The Louis CK Talking To Dane Cook Scene

The Louis CK Talking To Dane Cook Scene Is Genuinely Important | Videogum - Posted on Aug 5th by Gabe
On last night’s episode of Louie, it’s Louie’s daughter’s birthday, so he gives her tickets to some make-believe bubble gum pop star’s concert, but it turns out his daughter prefers Lady Gaga. So Louie talks to his agent (played perfectly by a 9-year-old) to see if there’s a way to get tickets to see Lady Gaga, but the only comedian who shares her promotion company is Dane Cook. Wanting so badly to please his daughter, Louie goes to Madison Square Garden (or whatever) and visits him backstage. good sum. And what follows is the scene that I have posted after the jump, and it is amazing. (You almost certainly know the history behind this scene, but Dane Cook has very famously been accused of stealing Louis C.K.’s material.) First of all, it’s just a very good scene. It’s funny and well done and it makes for a good TV show. Second of all, it is important. For real. Not only is this one of the more interesting things to happen on television in a long time, but it has important things to say about the way that we lead our lives that people do not really talk about very much even just in the world much less on tv. Let’s watch the scene (again) and then let us unpack it, yes? Sure!
[videogum-hosted vid clip here] I watched full epsd megavid LouieS02e07 Oh Louie / Tickets love the expression of the kid agent at 10:25 min in; whole epsd v good; scene under discussn begins ~ 13:00 Louis & Dane conversation --------
Man. OK, so, first of all, congratulations to everyone involved on this. I am not a Dane Cook fan personally but he gets Big Points for this. Yes, it allows him to tell his side of the story, which he has never really done before (unless he did it on Marc Maron’s podcast or something, but that episode was before my time and I do not pay for podcasts, no offense podcasts none taken :) enjoyed that before watching the show, as a direct address *to*: podcasts, then watched & realized was reference (probably! right?) to th show in wh Louie says to Bob Saget on set of sitcom that he shld not be there playing the best friend bcs Louie wld not hang out with this guy no offense Saget "none taken") and he comes off looking much better for it yes, but somehow the scene is impressively generous to BOTH of these dudes. The scene does not play out at anyone else’s expense. It really is as open and honest of a thing as scripted television can be.
This is a scene about forgiveness, acceptance, self-examination, fatherhood, fame, courage, honesty, and mortality. That’s a lot! Those are REALLY important things! What this scene says, at least I think, is that no matter what other people do in life, you need to be responsible for your own behavior. There are people in this world who are victims of terrible crimes, that is not what we are talking about here. This is about confronting and acknowledging the thousand cuts slights that we are constantly exchanging. As often as not, our reaction to being injured is to injure others, and that is a losing scenario for everyone involved.
Of course, what makes this scene even more interesting is a momentary consideration of the history leading up to it. Not just the “Dane Cook is a joke thief” thing, but the fact that is ultimately ancient herstory at this point, and that Louis C.K. continued to press on and do his job, and he now has a successful television show and sells out Carnegie Hall. He is, by all accounts, hugely successful in his own right. This doesn’t diminish what Dane may or may not have done (and I think the itchy asshole moment in this scene is one of the better descriptions of the ways in which sometimes people do just get the same ideas about things because no duh) but it does suggest that at the end of the day everyone needs to just keep going, and if you wallow in self-pity or you focus on negative things that might slow you down you will never get to confront your own Dane Cook on your own FX show. You know what I mean.

UPDATE: I just had a discussion w a friend of mine who disagreed w me on pretty m all pnts about this scene, & that is totally reasonable & he had a lot of good things to say in defense of his position, but one of his main grievances besides evth I said / :) / was w my use of th word “important” & I do think that our discussn helped clarify for me a little wh I mean by th, bcs in a lot of ways it is clearly th least “important” thing th has ever happened. / :) / I guess wh I mean is that, for me, this scene was interesting and meaningful, and that seems like a huge accomplishmnt considering th we are talking about a sitcom. dealing w very niche subject matter. And so the way that this scene is “important” is as an example of wh is poss in creating resonance within th context of television, or comedy, or narrative, or art, or what have you. More things shld be like that. I don’t know, I just felt like adding this clarificatn. Donate to children living in war-torn Sudan here.

-lakonislate: Communication. Actually saying things you mean out loud and accepting that it might make you uncomfortable. That’s what I think makes this scene important.
Although of course anything most of us say ever can easily be trivialized by insinuating they’re White People Problems, or something like that (I’m looking at you, Gabe’s friend).

-re: the UPDATE… TV is a mass communication media, and, It’s ridiculous to imply that nothing it does is important unless it directly feeds starving kids or ends war. TV comedy, e.g., Stephen Colbert, affects things like society and politics, which affects the world. Daily starvation and killing are themselves just collateral damage of these larger forces. How we tell our stories is who we are.