Hey everybody, take a look at the jerk who now has the reputation for being a humorless moneygrubber. A dickhead. Somebody that NOBODY would EVER want to hire.
Without naming names, Conan O'Brien settled with this putz, but did so grudgingly, and by circulating an essay to the media about it. Portions are below.
Meet me after the break.
Too bad for Conan that his lawyers didn't see a happy ending here: Mr. Asshole not only loses the case, but has to pay damages.
This happened in the case of my friend Matthew Fisher, who successfully won his case involving a share of "A Whiter Shade of Pale," a song for which he wrote the very famous opening organ solo. After many torturous years, and a trial that was quite harrowing and even involved an appeal, he won. His opponent had to pay the court costs, which were substantial.
Obviously, paying court costs if you lose involves where the lawsuit is filed and whether a judge feels the lawsuit was intentionally "frivolous."
I fortunately haven't had much experience personally with this kind of thing. I did successfully win good money on plagiarism matters involving authors abusing my work. One case got me the equivalent of a year's salary for many people. Ironically, it involved swiping jokes from my Doubleday tome, "The Comedy Quote Dictionary." While jokes can't be copyrighted, my lawyer pointed to how I compiled them, which was an element in the thefts in another joke book. Another interesting facet of that case was the legality of my book in the first place: how many jokes could I quote, giving full credit, to any comedian before it might be considered stealing? The publisher and I agreed that 10 would be the limit, and these shouldn't be from the same record album or hour-long special, but from a large body of work.
I also spent a lot of tedious time in Small Claims trying to pry $1000 or whatever it was from a publisher who gleefully didn't care if I never wrote for him again. My lady love helpfully served legal papers on another deadbeat publisher, who quickly settled. And, I defended when a publisher had one of his stooges hand ME papers indicating I had to show up in court because I was being sued for three million dollars. This, I think, for telling people he hadn't paid me or a dozen other people and was not to be trusted. It wasn't libel to tell the truth about him. I didn't even bother to hire a lawyer in that case. I represented myself.
But I digress?
Conan O'Brien.
What can I add to this? Agreement. Once in a while I see a "hashtag game" on Twitter, and I instantly come up with a funny gag. BUT...sometimes when I scroll down to see what other people have written, MY joke is there. Sometimes.
It's not pleasant to think that somebody ELSE is as clever as I am. Conan and his writers have the same feeling. Jokes are written to a formula. You can "learn" how to be funny. There's a trick to it. The really good comedians and comedy writers work beyond the obvious, the same as a good magician. There WILL be overlapping.
There also will be, sometimes, joke stealing. It didn't happen in this case, but it does happen. Milton Berle was famous as "The Thief of Badgags," and his defense was that any joke was funnier if HE told it. I think he also felt any publicity was good publicity, and joke-thief gags were as good for him as cheap-jokes were for Jack Benny. Milton was as quick with an ad-lib as anyone.
Several comics have had "joke thief" hurled at them for one reason or another. Sometimes it's true. Some guys are pricks. It's in their DNA : Dumb Natural Assholes.
I don't know what the deal is with Carlos Mencia or Dane Cook etc. etc. I suppose in the case of Robin Williams, he was so wired, and moving so fast, he simply threw in jokes he remembered along with ad-libs.
A joke, according to the law, can't be copyrighted.
It's doubtful Conan would've lost his case, but you never know. There are judges who set rapists free.
The judge may have looked at the five very obvious jokes and figured that this is TOO much of a coincidence, not understanding the world of comedy writing.
Judge: "Are you trying to show contempt for this court?"
Mae West: "No, I'm trying my best to hide it."
Sometimes when I've complained to a lawyer about a problem of this type, the answer comes back: "What are your damages?"
Meaning, can you PROVE that the plagiarism hurt you in any way. How is a judge going to determine the amount of money you should get?
In one case, I pointed out to the lawyer, "This clown made me his ghostwriter. A ghostwriter should be paid. I did a lot of research, which he didn't pay for. Worse than that, he picked my brain by deliberately re-arranging my phrases and my insights and pretending HE came up with them. I should get some money as his co-writer, and punitive damages."
My lawyer agreed.
Lastly, in talking about "damages," I close with the non-case of Mason vs Adams. No, not Mason Adams, who lived within walking distance and was such a nice guy (and a funny man, if you can find his "Idiots and Company" comedy album).
It's Jackie Mason vs Don Adams. It's a non-case because Jackie never sued.
In my 1988 book "Comedy on Record," I reviewed Don's lone stand-up album. One paragraph:
"Oddly, some routines are word-for-word copies of Jackie Mason material. He tells Mason's joke about his mother, who is so hard of hearing that she ends up with eighteen children: her husband says "Do you ant to go to sleep or what? She says "What?"
"He uses Mason's opener about the previous act ("I worked at a club a few weeks ago where the act before me, she was so bad, right in the middle of my act, they started booing her. They couldn't forget how lousy she was..."
"Says Mason: 'I've never seen anybody comparatively successful steal so blatantly. It's offensive and disgusting. I'm amazed that with all his stardom he'd stoop to stealing my jokes word for word, but frankly, it hasn't hurt my career. The audience is buying our personalities, not one joke or routine.'"
Let's add a line that Henny and Soupy and Milton have used: "It's not an old joke to somebody who hasn't heard it before."
The audience at a Don Adams show never heard Jackie's jokes. So they laughed. Maybe a few did hear Jackie's jokes and forgot them and laughed. Or laughed because of the way Don re-told them. What were Jackie's damages? He was offended, that's all. He may have won a lawsuit if he bothered, but as he said, both he and Adams were star comedians and there were plenty of nightclubs for both of them.
A lawsuit from Jackie Mason may have been bad publicity, presenting him in the public's eye as petty and cheap.
In this case, probably a good amount of people in the business know the name of the guy who sued Conan O'Brien, and consider him petty and cheap. And stupid and wrong. And not worth hiring.
I haven't mentioned his name.
I hope that prevents him from trying to sue me.
If he tries it, all he'll win is a punch in the nose. That's one way you settle out of court.
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