A Piffany About How We Treat The Sick and Suffering Inside and Outside Our Circle
Most movies about alcoholics focus on the bottoming out, that moment when the addict reaches the jumping-off point and manages to either find the gift of desperation that leads them into recovery, or literally jumps off the deep end and winds up institutionalized or dead.
Some of the best-known films in this genre include Sandra Bullock in 28 Days, Denzel Washington in Flight, Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas and Bradley Cooper in A Star is Born.
The what it was like and what happened gets covered a lot.
Few focus on the what it’s like now for an alcoholic in recovery.
So with great curiosity and trepidation, I watched Fourth of July on the sixth anniversary of my own recovery journey.
Fourth of July, directed by Louis CK, co-written by CK and Joe List, and starring List as a recovering alcoholic, hits home for me in multiple ways.
They filmed on my home turf. I’ve been to meetings in the church where they staged a meeting in the movie. I’m also in footage left on the cutting-room floor, inadvertently crossing paths with List on the sidewalk one afternoon when I came out of the Ditmars post office — not realizing that CK and his film crew were trying to shoot List in stride from the other side of the street. I apologized, then stuck around to watch them film a few more scenes for a montage that appears 10 minutes into the movie.
I’ve spoken with both List and Robert Kelly (who plays one of List’s sponsees) on my podcast before about addiction and recovery.
Some of the film’s other co-stars have guested on my podcast, too, including Tony V., Lynne Koplitz, and Allan Havey.
And of course, I’ve interviewed, covered and thought a lot about CK over the years.
Fourth of July opened July 1, 2022, and had earned about $333,000 at the box office before tonight (when CK has secured showings at multiple Regal Cinemas locations across America), about two-thirds of that coming from special screenings and Q&A panels in large theaters that opening weekend at the Beacon Theatre in NYC, the Vic in Chicago and the Shubert in Boston. Select locations also have screenings scheduled for next week. CK’s website keeps track of the current scheduling.
Reviews from movie critics were decidedly pointed, largely because CK’s name and face are on it and in it.
So I wondered, if I’m truly living in recovery, how should I review the film? Could I perhaps take some of the lessons — love and tolerance is our guide; placing principles before personalities — and apply that to CK and the film he made? The more I thought about the movie and my experience watching it, I thought perhaps that’s one of the points, if not the point. How do we treat those who are sick and suffering outside of the circle of recovery? How do I treat them?
Let’s show you the trailer in case you haven’t seen it yet.
Recovery teaches us selflessness, and rewards us for paying it forward by taking someone else through the steps, just as someone else had brought us through them. One of the secret tricks of how the 12-step program works — which List’s character says to his new sponsee at one point — is that helping someone else helps you, too.
In much the same way, CK helping List make this movie helps CK, too — in fact, most of the early reviews in the trades and the major press all focused on CK’s comeback as a director and supporting actor (he plays List’s therapist), glossing over List’s contributions as the star and co-writer. Critics made Fourth of July all about CK and their perceptions of him in the wake of the #MeToo revelations that the Emmy-winning, Grammy-winning comedian had behaved badly to multiple women over the years, many of those women young in comedy, which devastated their careers.
If you’ve read anything I’ve written about Louis CK since the fall of 2017, or even if you haven’t, then now is a great time for me to acknowledge that my own experience with recovery naturally led me to view his comeuppance and comeback through the lens of 12-step. I read his November 2017 apology (this is a gift link to his statement in The New York Times, so don’t worry about paywalls) and thought, well, an apology is not an amends. When he seemingly facetiously titled his next two specials Sincerely and Sorry, I sighed.
When he won the Grammy earlier this year (his third), for Sincerely, sure I felt some outrage toward Grammy voters — although honestly, CK’s offstage behavior aside, I still believe firmly that Nate Bargatze’s special, The Greatest Average American, was by far the best comedy album of those actually nominated.
But upon further reflection of Fourth of July, swirling the themes of the movie around with what I’ve learned in recovery, I came to the realization that Louis CK does not owe any amends to me.
He still may owe me that podcast interview he promised me at The Comedy Cellar more than five years ago. But he doesn’t need to make amends to me for what he did to anyone else — that’s both a personal matter for him with each of the impacted women, as well as an ongoing matter for anyone personally hurt by him. That’s not about me. That has nothing to do with me, nor my relationship to him. And that’s important for me to remember. And perhaps for the general public to reconcile, too. No matter how entitled to an amends we may feel.
My Twitter friend Max, best known as the frontman of Eve 6, covered ground in his recent advice column for Input that falls somewhere in the Venn diagram between my personal feelings toward CK and the themes of his new movie. Here’s part of what Max had to say to someone who has suffered not only from the effects of Long COVID, but also from bitterness toward those who’d celebrate his survival without ever being there for him when he needed them.
You have reason to be angry. You’ve been treated poorly by people who profess to care about you during a time in your life when you have been especially vulnerable and needed help and support most. That’s pretty fucked up. Your anger is justified. This makes your anger righteous. But righteous anger can be the most dangerous kind.
It’s a lot more difficult to let go of righteous anger, and sometimes we shouldn’t. Sometimes we need it. Righteous anger can lead to positive action, but it can also be a force that threatens to swallow us whole.
A thing that has been incredibly helpful to me — and it’s impossible to overstate this — is realizing that people only treat you poorly when they are suffering from fear. This fear can be conscious or unconscious, but it’s there. And recognizing fear, even in a person who treated me like shit, can result in sympathy.
Max continued: “The goal of converting your anger into sympathy is to make you more comfortable and effective at living your own life. You forgive people for you, not for them.” (emphasis mine, although the site also emphasized this line as a pull quote)
The running storyline of Fourth of July finds List’s character yearning for an amends from his parents and relatives, whom he felt abandoned him emotionally growing up and continue to emotionally abuse him and undermine him in adulthood, making him preemptively anxious and resentful about spending the annual summer holiday with them in their cabin.
I may quibble with some of the tonal notes or character arcs in the movie. If it were me, I would’ve left town after delivering a speech like List’s character did to his family — especially since he drove up there in his own car. So I would’ve written it to force him to be stuck with his family (much like the outsider widow character, Naomi, was). Perhaps he didn’t drive himself. Or his car broke down. Him choosing to sleep it off and wake up the next morning hoping his family had forgotten doesn’t ring true, at least for me.
CK’s stylistic touches — such as blurring the lens momentarily to symbolize a computer receiving text messages, or altering the entire color scheme of the frame during a particularly isolating moment — could be interpreted as clever, indulgent or both. The father character feels like he has a whole nother movie’s worth of emotional breakthroughs to reveal, but that tension never quite gets resolved.
And the family’s resolution feels unearned, missing a beat to earn it.
Something also feels slightly off at times tonally, as well as sonically with the score. But I digress. Feelings aren’t facts, right? Besides, it’s an indie movie, through and through.
A couple of reviews referenced Tracy Letts and August: Osage County. I could see why they would. The first film I thought of, though, was On Golden Pond. Which somehow, I’d never seen before now. Maybe because I was 10 when it came out. Why would a 10-year-old want to watch Jane Fonda reconcile onscreen with her estranged elderly father, Henry, even if he and Katharine Hepburn both won Oscars for it? Nevertheless, I knew in my bones that movie shared some emotional lineage with Fourth of July, in terms of children feeling uncared for by a parent.
In CK’s film, an opening quote onscreen asks you to consider: “How you feel about your family is a complicated thing.”
Yeah. OK. Sure. Live, laugh, love. Whatever platitude floats your boat.
And yet, growing up in New England, I know well the old-fashioned tradition of Puritanism which is not only reserved for the Irish or any particular religion, as all-too-many families instill in each generation the idea of bottling up your feelings, whether or not you take the next step by drowning said feelings in a bottle of alcohol.
Through recovering, List realizes he no longer wants to be trapped within his own family’s cycle and attempts to break out of it. It only really seems to land with his father, who eventually breaks down and tells his wife he feels ashamed for letting his son down. “It’s too late — for anything,” he says, bemoaning his perceived lot in life.
BUT IT IS NEVER TOO LATE.
There’s always time to reconcile. Always time to clean your side of the street. Always time to make amends.
After List’s character confronts his family, he receives two countering pieces of advice. First, from his sponsor, he hears: “Rule number one: Say what you mean, but don’t say it mean.” Then, from his uncle, he hears: “Would you talk to someone on the street that way?”
Books on 12-step recovery remind us when dealing with The Family Afterward, we sometimes discover that we’ve found it easier to reach out our hands to help the newcomers in the rooms of recovery than we have for those who need our help outside of the rooms. The disconnect often hits hardest with our family. Can we treat them with as much love and tolerance as we have to give to a complete stranger?
Another thing we’re taught, or that I’ve learned, anyhow, is that we never know what another person is going through, whether it’s a family member, a coworker or a stranger we pass in our daily commute. That person might be sick and suffering in ways that aren’t easily visible. Again, can we treat them with love and tolerance? Can I practice the principles I have learned in all of my affairs?
I do not know, nor can I pretend to know, what Louis CK is going through now, nor what he went through in 2017 when his open secret in the comedy world was no longer secret to the rest of the world. I don’t know anything about his relationship with his two daughters, and how he has prepared them for dealing with the men of the world. CK did introduce me to his mother, but she has since died, and I cannot begin to comprehend anything about how their relationship might have changed. And of course — OF COURSE — I don’t pretend to know how the comedians he hurt years ago continue to deal with the backlash from CK’s fans and other toxic individuals who are angry at them for speaking out, even though they were victims.
And the thing is, as much as I want to be there for all of them, it’s not for me to decide or control their situations. Because it’s not about me.
Want to discover other cool Substacks? Each morning, The Sample sends you one article from a random blog or newsletter that matches up with your interests. When you get one you like, you can subscribe to the writer with one click. Sign up here.
From The Comic's Comic 
Leave a comment