Louis CK (aka Louis Szekely) owes much of his success to creating a pitch-perfect brand as a self-aware, embarrassingly honest, overweight and entitled white 40-something American male. He’s crude, surprising, and dead-accurate when it comes to mocking how selfish North Americans have become today, typically using his own life as the subject matter.
His famous “Everything’s Amazing and Nobody’s Happy” rant on Late Night with Conan O’Brien (YouTube video quality here kinda sucks, sorry) made him a household barroom name, in my opinion. I think he hit an important nerve in unexplored, painfully relevant territory. Other comics might have touched on this subject matter before, but Louis CK’s dedication to it gave him an edge in comedy circles. He soon landed an HBO series, which got kicked down into an FX series. But stand-up is where he’s at his best.
At this stage in his career, his name is well-known enough to allow for a few risks — like his latest venture: releasing video of a stand-up performance in New York’s Beacon Theatre through his website, LouisCK.com, for five bucks. I have no idea whether this is a financially sound plan, but I really like the clean-and-simple approach. Imagine if this is the way we could all do it. Just make something good and sell it, without fear of it being duplicated and resold or given away to others for free. With a note on the download page, Louis goes out of his way to tell people he’s trying to make things easy to get in a “legitimate”, legal way:
To those who might wish to “torrent” this video: look, I don’t really get the whole “torrent” thing. I don’t know enough about it to judge either way. But I’d just like you to consider this: I made this video extremely easy to use against well-informed advice. I was told that it would be easier to torrent the way I made it, but I chose to do it this way anyway, because I want it to be easy for people to watch and enjoy this video in any way they want without “corporate” restrictions.
Please bear in mind that I am not a company or a corporation. I’m just some guy. I paid for the production and posting of this video with my own money. I would like to be able to post more material to the fans in this way, which makes it cheaper for the buyer and more pleasant for me. So, please help me keep this being a good idea. I can’t stop you from torrenting; all I can do is politely ask you to pay your five little dollars, enjoy the video, and let other people find it in the same way.
Sincerely,
Louis C.K.
First off, he’s doing something the big media companies are afraid to do, or are mostly incapable of doing – provide easy access to content while providing 100% of profits to the artist. Second, this is a blatant, somewhat naive act of faith that people want to do “the right thing” and actually pay for things they want. The barrier to getting this is pretty low — $5! — and, if you have a PayPal account, I think it’s three or four mouse clicks. I’m not suggesting everyone needs to get this comedy special, or even that it’s worth the money, only that if you’re going to watch it, you’ve got very few reasons to go outside the low-barrier transaction Louis and his people have set up.
I’m interested in this experiment because I think everyone producing creative content would love to follow in these footsteps and release projects directly through their websites. Obviously, we can’t all bank in on being a celebrity comic, so there’s a lot of work to be done in building an audience. The good news is, we’re headed in the right direction. I think. (Maybe?)
Update (12/13/11): NPR has made a new interview with Louis CK available online. According to Louis, he’s made his money back and then a bit more on this project. I wonder how happy HBO is to hear that?
