Louis CK's "Hilarious" to premiere on EPIX September 18th

[BillBrasky]

From Variety:

Cable channel Epix has acquired the rights to "Louis C.K.: Hilarious," which premiered at Sundance in January as that film fest's first stand-up concert film.

"Hilarious" will premiere on Epix on Sept. 18th via its cable channel, video on demand service and website. Prior to that, the film will get a limited indie theatrical release.

As part of the deal, Comedy Central will get the basic cable rights to air "Hilarious" in 2011, when the stand-up movie will also get a DVD release via Comedy Central Home Entertainment.

"Louis C.K.: Hilarious" earned strong reviews from its Sundance screening. "Hilarious," which centers on the comedian's musings on life after turning 40, was shot at Milwaukee's Pabst Theater in April 2009. Louis will soon kick off his new theater tour, "Louis C.K.: Word," on Sept. 17th in San Francisco.

[philly]

Is this going to be a lot of the material that made it on the show?

[BillBrasky]

Nope, this is a completely new hour of standup. From The Comics Comic:

None of the stand-up you're seeing on his new FX sitcom, Louie, is from Hilarious. It's from the hour he wrote in 2009.

[carrots]

I LOVE that about Louis CK, he doesnt reuse his material.

[ASR]

From his Twitter:

To be clear: Hilarious is all different material from LOUIE and WORD. Three different standup sets. One a movie, one series, one a tour.

[louisck]

Is this going to be a lot of the material that made it on the show?

I shot HILARIOUS less than a year after Chewed Up and wanted to release it right away, my goal always being to tour with a batch of material every year, record it as a special, kill it and start again.
but the airways were glutted with Chewed up and Shameless was still running on Comedy Central and Showtime. No one wanted Hilarious on cable so I had this idea to do it as a feature film and release it theatrically. I shot it on 6 RED cameras with very good lenses and thought very cinematically about it as a concert film rather than just a cable special.

then I got accepted to sundance so I had to sit on it until January, then it showed there, got good reviews, and we screwed around trying to get it into theaters but none of the distributors we talked to seemed to get that since I sell out thousand plus seat theaters in major markets, sometimes in a matter of a day or so, I should be able to sell movie tickets doing the same thing. We got some bites but everyone chickened out in one way or another.
By that time, Comedy Central, which had provided the budget for the film by fronting us the basic cable rights, had pretty much filled their schedule and wouldn't have a place for it until 2011. this made me very anxious because I wanted this shit out there. It's last years special already and it's on a shelf driving me nuts. Also to air on comedy central, it had to be cut way down. the show is 88ish minutes long. I expected that people would be able to see it in theaters uncut before it showed on CC. Comedy Central, by the way, was really great about this. Particularly a fellow there named David Bernath. He got us a lot more money than anyone else has been paying for specials, more than twice what we got to make Chewed Up, and he gave us hugely generous leeway to try to get it into theaters, including allowing us to retain DVD rights as somethign we could give theatrical distributors, to make it more attractive. he didn't have to do ANY of that but he did it because he was creatively interested in seeing this thing in theaters. So I really owe that dude a lot.
Anyway, so after the theatrical shit fell apart, along came EPIX, who offered to show it this very September, uncut, paid me and COmedy Central a decent amount and is still letting Comedy Central have it in january, and letting us keep DVD, which we are simply giving back to Comedy Central, because they know how to distribute a standup DVD, certainly better than some art house indi-film suede jacket fucks who didn't see the value in the thing anyway. Sorry.

Meanwhile we will put HILARIOUS into a few theaters around the country ourselves. I believe it will play in LA, San Fran, Chicago, Boston, New York, Austin and Philly. Not sure yet. This will happen before it is on EPIX.
After that, it'll be on EPIX, which is interesting to me, to put it on a new channel, seemingly run by adventerous and cool people who afterall came to us with ambition. FOr those who cant get EPIX, it'll be on Comedy Central and then the DVD will be out early next year.
Okay so that's HILARIOUS, which I shot in Milwaukee in I think April of 09. While all that shit was going on, I toured, mostly in Canada, and developed another hour of material. I had gotten that up to good speed around the time my show LOUIE came into existence, so instead of making another special, I put all that new material into the show. So LOUIE is what the next special wouldabeen.
I wrapped LOUIE about three months ago and have since been working on the next hour, which I'm taking on tour as WORD, starting in December.
If my show gets picked up, I suppose WORD will be the standup material for the next season. If I get cancelled, I will have a new standup special next year called WORD, probably on Al jezeera.

Nobody asked me for all this information. I'm in a room with my daughters, waiting in the dark for them to fall asleep.

to answer your question: No. None of the material from Hilarious is on the show, and the WORD tour material is all new and not on either.

LCK
http://www.louisck.com

[ASR]

Thanks for posting all that - believe it or not I was really interested in hearing what was delaying Hilarious so long. (Oh, and I already bought my tickets for Detroit!)

[Opiyum]

God damn man you sure are a workaholic. I for one am glad you are though and really hope to catch you in a theater someday. Hopefully I won't be working in October so I can make it to the Cleveland show.

[Travesty.]

to answer your question: No. None of the material from Hilarious is on the show, and the WORD tour material is all new and not on either.

Just saw you and Todd Barry in Nashville last Fri, and you guys tore the house down. Loved all of your new stuff.

[KeithTalent]

Shame theatrical distributors are such pussies/idiots. I can't imagine it'd be hard to recoup, seems to me you're popular enough and theatrical standup is novel enough these days...maybe if you'd traded 6 nice cameras for a couple 3d ones. heh. I guarantee there's some unfunny pile of shit these same fucks are gonna put out that they had to pay to make, cost 10 times as much, and will only make any money thanks to some disgusting ubiquitous marketing campaign.

Glad to hear you're putting it in theaters yourself even though I don't live in a major market. It'd be a blast to see with an audience.

[MikeDinosaur]

Come on guys. Don't pretend you don't understand where these distributors are coming from. Louie may be funny, but he's not the Notorious C.H.O.

[A_S]

A lot of stuff]

The fact that you wrote 759 words without wishing AIDS upon Todd Barry shows how much you're growing.

I've been looking forward to the theatrical version for a long time, glad to hear it will be playing in LA.

[KeithTalent]

Come on guys. Don't pretend you don't understand where these distributors are coming from. Louie may be funny, but he's not the Notorious C.H.O.

I'm not surprised they didn't take the gamble. I don't expect much. I just think they made a lousy call.

[MikeDinosaur]

I actually think Louis's funnier than Margaret Cho. Louis can you do an impression of your mom with a funny accent? Just make one up if you need to.

[BillBrasky]

After that, it'll be on EPIX, which is interesting to me, to put it on a new channel, seemingly run by adventerous and cool people who afterall came to us with ambition. FOr those who cant get EPIX, it'll be on Comedy Central and then the DVD will be out early next year.

Even if you can't see EPIX on a TV, you can watch the special on the website just by signing up for a free trial subscription. They did this recently with David Cross's "Bigger and Blackerer" and Janeane Garofalo's "If You Will"; EPIX seems to be positioning itself as the channel for good new comedy specials.

[crlygrl]

I'll try the free subscription! Super bummed I can't go to the show in DC this fall, so hopefully this will fill a void

I can't express how awesome it is to have Louis post on the board. It was always cool. But now to be able to watch Louie and then come back and hear Louis discuss it... it's the best.

[Travesty.]

Even if you can't see EPIX on a TV, you can watch the special on the website just by signing up for a free trial subscription.

Nice! Thanks for the heads up. I was kinda bummed, cause I wanted to watch the unedited version, and my cable provider doesn't have EPIX. I'll try that in Sep.

[crlygrl]

And yeah I kind of disgust myself with my fangirly butt kissing, but everyone knows I can't help it.

[Umlaut]

So pumped for the Chicago Theatre show.

[drbristol]

Louis can you do an impression of your mom with a funny accent? Just make one up if you need to.

Already done.