The title of “I’m sorry, I’m not sorry”, a documentary about the Luis C.K. The scandal makes the film sound like a controversial exposé with the potential to be as controversial as the case itself. Louis CK’s off-screen infamy — his coercive and abusive ritual of masturbating in front of women, many of whom were his fellow comedians — was first revealed in mainstream media nearly seven years ago, amid the wave of reckoning that became #MeToo. I thought: Is the movie going to be about how Louis CK is now remorseful — and not remorseful? And what angle will the documentary take?
“Sorry/Not Sorry” is about Louis CK’s reaction to the scandal: his apology message that was never quite an apology; his carefully orchestrated comeback, after just nine months, via the comedy club circuit (a comeback that ultimately included winning a Grammy for best comedy album in 2022 and performing a concert at Madison Square Garden); and how he dealt with the repercussions of his behavior within his stand-up act (short version: He’s not sorry).
But all of that is covered in the final 20 minutes. The bulk of “Sorry/Not Sorry” follows the 15 years leading up to 2017. During that time, Louis C.K. was becoming the most powerful figure in stand-up comedy, launching his legendary series on FX and (offstage) indulging in his reckless behavior without fear of recrimination, because the entire comedy world was protecting him. The documentary is a New York Times production, and as directed by Caroline Suh and Cara Mones, it’s a meticulously sharp, responsible and absorbing film — an incisive study, really, of the sweep-it-all-under-the-rug culture that was firmly in place before the #MeToo revolution upended some of its foundations. But the film also raises broader questions.
Early on, we see a clip from “Charlie Rose,” in which Charlie, sitting across from Louis CK, tells the comedian that he’s been compared to Lenny Bruce and Bob Dylan, anointed a “philosopher king.” CK smiles humbly and sheepishly (he’s clearly flattered) and then says, “I’m just a comedian.” The clip made me cringe, though not just because of what we now know he was hiding. CK, by this point, had become a cultural hero, but if I can separate myself from the culture, I always found him to be a smart but fundamentally overrated comedian.
“Louie,” on FX, was greeted as the second coming, but to me it was the weekly version of an “edgy” indie film that had nuggets of squirm-inducing hilarity but insisted, in each episode, on breaking up the best part of it (its air of authenticity) with exaggeration and artifice. It straddled, annoyingly, the line between thorny reality and sitcom farce. had Had it been an independent film, it would have come out and faded away without much fanfare. But on the small screen, the show somehow passed as revolutionary popular art.
In general, I am a strong advocate of separating the art from the artist. However, part of what was highlighted after the Louis CK scandal is that, in my (admittedly minority) opinion, the reason I found him to be a talented but limited comedian was not because he was not a smart and funny man, but because he was not a very smart and funny man. because His view of the universe was very limited. I remember watching him go through a routine about getting ready to go on vacation with his family, and he describes walking around the van feeling something like, This is the last moment of pleasure and freedom I’m going to have for a week. I can get as impatient with my family as anybody, but I thought, Actually?! You don’t even like going on vacation with them? Sorry, that’s not a “typical” reaction in the mind of a fellow geek, it’s distorted. It’s the thinking of someone who is not happy with himself. And I thought: it’s absurd that he is generalizing From there, Louis CK always appears as if he’s striking universal chords in the tradition of Richard Pryor and George Carlin, but he’s actually unravelling a distorted point of view.
There’s no doubt about it, though: He was talented, he tried his best, and he wrapped his observations in a confessional aura that often resonated more than what he was actually confessing. He became the angst superstar of smart, angry white people, and he knew that his stardom protected him. After the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke, there was much debate about who knew what and when they knew it, and while it was obvious that Weinstein had been protected for years by those around him and the entire entertainment industry, I think relatively few people knew the horrific extent of his crimes.
In Louis CK’s case, his transgressions were far less extreme, but as the documentary reveals, they were incredibly well-known. The incident that became iconic occurred at the Aspen Comedy Festival in 2002, when CK invited two comedians, Dana Goodman and Julia Wolov, to his hotel room and, once there, asked them if he could take out his penis, which they initially thought was a joke. They did not consent. He stripped and masturbated, and they were horrified and paralyzed. They eventually fled, and afterwards he shouted, “Which one is Dana and which one is Julia?” That is actually a significant line, as it is a “comic” expression of the dehumanization that his compulsive ritual was really about.
People talk about everything, about everything, and especially about things like this. According to the film, Louis CK’s pattern of behavior was an open secret in the comedy world. More or less everyone knew and “accepted” it. It was just… what Louis CK did. And if you questioned it, it could end your career. Goodman and Wolov were told to shut up, and the film suggests that in Los Angeles Louis CK’s manager, Dave Becky, ousted them from potential jobs. Given the “Louie”-style TV series CK’s company was producing (for people like Pamela Adlon and Tig Notaro), he was almost like a studio head. But the world of the Internet, spilling over from the sidelines, had arrived. CK’s behavior was cited in several high-profile articles on Gawker. Comedian Jen Kirkman implicated him on her podcast without naming him. The truth was starting to surface.
It all blew up thanks to the work of Times reporters Jodi Kantor, Cara Buckley and Melena Ryzik. But that was front-page news. The film deals more intriguingly with C.K.’s incendiary, almost low-key return to the comedy world. He was able to do so by working independently, bypassing the corporate apparatus of networks and studios (which never invited him back). “Sorry/Not Sorry” meditates, smartly, on the question of how the culture should deal with someone like Louis C.K. Michael Ian Black, the thoughtful comedian who started a contentious tweet thread about it, says, “I thought, I’m not defending Louis’ actions. I’m having, in public, a conversation that I feel like men are having privately, and women, all over this country, and saying, ‘How do we deal with this? How do we welcome people back or not?’”
The Times critic Wesley Morris suggests, quite rightly, that Louis CK should have taken stock. Instead, CK treated what happened to him as simply the “exposure” of his fetish, his obsession, and while he admitted it was embarrassing, what he told his audience (this is from a comedy clip we see) is: “Everybody has their thing. I don’t know what yours is… because everybody knows mine.” As if that is The only thing that defines him is that it was all made public. Louis CK’s “problem” is that he did something very wrong, but as “Sorry/Not Sorry” reveals, part of his problem is that he still has no idea why he’s wrong. Sorry, but he’s not someone who’s making comedy out of the truth.