You may have thought that masturbating in front of people who didn’t really want him to masturbate in front of them would have had a detrimental effect on Louis C.K.’s career, but it looks like you’d be wrong. Louis dropped in at The Comedy Cellar again to let everyone know that yes, he is making a comeback, this is a thing that’s going to happen. In fact, The Huffington Post reported Louis “talked about how he took a ‘really long break’ and was coming back now”
The Comedy Cellar has instituted a new policy of “swim at your own risk,” that says someone you might not like could drop in during the evening. They’re picking up the check of anyone who walks out because a comic they don’t want to see comes on stage, so we’re all covered if Larry the Cable Guy does a set, too. What this policy says to me is that even after everything that Louis C.K. has been accused of, being the place he might drop in and do a set is worth way more than paying for the dinners and drinks of anyone who might not want to stay and see him.
It took me a while to think through the morality around the subject of what Louis did and how wrong it was or wasn’t, because I do believe in Louis’s mind he thought the women he was jerking off in front of wanted to, or at least were okay with, watching him jerk off. I mean, some people want to watch people masturbate, it’s not that crazy. A friend of mine compared it to “The Implication” scene from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia and I have to admit, that comparison made incredibly good sense to me.
Comedy Cellar owner Norm (or possibly Noam, depending on who you ask) Dworman gave this explanation to The Hollywood Reporter about why C.K. was allowed back at the venue before his first drop-in appearance.
There is the matter of principle here, in my ACLU mode, which is that I don’t feel that there’s a clear standard out there in the world of when someone is supposed to be fired or denied an audience. And I don’t think anyone’s come after the theaters and stages that allow Mike Tyson to tour the country with his show, and Bill Clinton is still invited to charity events, and Monica Lewinsky disinvited. I would just like to be a platform.
And he’s probably making the right business decision. There were reports that two people walked out when Louis took the stage, but those conflict with a number of reports that no one left. I’ve mentioned before that, like Louis taking his dick out and jerking off in front of you, his comeback is going to happen if he wants it to, whether you like it or not.