Amy Schumer, 34, has been accused of joke-stealing before.
After her HBO special aired last year, Twitter critics (twitics?) said her closing joke was remarkably similar to a “bit” by the late Patrice O’Neal.
Schumer denied appropriating the material and other comedians jumped to her defense.
Now, three comics are saying Schumer’s been using their jokes, according to comedy news site The Interrobang.
It all started with a tweet by comedian Wendy Liebman which reportedly read (it’s since been deleted): “Between Amy Schumer doing 1 of my best jokes on her HBO special and this meme of my joke, I’m done with social media.”
The meme wasn’t related to Schumer but featured a retro-style pin-up quoting one of Liebman’s jokes.
Next, writer and director Chuck Martin replied to Liebman’s tweet suggesting she gets in touch with comedian Kathleen Madigan.
Madigan, looped into the conversation, wrote, “wow. finally. get ready for a shit storm,” followed by another tweet claiming to have a split screen proving a “disgusting amount of stealing” that she plans to release.
“Game over. I’m done,” she concluded.
Another comedian, Tammy Pescatelli, got in on the act, posting links to Schumer’s allegedly stolen material as well as the original sources she purportedly pinched it from.
“What has always been amazing to me is that she purports to be a feminist and yet only steals from other female comedians. If we call her on it we are ‘jealous’ or career shamed. Be successful. WE want you to do well, just do it with your own material. BTW she blocked me,” she tweeted.
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Robin Williams was accused of this kind of thing too, even though I absolutely adored Robin Williams. I think it's a couple of things, probably the occasional comedian does this on purpose, but also some jokes are similar, e.g. so many jokes about Jewish people or Scottish people being stingy that if you come up with your own joke it's going to resemble other people's. But also there is osmosis, you hear something it goes into your sub conscious then years later you say it.
Also very funny people often tell jokes of others, for instance we all retell jokes, "did you hear the one about the irishman who went to the pub…"etc. Everyone knows you didn't invent that joke but heard it somewhere else. I suppose though the problem is that famous comedians reword these like they are their own joke, e.g. they might be Irish so they will reword the joke like so, "i went to the pub…"
But I do think sometimes people do have the same reaction to the same event. I once said to a friend (i was a bit anti marriage at the time) that I don't believe in legislating love. I remember I thought I was rather clever coming up with such a line, and I know I had never heard it anywhere else, but I think I mentioned that to one or maybe only a handful of people. Well imagine my shock when I read a quote from the late Heath Ledger when he asked if he would get married and he said "i don't believe in legislating love." It was so surreal, because it's such a specific quote and I can't imagine that the couple of people I knew would have known anyone who knew Heath Ledger! So I think it was just that thing of two people having the same thought.
And you have got to remember that comedians often hang out with other comedians and watch their shows etc, so some of it gets stored in their subconscious, even many of the comedians who accused Robin Williams of this said they were very fond of him and that they actually thought that some of what he did was unintentional, that it just got stored somewhere and he would unwittingly repeat it later. Not sure if that is just a convenient excuse or not.
Unfortunately there is also the issue that someone says something vaguely funny and another person realises that if they change the joke a little or add a bit more to it that they can make it much funnier.
I think it is clearly a problem if a huge part of someone's act is using other's jokes, then that's plagiarism, but if instead there is one or two jokes amongst 100 it's probably unintentional.
Then again as they used to say at uni, using on other's work is plagiarism, but using a hundred is research!
I haven't commented on Mamamia for ages, but seeing that I'm a fan of Amy Schumer's I thought I would. I recently viewed a stand up routine from Adam Sandler circa 1990, possibly earlier, well before he was famous. During his routine he talks about how when he grew up as a Jewish kid amongst non-Jewish kids, the other kids was tease him and throw pennies at him. His punchline was how he picked up the pennies and saved the money.
I recognised that joke as Amy does the same joke herself. But, having said that, I believe that I've heard at least one other Jewish comedian do the same joke.
I started writing comedy in my late teens yet never had the guts to get up on stage and deliver my own jokes. But I have seen plenty of my jokes get used by comedians over the years. Did they steal them? Hardly likely. With 7 billion people in the world, do you really think that you are the only one to have had that thought? Nope. Some jokes are just that obvious that they write themselves, or present themselves to comedians in all manner of circumstances.
Did she steal these jokes? Well there's the possibility that she's heard them before, but I don't think she's based her whole act on stealing from others.