Louis CK is back on the scene. His accusers are underemployed and furious

“You can’t be the smart-guy comic if you’ve been stupid,” one of CK’s early victims says in the documentary Sorry/Not Sorry. “You don’t get both.” Justin Rohrlich reports

The fall and rise of Louis CK, the comedian who sexually harassed multiple women, is depicted in a new documentary, where women such as Megan Koester, pictured center, speak about how his actions hurt them (Photo on the left is by Angela Lewis for The New York Times, all others courtesy of The New York Times)

When comedian Megan Koester first tried to expose the “open secret” that superstar funnyman Louis CK was an incorrigible sex pest, she didn’t realize it would end a career in entertainment — not CK’s but, her own.

“I pretty much only make money selling garbage on eBay,” Koester explains in the new documentary Sorry/Not Sorry, out in theaters and digital downloads on Friday.

“At the end of the day, I don’t want to participate with the sort of people who are willing to just blindly ignore their morality,” Koester tells filmmakers Caroline Suh and Caroline Mones about having to abandon her comedy career. “Because I refuse to f****** participate in this s***.”

It’s a vastly different perspective than those offered onscreen by male fans at CK’s sold-out Madison Square Garden show last year. The 56-year-old mounted a successful comeback following harrowing accusations from numerous women who said the comic, a father of two girls, had openly masturbated in front of them without permission.

“We all make mistakes,” says one.

“You know, I don’t mind,” says another. “Whatever.”

“You know, I think everybody lives with a certain amount of hypocrisy,” a third man says with a shrug. “And this is the amount that I’ve allocated for myself.”

To Koester, the outcome makes little sense.

“Not only did he get away with it, he’s like, rubbing it in all of our faces,” she says in a segment seen in the film’s trailer but not the final cut.

The imbalance of power between CK and his victims is put on stark display in the 90-minute doc, clearly demonstrating the pitfalls, uncertainty, and negative effects on the lives of women who report wealthy, successful men for alleged sexual improprieties. And although CK admitted to the vile behavior, saw his eponymous sitcom pulled from the FX network, and said he would step back from the comedy world to atone for his sins, his career is arguably just as hot as it’s ever been.

“It’s not a film that is trying to provide answers,” Suh said in a Q&A provided by the filmmakers. “In the most basic sense, it’s meant to get the audience to think about how we treat each other versus how maybe we should treat each other.”

Comedian and accuser Megan Koester now sells “garbage” on eBay to make a living while Louis CK sells out arenas. (Courtesy of The New York Times)

CK was dumped by his management over the accusations. Reached by phone, CK’s assistant told The Independent that she would pass along a request for comment and have CK respond if he was interested. (He never called back.)

The sex harassment allegations against CK emerged publicly in 2017 following a New York Times investigation. The man who was once called “a sort of philosopher king” by public television host Charlie Rose, another noted sexual harasser, quickly went dark. After disappearing for a short spell, CK then kick started his career again — and male fans came out in the thousands to support him.

“So he steps back, for nine months or whatever it was, and people are saying, ‘That’s not long enough,’” hypermasculine podcaster and UFC host Joe Rogan is seen saying in a clip. “… So what should someone do?”

Even comic Michael Ian Black, who would later criticize CK for how he handled the situation, tweeted in August 2018: “Will take heat for this, but people have to be allowed to serve their time and move on with their lives. I don’t know if… people will have him back, but I’m happy to see him try.”

CK began touring more and more, playing to packed houses night after night. Fans lapped up CK’s act, which mined the charges against him as comedic fodder.

“He talked about the jerking off thing for like, 30 minutes,” a man tells an interviewer outside a Toronto arena. “It was hilarious.”

The broader public apparently agreed. As the film points out, CK’s website, which he set up to directly sell his performance videos online, took in $1 million in its first 12 days.

In a performance clip included in the documentary, CK says to one adoring crowd, “You all have your ‘thing.’ … You’re so fucking lucky that I don’t know what your thing is. Because everybody knows my thing… Obama knows my thing. Do you understand how that feels?”

By way of explanation, CK goes on, “I like jerking off. I don’t like being alone. That’s all I can tell you… I’m good at it, too. If you’re good at juggling, you wouldn’t do it alone in the dark. You’d gather folks, and amaze them.”

“I like jerking off. I don’t like being alone. That’s all I can tell you,” Louis CK says in the documentary “Sorry/Not Sorry." (Courtesy of the New York Times)

TV writer and producer Jen Kirkman, an early CK victim, says in Sorry/Not Sorry that she was shocked by the choice of material.

“Wait, what?” she remembers thinking, later noting that going public with her accusations against CK all but ensured the abuse is now and forever her “thing.”

She resents how CK sold crowds on his foul actions. “You can’t be the smart-guy comic if you’ve been stupid. You don’t get both,” Kirkman said.

Writer-actress-comic Abby Schachner describes a discomfiting interaction with CK in the early days of her comedy career. The Chicago native says she called CK, who she respected greatly, and invited him to her first solo show. However, she says the conversation quickly veered off-topic, with CK hijacking the back-and-forth by telling Schachner how “cute” she was, and began listing the things that turned him on sexually.

It was obvious to Schachner that CK was masturbating on the other end of the phone, but said she was too shaken to ask. When she again inquired of CK about coming to her show, Schachner says he “kind of quickly skedaddled, like, ‘Yeah, I’ll see, I’ll be really busy.”

“I just felt duped when I got off the phone,” Schachner says in the film. “I moved back to Chicago a short time after that. My dad had just died, and I was a bit broken. So I hid for a couple years.”

In 2009, CK reached out on Facebook to Schachner, who by then had returned to Los Angeles, and semi-apologized for what he had done. He asked if she would get together with him to talk, and the two met at the famous Canter’s Deli in West Hollywood. An apparently empathetic Schachner asked CK if he “had a problem,” since she had subsequently heard about two others who had endured similar experiences with him. CK said no, according to Schachner, who recounted CK then launching into a sob story about how everybody made fun of him. “He made himself a victim in that dynamic,” she said.

Louis CK has mounted a lucrative comeback without having fixed his issues, which his accusers find troubling. (Angela Lewis for The New York Times)

CK “never talked about the repercussions for the women,” reporter Milena Ryzik of The New York Times says. “But he talked a lot about the repercussions for himself.”

In 2021, CK, who declined to participate in the documentary, launched the “Sorry” tour, which featured a stage backdrop of massive, lighted block letters spelling out “SORRY.”

This, according to Michael Ian Black, was “just such a big middle finger” to everyone who had been wronged by CK

“You’re pissed at all the people who got mad at you for jerking off in front of people?”  Black asks. “Like, why are you mad at them?”

Far from being “canceled,” as some have tried to claim, CK won a Grammy in 2022 for Best Comedy Album, and was again nominated the following year.

“Cancel culture for me was, it was all a ruse,” comic Aida Rodriguez says in Sorry/Not Sorry. “Homophobia, transphobia, racism, misogyny—none of it went away… People are making money, money, money doing it. So what’s the cancel culture? … The people who love Louis CK are still there.”

Says Koester, “He came back, he learned nothing, he didn’t say anything profound about the experience.”

This article was amended on 23 July 2024 as it previously conflated Abby Schachner with Megan Koester on three occasions.