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Originally Posted by Louis CK
"This is not a series" Did I say that? It's funny how when you say something by way of trying to explain a feeling you had, when you're kind of reaching for an explaination so you try a string of words on and it sounds pretty good so you write it down, then that thing becomes etched in stone, taken to be a principal that you live by. I don't say this as a complaint. It's an observation. It's been fascinating to read about the show on the internet and this mother character issue is one I expected to come up.
Okay so this show is a series. You may call it that if you want. Now what? I still have the same feelings about it. I did one mother and then I wanted to do a different one. So I decided to go ahead. Some of you got taken out of the show for the time being by the difference. It so far doesn't seem like it was a fatal blow to your confidence in the show or ability to enjoy it.
I don't know if I'll do something like that again. I might. Maybe this was a brush-back pitch. Maybe you better not dig in too much in that batter's box, all expecting to see the same people all stay the same and develop and grow on you over time.
Bobby, my brother on the show, has no basis in reality, and as much as I love that character, it's occured to me to maybe not bring him back next season. Not as in kill off his character or have him move away, but resume the series with the premise that he doesn't exist and never did. I don't know.
The Mom episode was "what if I had a mom like this" the god episode was a concoction of a lot of things, some from my life and some not. That mother WAS my mother. She called me the other day to say how accurate she felt that scene was, in terms of what she feels her religious, moral and parenting views to be. She also loved the MOM episode and didn't identify with that woman and didn't think she was supposed to.
I'm sorry guys. I guess this show, to me, is like i turn on my brain each week and show some stuff that's in it. Sometimes it's real and sometimes it's not. Some things and people I like to show again (for now) some I don't. Some I want to change because I'm showing them for different reasons from show to show. I don't have a writing staff. The network doesn't read my scripts. I don't "vette" the stories the way a traditional show does. This stuff comes right out of my gut. I work very hard on the show and the scripts are forged carefully. But I try to trust my impulses and never do anything because I think it's neccicary, if it isn't compelling. I've worked on a lot of shows where you find yourself writing and shooting things that you don't want because you feel the show "needs" them. And NOT doing things you want because you think you can't do them or it hurts the show. I refuse to do either of those things on this "series".
Series. I had a thought about that. I remember reading a book by Milan Kundera called "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting". The book reads like a collection of short stories, each with a different set of characters and settings. But In the introduction, the author explains that the book is a novel. He says that to him, a novel is a collection of related chapters that are related, put in a book in a defined order. In most novels, the chapters are related by the plot. In his they are related by theme and not by plot, but it still functions as a novel.
I didn't love the book but the idea of that stuck with me, though I forgot about it until just now.
One last thing. When I was making Pootie Tang (ugh) after I did my first cut, I was flown to HOllywood to screen it for a test audience. We showed the movie to some people and then a proffessional movie tester asked them a bunch of questions. I was sitting in the back and watching. I remember that he kept asking questions like "Did you find anything in the movie confusing? people raised their hands and sited many places they were confused. I was told that these were all problems with the movie. But I felt they should have also asked these people "Did you mind being confused by that? Were you confused about it at the end?"
I feel sometimes that tv shows and movies today are so carefully constructed that audiences are used to being coddled and they get upset if their expectations are not met. I personally would rather see something that startles me and makes me ask questions. I am REALLY pleased from what I've seen with how people have taken in this show. I am encouraged by how intelligently I"ve seen it discussed, including this discussion about these fucking mothers that I made and bothered you with. You've all reacted the way I would and I think I'd be pretty irritated if I was a viewer of this show. But I guess I think taht irritation and confusion is not such a bad thing. Let's see what happens. I got fired off of pootie tang, by the way, and the guy who took the movie over used the testing and studio notes to "fix" the movie with narration.
In this case, I"m being allowed to keep going the way I'm going.
Yes, it's a series. But don't expect... well, anything.
thanks for watching.
Louis CK
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