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" Season 3, Episode 8: &amp;quot;Dad&amp;quot; We talked to comedian Maria Bamford, a guest star on this season of Louie, about Thursday night&amp;#039;s episode. Part of a regular series. ESQUIRE.COM: Can we talk a little bit about your part on the last couple episodes before we talk about the new one? MARIA BAMFORD: Yeah, sure, sure. ESQ: It was funny when you called him up and told him that you had crabs. MB: That Louis \u2014 you know, that&amp;#039;s all his writing. He&amp;#039;s so great, the whole show and his vision and stuff. And I was grateful to be a part of it. ESQ: I know the whole thing is tightly scripted, but you had a big segment that came directly from your stand-up. That&amp;#039;s very rare for the show. MB: That was so nice. I think it&amp;#039;s lovely of them to give all these stand-ups work. It&amp;#039;s just a wonderful show on any number of levels. That&amp;#039;s sort of biased, because I was on the show, but it&amp;#039;s so inspiring just to watch him work. He does everything himself. He&amp;#039;s helping with the cameras. It&amp;#039;s such a small crew, and it&amp;#039;s really wonderful what you can do.  ESQ: It&amp;#039;s on a smaller scale, but you made The Maria Bamford Show on your own. MB: Well, I made that about five or six years ago... Yeah. Six years ago. Now I just do stand-up. That guy is working much harder than your average bear. Are you a writer as well? Like outside of work, do you write non-fiction on your own? ESQ: Not too much. It seems like it would be much harder to self-motivate and write things when there isn&amp;#039;t an editor assigning you something, or someone you&amp;#039;re trying to impress with pitches. MB: With stand-up, it&amp;#039;s kind of deadline-oriented or peer-oriented, where it&amp;#039;s like, I want to do well for my co-workers. You know, the whole Oh gosh, all my buddies have heard this one. I better get some new material. Outside pressure. But all comedians in English-speaking countries do a new hour every year, and that is definitely not my practice. It&amp;#039;s like a new hour every five years or something. But this year, I got an assistant who comes over, and she&amp;#039;s a young comic. She&amp;#039;s super-fantastic, and just to have that outside deadline, to go, &amp;quot;Caitlin, I&amp;#039;m going to commit to writing this by this day.&amp;quot; I go, I can&amp;#039;t let her think that I&amp;#039;m sitting around. I gotta put it all forward for Caitlin. ESQ: How did you get involved with Louie? MB: I&amp;#039;ve opened for Louis a couple times, and he&amp;#039;s always been supportive. I think that&amp;#039;s how. Or at least I assume. I wondered if he might have chosen it because it was kind of a saucy, filthy part, because that&amp;#039;s kind of against type for me. I think I&amp;#039;m more on the prissy side. ESQ: I would&amp;#039;ve been a little wary that he cast you in this part to try and seduce you. MB: Oh, no. No, no, no. He has a lady in real life, but I think everybody&amp;#039;s old enough to be past the hook-up stage. I stopped doing one-night stands about seven years ago. ESQ: Right before you started your own series. MB: Interesting. Wait a minute! That&amp;#039;s when you focus your energy. ESQ: Let&amp;#039;s talk about this episode a bit. Jim Norton&amp;#039;s part with the hand-drawn porn was so funny. MB: That was so sweet. And you know that&amp;#039;s true. If it&amp;#039;s not true for Jim Norton, then it&amp;#039;s true for somebody. That just sounds too real to be not true. And it is sweet. Well, I guess I&amp;#039;ll just make it myself... I need visual imagery. ESQ: A crude napkin drawing has to be more stimulating than your imagination. MB: In my neighborhood here in Los Angeles, I put a big bowl of chalk outside my front lawn, so kids could make chalk drawings, and some kids did, and then a whole bunch of chalk was gone, and there were just giant dicks everywhere. ESQ: You must&amp;#039;ve expected there would be penises. MB: No, I didn&amp;#039;t! I just thought, Oh, there&amp;#039;s chalk. That&amp;#039;s nice. Kids will draw flowers and hearts. There were a number of those, but also cocks.  ESQ: Louie was very misanthropic in this episode. Even his daughter&amp;#039;s happiness was an affront to him. MB: That&amp;#039;s the character. Or the comic. I have a comic character \u2014 my sister said that I&amp;#039;m the victim of every joke I tell. Louie is kind of the jerk, too, on some level. But sometimes it&amp;#039;s like the whole world is conspiring. That&amp;#039;s how I think it feels for everybody. I really enjoyed the Russian tearoom scene. ESQ: With Uncle Excelsior? Do you have any relatives that, if you presented as fiction, people wouldn&amp;#039;t believe? MB: My mom says things that people don&amp;#039;t think are believable. Recently, she couldn&amp;#039;t find me in the house, and she called my sister and said, &amp;quot;Sarah, Maria&amp;#039;s disappeared, and I&amp;#039;m worried she&amp;#039;s killed herself.&amp;quot; I mean, what? That&amp;#039;s ridiculous. But people say ridiculous things all the time. I know I say ridiculous things. But I don&amp;#039;t have kids to write it down. ESQ: People tend to have an intense attachment to their family, but also a revulsion. MB: Totally. My mom always does this thing where, the closer I get to home, the more she calls. &amp;quot;Hey, listen, how&amp;#039;s your plane? Did you land? Are you landing? Sweetie. Listen. We want to...&amp;quot; The anxiety amps up exponentially as I get closer, and then I can&amp;#039;t get out fast enough.  ESQ: But is there a part of you that wants to be near her, too? MB: Yeah. I may shoot a goofy reality show where my mom and my sister and my dad and I bring health services to comedians on the road. And I&amp;#039;m pitching a show called Ask My Mom where my mom, but it&amp;#039;s me, answers all sorts of advice questions. I love my parents a lot. I can&amp;#039;t wait to flip and powder them when they get older. Flip and powder. Flip and powder. ESQ: Something to look forward to in twenty years. MB: Gotta keep the sheets tight. So that the sores can&amp;#039;t start. -- Maria Bamford&amp;#039;s Comedy Central DVD/CD, Ask Me About My New God, comes out at the end of this year. PLUS: Read The Newsroom and Breaking Bad Recaps Here on Monday Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a15397/louie-season-3-episode-8-recap/>