Whats the sub-culture view on ripping off material?

DeVore

My personal opinion is that if I was going to do comedy I would never want to simply do another comics material.

I hear people do the smoking routine from Bill Hicks (Lenny Bruce?) and I groan inwardly because it immediately marks them as a copy cat in my mind but I was curious about this. Is it considered by form to do a routine that has been done by another comic? What if it isnt a well known one? How much material is "inspired" by other comics?

DeV.

Galvasean

Ask Carlos Mencia. All of his material is robbed from other comics.

projectmayhem

Galvasean wrote: »

Ask Carlos Mencia. All of his material is robbed from other comics.

or Dane Cook.

Mellor

Somebody recently ripped off a famous Bill Cosby joke, kinda a long joke

I can't remember who it was as I recognaised the joke and switched off.


Carlos Mencia is terrible, he has his own show in america, and its on all the time and its terrible

Dave!

DeVore wrote: »

My personal opinion is that if I was going to do comedy I would never want to simply do another comics material.

I hear people do the smoking routine from Bill Hicks (Lenny Bruce?) and I groan inwardly because it immediately marks them as a copy cat in my mind but I was curious about this. Is it considered by form to do a routine that has been done by another comic? What if it isnt a well known one? How much material is "inspired" by other comics?

DeV.

Denis Leary famously "made use of" some of Bill Hicks' material, and got fairly slated for it.

orestes

There are only so many topics that can be talked about, so some over-lap is inevitable. Just doing a joke on the same subject as another comedian does not make you a rip-off. Doing a joke about smoking does not make you a Bill Hicks rip-off. Leary didn't just do jokes on the same subject, he did the same jokes, there's a big difference.

And two people can independently come up with the same joke, which happens quite a lot. From what I can tell, it's a first come-first serve kinda thing on that one. The first one to get the material aired owns it. The second guy didn't nick the joke, but he has to drop it anyway, which kinda sucks but it's just the way it goes. I've had to drop jokes from my routine because it turns out that another comedian I have never seen or heard before did essentially the same joke a long time before I did it. Doing it would have made me sound like a thief and I wouldn't have felt comfortable doing material that someone had already done anyway.

Doing another comedians material is simply wrong. It's plagiarism, artistic and intellectual theft, plain and simple. And the sub-culture view of it is that if you do it you're a cnut.

hotspur

There was a time when stand up comics told 'jokes' and these jokes usually came from the pool of existing jokes. So many comics would tell the same gags and use good ones they had seen others do. Also many old comics had gag writers and didn't produce any original material themselves.

This all changed during the revolution of alternative comedy in the late 1970's / early 1980's. Stand up was then less about 'jokes', and material was always written by the performers themselves and plagiarism of material was an unforgivable sin. It is still the same today.

Any comic who does any material from another comic would be ostracised, it's heretical to the view of stand up as an art form.

Dennis Leary's borrowing of some of Bill Hicks's material and style is the best known example. That was very unusual and he got away with it because he blew up a bit before Bill really, there were mitigating circumstances when he wrote that show in England, he used to be friends and gig with Bill, he shared some of his views, and he was a very good comic in his own right.

But borrowing material is a huge huge no no. Lenny Bruce died in 1966, Hick's plagiarised dying too young from him

Mellor

hotspur wrote: »

Lenny Bruce died in 1966, Hick's plagiarised dying too young from him

I know that was a joke, but it was pretty bad, Change it become DeV sees

RadioActive

Yeah, if you're going to steal jokes you might as well be an actor.