stream of income,

except my own industry.

You know, Louis
is not on the Tonight Show,

he's not on TV and Netflix.

He created his own thing
outside of the business.

The people who love
Louis C.K. are still there.

I have never asked
anyone to denounce him,

say he shouldn't work,
I've just said,

when you see women that
are hurting and feel
like they're crazy,

because everyone's letting
all these predators back,

while some people
never had a chance,

it really hurts, especially...

...in this culture,
where it just seems
like nobody cares.

Ladies and gentlemen,
Louis C.K.

For all the fans
he's lost,

he's able to gain these
new ones who don't care.

Maybe, they never cared.

But, now they see him
as someone

who's waving the banner
for people who don't care.

You're doing Madison
Square Garden in the round.

Yeah, so I, uh-- so,
I'm doing it on January 28th,

and I'm going to, uh,
livestream it on my website.

It's also expensive,
it's an expensive place.

-Renting it is about 400,000?
-Something like that,
yeah, I forget.

-To just rent it.
-Yeah, it's astronomical.

They know they got you,
'cause you wanna
play the Garden.

I mean, he's back, you know,

and, like,
we all make mistakes.

You know what, I don't mind,
whatever, you know?

I'm more or less looking
more to give someone
a second chance.

I feel kinda mad at him,
'cause I think it took away

-from what he could
have accomplished...
-Yeah.

...as far as
his television shows,

he had movies
that were coming out,

where could've been iconic.

I'm glad he came back,
just as he should have.

There's no reason why
he should've stayed quiet,

why he should've just
disappeared forever.

I'm very glad you're here.
I'm really grateful.

I know that, uh, it's not easy
being my fan, these days.

Uh...

I know that, uh,
all of you have one person

who doesn't know you're here.

There is that one person.

You know, I think
everybody lives with
a certain amount of hypocrisy,

and this is the amount that
I've allocated for myself.

We all have to draw a line.
This is one of
my favorite things

that John Oliver says.
People will often say,

"Where do you draw the line?"
Can't listen to R. Kelly,

we can't do that,
where do you draw the line?

Somewhere.
You draw it somewhere.

You have to draw it somewhere,
like, you can't have no line.

And maybe, tomorrow,

I will get a new
piece of information.

And I will have to
erase that line,

and I will have to
draw it somewhere else.

The sort of ability
to speculate about

what all could have happened
to the many, many, many,

many people who have suffered
at the hands of these men,

is long, and the longer
you think about it,

the harder it is to--
to really care

what art these men make.

Because there's a bunch
of artists who didn't
get to do anything

as a result of, either,
the incident having happened,

and they've got
a lot of PTSD over it,

or they were literally
not hired,

because they were
prevented from getting jobs.

Cancel culture, for me, was...

It was all a ruse,
you know, like,

homophobia, transphobia,
racism, misogyny,

none of it went away,
it's still here today, right?

People are making money,
money, money, right now,

doing it,
so what's the cancel culture?

Tell me what happened.

Since I gave up
on the entertainment industry,

I pretty much only make money
selling garbage on eBay.

Um, and by garbage, I mean,
like, shit people don't want.

If you wanna
make money on eBay,

and you wanna
do it fast, spanks.

Because, as long as women

are, you know,
capable of self-loathing,

which will be
until earth ends,

they're buying spanks
left and right,

all day,
every fucking day, dude.

It's hard
to draw a line, I think.

That's what makes it easy
for people to be like,

"Well, I'm not doing
anything bad,

"and this person's
not doing anything bad."

But then, to kind of,
like, stop there.

And I think Meg
is someone that's, uh,

so moral,
she won't work with anyone.

Meg has so much integrity,
she hasn't worked in a year.

But at the end of the day,
I don't wanna participate
with the sort of people

who are willing to just
blindly ignore their morality.

So, that's why I sell shit
on eBay for a living,

and occasionally do comedy,
when people will let me,

because I refuse to fucking
participate in this shit.

This is my quick story
about the wonderful time

that the very thoughtful,
Louis C.K., asked my consent.

I get emotional
thinking about it,

because it was
so sweet of him.

When you say anything,
as a woman...

...it is the scarlet letter,
right? It just becomes

who I am, no matter
how hard I try to fight it,

and what I'm told is,
"You shouldn't have
said anything."

I thought that could
just be one part of me,

I do this, I do that,
I might tell everyone

if someone showed
me their dick, then I do this,

someone else showed
me their dick,
I might mention it.

I'm a well-rounded person.

And I'm talking about this,

literally almost
20 years later.

Why am I talking about it?
I don't fucking know.

I don't want-- I'd literally
be happy if I never
thought about it again.

Um, but I guess,
because culturally,

something hasn't changed,
so here I go with my story.

I always put it this way.
For women in comedy,

there's always
a threat of rain,

so we carry
an umbrella everywhere,

and men walk out
the door and assume
it's gonna be sunny.

We always have to think
of something, be aware

that the men that
work with us might be

trying to get
something out of us.

It just changes things enough,
that it taints...

...your experience.

Um, I said "taint,"
that's why I stopped.

I don't regret doing it.

At least I've gotten
to that point.

People were coming forward
to let people know

who people are dealing with,
and not keep it quiet

and put other people
in those situations,

was, for me, why you did it.

But, it's bigger
than you imagine.

It's loud, it's hard,
and you just have to manage,

after that,
however best you can.

After the Louis article
came out,

and Chapelle made fun of me,

I thought, "Ooh, I need to
start expressing myself."

I need a voice,

and I can't do this
with solo shows.

And so, I started
doing stand-up in 2018.

And the same stuff
that can take you down,

can be the same stuff that's
a rise for the next thing.

Wow, can you believe it?
It's March 4th!

March 4th!

And Dave, I feel like I would
say something if I saw him.

I'd like to say,
"I'm the person that
you made a comment about.

"I'm the brittle-ass spirit."