I have actually done a lot of psychological research on memory illusions, and it is totally plausible that someone can genuinely believe the origin of something is in their own mind when they demonstrably got it from something else they witnessed or heard. I have no trouble believing that is what happened here, but some Twitter critics make a possibly telling point, which is that the Gervais special is well known in the comedy writing world, and it is not likely that a room full of late night comedy writers could not explicitly recognize the source of this joke.
Song writers are often unconsciously influenced by songs they have been exposed to, but it would strain credulity if a room full of ten rock and roll musicians wrote a new song together that began with the opening riff from Smoke on the Water and claimed they had come up with it themselves. On Thu, 3 Nov 2022 at 6:40 AM Adam Bowie <[email protected]> wrote: > I always tend to give writers the benefit of the doubt in these things. > Twitter being called a Town Square is a widely used (and bad) analogy. But > the "guitar lessons" bit is just too on the nose to be an accident, so yes, > it was probably "borrowed" from Gervais. Now whether the writer knowingly > reused the joke, or whether it just lodged in the back of their brain and > came out in a session is something else. I can believe that a writer might > honestly think that it was an original idea rather than from a four year > old comedy routine. > > There's a famous story about a packet of biscuits eaten at a railway > station that Douglas Adams related in his Hitchhikers' novel, So Long, and > Thanks for All the Fish. Adam's claimed that it had actually happened to > him, but it had appeared in films and other works on multiple occasions. > Maybe it happened in real-life as well? Maybe not. Snopes has an article > about it: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pinched-cookies/ > > > Adam > > > On Thu, Nov 3, 2022 at 1:26 PM PGage <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Not to pile on James Corden, about whom I have few strong feelings pro or >> con, as I have seen very little of his work (mostly the clip of him driving >> through Liverpool with Paul McCartney, which I like). But he was caught >> telling a monologue joke about Twitter that was almost word for word from >> Gervais’ 2018 Netflix Special. >> >> Gervais’ speculation that Cordon had no idea, and just approved and used >> a joke brought to him by his writers, sounds right. Unaddressed in this >> article is, was the writer fired? Isn’t something like this about as bad as >> it gets for a late night comedy writer? >> >> >> https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/02/james-corden-ricky-gervais-joke/ >> -- >> Sent from Gmail Mobile >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "TVorNotTV" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> To view this discussion on the web visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKGtkY%2BYia7shMRVJB%3DYs5D3qUjMBTBFd1ZC7TZ%2BWFvY8PtmnQ%40mail.gmail.com >> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKGtkY%2BYia7shMRVJB%3DYs5D3qUjMBTBFd1ZC7TZ%2BWFvY8PtmnQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >> . >> > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "TVorNotTV" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAD_sJGAp55i2zEyAz5cBL67shUt1%2BXfpEAN3C4btKWRCiin6Bw%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAD_sJGAp55i2zEyAz5cBL67shUt1%2BXfpEAN3C4btKWRCiin6Bw%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- Sent from Gmail Mobile -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKGtkYJfPb25on7BsYuuVu3%2BqECx8JU8wdxF4_SHhkKkOG01nQ%40mail.gmail.com.
