Exclusive scandal news: Did 'Last Comic Standing' hopeful Jason Weems steal another comic's joke?

  Did Last Comic Standing contestant Jason Weems steal one of his best jokes?

NBC's only a few weeks into their latest season of Last Comic Standing, and already we've got trouble brewing. The reality show has been a prime-time staple for years now, but there have been rumors about some unseemly behavior on the network's part in the past. Like any good reality show, there've been accusations that things aren't always as they seem on Last Comic Standing, rumors of shady behavior on the network's part during the audition process. Now a new scandal's brewing, but this time it's one of the show's contestants that seems to be up to some scandalous behavior: Jason Weems, who recently got put through on the show to the next round, has contacted a relatively unknown comedienne and accused her of stealing a joke ... and the opposite seems to be true. So, did he or didn't he? You can judge for yourselves below, my gentle Examiner readers ...

Joke thievery's one of the biggest offenses -- if not the biggest -- in the world of stand-up comedy. Any comedian worth his or her salt will tell you that they'd rather have another comedian punch them square in the mouth, set their house on fire, and reinstate Prohibition before they'd have one of their jokes jacked by another performer. Rumors of joke-thievery plagued both Dane Cook and Carlos Mencia over the past few years, and both comedians have seen their popularity dwindle in the aftermath.  In short, it's serious business.

Unfortunately, it's also not uncommon business. Right now, Last Comic Standing is enjoying its seventh season on NBC, and by all accounts the show's doing perfectly well in the ratings. Over the years, we've heard stories that things may not be as they seem on the show, particularly during a situation that occurred in the second season: Celebrity judges Brett Butler and Drew Carey reportedly walked off the show when they felt the network had overruled and ignored their final pick for the winner (or so some will tell you), and there have also been complaints about the show's audition process not being entirely fair. Unfortunately, it now seems that joke-thievery will be the show's latest scandal.

Comedian Jason Weems was put through to the semifinals last week, and the comedian certainly seemed to have earned it during his set on the show: He was funny, quick-witted, and held his own against a dozen other comedians during the night's showcase to earn a ticket out to Vegas. But did he earn that ticket with another comedienne's joke? That's what Jeanette Cause thinks may have occurred, but she's come to that conclusion in a very strange way: Weems has accused Cause of stealing his material, and we've got some video and correspondence that tells the behind-the-scenes story. Whether or not Weems is guilty is for you, the gentle Examiner readers of the world, to decide. First of all, let's take a look at the joke in question. This comes from last week's episode of Last Comic Standing:

Got it? Pretty good joke, right? OK, now let's take a look at comedienne Jeanette Cause's version of the joke. Keep in mind that the following performance was filmed way back in October, which means that Cause was performing that particular joke months before NBC aired the latest episode of Last Comic Standing:

Cause was contacted by Weems soon after the episode aired, and he made it very clear that he wasn't going to stop doing the joke anytime soon. In fact, he claimed that she was stealing his material. The message -- written in a manner best described as "dickish" -- arrived in Cause's private Facebook account on the Tuesday after Weems' winning performance on Last Comic Standing. Here's the message that Weems sent Cause following the show:

It's not strange for a comedian to call out another one when they feel that their material's been jacked, but in this situation it is, considering that the joke originated with Cause. Furthermore, Weems' message here seems to indicate that telling the joke on "NATIONAL TELEVISION" means that the matter of whose joke it really is has been settled. Had the joke originated with Weems, he'd have a point. As you can see in those videos, though, Cause performed the joke long before Weems did. Not only that, but we've got audio that indicates that Cause was writing the joke as far back as last July. So, what's up with the Facebook message?

I sat down with comedienne, actress, and all-around hot chick Jeanette Cause -- who once upon a time starred opposite Martin Lawrence in Black Knight (she was the "hot princess" with long, curly, red hair) and has worked with some of the top names in comedy over the years -- to see what she had to say about this situation. What she has to say -- combined with the footage and audio we've included here -- seems to contradict the story that Weems lays out in his Facebook message, but Cause stops just shy of accusing Weems of doing the same:

Comedy Examiner:  How ya doin' today, Jeanette?

Jeanette Cause:  Great, Scott, how are you?

CE:   I'm good, I'm good. Thanks for taking the time to talk to us today and for bringing this story to our attention. Let's hear this from your persepective, starting with when the video of you performing the joke in question was shot.

JC:  That video was shot October 11th of 2009. The reason I know the specific date is, that video was shot at a benefit that I was performing in for a very good friend who tragically lost her husband. She's a fellow performer in Orlando, and some local performers decided to throw a benefit to raise some money for her to help her out. A lot of us put together acts, music, a lot of stand-up, that kinda thing. That's how I know when the footage was taken. It's not the first time I'd performed the joke, but it's the first time I performed the joke where it was recorded.

CE: And that's verifiable? In other words, it can be proven that you didn't just slap a time-stamp on a recent video and call it October of last year?

JC:  Absolutely not. The benefit was publicized locally, on the Internet, on Facebook ... there were also 100 people there that night that saw me perform that joke. There was also an auction performed that night during the benefit, with people calling in and bidding on certain things -- we raised over $3,000 that night -- so it was a pretty publicized event.

CE:  And when did you become aware that the joke had been recycled? Were you watching the episode when it aired, or did friends clue you in?

JC:  Well, actually, I don't watch Last Comic Standing -- not for any particular reason; there's just no room for it with all the other crap dumped into my TiVo. So, I don't watch the show at all, but ... actually, I want to point out that I'm not accusing anyone of recycling the joke from me. I just became aware when a message came in on my private Facebook page on Tuesday night. The message came in, I opened it, and it was from a guy I'd never met named Jason Weems. I believe you have a copy of that --

CE:  We do.

JC:  The point of the message was that he'd made it into the semifinals on Last Comic Standing, that he'd made it on the show that aired the night before. He claimed to have been contacted after that show aired -- by, I think he said "folks he knows" -- who wanted to tell him that I'd stolen one of his jokes (and he specifically called it the "Magic Johnson/AIDS" joke), that I'd ripped it off and was now performing it in Orlando as though it was my own, personal work. He then went on to say that stealing jokes is the worst thing a comedian can do, and that if I wasn't creative enough to come up with material on my own, I should quit.

CE:  Nice!

JC:  Then it said in bold, "DO NOT PERFORM ANY OF MY JOKES ANYMORE" or something. And this was the first time I'd ever heard of him. I didn't know of him, never seen him perform, nothing. I didn't even know that ... it was news to me. I've never had someone go through the trouble of writing me something as nastily worded as that message he sent me. It caught me off guard, as you can imagine. That was the first I became aware of it.

CE:  And what have you learned since?

JC:  Well, I've learned that he's from Baltimore -- and I've got paycheck stubs that I can show to prove that I've been just working my job and haven't been in Baltimore for the past year, or ever. I didn't even see him perform the joke on Last Comic Standing. I also have people that will vouch for me and say they've heard me performing that joke as far back as July of last year. I don't know why he would've contacted me like that, been a bully, because what could he gain by that?

CE: Couldn't the inverse also be true, then? If you've never been to Baltimore and seen him perform, couldn't Mr. Weems just say that he's never been to Orlando and thus couldn't have seen you perform the joke? How do you think that happened?

JC:  Well, you could think that -- at best -- it could be as simple as two people seeing the same thing -- the Michael Jackson ceremony-thing. When my husband (ed. not-- Chris Cause, co-host of the Wheelhouse Radio broadcast) and I saw Magic Johnson talking on that stage, we both started riffing on that, when he said that about it being the best day of his life. And Mike (Bower, also of Wheelhouse Radio) thought the same thing. I'm sure millions of people watched that and had the same thought. At best, it's two people having the same idea for a punch line. I'd give him the benefit of the doubt on that, but I have a lot of questions. Like, who does he know in Orlando who have seen an open mic at the Best of British Pub -- which is the only place I've performed? 

CE:  Right.

JC:  I'm not a stand-up comic. I'm an actress who's done some comedic things. But I've been pushing myself to do comedy to be a little more well-rounded, but I'm told by my friends in the stand-up community that some people sell jokes. Like, they'll go to a show and videotape other comics and sell the material to some third party far away. So, maybe that's happened. Another question is, how did he know who I was? I don't perform under my real name, so how did he know to contact me through Facebook? If you search for a "Jeanette" in Orlando, you'll come up with --and you can try this right now -- three or four hundred results. I only use my first name on-stage. So if someone just called him and told him "Jeanette" was using his joke, how did he find me?

CE:  It's a fair question. Doesn't add up.

JC:  It's weird to me. I've never met him, don't know who he is. You've seen both the videos, both ways we told it. And it's eerily similar. But I wanna know why this man came at me in the first place. 

CE:  Again, I think that's fair. I think it's worth agreeing with you that it's entirely possible -- likely, even -- that two people with a comedic mind would see something and then come to similar funny conclusions, but that doesn't explain how he knew who you were or how to track you down. That's where I think it's obvious something shady's going on. 

JC:  Absolutely.

CE:  So, what do you hope to accomplish with these allegations? What do you want to happen here?

JC:  It's a hard question to answer, because it's a matter of a feeling. I was minding my own business, spending time with my son, and all of a sudden there's a stranger -- and even if it's not in-person, that message came into my home -- and there's this feeling of being invaded a little bit by someone I don't even know. He's attacking me, and it made me feel like someone just called me out of the blue and started yelling at me. My hands were shaking, my face was hot, I was upset and I was angry. I think you have my response to him: I asked for an apology for him accusing me of this. For him to say that it's the worst thing a comic can do, why would that be the first thing he'd do? If he really believed I did this, wouldn't he want to make sure before attacking me? Why not a note that starts off, "Hey, just heard we're performing some of the same material, and I just wanted to know how you're doing it," or maybe "I think we've got the same idea here, but I was wondering if you'd be willing to stop doing the joke since I've used it on TV."

CE:  Right.

JC:  You know, from one comic to another. I would've said, "Yeah! Sure, dude!" That was the first bit I ever did in stand-up. I would've just turned to my husband and said, "Well, I must've been doing something right! That joke just got this dude into the semifinals on Last Comic Standing!"

CE: (laughing) Right, right ...

JC:  High fives all around! But what would I like to accomplish? At the very least, an apology. For his tone, for how he came at me, for the accusations. And secondly, I'd like some answers. How did you violate my privacy? Who told you these things? What did they say? Maybe there's some turd in the punch bowl around here that's causing problems between us. He may think that I'm nobody, some chick that goes to open mics in Florida just messing around. But I'm an industry professional. I've been working in this industry for the past 15 years of my life, and I've worked really, really hard to get to where I am. I feel like I've been taken advantage of, but the last thing I want is someone doing that and then trying to pee on me. If he'd just said, "Clearly there's been a misunderstanding," that would've been it. But he didn't, and if there is something stinky going on here, I want to know.

CE:  I'm assuming you responded. What did you have to say to him?

JC:  It was angry, but I only used one swear. I'm not usually a swear-er, so I was horrified that I did that. But there were a lot of typos, which is embarrassing. If you're going to take great umbrage, at least spell correctly, ya know? But I said that I was sorry, he had his timeline wrong, and that it would've saved him a lot of embarrassment if he'd asked his friends when they saw me perform that material, because then he would've learned that I haven't done that joke since November of 2009 -- because it's no longer topical (couldn't resist throwing that elbow out there). I did say something along the lines of, "I can only say that I regret that a joke you thought was so original was conceived of by a lil' ol' housewife and mother in Florida and that it's not as inspired as you might think." I also asked for an apology for his tone, but I assumed that he was the kinda person that wouldn't apologize once he'd been proven as having gone off half-cocked. I didn't really embarrass myself in the note, but my parting salvo was: "You should wait to become famous before you become a dick."

CE:  That needs to be on T-shirts.

JC:  I'll copyright that first!

CE:  You might get a development deal outta that one!

JC:  Ha, yeah. Well, I wasn't happy with him and I might not have been as polite as I could, but ... Anyway, I didn't get an apology. And you know what? He didn't even do the joke as well as I did! He didn't even have a punch line! There was such a better way to go about broaching this conversation with me, but he was just a bully.

CE:  Did he respond?

JC:  He responded by saying that he took the art of comedy very seriously and that he appreciated me not telling the joke anymore. That was it. 

CE:  Which brings me to my next question: Why is this such a big deal? I mean, I know why it's a big deal, but there might be some people out there that don't understand why this is such a crime. Would you like to take a crack at explaining to our readers why this is such a cause for drama?

JC:   Well, I know it's a big deal, [it's] taboo in the stand-up world. He even says that. I imagine that a show that offers a $250,000 prize and a development deal isn't going to want to award that to someone that could then be sued by a third party for stealing their material that helped win them that prize, that it wasn't the property of the winner -- and, therefore, the show. That's why it oughtta be a big deal to him. And for me, it's a big deal because ...well, something doesn't add up. He knew who I was, how to get in contact with me, and just the way he approached it with me? It stinks. That might get him far in the competition, but let's say he wins. What if that joke helped get him there? If it was his, great, but it seems like it came from me, and that means that he shouldn't be able to win.

CE:  Would you feel inclined to take action if he won the top spot?

JC:  What do you mean?

CE:  Well, if people hear what you have to say and agree with you, and if it's generally agreed upon that this dude did, in fact, steal from you and then went on to win the show, would you be inclined to sue?

JC:  Well, boy, who wouldn't love to pursue things as far as they can go? But how could I do that? I could try and prove it in a court of law and place him at a show that I've been at, or get someone to admit they gave or sold the joke to him, but that's not going to happen. But then again, that's why I think it's wrong to go around accusing someone of stealing your material in the first place in the way that he did it. But lemme tell ya, if I found out for sure he did it, I'd nail his balls to the wall.

CE:  Were there clips of you telling the joke available online before now?

JC:  No, there were not.

CE:  So, this isn't something -- it's not possible that he saw you perform it online, or someone sent him a clip of you doing the joke, right? 

JC:  No. There's no way. Someone had to have seen me performing it live. People have videotaped open mics, of course, but I know that clips of me performing that joke weren't available online. Maybe he had a buddy there who passed along the audio. Who knows? And there's clips of him performing a bunch of material online -- even stuff, like the "Karate" stuff he did on the show -- but not a single clip of him doing that joke. If he did it on the show, where are the other examples of him doing the joke, working it out onstage? If that was his best two minutes, what he used to get on the show, then where's the footage of him performing his best material online? I can prove mine's as old as six months old, so where's his? 

CE:  We've also got audio of your husband discussing your writing the joke in July of last year, and that's almost a full year ago. That's in addition to the footage of you performing it in October. How many times have you done that joke onstage?

JC:  At least four. A bunch of people have seen me do that joke. At that benefit, there were at least 100 people there. I'm just not going to take this, you know? I'm standing up for the little guy, or the comedian that's getting his material robbed by some bully. I just want everyone to look at what I've given you and make up their own minds. I think it speaks for itself. 

CE:  Well, we're hoping that Mr. Weems will reach out and want to give closure to some of these unanswered questions before too long. We'd like to hear his side of things and how he explains how he found you, among other things. Finally, would you like to take this opportunity to apologize to everyone for Black Knight?

JC:  (Laughs) Can I just say that when I intially auditioned for it, I didn't even know what I was auditioning for?

CE:  Yeah, I'll take that.

Now, this isn't where the story ends: Unbeknownst to Jason Weems, Jeanette Cause is married to none other than Chris Cause, co-host of the Wheelhouse Radio show at WheelhouseRadio.com. After poring through some of their old broadcasts to find it, Wheelhouse Radio has provided the Comedy Examiner's Office with another video, one even more damning than the one above. In the clip below, you'll hear the Wheelhouse guys talking about Jeanette's development of the joke ... all the way back in July of last year:

Wow. So, not only is there footage of Cause performing the joke nine months prior to Weems telling it on the air, but we've got audio of Cause's husband describing her development of the joke as far back as eleven months ago. Curiouser and curiouser, no? Weems wasn't aware that Chris Cause is married to Cause when he agreed to go on their show for an interview Sunday evening, but that's exactly what happened. The Wheelhouse crew welcomed Weems onto their show this evening and decided to poke around his head about his comedy writing process. Here's what they turned up (Jason's interview starts a few minutes into the broadcast, but they call him out on it just before the 28-minute mark):

UPDATE:  OK, so Wheelhouse Radio's embeddable player automatically turns on whenever the page is opened, so we're going to remove it and give you-- the gentle Examiner readers of the world-- the option of heading to THIS LINK to hear the broadcast.  Sorry for the auto-pop-up audio, guys: I know that can be annoying.

So, what to think here? Wheelhouse brings up the obvious point: How did Weems know who to track down? The whole situation's obviously a very large-scale case of "He Said/She Said," and who you side with is entirely up to you. You've seen the footage, you've seen Weems' response, and you've heard what Jeanette Cause had to say for herself, and you've heard some of what Weems had to say on the air with the Wheelhouse Radio guys: So what do you think? Before you go, I'd like to keep track of things with an official "Comedy Examiner Poll." Cast your vote below, people!

Now that you've cast your vote, head on down to the comments section to tell us who you're siding with in this comedy war: Was this a clear-cut case of joke thievery? If so, who's the guilty party? If Weems did, in fact, steal the material, should he be booted off Last Comic Standing? How do you think Weems was able to track down Cause without knowing her last name if he didn't get the joke from her? What sort of chicanery is really afoot here? Sound off in the comments section below, my precious snowflakes: We wanna know what you think about all this!

That's all we've got for you for now, folks, but stay tuned for more as it becomes available. In the meantime, we've got all manner of funny videos, news, reviews, interviews, recaps, funny pictures, and more to keep you entertained all summer long, so hit the "Subscribe" button up top to get all of it delivered straight to your inbox, free of charge, the moment it's published. Why, if that wasn't enough, we've also got some other recent Comedy Examiner articles for you to look over while you're here:

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: ADAM SANDLER, TOM CRUISE, AND A BUNCH OF TOYS -- THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE NUMBER ONE -- in which we learn the expected, and you can see how hilariously low the returns for "Jonah Hex" are (hint: it's less than $10m).

TRAILER PARK: TRAILER FOR THE NEXT "MEET THE PARENTS" SEQUEL ARRIVES, AND IT MAY BE WORSE THAN GETTING A TERMINAL ILLNESS (WITH VIDEO) -- in which we watch the trailer for "Little Fockers," and then we all weep bitter tears.

"BREAKING BAD" BREAKING NEWS: AMC, VINCE GILLIGAN SAY "NO NEW EPISODES UNTIL JULY 2011," FANS EXPECTED TO SUCK IT -- in which we learn that it's going to be a looong time before we get new episodes of "Breaking Bad."

FUNNY VIDEO: SO, WHAT'S THE CREATIVE PROCESS LIKE IN HOLLYWOOD, ANYWAY? (WITH VIDEO) -- in which we learn how movies get made in Hollywood. Specifically, "Pinkberry: The 3D Musical." Don't laugh, someone might get the wrong idea.

(photos: top--nbc.com, next--screencap, next two--Jeanette Weegar, next--nbc.com, next--movies.yahoo.com, bottom--myspace.com)