To some fans of his not-exact­ly-a-sit­com Louie, Louis C.K. sim­ply appeared a few years ago, ful­ly formed and acclaimed by his peers as per­haps the most skilled, ded­i­cat­ed comedic crafts­men work­ing today. But he does have a past, stretch­ing back well beyond his voice role on the ani­mat­ed series Home Movies and his direc­tion of the film Pootie Tang, and he has offered up enter­tain­ing frag­ments of it online. Above you’ll find his ear­li­est known short film, Ice Cream. Begin watch­ing this black-and-white med­i­ta­tion on the vagaries of dis­af­fect­ed twen­tysome­thing love in the nineties — one which opens in a con­ve­nient store, no less — and you’ll imme­di­ate­ly think of Kevin Smith’s Clerks. But C.K. made Ice Cream in 1993, the year before Clerks came out, and it tilts in direc­tions even Smith would­n’t dare pre­dict, ulti­mate­ly arriv­ing at a mari­achi band-scored finale.

Just above, we have 1998’s Hel­lo There. In four min­utes, the film fol­lows a cata­ton­ic-look­ing fel­low (played by come­di­an Ron Lynch) wear­ing a poor­ly fit­ting suit and a cas­sette recorder around his neck as he makes his way through town. “Excuse me,” his machine says when he press­es its play but­ton, “do you have the cor­rect time?” A bystander ner­vous­ly answers. “Hel­lo there,” his speak­er blares to a bum doz­ing in a card­board box, “is that a new hat? You are a good guy.”

As the morn­ing con­tin­ues, we come to under­stand that this eccen­tric is not the only one of his kind. Below you can watch that same year’s Brunch, which throws the ver­bal­ly NSFW come­di­an Rick Shapiro into a sharply observed mid-morn­ing hud­dle of pon­tif­i­cat­ing senior cit­i­zens. These all come from Louis C.K.s offi­cial Youtube chan­nel, and indeed, C.K. pre­scient­ly made them in a form neat­ly suit­ed to the Youtube era, just as Louie has proven an ide­al artis­tic, intel­lec­tu­al, and finan­cial fit for the mod­ern cable tele­vi­sion land­scape.

Louis C.K.‘s short films: Ice Cream (1993), The Let­ter V (1998), The Leg­end of Willie Brown (1998), Ugly Revenge, Hijack­er (1998), Hel­lo There (1998), Brunch (1998), Per­sona Ne’ll Aqua (1999),Search­ing for Nixon

(via Metafil­ter)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sein­feld, Louis C.K., Chris Rock, and Ricky Ger­vais Dis­sect the Craft of Com­e­dy (NSFW)

How the Great George Car­lin Showed Louis CK the Way to Suc­cess (NSFW)

David Lynch Teach­es Louis C.K. How to Host The David Let­ter­man Show

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Here’s a curi­ous scene from the 1969 cult film The Mag­ic Chris­t­ian. In the sto­ry, Peter Sell­ers plays an eccen­tric bil­lion­aire, Sir Guy Grand, who adopts a home­less man, played by Ringo Starr, and sets out to play a series of prac­ti­cal jokes on peo­ple, demon­strat­ing that “every­one has their price.”

Sell­ers and Starr were at the hight of their fame when the movie was made, but John Cleese, who plays a snooty auc­tion direc­tor at Sothe­by’s, was still a few months away from the for­ma­tion of Mon­ty Python. The Mag­ic Chris­t­ian is based on a book of the same name by comedic nov­el­ist Ter­ry South­ern. Cleese and anoth­er future Python mem­ber, Gra­ham Chap­man, co-wrote an ear­ly ver­sion of the script, includ­ing this scene, which was not in the book.

The film was direct­ed by Joseph McGrath and includes an assort­ment of bizarre cameo appear­ances, includ­ing Christo­pher Lee as a vam­pire, Rac­quel Welch as an S&M priest­ess and Yul Bryn­ner as a trans­ves­tite cabaret singer. But per­haps the most endur­ing ele­ment of The Mag­ic Chris­t­ian is the hit song “Come and Get it,” which was writ­ten and pro­duced for the film by Paul McCart­ney and per­formed by Badfin­ger.

You can watch the com­plete film here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cleese’s Eulo­gy for Gra­ham Chap­man: ‘Good Rid­dance, the Free-Load­ing Bas­tard, I Hope He Fries’

John Cleese, Mon­ty Python Icon, on How to Be Cre­ative

Peter Sell­ers Gives a Quick Demon­stra­tion of British Accents

In late 1964, when he was at the height of his suc­cess, Peter Sell­ers filmed a series of vaude­vil­lian sketch­es with a group of wealthy and social­ly elite friends. He edit­ed the scenes togeth­er into a movie and called it I Say I Say I Say.

The ten-minute film was made dur­ing a week­end at the home of Joce­lyn and Jane Stevens. Joce­lyn Stevens was the pub­lish­er of Queen mag­a­zine and had recent­ly gained noto­ri­ety by financ­ing the con­tro­ver­sial pirate radio ship Caroline–hence the ref­er­ence to “the Duke and Duchess of Car­o­line.” A draw­ing of the pirate ship appears at the begin­ning of the film on top of the Duke and Duchess’s coat of arms, with its sym­bols for mon­ey and guns and the Latin mot­to “Errare Humanum Est” (“To Err is Human”).

Sell­ers is joined in the film by his preg­nant wife Britt Ekland, the Stevens­es, Princess Mar­garet and her hus­band Antho­ny Arm­strong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snow­don. Sell­ers jok­ing­ly called the enter­prise “Snow­do­deo­do Pro­duc­tions.” In one scene, Lord Snow­don appears as a rather effem­i­nate gang­ster. But the most famous episode fea­tures Sell­ers as “The Great Berko,” recent­ly returned from his “dra­mat­ic suc­cess at the Work­men’s Insti­tute, Penge,” who presents an uncan­ny imper­son­ation of Her Roy­al High­ness, Princess Mar­garet.  Sell­ers dis­ap­pears behind a screen and out comes–of course–the real Princess Mar­garet, sis­ter of Queen Eliz­a­beth II.

I Say I Say I Say was locked away in the Sell­ers fam­i­ly archives until about 1995, when the BBC pro­duced The Peter Sell­ers Sto­ry. The film was nev­er intend­ed for pub­lic exhi­bi­tion. “It was total­ly impro­vised,” Lord Snow­don told The Tele­graph in 2004. “Peter had a cam­era that he want­ed to try out. It was all very hap­haz­ard. We made the whole thing in I should think two hours.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Peter Sell­ers Per­forms The Bea­t­les in Shake­speare­an Mode

Peter Sell­ers Gives a Quick Demon­stra­tion of British Accents

Peter Sell­ers Reads The Bea­t­les’ ‘She Loves You’ in Four Voic­es