Fuck Yeah, Louis C.K.

The comedian, also known as Louis Szekely, is the forty-something star, writer, director and occasional editor of the eponymous, double Emmy-nominated comedy Louie, which begins its second season Thursday on FX Canada.

Louis C.K. - he adopted the stage name C.K because he grew tired of people mispronouncing Szekely - admits there were plenty of hard times before he struck it lucky, if not rich, exactly, with Louie.

“I’ve had, what, two years? Probably five good years,” C.K. said, deadpan. “Before that, I had 20 years of uncertainty and suffering and ego destruction and poverty - all those things. That’ll always outweigh the good times. There’s no way I’ll ever catch up to the misery years with the good ones. It’s impossible, no matter how good it is now.

“And, of course, there’s a decline coming. It’s not like I’m going to keep doing well. That’s not in the cards.” C.K. gives himself five years of good times. Eight, tops. ”If I don’t do anything dumb or don’t get a disease or some-thing, I think it’ll be great. And then it’ll start to degenerate, like uranium.” Not that he has regrets. “I don’t regret anything,” he said, decidedly. “I’m grateful for all those years.”

Even the ones when he considered quitting. “Absolutely, I thought about quitting, yeah. But after you do standup for, like, five years, you’re kind of screwed, because you have no other skills. You can’t get other jobs. It’s like being in prison; you’re not suitable for any other career. So I couldn’t quit, even if I wanted to.

“I’m just stating basic facts,” C.K. adds. “I’m a cheerful per-son. I like living a difficult life. It’s fun. It’s really a great thing to witness your life hit-ting rocks. If you can just step aside for a second and go, ‘Oh my God, I lost everything; it’s funny; it’s interesting’ - it’s more fun than living a middling, 70-per-cent kind of life, I think.”

Louie features C.K. as a semi-autobiographical reflection of himself: a newly divorced father raising two young daughters alone in the big city. The weekly comedy is loosely structured along the lines of Seinfeld in its early years, when Jerry Seinfeld would insert moments from his standup act into the live action of a single man and his single friends hanging out in a Manhattan apartment.

Louie has touched a nerve. C.K. was nominated last summer for a pair of prime-time Emmy Awards, one for lead actor in a comedy series and one for writing. Not bad for a modestly budgeted, first-per-son comedy that bowed with little fanfare - C.K.’s start-up budget was just $200,000 - on the upstart FX cable channel in the U.S. FX has ordered a third season, which will likely debut this summer.

C.K. attributes a recent jump in attendance at his standup shows to Louie’s success, modest as that success is. ”I’m not really that famous, when you think about it. I mean, I’m not Brad Pitt or somebody like that. It’s still just a little show on FX. A huge [number] of people don’t even know it exists.

“I’m close to my audience, though. I think I have more tools in my box than other guys who might try it. Also, I know how to do this stuff. I know how to write and shoot and edit. I’m technically adept, and that helped with the website. You need a big skill set. I’ve been building one for a while. And I have some fans, from my early standup days, so that helps.

“But there are still only, what - a million people who watch this show?” About 1.6 million, actually. That’s how many tuned in to see Louie’s season finale on FX. That sounds like a lot - until you consider that Two and a Half Men regularly pulls in more than 13 million viewers on CBS.

Louie is the funnier and more accomplished program, though, judging from critics’ reviews and award nominations. Louie shows off C.K.’s insecurities and humanity with wit and style, and it appeals to his small but loyal fan base.

The second season will feature a trip to Afghanistan, in which the fictional Louie will perform for the troops, mirroring C.K.’s real-life tour with the United Service Organization (USO) in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait, in 2008. C.K. considers himself politically antiwar and a pacifist, but he admires soldiers’ sense of duty, especially when they’re assigned to conflict zones. 

“I’m terrified of Season 3 being not as good as Season 2. It keeps me up at night. I don’t sleep a lot right now. That keeps me world-weary. It’s a weird time to be an American and human. So, you know, there’s a lot to keep me depressed.”