I only watched two episodes of Louis CK’s “Horace and Pete” project before giving up on it. I recognized it as something original, but it never pulled me in enough to want to devote more time to it.
However, my curiosity has been piqued after listening to this remarkable conversation Louis had on the 700th episode of Mark Maron’s “WTF” podcast. In it, Louis opens up completely about the creative process that led to “Horace and Pete,” including how he cast Steve Buscemi, Edie Falco, Alan Alda, Aidy Bryant, and Laurie Metcalf.
He goes into great detail about what went through his mind as he wrote it, how he reserved the studio space before he even had a script, and how he managed to direct a four-camera television drama that he was simultaneously appearing in. He also explains what he said to executives at the FX network, where he was signing a new deal — while putting his “Louie” show on hiatus so he could produce other projects — but hadn’t even told them about “Horace and Pete.”
In doing so, Louis used what he had learned from distributing his own standup specials online and applied that to the ten-part “Horace and Pete” project, somehow managing to keep everything about it secret so as not to spoil it for viewers — or even allow them to know what it was before they watched it.
In this “WTF” episode, he explains how he pulled all of that off. Spoiler alert: during his conversation with Maron, Louis does reveal a couple of crucial plot points that I didn’t know — but his description of how and why they came about interested me enough to make me want to see them acted out. It sounds like he’s making a deal with Netflix to stream the show, which until then remains available only through his website.
You won’t see any of that video in this YouTube audio-only embed, but you can hear the 105-minute conversation between Mark Maron and Louis CK…