people have held up certain jokes of yours as being feminist. I’m thinking about “the No. 1 threat to women being men and the No. 1 threat to men is heart disease.” And then people have pointed to certain episodes of Louie, like the episode with the “fat girl” speech8 or the episode where your character stops his notreally-girlfriend from leaving his apartment and forces a kiss on her, as proof that you’re a misogynist creep. Do those discussions make you think more about how different types of people might hear your material?
No. Why would I do that? I don’t know, because you might learn something.
Everybody’s point of view is legitimate. The goal of the things I say onstage or in my shows isn’t to please everyone. My goal is not to have everyone say, “This was an excellent indictment of this bad thing.” I’m confounded by people who want that from art. “Boy, that sure showed that woman to be strong! That means that was good!” It’s so much more interesting to shed light on these things that we all argue about. We don’t have to agree on everything, and that’s okay. After I made the episode about the fat girl, I read a blog post by a young woman who was furious. She said, “I’ve been talking about this all these years and nobody gives a shit. The fact that this guy’s being carried around on people’s shoulders by some feminists makes me sick to my stomach.” And I read it and I was like, You’re totally right. I completely see that. Would that make me go, I better not touch that note again? It’s the opposite. It’s exciting to be a flash point. It’s a valid thing to have your feelings violated and hurt. Sorry, but it is. So you’re saying you have zero internal censors? You did stop saying “faggot” in your act.
Yeah, I don’t use that word anymore. But I mean, come the fuck on. How much do you want to protect each other? You discredit groups by saying they can’t be portrayed as weak. That’s a huge discredit to women to say you can’t have a woman be in a position of weakness. For a stronger person to physically assault a weaker person, there’s just no greater crime, but everyone can insult everybody. We don’t get along— that’s the human race. The idea of America is that we can be mean to each other. I really hate that line of thinking, the idea that we just need to accept meanness.
But here’s the thing: Part of what’s happened with American culture is the shit we 11.
A smoking, wannabe-hip priest in sunglasses, Father Guido Sarducci rambled his way through Vatican gossip briefs and reviews of the pope’s musical efforts.
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choose to get angry about. The outrage economy. Everybody’s just such a sucker for this shit. Remember the dentist who killed Cecil the lion?9 People said, “We’re going to get that motherfucker!” There’s no humility. Nobody goes, “Jeez, I dunno anything about this. I’m going to keep my voice out of it.” I saw somebody who has 20 million Twitter followers write that the dentist should lose his business and his home and his whole life. Twenty million Twitter followers—that’s an enormous amount of influence to just go, “I am encouraging people to destroy this man’s life, and two minutes later I’m going to tweet about something completely different.” When I read that tweet I thought, I want to run into that person and say, “How’s it going?” “I’m sorry, what do you mean?” “Your campaign against that guy—how’s it going?” I mean, for you to say something that fierce about another human being, you must be like the Stephen Biko10 of activists against this one guy. But this person doesn’t give a fuck. There’s such careless outrage. I’m not an insult comedian. I’m not a person who tries to hurt people’s feelings. I don’t like downgrading people. But you’ve gotta strike out in all directions. You’re not an insult comic, but I think it’s fair to say that your work generally skews dark. What are you optimistic about? What makes you happy?
Trillions of things. I feel safe talking about dark subjects because they exist in a world full of life and beauty. Everybody who’s alive is choosing to be. You can take yourself out anytime. The whole population is a bunch of people who are choosing to keep trying. Obviously my kids and other people in my life that I love are a big part of what keeps me going, and I try to be useful to my family members. I try once in a while to call a friend and say, “Hey, what’s going on in your life? Is there anything that I can help you with right now?” Or I’ll throw influence or work at somebody who needs it. A lot of times it’s just, like, listening to a person. Life is busy. Listening is like the No. 1 thing that actually cures almost everything. A lot of times in life there’s not a solution to your situation. Sometimes something just sucks. When you’re in one of those moments where you think this is just bad, after you get it off your chest you go, “All right. I’ll be okay.” People need to be listened to. How are you feeling about your stand-up set these days? An Emo Philips joke: 13. “I like libraries. I was in one in New York, the guy was very rude. I said, ‘I’d like a card.’ He says, ‘You have to prove you’re a citizen of New York.’ So I stabbed him.”
The late-night 14. talk show ‘The Chris Rock Show’ aired from 1997 to 2000, winning one Emmy.
The best I ever was as a stand-up was 2006 to 2011. That was when I just toured all year round and made a special every year. I was dedicated and obsessed with stand-up. I was so good then. Ever since then I’ve been damned good but not as good, because I’ve been making my TV show and doing standup in the off-season. So after Horace and Pete I decided I’m not going to shoot Louie anymore, and I’m on tour now. I was developing the material in clubs constantly, going to L.A. and doing the Comedy Store twice a night. I’ve got a murderous 80 minutes of material right now. Can you explain the difference, practically, between the stand-up you were doing at your peak and what you’re doing now?
I think I’m a better comedian overall than I was back then, but back then I was better at performing. When you’re that greased up onstage, you just have a higher comedy IQ. It’s the ability to go on any stage in the country and be perfectly present and able to maneuver the set and have great timing. Some of it is being in physical shape. When you’re under pressure or strain, you get dumb, you know? It’s why I started working out in boxing gyms, because you watch a guy who’s fighting, he’s in a terribly arduous moment and he’s making intelligent choices. So to me that’s when you’re 55 minutes deep into your sixth show of the week, in your fifth city of the week. You have to be able to be great right in that moment. You have to be, “You’re not going to believe what I’m going to do next.” The audience is tired, and you have to have more energy than anyone in the room. You have to be able to control the pace. At my show last night, I was talking to myself a little bit while my mouth was moving delivering material. I was thinking, You’re going too fast. Cool it. You have plenty of time and loads of shit to say. You say that you’re a better comedian overall now. In what way?
I know how to carry a subtle idea and make it mean something. I’m doing a bit right now about the kind of person who makes the choice to teach public school. It’s just a real quiet back-and-forth. For me, that’s an evolution, because I started in the clubs in Boston, and you had to get huge laughs or you might actually get beaten up. There was always that feeling that you had to be on the balls of your feet, killing the whole time—that makes for a good 45-minute act, but you’ve got to evolve past 15. A Michelle Wolf joke: “Nothing electrifies a room more than the words ‘Hillary Clinton.’ I think it’d make a really good safe word. Then you’d know to stop but you also couldn’t keep going.”
A Barry Crimmins joke: “We have a presidential election coming up. And I think the big problem, of course, is that someone will win.”
june 13–26, 2016 | new york
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