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Many comics have been accused of joke stealing over the years. The two who immediately come to mind are Carlos Mencia and Dane Cook – I’ve heard a lot about their acts being derivative. Now powerhouse comic Amy Schumer has been accused of stealing jokes too. A (NSFW) compilation video has come out in which other jokes are compared to Amy’s, and you can see where her material isn’t original. I’m including the video below but in case you can’t watch it here’s a summary.
Wendy Liebman – 90s
Maybe I’m old fashioned but I like it when the guy pays – for sex.Amy Schumer – 2015
I’m very old school, I think a guy should always pay on the first date for sex.Patrice O’Neal – about 2006-7
Gorilla master. You come on her face right, then take some pubic hair and throw it at herAmy Schumer – 2015
There’s the Abraham Lincoln. That’s when the guy trims his pubes, comes on the girl’s face and then throws the pubes so she has that facial hair.Patrice O’Neal – about 2006-7
You ever Poltergeist… You need your friend. You’re f*king from behind then you sneak out and he takes your place and then you walk outside and wave at her from the window and you go “I’m here.”Amy Schumer – 2015
The worst one I’ve ever heard is the Houdini, which is where the guy is having sex with the girl from behind then unbeknownst to her his friend subs in for him, guy number one runs outside, knocks on the window, waves to the girl. Which is just rape.Kathleen Madigan – unknown date
I get why poor people are fat but Oprah you’re a billionaire. You have enough money to pay a man to stand there and literally slap shit out of your hand before you put it in your mouth. You can hire a full time food slapper.Amy Schumer – 2015
Slap Chef bit from Inside Amy SchumerKathleen Madigan – unknown date
You’re so rich you could just pay someone to exercise you. You could just lay there like a baby with cerebral palsy and have someone move your legs.Amy Schumer – 2015
Sleep gym bit from Inside Amy SchumerTammy Pescatelli – 2006
As a woman I will admit that women dress for other women. That’s why men… we dress you for other women too that’s why we dress you stupid. We want another woman to look at you and go ‘he’s cute but I can’t fix all of this.’Amy Schumer – 2015
Bit from Inside Amy Schumer. “You dress him like that so nobody else will want to have sex with him? That’s cool”
[From Vimeo video by Joe Schmo]
To me the most egregious examples are the sex stories from Patrice O’Neal. (The other comics are still alive but he passed away in 2011.) Those seem totally ripped off and I don’t know how someone could come up with those, especially the pubic hair thing, without hearing them first. The other jokes seem like two comics could come up with them independently.
Yesterday Amy went on Jim Norton’s Sirius XM show to deny stealing jokes. In the audio clips that were posted on People she adamantly denied seeing Patrice, Tammy or Kathleen’s specials and said that she knows Tammy and Kathleen and that she has some kind of long standing beef with Tammy. Amy also vowed to take a polygraph test to back up her claims which she would air, unedited, on her show.
As for the sketches on her show, she claimed to have come up with “sleep gym” and said another writer thought up “slap chef.” Amy sort of admitted that the Wendy Liebman joke is old and well known but insisted she came up with it herself. She added that she has to create so much material for her shows but said that “none of these things [other bits] ever reached me.”
Amy then pinned this on the other comics. “The reason I think this is coming up… I think this is Tammy. I blocked her on Twitter a couple years ago because she was unkind to my best friend, Rachel Feinstein, and I didn’t like how she treated Rachel. I don’t think she’s got much going on, this is my guess… I think people get upset by success.”
She had me up until she used the “she’s jealous” defense. She also brought up sexism and people wanting to bring women down, which is not valid to me given that this happens with male comics all the time.
When Louis CK used his semi autobiographical show, Louis, to confront Dane Cook about joke stealing he framed it as an issue of Dane being unaware of the theft. Louis said “I know you saw me do [the jokes] and I think they just went in your brain, and I don’t think you meant to do it, but I don’t think you stopped yourself, either.”
Amy is believable to me in that she’s really insistent that she didn’t steal jokes, so I think this may be similar to the way Louis CK believes Dane Cook appropriated his jokes. However she didn’t need to trash the other comics or say that they’re jealous of her. As DListed points out, they noticed their jokes in her act and tweeted about it. That’s not jealousy, that’s noticing content theft.
This video is not safe for work.
Amy Schumer is a Joke Thief from joe schmo on Vimeo.
On my life, I have never and would never steal a joke.
— Amy Schumer (@amyschumer) January 20, 2016
Here are two of the other three comics’ tweets on this. Liebman, Pescatelli and Madigan had more back and forth about this which preceeded the video release. You can read their now deleted tweets on Refinery29.
I appreciate the credit of being a mastermind,but I am ahard working wife,mom&comic.I barely have time 2start my car https://t.co/w1opUzLIoa
— Tammy Pescatelli (@TammyPescatelli) January 21, 2016
I think both @amyschumer and I like it when a man pays…for sex. #greatminds #parallelthinking https://t.co/zWQKo4Kj5F
— Wendy Liebman (@WendyLiebman) January 20, 2016
photo credit: WENN.com and FameFlynet
I really like amy Schumer but the facts are hard to deny. Some of the jokes area identical, and they are complex jokes.
I don’t know. ..
Most of them really aren’t complex jokes and have been around forever though
Right? I’ve heard versions of most of these on multiple occasions.
Ive heard variations of the sex position jokes since middle school (older brothers) Same with the Oprah joke, that one was much more G rated than some of the ‘how to get Oprah to not eat’ jokes around. The ‘old fashioned-pay for sex on the first date’ thing sounds like joan rivers or before. Comedy is observational to a large extent, those are not highly original thoughts not matter who theyre attributed to. CArlos Mancia and Dane Cook have damning evidence against them. Maybe these are bad examples, but we actually had a friend back in the day who used to make her hot (smoking hot) fiance wear terrible sweaters and vests. (yes, vests) Its probably safe to assume these are not jokes independent to any single comedian or blatant plagiarism.
Exactly. The poltergeist/Houdini one is like an urban legend. And she’s not claiming she wrote it, ‘it’s the worst one I’ve heard’ she said. The rest are just obvious, not even funny. No one invented them, they’ve just involved from observations and aren’t even particularly funny.
It’s like if I drew some circles and squares on a sheet of paper, I’m not ripping off Kandinsky. They’re shapes everyone draws.
Agreed, none of these people are the first to say stuff along the lines of someone exercising your body for you or paying someone to slap food away from you.
The 2 Patrice jokes, however, are so nearly identical I raise an eyebrow to those.
Other than the pubic hair one, these jokes are completely banal. “Women dress for other women” – really?? Wow, I’ve never heard that one before!!!
A more interesting question is why, of all the people working in semi-creative fields, comedians tend to be the most insecure, vicious, and needy types around. It’s weird, this whole “stealing jokes” thing being such a huge thing in the comedy field. Yes there is such a thing as copyright protection, but most jokes aren’t funny unless the person tells it funny. Isn’t talent important? Doesn’t talent count? If an unfunny person tells a funny joke, it’s not funny when they tell it. So it’s not the joke itself that’s the most important part; it’s the person’s level of talent.
This seems to be more along the lines of a social group engaging in “tall poppycock syndrome” than any sort of collective protection of intellectual property, which is what they’re pretending to be doing. These jokes are hackneyed; I heard most of them in college 25 years ago. If this is the best evidence they have…well, it says a lot more about the insecurities of the people making the accusations than anything else.
@PennyLane
Yup. It makes Amy looks bad to say it’s jealousy, but to me that’s exactly what it is.
Yes, I have definitely heard the sex jokes before – from neither Patrice O’Neal OR Amy Schumer. In addition to the “pubes-on-face” and “poltergeist/houdini” thing, there are about a million other sex-practice-jokes with a million interchangeable names. Okay, maybe not a million – but it’s hardly scandalous to repeat stuff that anyone with a crude male friend has heard before. If the content was less commonplace, then maybe.
I agree. The thing with comedy is that they hit on life’s truths, and it is funny because there is some reality in there. It isn’t surprising when more than one comic riffs on the same theme. They are drawing from common experiences.
The paying for sex thing…come on. These are not the only two people in the world who have equated paying for dinner with paying for sexual favors later on that night. The sex position jokes, the names and terms are so common they are slang.
Yeah, I wouldn’t claim credit for these. Yikes.
Patrice was a great, naturally funny comic, and I am surprised that Schumer “lifted” his material, I believe they knew each other.
RIP Patrice.
If she takes a joke and adds another level to it, that’s not stealing. And people do come up with the same ideas.
The thing people don’t seem to get is, big comedians have WRITERS. Letterman and Jon Stewart had a dozen or two.
They may write their own material initially but when they can afford it they pay for jokes. So someone may have ripped off a joke but that doesn’t mean Schumer knew it.
I think there’s just a lot of jealousy at how fast she became successful.
But her show, which no one claims “stole” jokes, has been praised for longer bits that are pretty profound, a lot more profound than anything these other comedians have produced.
Her success isn’t just from “jokes” — it’s from the show’s depth.
Before I read the summary, I was thinking about when I worked in retail. I would see at least twenty people a day who would make the same joke about an interesting or unusual display, or the weather, or some current event. But after I read the summary, nah, she stole some of these.
Oh, there’s no price on this one. It must be free!
I am an identical twin…and you’d think every nasty man who asked my sister and I to “double their pleasure” was the first person to ever think about it by their delivery.
I bet. So original, buddy, but sorry it didn’t work the first hundred times either.
I’m not concerned about her stealing jokes. I’m concerned that either 1) two people thought of the same crappy joke independently or 2) Amy would think these jokes are good enough to steal.
Because these jokes are…awful.
I didn’t watch the video, but a lot of it can be in the delivery. Some people can make anything funny, but when it’s written down……. yeah, not so much.
They all seem to have the same style, so I guess it happens. I mean how much material is there on being drunk and sleeping around…not much. You go in circles.
I am so sick of people using this excuse of “you are just jealous of my success.” You stole jokes, period. Own it, and give people credit for your success.
I’m currently listening to her interview with Jim Norton & she came right out of the gate with Tammy is trying to start something to get attention & everyone hates when someone is successful. That alone makes me think there is some merit to theft. A lot of the jokes are just very old & tired & obvious. Stealing from Patrice is harder to disbelieve. Word for word for the most part & I doubt her claim she never saw any of his work.
As I said above, both Patrice and Schumer were regulars on the “Opie and Anthony Show,” there is no way she never heard O’Neil’s material.
Those seem fairly plagiarized, but to be honest, isn’t this entirely characteristic of comedian culture? They all seem to either be stealing from one another, or accusing other comedians of stealing their material.
Here’s my take on it: comedians seem to be a tight, gossipy community. It’s hard to think up jokes, and I’m sure they see so many acts, or are told so many good jokes, that most of them probably have no idea about when they made something up, or echoed something they had heard in conversation, or in a show, or got the idea from a writer. I’m sure that there’s a ton of plagiarism going on, but that half of it is probably accidental. I’m sure there are so many jokes circulating that it’s really hard to draw boundaries of intellectual property, especially as single jokes are so small. This doesn’t seem half as egregious, for example, as Dennis Leary’s theft of entire routines from Bill Hicks.
Kind of like “there’s nothing new under the sun”. Some of these jokes have probably been tossed around longer than any of these people have been alive, and at a certain point, you just have to let it go. Personally I don’t care.
People copy each other all the time, and do truly forget that they didn’t actually come up with certain ideas. Or they out and out plagiarize. I read a really cool piece about this sort of comedian hostel type place run by the owner of the Laugh Factory in LA and based on the behavior described, I think you’re right. Comedians working on routines, tossing ideas out, going back and forth, gossiping, petty drama, drinking, drug use, etc. That would all blur the lines of who came up with what, and also make it really easy to rip off other comic’s ideas.
I am a huge Leary fan and there has always been this controversy between he and Bill Hicks.
While I know comedy like art, food and music is all subjective, I never found Hicks funny. Also, Hicks certainly had nothing to do with Leary’s success afterwards, especially in regards to his shows like “The Job,” “Rescue Me,” and “Sex, Drugs and Rock N’ Roll.”
I don’t know, some of these are just similar concepts I think. The dressing the man one, for example. And the Abe Lincoln one too. As for the Poltergeist/Houdini joke, I’ve heard of that referred to as “The Ghost” before, and earlier than ’06-’07. I guess that’s an older gag of indeterminate origin. It’s so hard to prove someone is stealing jokes. I have no particular relationship with Amy’s work, but I feel the need to give any comedian the benefit of the doubt on this one.
I’ve heard a few of these before too, and waaaaay before ’06. A version of “The Ghost” joke went around my junior high school. I think it was called “The Switch” or something like that and all the boys thought it was madly funny.
Right, and her joke was “ha, ha, actually that is rape.”
Cant prove or disprove it but… those same sex ‘jokes’ exist in various forms for years, different names sometimes, different delivery, but I’ve heard versions of them before in common culture.
I’ve only heard of Schumer after that Trainwreck movie. I kind of expected that her jokes and material for her stand up show would be different. And then I saw her special stand up show on HBO or somewhere on tv and I was disappointed. It was all about sex, vaginas and penis the entire show. I don’t mind some green, funny sex jokes but her show was just so uncomfortable and unfunny to watch.
I remember seeing that O’Neal video of his joke and Amy’s bit side by side and she clearly ripped him off. The joke is almost word for word.
The question is did she knowingly steal from these people or does she have a staff of writers who may have heard the jokes before?
And it’s funny that you bring up Dane Cook since I see Amy as the female version of him.
Well, Amy Schumer stole more than jokes – she stole stuff from NY shops in her youth and didn’t get arrested because she invoked the name of her uncle, senator Schumer (Google the story).
I guess she’s a professional thief ready to steal anything – jokes, clothes, ideas, shoes.
Besides, the “joke” with pubic hair on a woman’s face is horrible and humorless – I wouldn’t have taken it for free, let alone stealing it.
Yeah. I heard about that too. Amy Schumer has no talent at all. I think she has only come ahead in life because of her connections( her Democratic senator uncle) and thats all.
I didn’t realize a politician relative could be such a leg up in the comedy field.
To me Amy Schumer and Chelsea Handler fall in the same category – completely obnoxious and unfunny.
Schumer is worse though. Did you know she used to steal from stores in NY but got away with it because of her ties to the rich Democrats? Her uncle is a senator or a Governor.
Atleast Chelsea gets in trouble when she is accused from something.
That seems to be a bit of a reach to hold against someone. A lot of teens shoplift, but that doesn’t equate to the total sum of their character. People should be given permission to make mistakes, learn from it, grow and change.
Why repeatedly mention their political affiliation? How is this relevant to the story?
I agree, I don’t get the hype either. Some of the bits on her show are mildly amusing, but her standup? Meh…
Some of the jokes weren’t really original like the man who pays for sex, it has been told since the beginning of mankind. The Patrice O Neal jokes were probably stolen by one of her writers. Some of claims were a bit of a stretch like the Trainwreck poster. Anyway, it doesn’t matter who said it first, what matters is who delivered it better. Amy is slowly losing her underdog status and she’s at her best when she’s on the outside looking in. Now that she’s part of the group, her jokes lost impact.
She didn’t steal them, the jokes are hardly original and have been told in numerous manners.
All I see is a bunch of people (mainly men) jumping on the Amy Schumer hate train because a female comedian is having so much succes.
Y’all should watch the “proof”. It is extremely weak. They are absolutely not plagiarized – the wording and approach are completely different in every single case. Some of the content is somewhat similar, especially the Patrice stuff, and I could believe that she saw it, forgot about it, and used it later – tho as others have said, all of that is on Urban Dictionary. None of this is groundbreaking and none of it is word-for-word. That Tammy bit in particular is nearly a cliche that no one can claim as theirs. This is not at all damning.
She shouldn’t have said people were jealous because that’s never a good look, but it’s a total reach. People are salty and want attention for their extremely 90s jokes.
you have a point in the sense that Amy made every joke worse and er timing is not as good as the other comics. its really sad we see the least talented female comic succeed.
Amy lay low with your disgusting version of feminism, its not about you. also tell that to Taylor Swift if you meet her. sexism does not mean another woman criticizing you. even if she is jealous thats still not sexism. all of this also happens to male comedians. the late Robin Williams talked about it, in the mainstream media it was never a big topic (to be fair when he was a big stand up the news media looked very different from today) but it was very well known he stole jokes and he talked about it and paid people for the jokes he took.
instead of admitting it Amy tries to use a movement thats for oppressed women not rich white famous able bodied women earning millions with jokes about sex being called out when they steal from women with less success.
im also totally over the “they are all just jealous” BS. Also it would be nice if she tried to at least understand how other people feel. could be a bummer seeing someone getting praise (and Amy was praised like no one else this year) and lots of money with stuff you invented.
but we all know she’ll get together with other white famous women and talk about how hard they have it in life with all those less succesful women trying to take them down.
Lol get a grip
You do realize that these are not “less succesful women”. They are indeed actually “rich white famous able bodied women” just like you described Amy.
Sure they’re not as wealthy as her but they’re sucessful in what they do and are still considered rich for most people.
Those jokes are hardly original and have been around for a while. Schumer doesn’t oppress anyone.
Why do you feel so bad over her succes? Seriously why does it enrage you so much?
@Bree I can’t speak for @Esther, but for me I dislike Amy’s attitude and it’s not about ‘feeling bad over her success’ or being ‘enraged’ about it. I don’t like her, and stories like this one are a reason why.
It’s entirely possibly to not like someone for various reasons, that have nothing to do with feeling jealous/bad/enraged about their success. When someone doesn’t like you, it’s usually for who you are, period, they’re not upset about your success or achievements.
“She’s just jelly” has become an excuse for people to avoid actually looking at themselves…their behavior, their attitudes, and how they treat others.
Why would anyone want to steal some of those jokes? They’re disgusting, and not even disgusting in a funny way.
I thought Trainwreck was humorous enough, but Amy’s schtick is going to get old really fast. Whether those are her jokes or someone else’s, they aren’t particularly funny. As far as her success goes, 2015 was definitely her year. I just don’t think she has long-term staying power.
she hasnt. Jlaws advantage is that she can act, she could disappear for a little while, make people forget and then come back and focus on her acting and creating good movies. Amy only has her toilet humor.
its never good when you rise that fast.
Wendy Liebman is so funny. I remember her standup routine that got played on Comedy central over and over in the early to mid-90s, and that man pays for sex joke was probably the most memorable to me. For at least some of these, I can see how anyone might think of them independently. The food-slap and having someone exercise you, I myself thought of those jokes years ago (well, the food-slap one was more like Robert Downey Jr paying someone to slap drugs away from him, but same basic framework). I thought they were pretty original when I thought of them.
As far as Patrice’s jokes, ooh whether she stole them or not, those were nasty.
There are some legal problems when it comes to copyrighting jokes. For one thing, they usually have to be written down, so verbal jokes are harder to copyright. Plus, you have to have a certain length of a passage to copyright, and jokes are usually short. Legal challenges aside, I understand comics remember when others steal their jokes, and habitual joke thieves kind of get ostracized within the community.
So not only is she NOT funny but she’s also not original. Great.
I don’t find Amy Schumer funny at all. And one thing that I will NEVER think is okay to joke about is rape. So in the comparison of Amy vs. Patrice, I am glad that at least Amy ended it with “That’s just rape,” because that is exactly what that scenario is, and it’s sick.
Wanda Sykes’ detachable pussy joke is funny. It’s all in the execution. If you’re just making a rape joke to be edgy, it’s not funny, but if you’re making a point with it, that’s different.
What I got from all of this — sex jokes are really not that funny, or possibly at all.
She is a joke.
Mmmm… this is reaching. The first joke, yes may have been stolen. The poltergeist/Houdini one, she SAYS she heard a story about it. She could be referencing the earlier joke.. The Pescatelli joke– that wasn’t stealing. That is a common sentiment I’ve head a few times years ago.
Meh. I listen to comedy shows on Pandora at work all day long, and one thing I’ve realized is that all of these comedians steal jokes. ALL of them. Even the big ones, like Jim Gaffigan and Robin Williams, tell jokes I’ve heard not five minutes earlier from another comedian. I don’t even think they realize they’re doing it. How many comedy acts they’ve probably heard over their lifetimes, and the jokes might just be floating in the subconscious.
I believe Amy. And she’s absolutely right. Many people are inclined to see someone else’s success as their failure. It just makes them look for something to criticize. It’s a shame.
I remember Robin Williams was accused of stealing jokes on more than one occasion. (Although, thinking about it, I bet his delivery was original enough to change the material).
This is one of those debates that can be boiled down to “Is any thought actually original?” but at the end of the day, Amy steals jokes and there is tons of proof. I saw some videos comparing Amy’s jokes to the original jokes and they’re all blatantly ripped off. Amy changes a few words, but the jokes are other people’s material.
“I don’t think she’s got much going on, this is my guess”… this says a lot about Schumer. She talks around the issue and then uses insults to discredit Tammy Pescatelli. That is tacky and manipulative.
It’s exactly the same thing we’ve all laughed at Trump for doing: Instead of facing the issue, go on the attack with insults & discredit the other person/group of people. I honestly think Trump has used the exact same phrase, more than once.
Her stand up seems so desperate to me.
I will say this, the Abraham Lincoln/Houdini joke I remember hearing about 15 years ago… it’s THAT old. I think neither Patrice nor Amy came up with it, so there’s that. I also agree with what other posters said – that comedians recycle jokes all the time and it’s probably not intentional. They hear something, it’s stored in their subconscious, then they recreate it in their own words. When I’m writing, I will often think of a phrase or a line and then I have to wonder: ‘Did I create that or did I read/hear that elsewhere?’. Is it irresponsible to not double-check that the joke is original to you, when you have some sort of doubt in your mind? Absolutely. But I can see how when you have all of these projects and deadlines you might not have the time. Honestly, none of the jokes listed above are that original. I dislike Amy Schumer (I think she’s overrated and annoying), but I think this is harmless and she didn’t intentionally steal anyone’s jokes.
She isn’t always funny
So in other words:
“Oh my gawd, she is totally copying me!”
“Nuh uh, she is totally just jealous of me!”
I think all this illustrates is how lazy and unoriginal all these comedians are. Not even the people Amy’s being accused of stealing from made up those jokes. They are all spins on the same jokes that have been being made for YEARS.
I think I read/skimmed most of these posts … and right to end, you (Claire) illustrate what I’ve been thinking just now. Very good point. Comedy in America is so crappy …. unfortunately it’s taken a female comic/celeb to point that out … or to be pointed out as a good example rather ;). But at least I have my Tosh. Wait, that’s kinda sad too.
#AmySchumerHackedMeToo (I’m on that on hashtag page on Twitter …and I’m not kidding)
I heard both the ghost and the Abe Lincoln joke from my high school boyfriend, and I’m 42.
So no they aren’t original to any of these people.
The other jokes aren’t original to any of them either.
exercising when you sleep, having someone to take the food from you, dressing your boyfriend ugly or getting him a bad haircut, these are all ideas I’ve had at one point or another years ago, they just made them funnier.
And getting paid for sex, my asshole husband has joked hey he pays me for sex, I get to go grocery shopping.
So I’m not seeing it, there is nothing original here.