Hilarious (album)

Hilarious is a concert film by comedian Louis C.K., as well as his third album, containing the audio of the conert recorded at The Pabst Theater in Milwaukee and released on January 11, 2011 by Comedy Central Records.^[1]

Background and development

After the airing of his second hour special, Chewed Up. Louis C.K. launched his Hilarious tour in the fall of 2008, where he continued his trend of ditching all the material of his previous effort and began performing with a brand new hour.^[2] The themes and subjects include C.K.'s life now living post-divorce, kids, and numerous accounts of social criticism such as the famous, "Everything's Amazing & Nobody's Happy" routine (featured on the album as "Cell Phones and Flying") which he had done in conversation on the October 1, 2008 episode of Late Night with Conan O'Brien resulting in a viral frenzy after being posted to YouTube and other media outlets; it has been seen over 4 million times.^[3] In reference to the appearance and internet attention a writer for Vanity Fair praised his honesty saying:

"Louis C.K. has slowly been evolving from a dependably funny stand-up to the comedy lovechild of Bill Hicks and George Carlin. [...] If you don't find yourself nodding along with C.K. in fierce agreement, and even occasionally pumping the air with a raised fist salute, you're either dead inside or a member of that “crappiest generation” C.K. was talking about. Somehow, Louis managed to do something even Obama has had a difficult time pulling off lately: Finding the silver lining of our nation's ongoing economic collapse. In less than five minutes, C.K. made a convincing case that capitalism's death knell might not be such a bad thing after all. Sure, it could mean donkeys will become our primary source of transportation, but it could also lead to the triumphant return of rotary phones and manual credit card machines. O'Brien, which first aired in early October and has been making the rounds on YouTube and other viral video Web sites ever since."

—Eric Spitznagel, "Starvation Can Be Character Building", Vanity Fair interview^[4]

While on his tour, he also landed a deal to shoot a pilot for FX; featuring a loosely autobiographical depiction of his life as a single dad living as a comedian in New York City. Soon after, the show was then placed for an order of 13 episodes requiring a new hour of material aside from the hour written for the Hilarious tour. Louis stated on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast that his 4th hour went into the show but was performed with the Hilarious material on the same tour.

Production

At the end of the tour he filmed the material as his third one-hour special at The Pabst Theater in Milwaukee during April 2009, with Louis himself serving as director and editor. It was filmed as a concert special expected to be screened in movie theaters, which was done limitedly in select cities such as; Austin, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C..^[5]

Track listing

DVD

Hilarious is also available on DVD and it is completely uncensored. The DVD was shown at Sundance and was received extremely well.

Reception

Hilarious was praised by critics, with Punchline Magazine writing an extensive review on C.K.'s performance saying, "From each new hour of C.K. material, we’ve come to expect an emotionally rich, soul-baring performance; Hilarious gives us exactly that.... In the end, Hilarious will be remembered as one of the strongest stand-up comedy performances in the history of the art."^[10]

Chart Positions

References