PENN JILLETTE’S LONG CON
Over at his Hollywood Elsewhere (scroll down to his “Wired” section), Jeffrey Welles links to this conspiracy theory at the Slumbering Lungfish blog concerning the film The Aristocrats. Blogger Lore Sjoberg hypothesizes that the vaudeville-era dirty joke that is the sole content of the film is actually an invention of Penn Jillette: “My theory: this joke didn’t exist before circa 2001. The actual joke, really, is that they’re making up this dirty joke, having a hundred comedians tell it, and billing it as a documentary with historical significance.”
I don’t know — it’s a fun theory, but Waxy.org provides a link to a Jackie Martling book from 1998 that repeats the joke, which makes me think that it’s too much of a “long con” for Jillette to have totally made it up.
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