Pegged to tomorrow night's "Louie" season five premiere, Louis C.K. penned a fascinating, funny, self-deprecating personal essay for The Hollywood Reporter, waxing poetic about his love of New York — "everybody is dealing with the same shit, everybody is on the subway elbow-to-elbow" — his insecurities about his career and his goals and ambitions going forward.
We've pulled our five favorite excerpts below, or you can read the full story here.
On the silver lining of getting passed over for "SNL":
“I'm so glad I didn't get cast on SNL. I'm way better off because I host it now. That's a million times cooler and more fun because to be a castmember there or a featured player or writer is a perilous, difficult, grueling office job — like the worst kind of office job, a 12-hour-a-day job with no end in sight. As a host, you have dinner with the cast and you hang out with Lorne. You get the best of that guy, and he's a great New York institution."
On offers to host a late night show:
"Since I have kids, the stability is half interesting. But I just have too many other things I like to do. I get off onstage, so I'll never stop doing stand-up, and I love to have my summers off, and going out on the water on my boat is one of my favorite things. Plus, that's a pretty high id factor job to every f—ing night be like, "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen of the whole country. Here's what happened to you today and here are the famous people and I'm going to be the filter you're going to see it all through.""
On being nominated for awards:
"I'm proud we've been nominated for best comedy series; that's a phenomenal thing for me. With the other ones, it depends. I'm happy to have the writers awards, and I feel like I've earned them. I'm really trying hard with acting, but I feel like I'm more uneven as an actor. So I always get it [with regard to] who wins. Jim Parsons is on a show that's watched by 10 times the amount of people who watch my show. Why the f— would it go to me? I have a weird little show that's kind of disgusting, foul and rude, and most people don't like that, so I don't think it's even right for me to win it.:
On Chris Rock calling out his cash-hoarding:
"When I first started making tons of money, it freaked me out. I would always get 10 grand in cash every show because I needed to touch the money. I needed to feel like it wasn't just going to pay my bills… So I was squirreling away cash — I had something like $100,000 hidden in my apartment. This was probably 2012 and Chris [Rock] was over, so I showed him where I hide my $100,000, and he looked at me and said: "You're such a n—er. You're such a f—in' n—er." That's what he said, and I was pink and proud to be called that by him. I don't hide money in my house anymore."
On always pushing himself:
"I didn't start doing really well until I was about 42 years old; I'm 47 now, so I got 42 years against five good ones. I still have a lot to draw from, and life doesn't get easier ... I definitely have huge benefits to how well I'm doing, but you do find yourself missing the climb. It's a little like Mount Everest. When you summit, you spend about 20 minutes up there, and you do a little dance, but if the 20-minute dance was really it, would you really risk your life for the amount of work it takes to get up and down? So every time I feel like I've found a clearing, I try to find something else that I don't know how to do yet."
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