Name: Louis C.K.'s First Book "Ingram" is Special
Uploaded: 2025-09-19T17:02:19.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Louis C.K.'s First Book "Ingram" is Special' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-09-19. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Louis C.K.'s First Book "Ingram" is Special' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-09-19. Transcript available.

This is my, this is a hard, because that's a.
No, you brought me Ingram.
I brought you a hard cover of Ingram.
Let's go.
It's an inscription, but just don't read it out loud.
Okay, I'm going to say, okay.
Yeah.
I'm going to say that.
Dude, thank you so much, man.
Yeah.
Yeah, I read this.
You sent me, and I still have it inside.
I have, you sent me like, it was in this green kind of folder that was really
cool.
And it reminded me of like, kind of like, something that meant something like
25 years
ago, 20 years ago, you get a script and it would be like, and it would be in
something,
you know, it'd be like in this sort of like green folder.
Yeah.
It was professional.
Binder, yeah.
Yes, it was a binder.
Yeah.
And you gave it to me like that, and you let me read this whole book, dude.
Well, you read a really early version.
Yep.
And it took me two months to read it because I was like, I don't know what was
going on.
I was probably, I don't know, who knows, taking breaks to touch my body
probably.
But it was awesome.
And every time I came back to it, dude, it was just fascinating.
Thanks, man.
And it's a book about, well, it's a book about a boy who's kind of neglected,
and then he
has to take on the world himself.
Is that right?
I would say, yeah.
Yeah.
It's about a boy who grows up on a, that's what it looks like, on a farm, just
a shit
farm.
Yeah.
And, um...
And he lives in a cage, or in a...
Well, he just lives outdoors.
His parents don't let him sleep in the house.
Got it.
And he sleeps in the shed, and he just sits on the porch steps where the
animals are.
His father, it's one of these farms, his father's got like one pig, he's just
trying
to get a little extra.
Yeah.
And, uh, his parents are very overwhelmed, and his father one day tells us, uh,
the bank
comes to over, take the house.
They give him a few days.
So the father tells the mother to slaughter all the meat, and he goes on the
horse and says,
I'm gonna sell this horse, and I'll come back.
And he never, he just never comes back.
Yeah.
So the kid's left with his mother, who's just so weak.
And, uh, she just tells him, uh, you gotta, you gotta go.
And he's like 10.
And she tells him, uh, I can't, your, your, your luck's worse here than it
would be out
there.
Wow.
So, uh, and she's just too hollowed out to overcome what's going on with her.
And, uh.
And she probably thinks the best thing she could do to save him would be to
send him off.
Get him out there and let him learn how to start taking care of himself.
So all she tells him is stay alive any way you can.
That's like the, all the advice he's given.
And, uh, he just hits the road.
And I started writing it, and I, I didn't know, it's not, I, I, it's the first
novel
I ever wrote.
I wanted to write novels when I was a kid.
That was like the first thing I really wanted to be.
Yeah.
And then I just took so many drugs that I feel like I burnt my brain out, and
it's only now
really recovering.
Is that true you're saying that?
I feel that way a little bit.
I used to feel that way.
But, um.
Were you using opioids or whatever?
When I was a kid, I was doing a lot of, um, smoking a shit ton of pot.
Oh, yeah.
And we took a lot of acid and mescaline and stuff like that, too.
And I don't think that hurts you.
But, uh.
Not at all.
It does take out the linear of your thinking a little bit.
But, uh.
But, um.
But your life got busy, too, then.
Yeah.
And then I became a comedian, which I always thought was like just, it's a free
form, scatter
shot, verbal art.
So I always felt like I could handle, it was what I could handle, you know?
But I wanted to be a writer, you know?
And then I wrote television.
But writing TV and movies is, is more like a blueprint.
You're, you're, it's technical writing.
Here's what needs to happen when we shoot this.
But actually writing something that's meant to be read is what I really wanted
it to do.
And, um.
God, so cool.
Yeah.
So I started writing short stories a few years ago and I got really back into
it.
And when, when Ingram kind of like came into my head, I just had this ritual of
sitting
down every day and asking him like, what happened to you?
And he, and it was just a story that just kept coming.
Asking the child, the character?
Yeah, yeah.
Like what happened?
And I felt like I was taking care of him by like taking an honest account,
trying to
just be honest and not trying to achieve anything in writing it or trying to,
you know
what I mean?
Or be impressive.
I just wanted to be, I just want to hear the voice and see what happened.
And, and I worried about him every day cause he has a hard, it's a hard life
that he lives.
Yeah.
But I learned from him because he kept like just being curious and reporting
when it stinks,
but not complaining.
Yeah.
I mean, there's times there's, he takes on some abuse a couple of times and I
was like,
God, it's like you like, yeah, I mean, there's parts, especially toward it.
Like the later parts of the book.
So harrowing some, you're like, God, why can't he, why doesn't he know better?
Yeah.
Yeah.
He's, he's, he's just simple.
I mean, it's not simple.
Like, um, uh, like mentally challenged.
He just hasn't had any.
Like Dennis Rodman or whatever.
Or who else I was going to say, that's not fair.
Or no, somebody else.
I mean, Dennis Rodman is anything but simple.
You're right.
That's a great, you're right.
Complex dude.
Yeah.
He's a fucking Rubik's cube.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
All the stickers are different.
There's not even one color is the same.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Even one of those like Indian kids couldn't put that guy.
Yeah.
I know.
Forget it.
Yeah.
That was a bad choice.
But, um, but yeah, dude, there was times you're like, ah, you feel for him that
much.
And you did such a great job of making me feel for him.
Oh, thanks.
I can't tell like how I got to know him so good as I'm reading it.
Well, I, I guess, uh, I don't know for boys, it's this thing of getting thrown
out into
the world a little bit.
Mm-hmm.
Um, I, I was alone a lot as a kid and out in the street, just trying to figure
out what
life is.
And you just become, you're kind of a, a boy is kind of a microcosm of a human
ape turning
into a human being.
You know what I mean?
Like adapting.
Evolution's right there.
Yeah.
Evolution from the first day of life, especially if you're kind of left alone,
if you spend
a lot of time alone as a boy, you're just catch as catch can.
And then you go, oh, I guess that's what this is like.
Right.
And, uh, you, some things you get strong at and some you don't.
And, uh.
And some things you learn from the worst influences too.
It just happens to be the influence that was passing through town or that
stopped and
rolled its window down.
It's kind of crazy the way you can get influence.
That's kind of what happens to him in some ways, huh?
Yeah.
Like there's this one part where he's got, uh, he's been working on a farm, um,
like just
pulling up corn and he makes money in dimes.
I know just cause it's the first currency that he learned to respect was a 10
cent dime.
So he makes them pay him in dimes and he has, he hides them under a tree.
And when he decides to leave the farm, he digs them up and he falls asleep in
his cabin.
And there's this, he wakes up and there's this guy there about to steal his
money.
And Ingram at this point has a little knife and he's, he's thinking he's going
to have to defend
himself.
You know, he's going to have to stick this guy, but he, he, he's trying to
figure out cause he's
never been taught.
Is it okay to actually harm somebody for money?
Like, is it, it to, to defend yourself is one thing, but to defend this thing.
And, um, and then it occurs to him that the guy might be a little scared, even
though he's
bigger than him, even if it's a kid, like it's not easy to beat the shit out of
a kid.
Right.
Like it's no small thing.
So they're, yeah, they're resilient kids survive.
I mean, you're going to go through something.
So, so Ingram says to the guy, uh, why don't we split it?
And the guy goes, I don't have to split it with you.
I can just take it.
And he goes, yeah, you can, but it's going to be trouble.
I'm going to give you a hard time.
I'll split it with you now.
And by it's my money, but I'll give you half of it if we could just split it.
And then they look at it and neither of them know how to count.
So they got that problem.
But I didn't know where it was going.
I got to this moment in it where they're in this standoff and I was like, what's
his solution?
But by following his logic and in the way he looked at life without having been
taught,
he found solutions that I just came to me naturally, um, that I wouldn't have
found in life.
Do you know what I mean?
You just get taught things like you got to defend, you got to, anybody fucks
with you.
You have to hurt them.
Right.
You do, you know, let's split the difference.
Yeah.
Split them out.
I'll take half.
I'll take half.
I'll take half and nobody has to throw a punch.
I stay alive.
And also I don't have to feel the pain of if I stabbed you and if I shouldn't
have.
That's right.
Which can be just as harrowing.
Of course.
You got to walk around in life knowing you stabbed somebody for a hundred
dollars.
Yeah.
Oh, dude, it was, there's a lot of great parts, man.
It's honestly, bro.
It's awesome.
It was so much fun to read.
It reminded me of like, I mean, this sounds crazy, but it reminded me of like a
real book.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I feel the same way.
To me, it's, it still doesn't add up to me or make sense that I wrote a book.
I grew up in a world of books.
You look at a book, you're like, well, nobody, that's somebody else.
Yeah.
Somebody else can do that.
Not me.
And I've tried, I've written short stories and things that have sputtered out.
When I got to the end, like when I, when the publishers, I got a publisher,
this place,
Ben Bella.
Simon & Schuster, is that you're with?
Yeah.
Simon & Schuster is distributing it.
Okay.
But the publisher is a company called Ben Bella out of Texas.
Really nice people.
And when I started working with them and they were going through the book and
the editorial
part, they, they said it was kind of curious that I say the end, because it's
like a
Grimm's fairy tale.
Like nobody does that anymore.
But I asked to keep it because that's, to me, it was crazy that I got there.
Yeah.
I couldn't believe I got to the end.
And I was just like, the day I finished this, I was like, I wrote a fucking
novel.
And, uh, you know, if I wasn't me with a little bit of sense that I could
probably sell something,
I don't know that it gets out.
I have no idea.
Um, and everybody that's right, I haven't, I haven't had anybody read it that
hates me.
So I don't know if it's good, but, uh, you know, I don't know.
Folks can buy it.
It's yeah.
It was great.
It, I know it comes for, it's, you can pre-order it now.
Yeah.
September 20th, 20th.
Not November.
It's coming out in November, mid November.
Okay.
Uh, but you can pre-order.
It's good if people pre-order it.
Cause then they'll, they'll print more.
Put the ranks up.
Yeah.
Get it up there.
Get it up.
And look, I'm not even joking guys.
Like I, you know, I like to read.
I really, it like, especially if for like a young man, like, um, if you've had
neglect
in your life or you wonder like how a child would start to absorb the world, um,
with not
even, not even being taught how to be much of a sponge in a way, kind of like,
I mean,
it's just fascinating.
And it was, it was, it took, I was just right there in it.
I was right there in it with him.
It takes place in Texas, right?
Yeah.
Oklahoma, Texas or something.
Texas.
And so like, yeah, he's just like walking along the highway and these car, like
things
are, cars are badly, things he's never even seen.
He's never seen any of it.
It's all fucking great.
Yeah.
He calls the pavement hard black dirt.
Cause he doesn't really know what, cause he grew up barefoot in the dirt and it
amazed
me.
I was like, Oh shit, somebody can do this.
I think, I think that was probably the, cause like, you know, you and I know
each other
and I knew that I know like your comment and I know that.
And then I, I, I, uh, I've gotten to know you some as a person.
But then to see that somebody can make this and it's a real fucking book.
I have a lot of friends that have made some okay books.
Right.
You know what I'm saying?
I'll buy them.
I'm not reading them.
Yeah.
But this, I was like, well, I love doing it.
I wrote another one.
I just finished a second one.
And, uh, if I can make that what I do, I'm going to make that what I do.
Like I see in the, I mean, whatever, when you get a vision of what you want
your future
to be, you might get 40% of it and that's okay with me.
But what I like is the idea of having kind of like a nice cruising altitude,
standup comedy
performing and writing novels.
Cause I really love doing it.
Um, and now that I wrote one and the second one was a lot, it took me much
longer.
I spent a year and two months on the second one because this one, I was like,
wanted to
finish so that I wouldn't not finish it.
But now that I know I can finish one, I feel like I got a flow.
It's really fun to do.
Yeah.

Louis C.K.'s First Book "Ingram" is Special

This is my, this is a hard, because that's a.
No, you brought me Ingram.
I brought you a hard cover of Ingram.
Let's go.
It's an inscription, but just don't read it out loud.
Okay, I'm going to say, okay.
Yeah.
I'm going to say that.
Dude, thank you so much, man.
Yeah.
Yeah, I read this.
You sent me, and I still have it inside.
I have, you sent me like, it was in this green kind of folder that was really
cool.
And it reminded me of like, kind of like, something that meant something like
25 years
ago, 20 years ago, you get a script and it would be like, and it would be in
something,
you know, it'd be like in this sort of like green folder.
Yeah.
It was professional.
Binder, yeah.
Yes, it was a binder.
Yeah.
And you gave it to me like that, and you let me read this whole book, dude.
Well, you read a really early version.
Yep.
And it took me two months to read it because I was like, I don't know what was
going on.
I was probably, I don't know, who knows, taking breaks to touch my body
probably.
But it was awesome.
And every time I came back to it, dude, it was just fascinating.
Thanks, man.
And it's a book about, well, it's a book about a boy who's kind of neglected,
and then he
has to take on the world himself.
Is that right?
I would say, yeah.
Yeah.
It's about a boy who grows up on a, that's what it looks like, on a farm, just
a shit
farm.
Yeah.
And, um...
And he lives in a cage, or in a...
Well, he just lives outdoors.
His parents don't let him sleep in the house.
Got it.
And he sleeps in the shed, and he just sits on the porch steps where the
animals are.
His father, it's one of these farms, his father's got like one pig, he's just
trying
to get a little extra.
Yeah.
And, uh, his parents are very overwhelmed, and his father one day tells us, uh,
the bank
comes to over, take the house.
They give him a few days.
So the father tells the mother to slaughter all the meat, and he goes on the
horse and says,
I'm gonna sell this horse, and I'll come back.
And he never, he just never comes back.
Yeah.
So the kid's left with his mother, who's just so weak.
And, uh, she just tells him, uh, you gotta, you gotta go.
And he's like 10.
And she tells him, uh, I can't, your, your, your luck's worse here than it
would be out
there.
Wow.
So, uh, and she's just too hollowed out to overcome what's going on with her.
And, uh.
And she probably thinks the best thing she could do to save him would be to
send him off.
Get him out there and let him learn how to start taking care of himself.
So all she tells him is stay alive any way you can.
That's like the, all the advice he's given.
And, uh, he just hits the road.
And I started writing it, and I, I didn't know, it's not, I, I, it's the first
novel
I ever wrote.
I wanted to write novels when I was a kid.
That was like the first thing I really wanted to be.
Yeah.
And then I just took so many drugs that I feel like I burnt my brain out, and
it's only now
really recovering.
Is that true you're saying that?
I feel that way a little bit.
I used to feel that way.
But, um.
Were you using opioids or whatever?
When I was a kid, I was doing a lot of, um, smoking a shit ton of pot.
Oh, yeah.
And we took a lot of acid and mescaline and stuff like that, too.
And I don't think that hurts you.
But, uh.
Not at all.
It does take out the linear of your thinking a little bit.
But, uh.
But, um.
But your life got busy, too, then.
Yeah.
And then I became a comedian, which I always thought was like just, it's a free
form, scatter
shot, verbal art.
So I always felt like I could handle, it was what I could handle, you know?
But I wanted to be a writer, you know?
And then I wrote television.
But writing TV and movies is, is more like a blueprint.
You're, you're, it's technical writing.
Here's what needs to happen when we shoot this.
But actually writing something that's meant to be read is what I really wanted
it to do.
And, um.
God, so cool.
Yeah.
So I started writing short stories a few years ago and I got really back into
it.
And when, when Ingram kind of like came into my head, I just had this ritual of
sitting
down every day and asking him like, what happened to you?
And he, and it was just a story that just kept coming.
Asking the child, the character?
Yeah, yeah.
Like what happened?
And I felt like I was taking care of him by like taking an honest account,
trying to
just be honest and not trying to achieve anything in writing it or trying to,
you know
what I mean?
Or be impressive.
I just wanted to be, I just want to hear the voice and see what happened.
And, and I worried about him every day cause he has a hard, it's a hard life
that he lives.
Yeah.
But I learned from him because he kept like just being curious and reporting
when it stinks,
but not complaining.
Yeah.
I mean, there's times there's, he takes on some abuse a couple of times and I
was like,
God, it's like you like, yeah, I mean, there's parts, especially toward it.
Like the later parts of the book.
So harrowing some, you're like, God, why can't he, why doesn't he know better?
Yeah.
Yeah.
He's, he's, he's just simple.
I mean, it's not simple.
Like, um, uh, like mentally challenged.
He just hasn't had any.
Like Dennis Rodman or whatever.
Or who else I was going to say, that's not fair.
Or no, somebody else.
I mean, Dennis Rodman is anything but simple.
You're right.
That's a great, you're right.
Complex dude.
Yeah.
He's a fucking Rubik's cube.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
All the stickers are different.
There's not even one color is the same.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Even one of those like Indian kids couldn't put that guy.
Yeah.
I know.
Forget it.
Yeah.
That was a bad choice.
But, um, but yeah, dude, there was times you're like, ah, you feel for him that
much.
And you did such a great job of making me feel for him.
Oh, thanks.
I can't tell like how I got to know him so good as I'm reading it.
Well, I, I guess, uh, I don't know for boys, it's this thing of getting thrown
out into
the world a little bit.
Mm-hmm.
Um, I, I was alone a lot as a kid and out in the street, just trying to figure
out what
life is.
And you just become, you're kind of a, a boy is kind of a microcosm of a human
ape turning
into a human being.
You know what I mean?
Like adapting.
Evolution's right there.
Yeah.
Evolution from the first day of life, especially if you're kind of left alone,
if you spend
a lot of time alone as a boy, you're just catch as catch can.
And then you go, oh, I guess that's what this is like.
Right.
And, uh, you, some things you get strong at and some you don't.
And, uh.
And some things you learn from the worst influences too.
It just happens to be the influence that was passing through town or that
stopped and
rolled its window down.
It's kind of crazy the way you can get influence.
That's kind of what happens to him in some ways, huh?
Yeah.
Like there's this one part where he's got, uh, he's been working on a farm, um,
like just
pulling up corn and he makes money in dimes.
I know just cause it's the first currency that he learned to respect was a 10
cent dime.
So he makes them pay him in dimes and he has, he hides them under a tree.
And when he decides to leave the farm, he digs them up and he falls asleep in
his cabin.
And there's this, he wakes up and there's this guy there about to steal his
money.
And Ingram at this point has a little knife and he's, he's thinking he's going
to have to defend
himself.
You know, he's going to have to stick this guy, but he, he, he's trying to
figure out cause he's
never been taught.
Is it okay to actually harm somebody for money?
Like, is it, it to, to defend yourself is one thing, but to defend this thing.
And, um, and then it occurs to him that the guy might be a little scared, even
though he's
bigger than him, even if it's a kid, like it's not easy to beat the shit out of
a kid.
Right.
Like it's no small thing.
So they're, yeah, they're resilient kids survive.
I mean, you're going to go through something.
So, so Ingram says to the guy, uh, why don't we split it?
And the guy goes, I don't have to split it with you.
I can just take it.
And he goes, yeah, you can, but it's going to be trouble.
I'm going to give you a hard time.
I'll split it with you now.
And by it's my money, but I'll give you half of it if we could just split it.
And then they look at it and neither of them know how to count.
So they got that problem.
But I didn't know where it was going.
I got to this moment in it where they're in this standoff and I was like, what's
his solution?
But by following his logic and in the way he looked at life without having been
taught,
he found solutions that I just came to me naturally, um, that I wouldn't have
found in life.
Do you know what I mean?
You just get taught things like you got to defend, you got to, anybody fucks
with you.
You have to hurt them.
Right.
You do, you know, let's split the difference.
Yeah.
Split them out.
I'll take half.
I'll take half.
I'll take half and nobody has to throw a punch.
I stay alive.
And also I don't have to feel the pain of if I stabbed you and if I shouldn't
have.
That's right.
Which can be just as harrowing.
Of course.
You got to walk around in life knowing you stabbed somebody for a hundred
dollars.
Yeah.
Oh, dude, it was, there's a lot of great parts, man.
It's honestly, bro.
It's awesome.
It was so much fun to read.
It reminded me of like, I mean, this sounds crazy, but it reminded me of like a
real book.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I feel the same way.
To me, it's, it still doesn't add up to me or make sense that I wrote a book.
I grew up in a world of books.
You look at a book, you're like, well, nobody, that's somebody else.
Yeah.
Somebody else can do that.
Not me.
And I've tried, I've written short stories and things that have sputtered out.
When I got to the end, like when I, when the publishers, I got a publisher,
this place,
Ben Bella.
Simon & Schuster, is that you're with?
Yeah.
Simon & Schuster is distributing it.
Okay.
But the publisher is a company called Ben Bella out of Texas.
Really nice people.
And when I started working with them and they were going through the book and
the editorial
part, they, they said it was kind of curious that I say the end, because it's
like a
Grimm's fairy tale.
Like nobody does that anymore.
But I asked to keep it because that's, to me, it was crazy that I got there.
Yeah.
I couldn't believe I got to the end.
And I was just like, the day I finished this, I was like, I wrote a fucking
novel.
And, uh, you know, if I wasn't me with a little bit of sense that I could
probably sell something,
I don't know that it gets out.
I have no idea.
Um, and everybody that's right, I haven't, I haven't had anybody read it that
hates me.
So I don't know if it's good, but, uh, you know, I don't know.
Folks can buy it.
It's yeah.
It was great.
It, I know it comes for, it's, you can pre-order it now.
Yeah.
September 20th, 20th.
Not November.
It's coming out in November, mid November.
Okay.
Uh, but you can pre-order.
It's good if people pre-order it.
Cause then they'll, they'll print more.
Put the ranks up.
Yeah.
Get it up there.
Get it up.
And look, I'm not even joking guys.
Like I, you know, I like to read.
I really, it like, especially if for like a young man, like, um, if you've had
neglect
in your life or you wonder like how a child would start to absorb the world, um,
with not
even, not even being taught how to be much of a sponge in a way, kind of like,
I mean,
it's just fascinating.
And it was, it was, it took, I was just right there in it.
I was right there in it with him.
It takes place in Texas, right?
Yeah.
Oklahoma, Texas or something.
Texas.
And so like, yeah, he's just like walking along the highway and these car, like
things
are, cars are badly, things he's never even seen.
He's never seen any of it.
It's all fucking great.
Yeah.
He calls the pavement hard black dirt.
Cause he doesn't really know what, cause he grew up barefoot in the dirt and it
amazed
me.
I was like, Oh shit, somebody can do this.
I think, I 