Jim Gaffigan prefers reach over money. Sure Jan.

Topics include Louis CK on selling standup specials directly to fans and his current career status compared to pre-2017. Louis talks about his secret superstar status and the desire to stay connected with fans directly. Stephen Colbert discusses his transition from his Colbert Report persona to his current role and the nuances of performing as himself. Colbert and Jim Gaffigan talk about their views on comedy distribution and the evolving landscape of late-night and streaming platforms. The script includes additional commentary from Jeff Dye on diversity in comedy and Leanne Morgan's sitcom success. It concludes with Fred Armisen's honor at the Dallas Video Fest with the Ernie Kovacs Award.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Caloroga Shark Media. Hi there, Johnny mat with your Bailey
Comedy News. The Wall Street Journal asked Louis ck about
when he started selling stand up specials and tickets to
fans directly, which came in handy when the entertainment world
cut ties with Ck. They were curious. Was that the

(00:24):
business equivalent of being a doomsday prepper? Louis C. K said,
It's not the way I looked at it. I got
to be a top guy all of a sudden. If
I put a show on sale, it sold out, didn't
matter where. That's an incredible thing to experience, and I'm
really curious about the way things work. So I thought,
I'm gonna perch here. How could I benefit the fans
and get with them more directly? With the special I released,
which was live at the Beacon Theuter back in twenty eleven,

(00:44):
Ck said, I just wanted them to be able to
click and watch with a tiny bump of commerce five bucks,
and it was like a million dollars in a week.
I never had a million dollars before. It was just crazy.
And then all of a sudden, I also had that
email list. These are the premium leads. The entertainment industry
has gotten really confusing and bye. There's a lot of
fear based prohibition now and weird rules. But I don't
have to live by any of those. I'm in a

(01:05):
little bit of a close circuit. There's a lot of
people that don't know I'm working. I sold out Madison
Square Garden and about one hundred thousand people bought the
live stream. Was a huge night, but it was like
a secret something kind of amazing about being a secret superstar.
The Journal asked if he wishes the TV show Louis
were easier for people to rewatch or discover. Ck said,
it's on my website and people buy it steadily. Would
I like it to be on a platform or something, sure,

(01:26):
but that ain't up to me. Is Ck anywhere close
to his twenty seventeen earning level. Louis said no, no, no.
I was making stupid money and the things people were
saying about me were bigger than reality, and I didn't
know how to handle it. Nobody does. Then that evaporated,
and now I'm just more connected to just getting paid
for what I do. If I can keep writing novels,
I don't think I'll tour at this level. I really
love my life now I didn't used to, and going
on the road takes me away from that life. So

(01:47):
I think I'll take a long break after this tour,
and if I come back to it, I'll come back
to it in a smaller way. GQ asked Stephen Colbert
prior to The Late Show. You played a character for
a long time. How has it been spending the last
ten years as yourself? Colbert explained, Yeah, it's pretty close.
I mean, it's performance persona. There are times when it's
very close to me, especially if there's something that cannot
receive a joke. There are things that will not receive

(02:10):
the matrix of our desire to do comedy. And I
choose not to talk about tragedy on my show because
I think that's sacred. But there are things that are
unavoidable that are happening in our country, and because I
talk about what's happening in America today. I don't generally
say or do things I don't mean on the show
unless I'm in character, like in a sketch. Whereas that
the Colbert arepoort was almost nothing. Basically it was Catholic
and Lord of the Rings were the only two things
that we had in common. I get that I was

(02:31):
talking with one of the trivia guys recently about this,
and also I talk about this with my college class
a lot. The Johnny Mick persona that you're listening to
right now, for one, has a certain delivery. I don't
speak like this and normal I'm not like at trivia night,
like hey, Glenn, should we get a beer? Like this
isn't the way of talking. It'd be like you want another?
One would be how I would normally speak. Professor McDermott

(02:53):
is also a bit of her performance. I have to
try and keep college students entertained for two plus hours.
So I got what Colbert is there. It's, you know,
an exaggerated version of your real self. He was asked
how he looks back on the Stephen Colbert character from
The Colbert Report. He said, finally, I mean, it was
enjoyable to do. A lot of people thought you couldn't
sustain it, and I always thought I could because a
mask is such a gift for me, at least as
a performer, because really all my training in my entire

(03:16):
career until I did that show was as an actor.
And we had a bible for the character. We kept
a running bible. What does he believe? What does he
not believe, what's his back history, what's the relationship with
other people. We were writing it as this ongoing narrative
where nothing we did should be contradicted by other things
we did for that character. I'm gonna jump in there too.
So when I ran the Raw Dog comedy channel at Sirius,

(03:37):
the station voice was Satan. It was my production guy,
Saldo Leo, using a voice processor, so it dropped his
voice down and it was like serious, what O four?
He had used the Satan character at a promo and
I liked it, and I'm like, let's make that the
station voice. But here we also had a writer's guide
or a bible about it. The way I wrote the
character was there was nothing satanic about it. As we

(04:01):
wrote the character, Satan was a guy with a deep
voice who sure he's the devil, but the only reason
he's working with us on rowd dogg is because we
pay well. And he thought everything we did was stupid.
So sometimes the bosses would make us promote things. I
remember one time we had to promote Oprah Winfrey Radio,
which I didn't think there was much of a crossover
with the raw Dog audience. Like if rowd Dog was

(04:23):
a person, raw Dog would have been classic Bill Burr,
not the current version, the young angry version that would
have been rawd dogg It had come to life, so
the satan character, for example, promoting Oprah Winfrey Radio would
get about two thirds of the way down to the
mandated copy and just be like oh and throw out
a piece of paper, and sal would record the piece
of paper hitting the waste basket and then just leave

(04:44):
dead air. And that was the way we handled things.
GQ said, I had forgotten so recently. There was a
moment when people thought you, Stephen Colbier and John Stewart
were going to save the republic somehow, Colbert said, I
promise you we did not share that feeling, especially when
reflecting back on the Rally to Restore Sanity slash March
to Keep Fear Alive. He was doing the rally to
restore sanity. I was doing the March to keep Fear alive,

(05:05):
and I liked to remind him that I won. We
kept fear alive. Switching topics, what comedians is Colbert into?
I celebrate all of them because I love comedy. I'm
a huge fan of Dave Chappelle. I love Kat Williams.
I guess I should have started a podcast now. The
other day I told you Stephen Colbert said he would
not do a podcast. In this interview, Who's asked would
he consider doing another podcast? He said, I would, and

(05:26):
I'd love to do one with my daughters. I've got
funny kids. My baby's twenty years old. She doesn't want
to be in stand up but if she comes out
on stage, people throw their purse in the air. She's
got something and people beg to see her in videos
and all that. She likes money, so she might do
a podcast with me if it meant money. So yesterday,
was it yesterday or the day before where I told
you write this down? Steven Colbert will to another podcast.

(05:46):
You wrote it down right, Thank you, You're welcome. Friday
waxed Jim Gaffigan's car. Jim, you've done eleven stand up specials.
How has the press too evolved over time? Jim said,
there's still the power of the late night shows. Some
of that is prestige, but a lot of is that
the clips that come out out in those appearances, whether
you're on the Tonight Show or Kimmel. Notice he's not
doing NBC twelve thirty. Make NBC twelve thirty great again.

(06:07):
But obviously the power of podcasts is significant, and you
end up getting very strategic about how you place these things.
Even the outlet for comedy specials always moving. I had
two specials on Comedy Central, then I did one on
my website. Then I did a couple on Netflix, a
couple on Amazon, and one on Hulu, which, as listeners
to the show know, is where you go when you're
on your way down. Sorry, Jim, sorry to break it
to you. It's always moving. Is Apple going to get

(06:27):
into the business, Is Ellison going to buy Hbo? And
then they're going to compete with Netflix. It's constantly changing,
so you have to guess ahead. But in some ways
the powerhouse now might be YouTube. That doesn't take anything
away from how important Netflix is or their paychecks, but
comedians have become so successful by posting their specials on
YouTube that it can actually allow them to go to Netflix.
Jim was asked, besides eyeballs and money, what are the

(06:49):
metrics you weigh when choosing which distributed partner? With time out?
Here's who he chooses money. I guarantee you money, Jim says,
I see a special as harvesting crops. Money. You always
want to be expanding your audience money. If I'm going
to Baltimore, Denver every two years, I don't expect that
the people who enjoy my stand up are coming every
two years. That's not realistic. Some of them are busy,
some don't have disposable income. You always want to be

(07:09):
expanding the audience that enjoice your comedy. So when I
first went to Amazon Money, I knew they had to
reach that at that time. Netflix didn't. With Hulu Money.
I knew there were viewers who consumed a ton of
stuff there, So why not spread the wealth money. It's
easier for me to do that than someone like Dave Chapelle,
who's getting a huge check he doesn't have to factor in.
Maybe I can get more people. Stop, Jim, stop stop
stop stop stop stop. You mean to tell me that

(07:31):
if I don no Amazon Prime goes Hey, Jim New
Special twenty bucks and Netflix goes thirty bucks, You're picking
Amazon Prime get lost. Jim. What excite you about the future,
he said, It's an exciting time for creative people. I
know things are scary, but I think that translates to
a certain independence. Creative. People who are self starters are
gonna be fine. Most incredibly, Jude didn't promote his bourbon

(07:51):
in any of that. I remember that Jeff Dye guy,
he was on Joe Rogan's show. Jeff Dye said, I'm
sympathetic to the things female comics have to go through through.
Then Dian Rogan started talking about de Ei style mandates
when in the field. Joe Rogan said, they've literally said
we have too many white male comics. Jeff Didye said,
I've heard it my whole career. Yeah, I mean, I

(08:13):
don't book comedy shows. What are people really saying? No, no, no,
we have too many white male comics. Because I don't know.
I pay attention to the comedy scene, and there seemed
to be a lot of white male comics. No. Jeff
Dye said, someone comes out and goes, listen, if you're
a straight white guy, you better be real different. It's Boston,
we're all straight white guys. That kind of hurt my
feelings a little bit. What does that imply about my circumstances.
Apparently an agent told Jeff Die The agent was praising

(08:36):
one of the agent's other clients. Apparently, the agent told
Jeff die he has all these great things that make
him interesting in the industry. I think you're gonna have
to reinvent yourself. Rogan said, that's just Hollywood. We don't
do that in Texas. In the Mothership, it's a meritocracy.
And because it's a meritocracy, it's very diverse. You got
a lot of women in the lineup. You got all
kinds of people. Rogan said. The vast majority of comics

(08:57):
at my club are left wing. They are artists. I'll
tell you who's got a great agent or pr team.
Leanne Morgan, her whole team gets it done now. She
was on the Today Show the topic how her show
Leanne was renewed for second season. Leanne said, Jerry Seinfeld
called me the day came out. He said, you have
a sitcom with your name on it, which is unheard of.
You were in there with Bob Newhart, Mary Tyler Moore,

(09:18):
Lucille Ball. All right, tap the breaks, I mean, yes, congratulations,
very successful. What eight episode season one? Can we tap
the breaks before we start comparing you to Lucille Ball.
I mean, for example, Richard Lewis had a show called
Anything but Love that got more than a year. We
don't talk about that one much. So before we put

(09:39):
you on the Pantheon with New Heart, Mary Tyler Moore
and Lucille Ball Tap the Breaks, Jerry rude As told Forbes,
I would never call myself veggie. I think any comedian
that refers to themselves as edgy or uncancellable putting these
things on themselves you see a lot in America. I
think they're in trouble as an artist anyway, And those
guys are usually the first to fold. In my experience,
comics just keep writing jokes, and you call us what

(09:59):
you feel the freedom to call us. We're just thinking
about the next show. So no, I wouldn't call myself
any of those things. It's not my privilege, it's yours.
I don't think controversy is adding any currency in art.
I don't. I think it's a trap. Then you're constantly
going to be chasing that. But I also don't think
you can predict what'll get you into controversy. It's the
thing you never thought of. Fred Armison will be honored
with the Ernie Kovacs Award at Dallas Video Fest today

(10:20):
at the Texas Theater in Dallas. The Ernie Kovacs Awards,
introduced in nineteen ninety seven, honors television's greatest visionaries. Past
recipients include Joel Hodgson, Al Franken, and Terry Gilliam. Fred
Armison said, I'm absolutely honored to be part of Ernie
Kovac's world in any way, and that is your comedy
news for today. I'll meet you back here tomorrow