Oops! Received this comment from blog faithful Doug McEwan:"Raiders of the Lost AARP"
A perfect example of my point two columns back, that sometimes two brilliant minds will come up with the same joke independently, that it's not always a steal, because Tallulah used "Raiders of the Lost AARP" several times over on her blog back when the film came out a year ago.
Great Minds and all that.
Yes, it is very possible for two people to independently come up with the same joke or premise or subject for a painting. I just recently learned that Cezanne wasn’t the only artist to paint fruit. And in the case of “Lost AARP” that’s partly the case. It would be entirely the case if I hadn’t read Tallulah’s blog (she has a new piece that’s a riot, by the way). I had consciously forgotten it but my brain’s komedy kloset apparently did not. So, sorry about that Tallulah. And little Dougie.
This is why when I review award shows I always try to post them as soon as I can. Other reviews may tread on similar comic ground and I want to cover myself that I came up with the jokes myself and didn’t lift them from other sources.
But the greatest story of inadvertently stealing someone else’s material comes from singer/songwriter, Neil Sedaka. Neil is an incredibly talented musician. His perform
ing career spans fifty years and he has written hundreds of hit songs including “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do” and “Love Will Keep Us Together”. Neil was part of that Brill Building collection of superstar songwriters in the early 60s that included Carole King and Bacharach & David.One day while noodling at the piano he came up with an incredible melody. He was ecstatic. This was the best melody he ever wrote. He quickly rounded up some musicians to do a demo. This was going to be a sure-fire smash.
The excited musicians gathered for the session, Neil proudly played the melody and they looked at him dumfounded. One had to gently remind him that that was Gershwin’s “Our Love Is Here To Stay”. I’m sure, like me, a red-faced Sedaka said…
Oops!
We work all night writing a topical comedy service for morning radio, so we usually avoid the trap of repeating someone else's joke (we're writing news about stories that just happened hours before). Every night, I watch Leno and the other talkers, to see what they had to say on the same subjects. I find that at least two or three of our lines would usually pop up word-for-word in Leno's monologues two or three days later (you could spot them by the audience reaction: loud laughter, sustained applause, etc.) I always assume that's just two minds working on the same track, and not one of our clients fencing stolen material. Although one time, I did have to wonder when I wrote a really off-the-wall line based on a fact that was in about the 17th paragraph of a long news story, and Leno did the exact same line two days later.
ReplyDeleteBut then, I reminded myself that my wife and I work together, and nearly every night when she brings me her lines on the premises I've written, several of them will be nearly identical to lines I've already written. I figure that just means I married the right woman. Finally.
Never for a moment did I think it was a lift; just a joke so THERE that we both found it independently a year apart. My first reaction to seeing it here was pride; I knew it was a good joke. Nothing to apologise for.
ReplyDeleteAnd Heaven knows, I have had the experience more than once of writing something I thought was terrific, and then finding it in something that I had read a year or two earlier. That joke memory closet is slippery.
Woody Allen had a stand-up bit 40 years ago: "I just wrote a novel. I call it 'Great Expectations.' My agent said, 'It's a good book, possible a great book, but there's no need to have written it, as Charles Dickens had already written it.' "
But thank you for the gracious acknowledgement.
And Tallulah enjoyed the ballpark beer.
Oh, and your comments about writing award show reviews goes exactly the same for me. In fact, it makes me write them a little faster, since I can't read yours until mine is posted. Look for Tallulah's Tony Award Show review on The HuffPo Monday.
ReplyDeleteI knew you weren't channeling "Bobby" all along.
ReplyDeleteIt happened to Sedaka, too. Billy Joel admits that his first version of "Moving Out" was actually the music to "Laughter In The Rain".
ReplyDeleteTry it yourself and match up the lyrics.
P.S. -- It's the nightmare of every author of humor that he'll discover the piece he's been working on for weeks was already done better by Robert Benchley in 1923. Wish I could take credit for that observation, but James Thurber said it first.
ReplyDeleteThe Sedaka story reminds me that when Paul McCartney wrote the tune for "Yesterday," he was so astonished at coming up with it that he went around playing for everybody he knew, asking them if he hadn't accidentally lifted it from something, because he could hardly believe it was his own creation.
ReplyDeleteAn even better example than the Sedaka one is the story of Arthur Freed and "Make 'Em Laugh." While working on "Singing in the Rain," Stanley Donen, the director, suggested to Freed that they needed a song a bit like Cole Porter's "Be A Clown" for Donald O'Connor. Freed agreed, went away for a while and came back with "Make 'Em Laugh" which is pretty much the same song with a different lyric. Oddly Cole Porter never complained. Perhaps it was because Freed was at that time head of MGM's musical division.
ReplyDeleteDidn't Barry Manilow steal Could It Be Magic from Chopin?
ReplyDeleteThen there was the time that Sgt. Bilko went to great lengths to write down a tune Cpl. Paperelli used to sing in the shower, then managed to get Col. Hall to think he created it and came up with "The Song of the Motor Pool". Only it was already "The Song of Signal Corps", Paperelli's old unit and the platoon didn't win the big TV contest.
ReplyDeleteAnd the writer of that series, Nat Hiken, used to write for Milton Berle...
And The Phil Silvers Show featured an early appearance for Alan Alda..
@RogerOwenGreen: Yes, and Eric Carmen made an entire career ripping off Rachmaninoff. Hell, he didn't care; he was dead.
ReplyDeleteI remember coining the term "the Govenator" moments after Ah-nold was elected, in an email to a friend. I also predicted that my friend would see it everywhere very soon.
ReplyDeleteAnd I was right.