Louis C.K. has made three appearances on Saturday Night Live, which have made for some of the funniest SNL episodes over the last three years. And every single one has featured an extended stand-up monologue with C.K. doing what he does best. It seems that he and Lorne Michaels butted heads over his second appearance however, which led to C.K. saying "f*** you" to the SNL honcho.
Slate has all the details, which come from Judd Apatow’s new book of interviews with comedians, "Sick in the Head." Slate writes that C.K. told Apatow he worked on the set harder than he had ever worked on anything in his life, wanting to do something that pushed the audience, "a really interesting monologue that’s like its own piece of performance." You can watch the performance below.
The original monologue came out to about 12 minutes. Michaels wanted him to cut it down to seven. C.K. did not appreciate this:
“It’s like meeting the president. It’s, like, very important. And [Michaels] says ‘So you did twelve minutes in the monologue. How much do you want to do on-air?’ I said ‘I want to do all twelve.’ and he goes, ‘You’re not doing twelve.’ He goes, ‘It was good but there was a lot of air in it, a lot of stopping and starting. I know there are cuts in there.’ My face turned red. I was angry. I was like, ‘Well, I don’t know. I thought it was pretty good. And fuck you.’ I was really mad. And then later this woman comes in and says, ‘Uh, we’re one minute under.’ And so I go, ‘Then I’m doing twelve.’ And Lorne turns to me and goes ‘Calm down.’ I was really insulted. He said ‘I’ll give you seven and nobody’s ever done seven.’ And I said, ‘What if it goes long? What if I go over and end up doing ten or more?’ And he goes, ‘Then we’ll know that you’re very undisciplined and unprofessional.’ And everybody laughed.”
However, once he watched playback of the dress rehearsal, C.K. ended up agreeing with Michaels, one part in particular: "I had a whole fart thing. A whole thing about farting on a baby that fucking killed, and [Michaels] was like, 'You’re winning without it. I wouldn’t do it.'"
C.K. ends up crediting Michaels for pushing him, noting, "He’s so smart, but he scared me. And I needed to go in scared."
We have no doubt that C.K. brought that same level of intensity to his third and most recent appearance last month, when he hosted the season finale. If this monologue about feminism, farts and religion got Michaels ears to perk up, we can't imagine what he thought when he heard the recent controversial monologue (see it below), which included talk of benign racism and the commitment of child molesters.
