Making the New Hour with Louis CK: The Elvis '68 Setup

• 45:13Louis CK wanted Tim to do a club set without a theme, just murder an hour like he's on the road.
• 45:34Tim styled the special after Elvis's 1968 Comeback Special, building a 10-by-10-foot stage with the audience surrounding him.
• 46:00The stage setup was almost in-the-round but more of a square, recreating that intimacy where people can see each other's faces.
• 46:58Tim hates having specials because you're doing it on cue, whereas live performance has genuine stakes.
• 47:17A woman in the audience passed out 20 minutes into the first show, stopping the performance and throwing Tim off.
• 48:05They didn't do this for ten thousand dollars at a club; they made something special and put it on Louis's website without asking a middleman.
• 49:05Tim shot in Denver at a big theater but doesn't want to do that again, thinking smaller next time might work better.
• 49:30Tim's done specials at the Village Underground and here; theater performances are different because he can't see people's faces and ends up doing more crowd work.
• 50:31Louie's independence means no network notes and the freedom to call the special whatever he wants—Tim pitched "Remember AIDS" as a title.
• 51:05Streaming services and networks are losing money and will eventually need to make profit-driven decisions, so the era of making garbage might be ending.
• 51:29Tim contrasts old publicity tours set up by publicists with shooting the shit with friends on a podcast at 11 PM, which is easier and reaches thousands.
• 52:00Tim jokes that he might have shit his pants during the conversation.

TampaLouis C.K.Mike CaltaVillage UndergroundDenverCoastal creativesRound RockElvis's 68 Comeback SpecialRobert Kelly