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Amy Schumer (Pretty Obviously Falsely) Accused of Joke Theft

The comedian went on Sirius XM radio to defend herself

liam-mathews
Liam Mathews

A video was anonymously released on Wednesday comparing Amy Schumer's comedy to other comedians' material, and Schumer disputed the claims on Twitter and during an appearance on the Jim Norton Advice Show on Sirius XM's Opie Radio.

The video compares some of Schumer's standup, sketch, and movie work to footage of comics Wendy Liebman, Patrice O'Neal, Kathleen Madigan, and Tammy Pescatelli with the intent of showing that Schumer stole from these earlier routines. Upon watching the video, it's clear that they are not stolen.

Amy Schumer is a Joke Thief from joe schmo on Vimeo.

The jokes about paying for sex on the first date are hacky. It's a straightforward wordplay premise that doesn't require much of a point of view to come up with, and the similarity doesn't indicate thievery, just laziness. The filthy sex acts Schumer and O'Neal describe are public domain premises that they didn't come up with. The earliest Urban Dictionary entry for "gorilla mask," for example, is from 2002, well before the Schumer and O'Neal bits in the video. And Schumer's joke is really about how this sex act that's presented as a funny thing to do to someone is actually rape. That is an on-brand Amy Schumer joke that is pretty unique to her point of view. It's very different than vocal misogynist Patrice O'Neal's joke. The food-slapping and sleep-exercising are obvious premises that Madigan and Schumer take to very different places, and the "women dress men ugly" joke is a cliché that wouldn't feel out of place in a Lockhorns comic strip. The only thing that really seems like it could be a rip-off is the promotional poster, which probably wasn't Schumer's idea anyway. She is not Universal Pictures' marketing department.

If anything, this video proves that Schumer sometimes tells bad, clichéd jokes.

Amy Schumer calls out teen's rude joke on Twitter

"On my life, I have never and would never steal a joke," Schumer tweeted yesterday.

On Jim Norton's show, Schumer admitted that some of these jokes aren't great, but vehemently denied that they're stolen. "I will literally take a polygraph. And I just would never [steal jokes]. That would be so stupid for me to do that."

She also accuses one of the comedians featured in the video, Tammy Pescatelli, of being involved in the video somehow. Pescatelli, Schumer says, is jealous of Schumer's success and bitter that Schumer blocked her on Twitter, so she's accusing Schumer of joke theft as a way to tear her down.

As Taylor Swift, who has had her own plagiarism allegations to deal with, would probably say: When you're at Schumer's level, haters are gonna hate.