I don’t normally talk about the mechanics of comedy on this blog for a couple of reasons. It’s kind of boring if you’re not a comedy nerd and talk like this should be left to more capable comedians than myself. Personally, I love talking shop about comedy but this blog is about one thing, feeding my ego.
Regardless of my completely not at all overinflated ego (feel free to comment, link, post to facebook, digg, stumbleupon, email to your parents, print out and hand to strangers on the street while wearing a white robe and singing etc.), I posted a joke on facebook last night that I was thinking of taking onstage sometime and a friend pointed out that it was pretty close to a Mitch Hedberg bit. I posted –
“The back of the Ritz cracker box is really presumptuous about the effort I’m willing to put forth into topping a fucking cracker. Tell you what, Ritz. You’re getting either peanut butter or cheese and maybe some summer sausage if we’ve got company. I’ll save the roast beef, horseradish and parsley for actual bread.”
This came to me while I was (get ready to peek in to the mind of the auteur as he crafts comedy gold) putting peanut butter on a Ritz cracker and reading the back of the box.
Seriously. The "Cheesy Tomato Melts" recipe calls for pepper and garlic powder. It's a cracker, not an episode of Iron Chef.
A short while after I posted this a friend commented that it was a Hedberg bit. I couldn’t think of a Hedberg bit about topping crackers so I just took his word for it and decided to drop the bit before I ever took it onstage. Another friend posted a link to the actual Hedberg Ritz cracker bit and stated that the context is different. It’s true, I certainly go in a different direction than he did but the basic foundation is the same and he came up with it first.
So what should a comic do in this situation? Throw the joke out.
It doesn’t matter that I came up with the joke on my own because I didn’t come up with it first. This rule holds true whether the bit was performed by an icon like Hedberg or a shitty open mic comic. You wrote it first, it’s yours.
Besides, if I’m funny I’ll be able to write a different joke that’s just as good. Comedian and aggressive top Rob Delaney wrote in Vice Magazine about a time a joke was stolen from him and performed on TV. He said “I realized that if I couldn’t immediately write several more jokes to replace it, then I wasn’t funny, and I had no business calling myself a comedian”. This philosophy should hold even truer (according to spell check it’s a word!) if you inadvertently steal a joke.
I’ll just write more, better jokes. I’ll be fine. In fact, you can see me at The Monday Night Comedy Show tonight. I’ve got a great new joke about Triscuits.
This closing line is killer
I hope your Triscuit joke is nothing like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5338Gt-cOY
Well, shit. Not anymore.
I just realized that I should make it 100% clear that I didn’t think you were stealing a Hedburg bit. I assumed from the beginning that you arrived at the similar bit independently, which is what happened, of course.
That happens all the time. I thought once I had a brilliant bit about hiding a bomb in a bra so the TSA would require women to take their bras off at airport security and then I discovered that Alonzo Boden did it first. Sigh.
Plagiarism is the backbone of comedy.
Great post, Bill. And inspirational too, realizing that if I can’t write more [hopefully funny] material to take the place of a joke I probably shouldn’t use, then I might not be cut out for the comedy path.
A couple of months into open mic-ing I did a joke on stage that got a great response. That night Corey Adam told me it was a Rick Logan joke. I contacted Rick and although he liked my expansion of his original one-liner into a 1-2 minute bit, he was so awesome to break down for me the reasons why he’s stopped using jokes himself once he’s discovered a coincidence like that. Club owners [and anyone for that matter] wouldn’t know that you’ve stumbled [on your own] upon the same idea another comic has been talking about already. It’s just a safe bet to tuck away a joke if someone else has been using it so you’re not mistaken for a thief or a douche-bag.
Fear of being disliked certainly shouldn’t be the only reason though. Would one less joke really make me a worse open mic-er? I’d like to think I’ll evolve and have a whole new arsenal of material a year from now. If I don’t, I’m probably wasting my time.
Fortunately I was able to look at the experience as a milestone. Hell, I got to retire my first joke. Now I just need to figure out how to writing smart, original and funny bits. Damn.
[Most of the] advice that gets thrown around this town is priceless to me. It’s comics that share stuff like this and tell noobs like me when and where I might be making mistakes that make the scene here so supportive. The comics I’ve already mentioned plus a handful more have been very good to me, giving honest feedback and just telling it like it is. Thanks for being one of the good ones, Bill.
Bill, I hate when you do post like this….. acting like you have this “creativity” and talking about your “craft”. BILL HAS BEEN USING STOLEN JOKES FOR YEARS! It’s time the world knows… When he was a teenager he was cleaning out the attic at his house in Oakdale, and found his long lost Vaudeville realitive’s notebook(it was a pile of loose parchment paper with the words written in blood?) that had a title page: Shecky Young’s Private Joke Book/Moonshine recipes. His “act” is basically the same as Shecky’s was just minus the parts about Chinese people and of course the juggling.
My secret! Noooooooo!