Most people in the world are worried about who Donald Trump is going to nuke, but not Tig Notaro, who you will know if you have Amazon Prime and enjoy their original content from her show “One Mississippi.” She’s more concerned with a “Saturday Night Live” sketch that comedian Louis CK starred in when he hosted the show last week (and killed with his brilliant opening monologue). She claims the sketch is a rip-off of her short film “Clown Service,” since both are about a lonely person who hires a clown to come to their house to cheer them up. However, the execution is very different.
The ‘SNL’ version has a much darker ending
For starters, Notaro’s short film (which is a poorly paced snooze-fest, by the way) has a nice happy ending, whereas CK’s version of a similar premise on “SNL” ends (in typical CK fashion) in a much darker manner.
The “SNL” version also has much better pacing and humour than Notaro’s “Clown Service,” so on the off-chance that the writer/director who Notaro claims in a statement to Entertainment Weekly had worked on the sketch and was “fully aware” of her film decided to rip it off, it was probably not because they thought it was funny but rather because they were so agitated by it that they had to give it the rewrite it needed to make it funny, and did so via “SNL.”
This is all very cheeky of Notaro
It’s surprising that Notaro has the audacity to do this, given how she would be nowhere without Louis CK.
He discovered her and, in effect, by executive producing her show through his company and getting her into the limelight, gave her the career of her wildest dreams. So, to call him a thief because he’s in a sketch that has a similar premise to her boring short, a sketch that was obviously written by the staff of “SNL” and not CK himself, is kind of cheeky.
Without CK, Notaro would still be scrounging for guest spots on shows like “Maron” (excellent show, check it out, it’s on Netflix) and going completely unrecognised. “Clown Service” certainly wasn’t getting her anywhere. And now she’s accusing him of plagiarism that even if it is some kind of plagiarism, which fair enough, it might be, it isn’t his fault.
Interesting how Notaro is happy to name the hand that fed her an entire career and her own TV show in her accusations but she won’t call out this mysterious nameless writer/director who knew about “Clown Service.” The audacity is ridiculous. She’s using the public platform Louis CK gave her to accuse him of stealing her boring short film, probably because she’s jealous the version he was in is better than hers. In the meantime, CK’s new special “2017,” quite possibly his best yet, is available for viewing on Netflix.
