Amy Schumer had an unusually exciting and extraordinarily successful 2015 — so it naturally follows that she’s now being hit with accusations of joke theft.
On Wednesday, a video surfaced on Vimeo titled “Amy Schumer is a Joke Thief.” The almost six-and-a-half-minute compilation splices together footage from Schumer’s HBO special, her Emmy-award-winning sketch show Inside Amy Schumer and her film Trainwreck with jokes performed by other standup comedians.
Some of the claims seem baseless — the poster for Trainwreck, for instance, would’ve been designed by the studio’s marketing team rather than Schumer herself.
But other incidents may raise eyebrows, especially knowing that the video comes after comedians Wendy Liebman, Kathleen Madigan, and Tammy Pescatelli — all of whom appear in the clip — took to Twitter Monday night to slam Schumer for stealing material. At one point, they even compared her to Bill Cosby.
Their tweets were then deleted, but not before Interrobang grabbed them.
Liebman (whose tweet ignited the firestorm) now seems to be backing off her accusations, saying it may have been possible Amy wrote similar jokes without hearing her material first.
It’s all good.
— Wendy Liebman (@WendyLiebman) January 19, 2016
I never said @amyschumer stole my joke.I just said it was the same.It’s possible we both wrote it.I just wanted you to know I wrote it 1st.
— Wendy Liebman (@WendyLiebman) January 20, 2016
I think both @amyschumer and I like it when a man pays…for sex. #greatminds #parallelthinking https://t.co/zWQKo4Kj5F
— Wendy Liebman (@WendyLiebman) January 20, 2016
It’s not the first time Schumer has been accused of stealing material. Following the premiere of her HBO special in October, media pointed out that Schumer’s jokes about curious sex acts mirrored a similar routine by the late Patrice O’Neal, who happens to have been a friend of Schumer’s.
Schumer denied the claims in a tweet, saying she had never heard O’Neal’s joke. Other fans came to her defense saying while the material they both riff on is similar, the punchlines are varied. And comedian Jim Norton, a close friend of both Schumer’s and O’Neal’s, leapt to her defense, calling accusations of joke theft “ignorant.”
Thanks man. I have never seen that Patrice bit but I will watch today. I love and miss him. https://t.co/4hxlDgF7Bi
— Amy Schumer (@amyschumer) October 19, 2015
The comedy world has been fraught with beefs over stolen material, especially over the past decade or so. The most famous fights include those between Carlos Mencia and Joe Rogan, The Fat Jew and Patton Oswalt and, most notoriously, Louis C.K. and Dane Cook — who eventually addressed their tiff on C.K.’s FX series Louie.
Schumer has yet to comment on the recent accusations.
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