Confessions of a joke stealer: One comic’s story

by Punchline Magazine

[Editor's note] This past summer comedian Jeff Nichols released his memoir: Trainwreck: My Life as an Idoit for Simon and Schuster. Nichols grew up in Manhattan surrounded by fairly traditional family and friends. But having dyslexia, a speech impediment and the tiniest amount of Tourette’s made it difficult for Jeff to grow up completely normal. The book is a highly entertaining and enlightening read throughout, but there’s one chapter in particular that we thought Punchline Magazine readers would find especially intriguing: Confessions of a Hack Comic: The Anatomy of a Thief.

As he was trying to be a comedian in New York in the 1990s and eventually hitting the road to make real money — where being a complete hack was a lot easier to get away with — he admits he became a world-class joke thief, saying, “I constantly stole material and it had begun to wear me down. It had no longer been a means to an end; it was the end.” We should mention, also, that Jeff told Punchline Magazine that he’ll be on the road doing stand-up and trying to drop his evil ways. Below, is a portion of the aforementioned chapter.

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I didn’t start out as a thief. Actually, I was one of those guys you would see frantically scribbling ideas on yellow legal pads on the bus, subway, or park bench. I would bounce premises off anyone I met. I immersed myself in the open-mike circuit. All my time was spent with comics in diners or on the phone developing bits. I took workshops and comedy classes at NYU. I constantly had my hand inside one of one those yellow Gotham City bins with “comedy workshop” boldly printed on them that used to clutter Manhattan sidewalks.

Ironically, I always got accolades on how original my stuff was. I believed (and still do) that I had a point of view and the persona and delivery to carry it out. Perhaps if I stayed in NYC things would have ended up differently. I was quick to find out that on the road (where comics get paid real money) the audience was not into my pithy, wired, neurotic subjective humor. In Biloxi, Miss., they want to laugh and they want to laugh hard. And if you can’t do the job, there are thousands of comics that can.

After only a few short weeks on the road, I realized that other people’s bits seemed to work better than mine. Remember that joke of mine? “My S.A.T.’s were so low that my entire school district lost funding.” Not bad. But “Jammin’ Jim” Florentine had a joke that went: “I loved the S.A.T, I did great on that test; it was the only test I ever got a one hundred on!” Now my joke had its qualities, but it lacked the pedestrian appeal of Jammin’ Jim’s joke. So I started to use his bit rather than my own.

Between comics there is an unspoken rule: what is said in Plattsburg stays in Plattsburg. Whatever you do, don’t get caught stealing in Manhattan. I did, twice. The first time it was at a prom show at Stand-up New York. The kids were digging me, so I let loose Jammin’ Jim’s S.A.T bit. The young crowed loved it. I got off stage and looked at the list of comics to follow me, and three comics down was Jammin’ Jim. Holy shit! What to do? Should I be a man, and approach Jim and tell him what I had done, saving him embarrassment and rage.

Or, since I had not heard him do comedy for a few years, should I hope that he developed new material and didn’t do the S.A.T. any more? (Fat chance.) Avoiding confrontation has always been a character defect of mine. So I let Jammin’ Jim take the stage and kept my fingers crossed. It was his second joke. Not only did the audience not laugh, but they booed him. I ran out of the club as Jim was questioning the audience why they didn’t like the bit. The audience was more than willing to furnish him with an answer.

From TRAINWRECK by Jeff Nichols. Copyright 2007, 2009 by Jeff Nichols. Reprinted by permission of Touchstone, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

You can find more about the author at jeff-nichols.com. Check out the rest of the chapter and the entire book. Click the image below and snag yourself a copy.