Louis C.K.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:02)
Tetragrammaton.

**Louis C.K.** (0:23)
My brain knows when a joke is there, right? So, like, comedy is something you find. You strike gold, sort of. You're talking to somebody and you go, hey, I noticed that made this observation today. And then you go, that's a bit. I know that's a bit. I keep it fluid in my head, somewhere unformed and unfigured out.
And then the next time I'm on stage, in front of them, I work out what I've, it's in the main memory.

**Rick Rubin** (0:53)
Is it a stressful process?

**Louis C.K.** (0:56)
What do you mean?

**Rick Rubin** (0:57)
Well, you're on stage in front of people, they have some expectation that they're going to get something from you. You don't know what you're going to say.

**Louis C.K.** (1:04)
No, you don't really know.

**Rick Rubin** (1:05)
That sounds stressful.

**Louis C.K.** (1:07)
Really?

**Rick Rubin** (1:08)
Well, yeah.

**Louis C.K.** (1:09)
I only find that very exciting and warm and fluid.

**Rick Rubin** (1:12)
Has always been the case.

**Louis C.K.** (1:14)
I don't perfectly remember that far back, but no, I think it wasn't in the beginning.
But you know when you have something and you go like, oh, this is a good one. There's different bits. It depends on the bit because there are some bits that are just like, boom, that's great. That's always going to kill. There's always a little question. Sometimes you come up with stuff like I was backstage with my friend in San Francisco and I thought of this bit right before I went on. So to me, in terms of like, is it stressful? So I'm about to do a concert in San Francisco at the Masonic Temple. It's an important show. I don't know. It's got some, it's a major city and I want to really kill.
Instead of doing what I know is going to work, I'm about to open with a totally unknown joke.
But the thing to me is that I don't think any more and this has evolved over time in terms of success or failure on stage. I'm not attached to either outcome. There's many in between by the way. If you have this idea of laugh, no laugh. You're stuck in two things. It's like if you're just doing A and F and ignoring all the notes in between, there's a lot that can happen. You tell a joke and it stirs the room. It doesn't make them laugh. Makes them go, what? Or they might just go, no. Or it might just get nothing. But that's really interesting and there's potential in that next moment. A long time ago, I was like, jeez, I hope this joke works.
I would tell it with that energy and sometimes it would, but that was a long time ago.

**Rick Rubin** (2:47)
How long did it take to get past that?

**Louis C.K.** (2:50)
I think about 15 to 20 years.

**Rick Rubin** (2:53)
It's a long time.

**Louis C.K.** (2:54)
Yeah, sure. It probably happened incrementally.

**Rick Rubin** (2:57)
Yeah.

**Louis C.K.** (2:58)
At first, I was like, I love getting laughs. Then I was like, it's interesting to have them be offended and laugh at the same time. The other thing is that I know that if I do something and it doesn't get a laugh, the work's not done yet. It's still.

**Rick Rubin** (3:16)
You don't give up on it.

**Louis C.K.** (3:17)
No. There's bits that kill right away and I throw them out.
Because I'm like, yeah, that's killing because I know how to do this and because that's pretty down the middle. It's not even that I'm trying to be interesting. It's just like, that's not an important, interesting piece of work. It's just a good joke. I think about music and comedy a lot. If you're playing music for an audience and you do like playing on a guitar, people will get a little excited. But it doesn't mean that that's what you came there to do. Do you know what I mean? But if you work, there's something you've been working on. If I really work on this, they haven't heard this before and this feels like it's got a wider range of places it's touching.
If I can really master that, then that's really, boy, is that a bit, right?

**Rick Rubin** (4:04)
Yeah.

**Louis C.K.** (4:04)
Rather than just twanging. If I have a bit that kills right away because it's touching on a modern subject or it's hitting a common note, which there's a huge value in that and being able to do that. But most of the bits that I have that have turned into bits, that people come back and tell me they loved, or bits that have stood up as I'm really proud of that one.