Joke Thievery - in Other Media

In Other Media

Joke theft is not limited to stand-up comedy. Often jokes in film and television shows are taken from comics or even other media.

Dick Cavett wrote about joke theft in his autobiography. He relayed a story about writing a bit about eating Chinese-German food and, an hour later, being hungry for power. After a few days of performing the bit, he discovered a review of Rip Taylor's show, where the joke was quoted verbatim. However, after calling Taylor to ask him to stop using the bit, he discovered that not only had Taylor never performed the bit, he had never even heard it and laughed hysterically at the joke's humor. It was then that Cavett discovered that some journalists often falsely attribute jokes to the wrong comics.

Cavett and Woody Allen often cited to each other the many instances of their jokes appearing in television shows without their permission, sometimes even falsely attributed to each other.

Allen's jokes were regularly stolen by the highly successful television show Laugh In. This proved extremely painful to Allen.

The experimental Pet Shop Boys film It Couldn't Happen Here and the promotional music video for their remake of the Elvis Presley song "Always on My Mind" both featured a homicidal priest, played by Joss Ackland, who performed several bits from Steven Wright's first comedy album, "I Have a Pony".

Several episodes of The Simpsons, including "Missionary: Impossible", "Treehouse of Horror XIII", and "The Italian Bob" have poked fun at Family Guy, implying that MacFarlane's show is guilty of stealing jokes and premises from the Simpsons. However, the producers of both shows have said that there is no serious feud between the two of them and their shows.