Louis C.K. says standup gives him "an insane amount of power over the audience" — and that he also wields it on his FX series.
"Stand up is crazy because I know what I’m going to say, and they don’t know," he said in an interview for Elvis Mitchell's "The Treatment" Wednesday on Los Angeles station KCRW. "They are just sitting there, listening. So I can take a second because I know I’m about to ruin your life with this material."
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He said he performs the same trick on "Louie," which he writes, directs and stars in. One of the show's trademarks is its willingness to go for long stretches without jokes.
"If I’m slowing things up a little bit, it’s because I know the next scene is going to be an assault on your senses," he said.
C.K. , who edited the show himself in its first two seasons, said he hired Woody Allen's longtime editor, Susan Morse, for the current season because he thought some of his episodes were subpar.
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"I really love editing. And it’s a necessary part of the process to me that I be the editor. But last year I turned in episodes that I think were bad because I couldn’t edit them properly… I was running out of gas and out of time. I was exhausted and I couldn’t — I was editing and shooting at the same time," he said.
He was also merciless in his critique of "Pootie Tang," a 2001 film he was fired from directing. He has previously called it "a very huge mistake" that "never should have been made."
It was just terrible, it was so far from what I tried to make. I think there have been three moments in my life that have been that low… so literally they gave me a bound book of hatred that I then absorbed.
You can listen to the full "Treatment" interview here.