Gimme That!

It's impossible to write a proper stand up comedy blog (because as we all know... standards for these things are mighty high) without touching on comedy theft. I have ran a decently successful open mic night for the past two years and in that time have ran across countless people (well... not countless, probably about 150-170 if you want to get mathematically technical... nerds) who went on stage. I can only remember a small handful of them trying to rip off others material.

I'll share some stories in a different update about people who help themselves to a two ears and a mouth discount (the cousin of the five finger discount), but let me throw out something that isn't much mentioned with joke thieves:

Some aren't to blame.

No one really says that - and don't get me wrong, what they are doing is a bad thing, but I honestly believe some of the people who sign up simply don't know any better. I'm not defending their actions, only their complete ignorance. They don't know enough about etiquette in the stand up world. In fact, there is a good chance the only time they have seen stand up comedy was either over fifteen years ago during the 90's boom, or three to five minutes at a time while flipping through channels when "Celebrity Rehab" was on commercial.

If no one tells them, "hey... this is why this is wrong" - they simply won't understand... and in my experience, even if you do tell them, they still don't understand. THAT is when they become laugh burglars.

Here is the rationale of ones who don't understand: "I watch bands cover songs, why can't I cover comedy?"

Which, in fairness, isn't the dumbest reason someone could have. Songs are creative expression, written and worked on by artists (...and hair metal bands) - so how does that pass off as vastly different than stand up comedy? Well... it doesn't. If you break it down, doing a cover of someone's song without their direct permission is a form of plagiarism, but different for two main reasons.

1. Doing cover songs has become pretty nationally accepted. I have to imagine the first few times someone did a show dressed as Elvis, covering all of Elvis's songs... some where, someone with a gold plated Elvis album hanging on their wall had to say, "this is bullshit." Songs are on the radio all day, in movies and TV, on youtube most of the time with the bands consent - it's basically public domain. Which leads to:

2. Everyone knows who the song belongs to. A local band isn't going to fire up "Crazy Train" by Ozzy and trick anyone into thinking they wrote it in the wee hours the night before. In fact, if they tried out the "B-side" of let's say a Drowning Pool album, most people might not instantly know it, but will still say, "Which band does this song?" At no point while hearing that is someone going to nudge a guy at the bar stool next to him and say, "give your cousin a call... this is that new sound he has been looking for." (Yes, that was me making a dig on Marty McFly being a complete asshole for ripping off Chuck Berry before ol 'Chuck ever performed Johnny B Goode. Time travel does not make plagiarism okay, butt head.)

Stand up bits, even some that are somewhat well known, are not going to be known by an average comedy club goer. Sure, if someone dove into Richard Pryor material or went into a Chris Rock impression... everyone is going to know. But if someone changed a word or two around then did two straight minutes of let's say an early Patton Oswalt bit... it's going to go completely unnoticed by the majority.

Here is the simplistic break down: One student hands the book, "The Cat in the Hat" to a teacher and says, "I couldn't come up with anything... but this is by Dr. Suess... let me read it to you." The second student hands in a re-written, sloppy, make shift pile of construction paper of the same book to the teacher and says, "this is The Dog in the Cap... I wrote it."

That's the person who can't claim ignorance... and good chance if you know someone like that who made you laugh while they were on stage... they can't claim their material either.

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*Disclaimer* This is not advice, a how-to manual, or in any way presented as fact. No one at my level (or to me.. at any level) should give "advice" about how to do stand up. This is simply opinions and things I have noticed along the way of performing stand up comedy.