Did Conan O’Brien Plagiarize Jimmy Kimmel?
Conan O’Brien has to be happy. He has his writers back on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and he escaped the strike essentially unscathed, with Craig Ferguson still trailing behind him in the ratings (update!-Ferguson beat Conan last week… kind of, see here). Still, last night the show featured a funny, though short, comedy bit that left me scratching my head.
O’Brien (left) showed the clip of Jane Fonda on Today using “the C-word,” with the forbidden utterance bleeped out. He then went on to show other clips of Fonda, including one from her (in)famous workout video, with mundane words bleeped out to give the illusion of being what the FCC would call a “fleeting expletive.”
The bit itself was fleeting (I will link to the video when it is available), but more than that, it was essentially taken from the competition. Jimmy Kimmel, on his significantly less popular late night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live, has a regular bit called “this week in unnecessary censorship” where he takes ordinary clips from news and entertainment programs and adds bleeps to make them seem incredibly, ridiculously dirty. It is also very funny (see it here).
Now to be sure Kimmel (below) did not invent the unnecessary bleep, nor are other hosts forbidden from doing so, but it is hard to ignore the comparison. Kimmel has been doing it for a couple of years now and until last night I had never seen O’Brien do it at all.
O’Brien usually differentiates himself from his competition by taking classic bits and adding a twist. While Letterman and Leno both have cute, funny little newspaper gaffes on their shows, O’Brien would just make up fake ads and news stories for his version of the bit.
All of this makes the decision to run the Fonda/bleep bit all the more puzzling.
So, Conan, what gives? Was it all a misunderstanding? Coincidence? Did Matt Damon convince Conan to do it? Or is it inevitable?
Comedy hosts end up telling variations of the same joke all the time, is one little comedy bit that big of a deal? Probably not, unless you’re a big Kimmel fan. And I’m sure all three of them are pretty PO’d right now*.
* It’s actually closer to 2 million, but you know what I mean.
jokeonthis commented:
All this is a bunch of BS Conan rocks who cares about some stupid bit
Murphy commented:
Jimmy Kimmel didn't invent this. It's been a radio thing for years...which is where Kimmel started out.
RunRob commented:
Kimmel was the first person to do this on television. He does it every week. Conan and his producers know that. they should be ashamed of themselves. I guess Conan really is the next Jay Leno.
sabsal1 commented:
By your own admission in the article it isn't plagiarism if Kimmel didn't create it himself or owns copyright over the bit. You admit others are free to use it, so the question becomes: Why should we care, what is your point, and do you really have nothing better to write about?