Louis C.K. Basically Wrote a Response to Joan Didion'south 'Bye to All That'

Comedian Louis C.K. attends SNL 40th Anniversary Celebration at Rockefeller Plaza on February 15, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Larry Busacca/Getty Images)

Photo: Larry Busacca/Getty Images

In an as-told-to for The Hollywood Reporter Louis C.K. remembers the magic of what information technology was like to movement to New York. "I felt like I was breathing the right kind of air when I moved here," he writes. He talks about his early struggles: "I wasn't making any money at the beginning." He would practise a set up at the Comedy Cellar, make $eight, which he would then use to take a cab to his next set at the Improv. He'd make $x all told: "You want to keep information technology so you walk across Central Park to get abode. You're happy if you did that every dark." But instead of feeling jaded about the daily grind, he looks back on those times with a contemplative nostalgia. The essay is in many ways, the anti-"Goodbye to All That" — the required Joan Didion essay for every young person who moves to New York. For her, the spell broke in her late 20s, when she realized that information technology was "possible to stay too long at the Fair." But for Louis it still has that magic.

He's glad that he never got bandage on SNL back in 1993.

Just I don't look back with any regrets or bitterness about my path. A [quicker] path can become you to the end quicker, and y'all don't want to get so fast. You know, I'yard and so glad I didn't get cast on SNL. I'yard way amend off because I host it now. That's a meg times cooler and more than fun because to be a castmember there or a featured role player or writer is a perilous, hard, grueling office chore — like the worst kind of office job, a 12-hour-a-24-hour interval job with no cease in sight. Equally a host, y'all have dinner with the cast and yous hang out with Lorne. Yous get the best of that guy, and he's a great New York institution. As a host, you get to just sit next to him and picket him practice a thing that very few people practise anymore. Spending a week there is one of my favorite things I get to practice.

That other fourth dimension Chris Stone called him the N-word.

So I was squirreling abroad cash — I had something like $100,000 hidden in my apartment. This was probably 2012 andChris[Rock] was over, and then I showed him where I hide my $100,000, and he looked at me and said: "You're such a north—er. You lot're such a f—in' due north—er." That's what he said, and I was pink and proud to be called that past him. I don't hibernate money in my house anymore.

Broadway magic is existent.

Every time I go to a Broadway play of whatever kind — good or bad — as soon every bit the lights leave and people come onstage and beginning to speak, I start to weep. I can't help it. The outset minute of any play feels really stupid — they're pretending the audience isn't there, and they're having this loud dialogue, and you're like, "What the f— are these people doing?" — but information technology'south then vulnerable. It's such an effort, and it'due south such a generous thing to practice, and and then I always get all choked upwardly.

On the difference between Los Angeles and New York:

At that place'southward a whole, huge [form] of people — the El Salvadorans, the Guatemalans — who make the city run, and they're invisible to people. And then when you go to L.A. and your liberal friend is rude to the valet guy or the busboy, it tin be a little shocking. In New York, everyone is and so mixed together that in that location's less of a feeling of class here. Exterior some fancy function building, you see a CEO getting his cigarette lit past a cleaning lady. Everybody is dealing with the same shit, everybody is on the subway elbow-to-elbow.

He doesn't really intendance about the awards, but he is happy to hang out with Jessica Lange.

I get to the Emmys considering at that place's just too much pressure not to become to the Emmys, and I don't want to be an asshole. Only I feel similar the awards are for everybody else because I got what I wanted: I got to accept a show on TV, and I got paid to do information technology. I'k a total winner. So all of information technology is a little goofy to me, merely, at the same time, I grew up watching the Emmys and the Oscars, and it's not lost on me. And I like being at an event like the Gold Globes and making Jessica Lange laugh for an hour. I'chiliad a bit of a starf — er, so a lot of fourth dimension I'grand simply happy to be in the same room as these people.

He makes his kids take the bus while he takes his driver.

My thirteen-year-old daughter leaves the firm at 7:15 every forenoon and takes a smelly city motorbus to school mode uptown. Information technology's like 8 degrees out, and information technology'due south dark and she's got this morn face and I send her out in that location to have a omnibus. Meanwhile, my driver is sitting in a toasty Mercedes that's going to have me to work once both kids are gone. I could send her in the Mercedes and so have it come dorsum to get me, simply I tin't accept my child doing that. I tin can't do that to her. Me? I earned that f—ing Mercedes. You better f—ing believe it.

You lot can read the full piece hither.

Louis C.K. Basically Wrote 'How-do-you-do to All That'