Patton Oswalt Attacks Nobody For Stealing Material
What does a guy do after the Broadway show he's starring in gets canceled because of his performance and then he's removed from a comedy pilot after the first table reading? Well, if he's Patton Oswalt, he scours the Internet to find out if disingenuous no-talents are stealing his stand-up material! Oswalt took to MySpace -- God love you, Patton, but really: MySpace? -- to out a pathetic joke stealer named Nick Madson, a Colorado comedian who did Oswalt's routine at a club in Iowa on Wednesday. Needless to say: Someone get Madson a helmet.
After calling the him a "thief" in an earlier post, Oswalt actually got a correspondence from Madson that claimed the stolen jokes were just a tribute planned for a benefit show to support the club where the performance was held. Uh, yeah, nope.
As it turns out, all of that was made up: It was no tribute and the club in question isn't in trouble. In a blog posted on Saturday -- titled, fittingly, "A**holery" -- Oswalt wrote directly to Madson: "I'm sorry I merely called you a 'thief.' You are also an a**hole, sociopath and liar ... You craven, pudding-spined cl*toris of a man." No truth to the rumor that Carlos Mencia just made that one of his punchlines.
· Patton Oswalt Outraged at Joke-Stealing Comic [Huffington Post]
· A**holery! [MySpace/Patton Oswalt]
Subscribe to the new Movieline on YouTube
Comments
In fairness, Mr. Oswalt was sent the video from the original show by a 3rd party - I don't think there was any scouring done by him (at least, until he went justifiably nuclear on a low-rent joke thief).
According to Christopher Rosen it's perfectly okay to steal a comedian's material if that comedian:
1. Lost out on a TV pilot when pilots traditionally replace actors based on the whims of network execs.
2. Was in a failed Broadway show during a time when Broadway is struggling to survive.
3. Dares to call you out on the thievery on an un-cool social network site.
If you meet a comedian meeting that criteria, feel free to steal his intellectual property, because that comedian has no rights to protect his original work from someone running around claiming that they wrote it.
A+ for FURIOUS D.
The only reason I go on myspace anymore is Patton Oswalt's blog.
From his myspace blog on why he's still using myspace:
"I didn’t want to announce this on my website, or on my Facebook which, truth be told, I shut down ‘cuz of all the psycho messages I was getting. I mean, I appreciate knowing that you were awake at 3am and heard a katydid chirping my name and that’s why you’re warning me that a hobo-harlequin’s going to kill me with a tire iron on Christmas, but…I mean, didn’t you get tired just reading that?"