At Toronto Film Festival, a new doc explores how the comedy world enabled Louis C.K.
TORONTO — As filmmakers Caroline Suh and Cara Mones began interrogating the sexual misconduct scandal that halted — at least, briefly — the career of comedian Louis C.K. at the height of the #MeToo movement in 2017, they came to a realization: Debates around C.K.'s behavior, subsequent cancellation and eventual return to comedy success were centered on the wrong person.
At first, the knotty questions were a springboard for curiosity. Suh, a self-described C.K. fan, wondered in private if the comedy star really deserved to be banished from public life after allegations of sexual misconduct, which C.K. later admitted to, were levied by five women in a New York Times report. "Is what he did that bad?" she says she asked herself.
Probing that notion and parsing C.K.'s comeback nine months later — which would eventually include a return to touring, sold-out comedy specials and a 2022 Grammy Award win for best comedy album — led to an evolution in the thinking behind Suh and Mones' feature documentary "Sorry/Not Sorry," which has made its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
It wasn't re-litigating the details of C.K.'s behavior, or pondering who gets to come back from cancellation, but hearing the experiences of women who spoke out about C.K. and the invisible repercussions that followed in their lives and careers that brought their film into focus. "We realized those aren't really the essential questions to ask," Suh told The Times. "It's not about Louie. It's
