(continued)

How much is a stolen joke worth? The value of a joke has fluctuated considerably over the years as the nature of entertainment has changed. In vaudeville days, a comedian could perform the same 18-minute bit around the country for a decade, earning a living from a set barely long enough to fill a second-bill act. (Such was the value of material that W.C. Fields reportedly once paid a thug $50 to break a
comedian's legs for stealing his jokes.)

But a different ethos developed in the Catskills in the '30s, where comedians blatantly took notes while watching competing acts, and thought nothing of working the best jokes into their own sets. Milton Berle, television's first star, made no apologies for his nickname, "The Thief of Bad Gag." (Bob Hope held a long-standing grudge against Berle for jokes stolen from him during their vaudeville days.) As comedy became more personal in the era of Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, and Richard Pryor, jokes came to reflect a performer's individual sensibility and their theft became a more hurtful offense. In his autobiography, Dick Cavett wrote that the borrowing of his friend Woody Allen's jokes was so pervasive that Cavett routinely called Allen to report the latest incident. Allen finally made him stop because "it pained him."

In some instances, the thievery is so absolute that a performer is left with nothing, a carcass picked apart by comic vultures. Take Will Jordan, a comedian and impressionist who gained fame in the '50s with an exaggerated impression of Ed Sullivan. Even if you've never actually seen Sullivan, you're probably familiar with his mannerisms, and credit for that goes to Jordan, who was the first performer to nail the talk show host's stiff body language and exaggerated dyspepsia. His Sullivan persona—with the host's encouragement—became part of the pop lexicon, an impression as revered and repeated as those of Groucho Marx and Howard Cosell.

But with success came appropriation. Comedians like Jackie Mason, Jack Carter, and Rich Little worked up their own Sullivan impressions, and Jordan's value plummeted. He watched in horror as bookings were canceled because Mason or Carter had entertained with his Sullivan at the same venue the week prior.

"The stuff they stole from me improved their lives one-tenth of one percent, but hurt me this much," says Jordan, spreading his arms wide during an interview at his memorabilia-strewn one-bedroom apartment in midtown Manhattan. "Jackie wasn't doing Ed Sullivan, but doing me doing Ed Sullivan." Recalling his propensity for twirling on his toes while mimicking the host, Jordan adds, "He's doing the spins! Sullivan didn't do that!" Once other comics began absorbing Jordan's Sullivan inflections and movements, fear dried him up. "I was afraid that anything I would write would be stolen," he admits. "It's a stupid reason, but I think it's the truth."

Jordan went on to make a small fortune as General Patton on the corporate sales meeting circuit in the '80s, and last played Sullivan in the 2003 romantic comedy Down With Love. But these days he works just one or two days a year. To add insult to injury, he wasn't even called when David Letterman held a special "Impressionists Week" on his show last November—at its home at the Ed Sullivan Theater.

Given those stakes, it's not surprising that some comics occasionally resort to violence to even the score.

When veteran Boston stand-ups Kevin Knox and PJ Thibodeau caught wind of a young comedian named Dan Kinno doing their material a few years back, they hatched a plan to exact revenge at one of Kinno's upcoming gigs. Kinno walked into the club to find the pair waiting for him, along with 60 to 70 other comics who, Thibodeau says, were "waiting to see a lynching." After ushering Kinno into the club's tiny green room, Thibodeau (who stands six foot, four inches and 250 pounds) and Knox (also six-foot-plus) interrogated the smaller comic until he confessed. "I slammed him into the wall and started spitting in his face," says Thibodeau. "I'm screaming, 'We're supposed to be friends!' and Knoxy was kinda pimp-slapping him. The kid started to cry. At that point, I walked away." Kinno never went on that night, and found himself shut out of the local club scene. Soon after, he moved to Los Angeles, where he has since appeared on the Game Show Network and MTV and is currently finding success on the club and college circuits, with regular gigs at the Improv Comedy Clubs around the country.

"People take plagiarism so seriously in all other forms of media, whether it's music, newspapers, books," Rogan says glumly. "But with comedy, it's like, 'You're on your own, fucker.'"

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