An update to the Louis C.K. post

A lot of people have been reading and commenting on the Louis C.K. post I put up yesterday. And Social Fresh also ran the post (great conferences btw, if you haven’t been a highly recommend them) ~ thanks @jasonkeith.

I kinda threw it up at first because I’m just such a huge Louis fan that I wanted to talk about this interesting thing he was doing, and I realized along the way, mostly from seeing the discussions going on around it, that this has the chance to be something much larger. We could be seeing the beginning of a disruption in the entire media business.

I just finished listening to the B.S. Report (ESPN’s Bill Simmons) podcast where Bill spends over an hour talking with Louis about his entire creative process these days.  If you want to listen to it (I recommend it, good stuff, Bill is a great interviewer), here ya go:

– Part 1 of the interview via iTunes

– Part 2 of the interview via iTunes

What struck me about this was how Louis somewhat unknowingly is becoming an entrepreneur. He’s taking the game into his own hands, producing his own content and taking most of the risk upon himself…and reaping the rewards if it pays off. He comments at one point in the interview that he now can’t ever see himself being in someone else’s production, be it a movie or special or something. Because he wouldn’t be able to control it and do it the way he wants.

This is true for most entrepreneurs. Once they get a taste of that freedom that comes in making your own decisions and being in control of their own destiny, nothing else can compare and the idea of working for someone else is out of the question.

I’ll be thrilled if this is how artists start to view the world. Louis talks about the other side of the coin where most artists currently reside. They want to create art/comedy/etc., but to get it produced and marketed they have to bend and change their product so that the people in charge of the process feel comfortable. So what you end up with is a bastardization of the original content.

REM in the early years, when they did their own thing

I’ve heard R.E.M. talk about this in the past. How when they first started they were playing the music they wanted to in any and all venues, with no pressure and no timelines. Then when they hit it big and signed their huge contract with Warner Bros., they were suddenly beholden to deadlines and pressure and their work was never the same.

Very interested to see where all this goes over the next few years…