If you don't know who I am, then you don't know my show,
then that means you've been under a ----in' rock.
In the 90s, when Carlos Mencia was blowin' up...
Mencia!
...he was up in people's faces.
You have no ----in' idea how it is if...
He destroys a room. Carlos was driven,
and he would've done anything to get to the top.
White people don't know shit about geography, huh?
"Hey man, where are you from"?
I can say anything. Paraguay, Uruguay,
Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina...
what do they say?
"Oh, you're Mexican, huh."
He lived and ate and slept comedy...
and he's a brilliant performer.
I go to Miami, I'm not Mexican anymore,
no, I'm Cuban.
He had several HBO specials
sell out all over the country.
Please welcome Carlos Mencia.
Overnight he was this huge sensation.
♪
Then one night it all changes.
[Carlos] Why would it matter to you?
Why would it matter to you? Why would it matter to you?
This was one of the biggest scandals in comedy.
A video goes viral and turns Carlos Mencia into one of
the most hated comedians in America.
It's easy to say, "You steal shit."
I could say you steal shit.
Carlos Mencia just became the poster child
for joke stealing.
Carlos Mencia is taking credit for our joke.
[Radio] Just call him the phoney Mexican
or Carlos "Men-steal-ia".
Carlos had become this ugly evil spirit in comedy.
I just kinda remember him disappearing from the scene.
If Carlos had just a little bit of humility,
things would've been a lot different.
♪
[Overlapping voices] Ladies and gentlemen!
You're about to be entertained!
Getting the laugh is the greatest addiction.
They want more of it, they want more of it.
He was getting death threats. It [beep] with your head!
...he's out of his skull! That's what took her down.
This is a crazy story.
♪
I grew up in East LA.
I feel Mexican 'cause I grew up there and shit
in the Maravilla Projects. That's where I grew up.
[Applauding]
Carlos Mencia is raised in East Los Angeles,
which boasts one the biggest Mexican populations
in the United States.
So The Projects are basically low income housing.
It was really family oriented, like,
everybody that we grew up around,
I'm still friends with them. Even now.
The Maravilla Projects are infamous for
their gang culture.
And at 9 o'clock, sure enough all the parents,
all the moms, all the dads, would be like,
"Hey, get inside." You know.
Mencia is determined not to fall prey to that life.
He could've been a criminal man.
You know, he could've said, "---- it." You know.
"I'm gonna join a gang and sell dope."
♪
From a young age, Mencia is told that he holds a ticket
out of poverty, both for himself and his family.
I'm Carlos Mencia, born Ned Arnel Mencia.
You gotta understand who I've been to my family
since I can remember.
I was the special one, the chosen one.
My mom had 18 kids.
I said, "Mom, why'd you have so many kids"?
"Look at 'em, they're not all winners."
[Laughing]
From the time I can recall, my parents let me know
I was smart, I was different.
When I was 8 years old,
she put all of us against the wall.
She said, "Carlos..." [Speaking Spanish]
"Move to the side. You 3 are very different.
You're very special because you're smart.
If you apply yourself,
take advantage of this country,
you can make a lot of money."
Then she looked at the other 15 and went,
"Your job, ----ers, is to pray that
one of them makes a lot of money."
[Laughing]
He developed the expectation of
being successful because
he was so bright and
an anomaly in his family or his community,
and I think he had an expectation
of himself to do something great.
The young Mencia more than lives up to his potential.
I never went to the seventh, eighth, or ninth grades.
I was skipped from the 6th grade to the 10th grade,
and by the time I was like 19,
I pretty much had everything I needed to graduate
as an engineer.
So one day my girlfriend at the time
took me to The Improv.
I watched a few comedians, Paula Poundstone,
Rick Ducommun...
and Rick Ducommun I connected with, because he was angry.
I got shit to do, okay?
And he told this joke about the old lady
who's in front of the line.
Oh, oh, and you've got coupons too.
Oh, good, good...
because I want to live in this ----ing store.
I just couldn't stop laughing.
Show's over, I am walking out of the hallway.
I stop right above one of the lights.
I look back that stage, and I remember feeling,
I didn't think it, I felt it...
I could do that. I want to do that.
Carlos Mencia decides that he too will get on stage and
do stand-up.
I had no idea what to talk about.
So I literally go, "What are these...
what are these jokes"?
And I got a joke book, and I did like, two of the jokes,
kind of versioning of what I thought was funny.
I know what you people are thinking,
"Damn, finally the Mexican."
[Clapping]
I know, you know how it is...
they had me in the kitchen, you know how that goes.
[Laughing]
When I got off stage, the owner,
Jamie Masada goes, "Buddy...
I like this, that you pretend it's your first time.
Good." I was like, "What do you mean pretend"?
"Buddy, it's your first time"?
That's the first time I had ever been on stage, ever.
He's like, "Buddy, never stop. Never stop."
And that was it.
He started to get a taste.
Thank you!
And an idea of what he was capable of.
There was no turning back.
Less than a month after that I quit my job at Farmer's
Insurance and dedicated myself to doing stand-up.
Yeah, I know what you're thinking.
I know what you're thinking. Well, you know what?
You thought wrong. I ain't doing that.
I'm a comic and I'm funny.
Mencia's family is devastated.
This calls for action.
♪
We usually had Sunday dinners,
and I come to my mom's house,
and I notice a lot of cars that I recognize.
I'm starting to go, "This is way more than normal."
I walk in and cousins, aunts, uncles,
brothers, sisters all staring at me.
Now I realize this is about me.
They start telling me how I'm ruining my life,
how stupid I am. This gift of a child is rotting away.
Well, I think Carlos Mencia's immigrant family
just was like, "Que, que? What?
What do you mean you're gonna be a comedian"?
It feels like a slap in the face of them 'cause
they don't really understand it.
When it got to my dad,
he's the driving force of my family.
He's the dreamer.
So I said to my dad, "Remember when I was
10 years old, you said that you came to this country
so that I could be anything I wanted to be."
And I said, "Dad, whatever you say
is what matters to me."
And that's when my dad looked at everybody
and said- [Laughing]
"If he wants to be a clown...
---- it. Let him juggle!"
With his father's newfound support,
Mencia goes all in. ..
Developing his own comedic voice
that draws on Mexican life in America.
Because in the Latino family, if my brother has money,
hey, we're all rich.
That's the way we look at it.
In the 90s when Carlos was blowing up,
he wanted people to know who Latinos were.
He wanted people to know what his experience was,
and he was up in people's faces.
'Cause you have no ----ing idea how it is.
If you're Black or Mexican, you turn on the ----ing
television and there's the news,
it's always Paco and Tyrone doing all the ----ed up shit.
[Laughing]
He's soon noticed by LA legend Mitzi Shore,
who offers Mencia a job at her iconic club,
The Comedy Store.
In the 80s The Comedy Store was at its height,
and anyone who was everyone that came out of there,
became a celebrity.
You know who is to blame for looting...
Mitzi Shore recognizes Mencia's talent and
gives him a regular spot doing stand-up.
You know, in the beginning I was always on at midnight.
Midnight at The Comedy Store meant
two o'clock in the morning.
'Cause nobody did their time.
She wanted to do that on purpose,
but it only reinforced the fact that
she was trying to be a mentor.
It's not long before Mencia goes from club regular to
rising star, and in 1994 he lands a half hour
comedy special on HBO.
And it just seemed kind of like overnight he was this
huge sensation, and he was selling out rooms.
How many Mexicans, Latinos...
hear some ----ing noise.
We went from living in this kind of rundown condo
to a new house in Encino, like,
beyond what I thought we would ever get.
When he started making a lot of money, you know,
he started spreading the wealth.
When family members asked for money,
he was like, "Hey, you know what? Sure."
But for all his success and generosity,
Mencia is also gaining an entirely different reputation
as a bully and a joke stealer.
As comedians, you know, you're traveling around the
country, and the same openers are in those cities,
and they come up to you and they're like, "Hey man.
Carlos Mencia was here two months ago.
You know, I do this joke, Willie, man, he does it now."
It actually happened to me.
I vividly remember writing a joke and it took me five,
six years to develop it, and then I see
Carlos doing a very similar bit.
And I'm like, wait a second, dude.
I've been working that joke for six years.
I finally figured out what made it that funny,
and now this dude's doing it.
There's an ethic to comedy.
There are rules to stand-up comedy,
and Carlos was breaking the rules,
and that just opened up this whole Pandora's box.
And that was ----ed up, 'cause during the riots
Black people were all mad at Mexicans and shit.
There were a lot of Black people...
why were you all mad at us?
That's ----ed up.
Just 'cause we looted better than you.
What the ---- was that all about?
-[Laughing] -----!
While Carlos Mencia's popularity skyrockets,
the release of his HBO special has some people
questioning his integrity.
Alright, welcome to- [speaking Spanish]
George Lopez accused me back in the day of stealing six or
seven minutes of his act when I did my first special.
My grandmother gave me a putaso-
[Laughing]
I know that George Lopez was really upset, 'cause Carlos,
he didn't do anything to disguise it...
and that just made him, you know, lose it.
Stand-ups shouldn't be taking each other's jokes.
When you see a comedian who flat out has taken
someone else's joke, they're in trouble.
♪
There used to be a place called the Gaucho Grill
across the street from The Laugh Factory.
I was with my girlfriend at the time,
and I look up and I go,
"Oh, George is performing tonight."
Mencia decides to try and patch things up with Lopez.
I went upstairs,
and he grabbed me by the shirt and
pulled me in, and he ripped my chain that
my girlfriend had given me.
And I said, "George, I don't watch you perform.
I'm not doing your stuff."
I walked away, and that was it.
It won't be the last time Mencia clashes with
another comedian over stolen material,
but the incident doesn't slow down his meteoric rise,
which reaches new heights in 2001 when he headlines
the Three Amigos Comedy Tour.
♪
Yes, I remember The Three Amigos!
It was one of the funniest tours,
I thought, ever put together.
My name is Erik Rivera.
I am a stand-up comedian,
been doing it for about 19 years now.
These three guys were just monsters on stage.
The Three Amigos was a great idea.
It was Mencia.
Stop mother----er, stop.
Freddy Soto.
"Man, I'm not gonna pee on my feet."
"Oh, you want me to?"
[Laughing]
And Pablo Francisco.
Talk to me. [Quacking]
Tell me your name. [Quacking]
At the time I had been grooming Freddy Soto and
been working with Pablo Francisco,
and those guys were amazing.
They weren't "known" quantities,
but they were great quantities.
-Like numb, dude. -Right on, man.
The tour sells out and Mencia isn't
the only one who benefits.
The Three Amigos...
let me uplift these guys to a different stratosphere and
that was pretty awesome that I got to do that.
Carlos blazed the path for all of us.
Give a big round of applause for Ernie G!
He was the first Latino comedian I ever knew of
who was a multimillionaire before having
a TV show or any kind of movie.
He made us go, "Dude, if that dude can do it,
I can do it too."
A lot of comics went on the road with Carlos.
The likes of Bobby Lee, Steve Treviño,
and Joe Koy all make it big touring with Mencia.
-He discovered me. -Really?
Yeah. Mencia was...
Without Mencia I wouldn't have an agent or anything.
But then the allegations of stealing resurface.
This time among comics Mencia has helped out.
[Comic] Lopez basically told me. He goes, "Look, uh,
Mencia is a horrible human being,
and you shouldn't go with him."
And Freddy Soto would go, "Bro, don't trust this guy."
[Host] Yeah.
"Bro, watch what you tell him."
He was feeling, "I'm up, you're down.
I can shit on you,
and it's too bad if you don't like it."
Despite the rumours,
Mencia gets a multimillion dollar deal
with Comedy Central to create his own sketch show,
'Mind of Mencia'.
[Cheering]
And I was like, "Finally, I get to, like, show the world."
The beaner got a show!
[Cheering]
But there's better.
You get to go on after Dave Chappelle's show,
which was the most successful show on cable at the time,
and we want you and him to be back to back.
I was just elated.
Elated!
I think The Mind of Mencia was huge.
Because here comes this hot new kid.
I mean there was some great bits, man,
I'm gonna make fun of everybody.
[Laughing]
The series showcases Mencia's brand of no holds barred,
politically incorrect comedy.
America's a giant game of tag.
Somebody's always it.
September 11th, bad day in American history,
great day for Blacks and Hispanics.
'Cause on that day white people accepted us as
Americans, before that, we weren't Americans.
Then on the 11th, the buildings collapsed,
they showed the pictures of the hijackers.
Maria, Laquisha, Carlos, and Tyrone
walked up to Ahmed and went, "Tag...
Your turn!"
The stuff that we were doing was always hitting.
You cannot be afraid of
doing what you think is funny because
you think it might ruffle some feathers.
As Carlos' success continues to grow,
so do his troubles.
Whispers of his joke stealing in the community
suddenly go public.
Then, a new allegation surfaces.
Just call him the phoney Mexican or
Carlos "Men-steal-ia", that's what we call him.
I knew that Carlos would say that he was Mexican.
And I want to thank the band for not playing
La Bamba for the Mexican.
Appreciate that very much.
People questioned Carlos' authenticity
because he's not Mexican.
Are you kidding me?
I mean this guy's got a fake ----ing name,
a fake ethnicity.
There's nothing genuine about him.
All right, my next guest is a comedian and the star of the
Comedy Central Series, 'Mind of Mencia'.
Please welcome Carlos Mencia.
While questions about his authenticity swirl
within the comedy community,
Mencia reaches the height of his fame.
Congratulations first of all.
Your show has been very successful,
just got picked up for a third season.
Third season, yeah, third season.
[Cheering]
But when those questions suddenly go mainstream,
things start to change.
I didn't realize this. Carlos is not your real name.
-Is that right? -My birth name is Ned.
[Laughing]
You're being serious.
No, seriously, my birth name is Ned Arnel Mencia.
But I grew up in East LA where, like,
everybody's Mexican.
He probably always had this, kind of, like,
crisis of identity, like who the heck am I?
-I was born in Honduras. -Right.
So they'd be like, "Ned, you're the wetter wetback."
And I was like, "How could I be wetter?"
"'Cause you're from farther"?
[Laughing]
When I was born, my birth mother
had a brother who immigrated to America.
She had a bunch of kids, he couldn't have kids,
she found out about that.
So, when she was pregnant with me, he said,
"I'm gonna take you to America." And she said,
"Well, I'm gonna give you a gift of a child because
you can't have any children."
It was pretty unbelievable that
I got to be that gift.
And my life from the moment I was born
was to make other people happy.
Through his adoption,
Mencia gets a multicultural upbringing.
My mother who adopted me is from
Jerez, Zacatecas, Mexico,
and so, the Mexican culture
was a huge part of my life growing up.
It's not until Mencia starts doing comedy that
his cultural identity becomes an issue.
When I started doing stand-up, 1988,
a few months in, I got off stage and Mitzi Shore,
the famed owner of The Comedy Store said,
"You can't be an angry Mexican named Ned."
I said to her, "Well, first of all,
I was born in Honduras."
"Okay, well, you can't be an angry Mexican named Ned."
That must be weird knowing that you were born in a
different country, and the neighbourhood doesn't really
accept you, and how the heck are you going to get a bunch
of strangers in a comedy club to accept you?
So I said, "Well, my last name is Mencia,
and I have an uncle named Carlos." And she said,
"Carlos Mencia, that's melodious."
And I changed my name to Carlos Mencia.
It is this double dutch that people of colour have to play
in this country so that they can survive.
When Mencia's name change becomes public knowledge,
it turns into fodder for his detractors...
like Joe Rogan.
[Joe] It's open season on phoney Mexicans,
you ----ing piece of shit!
Mencia's relentless focus on success blinds him to
the storm that's brewing in the background.
Carlos had this inflated sense of who he was,
and I can't imagine how difficult it is to stay humble
when you're selling out everywhere you go.
I don't know how not to be committed to
every little moment.
Thank you very much.
I got to buy my mom and dad a house.
I got to help most of my family in some way,
shape or form, and all because people
pay to see me perform.
How do I not give them everything?
[Laughing]
For me it's just a part of my being,
but it's not always a positive thing.
There was a set lineup at The Comedy Store every night,
but there were comedians who would show up and
bump other comics,
which would set the whole schedule off.
Bumping is when there's a lineup for a show,
and everyone's got their time slots,
and a more famous comedian comes in and he goes,
"I'm gonna go do 20 minutes right now."
So you get bumped and
you just have to sit there and wait.
Carlos Mencia was king of bumping comics.
His set was 20 minutes,
and he would literally do 90 minutes...
and so that blatant disrespect for your fellow
comics of course turned him into this crazy villain.
Six months after his appearance on Conan,
the years of resentment towards Mencia
come to a head at The Comedy Store.
[Indistinct shouting]
This was one of the biggest scandals in comedy.
I always just thought it was a matter of time.
-That's bullshit, bullshit. -[Booing]
'Cause he was always kind of a dick.
♪
I will never forget being at The Comedy Store
the night of February 10th, 2007.
That night, Mitzi Shore does something unexpected.
She puts Mencia in the same lineup as Joe Rogan.
[Laughing] There's a reason why guys
climb Mount Everest too...
little dicks, that's it.
Joe and Carlos were both beast comedians all up
in your face telling you how to live your life.
But Joe and Carlos had a lot of animosity,
and a lot of vitriol towards each other.
Have you ever met somebody that stupid that you wish
you had 1-800 number- come meet this
culero right now type of shit, you know?
At the time, Carlos was way bigger than Joe.
---- that asshole.
And Joe's a competitive dude, too.
I'm in the original room watching him perform,
'cause I'm supposed to go on after.
Between Rogan and Mencia's sets,
another comedian, Kirk Fox, is on.
Rogan introduces Fox as a writer for
"Carlos Men-steal-ia's show".
Fox is already on stage, and I went up on stage and
grabbed the mic from him and said, "Hey Joe,
what joke did I ever steal from you"?
He invited him on stage because
he thought he was untouchable.
Like, there's, "I'm so successful,
there's nothing you can do to me.
Look at who I am."
[Audience] Who are you?!
I'm somebody important enough that he had to
end the show by saying, Carlos Men-steal-ia.
I was talking with my friends,
and then we looked at each other,
and we were like,
"Oh my gosh, is that Joe Rogan and
Carlos Mencia in the same room together"?
Mother----er steals shit and make it on HBO!
Carlos had this muscle of
being able to handle any crowd.
So Joe Rogan is attacking him verbally, and Carlos
is like, "Dude, I'm gonna embarrass this fool."
I think that every time you open your mouth,
you talk about me.
I think that you're secretly in love with me
'cause you can't...
I remember my heart beating 'cause I was like,
these two guys are now on this really
small stage together, there's no security.
What are you saying?
Listen, I know you guys...
She's saying that you're acting like a little bitch.
-No, she's not saying that. -Yes.
They're agreeing with me mother----er.
They're not agreeing with you!
They don't even know...
And then you got this battle of the wits,
and testosterone, and it's a recipe for a disaster.
-They're jealous because- -No one's jealous of you!
You can see Carlos getting frustrated and
you can see Joe having that command.
[Applauding]
And then to prove his point, he called up Ari Shaffir.
Now there's three guys on this tiny little OR stage,
trying to explain how Carlos
is stealing other comedian's jokes.
I opened for you and did that joke,
in the rooms you performed in.
[Audience] Oh!
I was doing that joke before.
-No, you weren't. -Yes, bro.
The joke that spawned this whole thing was
an Ari Shaffir joke, which he did on
the Latino Laugh Festival,
which I was the audience warmup for.
Here's this new thing, I don't know if
you guys heard this...
he wants to build a new wall all down
the California Mexico border.
Like a 12 foot high brick wall,
it's like three feet deep, so no Mexicans get in.
But I'm like, dude, Arnold, um...
who do you think is gonna build that wall?
I propose that we kick all the illegal aliens
out of this country.
Then we build a super fence so they can't get back in.
And I went, um... who's gonna build it?
[Laughing]
That joke is such low hanging fruit that
literally, I did it, Lopez did it,
Rodriguez did it, Miller did it.
I believe eight other people had that joke.
That's one of those jokes I don't think anyone stole,
I think it's parallel thinking,
especially here in LA where it's very Mexican heavy.
I don't believe that.
Just looking at the two jokes,
my gut says he stole that joke.
Do you really think that a Jewish guy
came up with that joke-
[Indistinct speaking & audience shouting]
There were people in the room cheering and
we were happy that someone actually stood up for us.
-Why would it matter to you? -Why the ---- would it matter?
You're stealing other people's shit.
Why would it matter to you?
At the end of the night everyone goes home.
For Mencia that seems to be the end of it.
I was under the assumption that we're addressing stuff
the way we address stuff as comedians...
Right? Between us.
What I remember is him saying,
"Wake up, something happened.
I don't think it's good."
I don't think Carlos Mencia appreciated or understood
the power of celebrity that Joe Rogan had.
The next day, a video of the confrontation is posted on
Rogan's YouTube channel and quickly goes viral.
Everything is about to change.
That was the birth of that whole thing,
where you could become popular through social media.
And it worked beautiful for Joe,
and obviously horrible against Carlos.
What Joe Rogan did that night
was what a lot of comedians wanted to do
but didn't have the cachet to be able to do it.
Joe wanted to educate people on
who Carlos Mencia really is.
I don't think that Joe's intentions were 100%
altruistic, but Carlos was taking jokes.
And unfortunately, I don't think any of us knew that
it would become the demise of Carlos Mencia.
♪
And now in honour of Carlos,
we're stealing a joke from Joe Rogan.
Carlos Mencia? More like Carlos Men-steal-ia.
Boom!
Virtually overnight, Mencia goes from being
one of the country's most celebrated comedians...
What's up, everybody?
To one of its most despised.
Carlos Mencia became the
poster child for joke stealing.
Carlos had become this ugly evil spirit in comedy.
His oxymoronical show, 'The Mind of Mencia',
is a veritable bomb factory where Ned's unfunny jokes
detonated America's face.
I just kind of remember him
just disappearing from the scene.
It's kind of surprising because
people can come back.
As we've seen time after time,
there are many male comedians coming back from
assaults or allegations,
and someone like Carlos,
especially appealing to the Latino community,
that there would still be that, that loyalty.
In the two years following Rogan's viral video,
Mind of Mencia is canceled.
And Carlos Mencia gets blacklisted.
I have no idea why it was me.
I've been asking that question a million times.
What I heard in my head was,
"If one person thinks you're a dick, whatever.
If everybody thinks you're a dick, dude,
you need to have some self-reflection."
And that's where I started.
♪
I talked to somebody recently and I said to him,
"Hey man, did I ever do anything to really hurt you"?
And he said, "Do you remember that night
that I got a standing ovation"?
I go, "I was there, man.
That was your first standing ovation ever."
He goes, "Do you remember what you said to me
when I got off stage"? Yeah. I said,
"Man, one day you're gonna be really funny."
And I laughed.
And I looked at his face and...
there's nothing funny about it.
He said, "You're my mentor.
You were the guy I looked up to.
You were the guy I wanted to be like.
And you just took a big shit on that moment."
And I went, "Oh Jesus. Oh my God."
In talking to other comics I did similar things,
like going on long.
On the comedy club circuit, there's a lineup.
And if a celebrity walks in and
decides to go on, they bump.
If they do five minutes, they don't care.
But some of these guys will do two hours.
That means they have bumped the
next 12 comics, and they are angry.
As a comedian at The Comedy Store,
whenever a celebrity showed up,
they got to go on.
Well, by the time Mind of Mencia came around,
and then I got to be that guy,
the rules have changed.
You gotta call in and get a spot.
You can't just run the light.
And for me it was like, what?
No, no, no, no, no, no.
You cannot do that to me, and then I have to...
No way. Nm-mm! I'm doing it.
I paid my dues.
But you know when John Caparulo's mom flew in,
and I went on long, and half the audience left after me,
and first time she ever saw him perform live was
in front of a half audience.
I could see why that guy's mad.
I get it.
Some people point out that
Mencia's behaviour wasn't unique.
When I started back in New York, you know,
how many times did Chris Rock come in and bump us?
Dave Chappelle would come in and the
club would be like, "You want to go home?
'Cause he's gonna be up there for like two hours."
And you'd be like, "Sure, I'll take my pay and
I'm out of here."
Every comedian that's on top bumps comics.
I don't care who it is.
There isn't a comic out there that didn't want to
run the light and do as much time as they could.
But Carlos Mencia's reputation was
he only cared about himself.
And the truth is, he helped a lot of comics,
but people don't talk about that because
all they remember was that he ran the light.
By 2010, Mencia's reputation as a bully and
a thief has gone mainstream,
even making an appearance on South Park.
Recently, we've all come to know the fish sticks joke is
probably the funniest most awesome joke ever.
So in the South Park episode,
Kanye West says he loves fish sticks,
and then they call him a gay fish.
[Laughing]
No, I'm not! Agh!
He doesn't understand the joke and the more he says it,
it just sounds like he's saying fish dicks.
And then they tried to find who originated this joke.
Joining us tonight, the brains behind
the incredible fish sticks joke,
the one and only Carlos Mencia.
[Cheering]
Yeah! Viva la Mexico!
When Kanye confronts Carlos, he finally admits.
Hey, look, it wasn't me.
I didn't really start the fish stick thing, alright?
You just saying that now 'cause you're scared.
No, man, it's true. I stole it, man.
I took credit for it 'cause I'm not actually funny.
I just take jokes and repackage them
with a Mexican accent, man!
Mencia takes the parody in stride,
posting his compliments on Twitter.
But he can't run from the public reputation
cemented in this episode.
Carlos Mencia was stealing
a lot of material and he finally got caught,
and now he's suffering the consequences.
I couldn't get on ABC. I couldn't get on NBC.
I couldn't get on HBO.
I have lost millions of dollars because of this.
I've had producers come up to me and tell me,
"I didn't put you on a project and I just want to be
upfront with you and tell you I'm so sorry."
I know that it cost me that.
I saw what he went through.
Those were really dark times for him.
♪
When his comedy career all but flames out,
Carlos Mencia hits rock bottom.
To be reduced and diminished
by one sentence.
Whose jokes did he steal? Whose jokes did he tell?
It was devastating.
Sometimes when bad stuff happened,
he'd be like, "It is what it is.
It happens, it's cool. We'll get over it."
But this was something different.
You know he was really down, really depressed.
I started to drink, I did drugs,
and at my darkest hours,
there were moments of,
you know, ending it.
Just... be gone.
You know, if the comedy world doesn't
appreciate me, then why should I love it?
Let me just quit.
---- it, let me just kill myself.
I absolutely was concerned.
Concerned with his
mental health and his wellbeing.
She married a man that was sober, completely,
100%, and she ended up with a,
with a man that was broken, that was fragile.
It's only with his wife Amy's support that
Mencia avoids spiralling out of control.
She never allowed me to go to that place.
After a lot of self-reflection,
Mencia tries to redeem himself and
attempts a comeback.
Listen to me, and look at me when I tell you this.
With all honesty, if you think that I steal jokes,
---- yeah, you're right.
Of course I ----ing steal jokes.
Are you out of your ----ing mind?
In the 2010 documentary, 'I Am Comic',
Carlos Mencia satirizes his notoriety.
When I come to a comedy club,
you better run, bitch.
You better get the ---- off stage.
'Cause if anything you say is even remotely funny,
I'm gonna make it mine.
And all I'm gonna do is say Mexican in the front.
Despite trying to put his reputation of stealing
behind him, videos of Mencia doing
other comedian's jokes keep popping up.
Hey, put on channel five.
[Laughing]
"What do you want?" "Change the channel."
"Ah!"
But as with the wall joke, not everyone believes the
issue is as clear cut as YouTube edits make it seem.
That's another thing about these jokes that people
claim to be their own, or that they have ownership,
it's a lot of stock jokes.
So, I mean, a stock joke is a joke that is-
Can be, can be delivered by anybody,
and it is a very generic concept that
everybody has a take on, right?
You listen to all these great comics,
and we all agree.
We've all been inspired by comics, and we think,
"Why isn't he saying it like this?
He shouldn't say it like that,
he should say it like this."
And then you say it the way he thinks,
you think he should do it,
and now it kills, and now you feel like,
"Dude, I did that and now this is mine."
So the tables are always kind of grey.
It's like, you know, am I stealing this bit
or am I inspired by this bit?
But there's one joke that Carlos used to tell that is
almost identical to a classic Bill Cosby bit.
Two years old, you say, "Get down,
Dad'll show you how to do it.
Now you come at me, run through me...
there, see? Get back up, get back up."
He shows this little kid everything that he needs
to know about how to be a great quarterback.
He even moves from one city to the other so that kid
could be in a better high school.
High school touchdown!
800 touchdowns per game.
"Yes, that's my son," and he goes to the big college!
And he's in college getting better.
He wins a Heisman trophy.
He ends up in the NFL.
Five years later, he ends up in the Super Bowl.
For a TV and turnaround and the camera's on him and
you are looking, and he says, "Hi, Mom."
"I love you, Mom." [Screaming] Ah!
Carlos claims he never saw the Bill Cosby routine,
and there's no way Carlos could not have seen it.
It was almost exact.
Bill Cosby doesn't take action against Mencia,
but he does join the conversation about
joke stealing that started with Rogan's video.
They all steal.
And they're a liar if they tell you any different.
If you care about stealing jokes,
you're not a good comedian.
'Cause every comedian has stole a joke.
Robin Williams, he was notorious for stealing jokes.
He was never outcasted, he was never
scrutinized by the comedy community.
So I do believe Carlos did get the raw end of the deal.
Some of Mencia's contemporaries wonder
if he would've been treated the same way
had he been a white comic.
I believe it was easier to pick on Carlos because,
what, the number of Latino comedians...
there's only like, what? Four?
At the time.
I mean, there was a lot of Black comedians,
a lot of white comedians that steal.
Of course there was a racial component to it.
It doesn't matter if his name is Ned Silverman,
he still looks brown,
and if ICE comes through here,
they're probably going to ask him for his papers.
Mencia admits to bumping, but he's adamant
he never stole jokes.
Carlos Mencia's biggest 'F' up is that his ego
won't let him own
what he actually, really did.
And to me it's sad because
I know he's gotten the opportunity.
Ned, why not do in the beginning
just a blanket apology?
If I apologize, then I'm saying,
"Yeah, I sat around the back of comedy clubs
taking their stuff." Never happened.
♪
So how are you feeling now with the controversy
that had happened a decade ago?
I realized, like, my absence from the internet in
all those years allowed a narrative to be created
that will never change.
In 2021, Bobby Lee hosts Mencia on his podcast,
'Tiger Belly', to give his long-time friend and mentor
a chance to make amends with the comedy world.
Bobby Lee had left the door open for him to say,
"Okay, I did it. I did it." And I was watching that.
I was like, "Come on, Carlos, say it, bro.
Say it"!
I've seen some of your act, you know, I mean,
a little too close to things that have
already been established.
Why not just outwardly say, "I apologize."
And then we could just move on from it
rather than you constantly defending.
But it's not that I'm defending.
See, again... it's not that I'm defending,
I just, who do I apologize to?
It's hard to be accountable, but to say,
"Hey, I'm sorry. I ----ed up."
Everybody would just say, "We move on."
Dude, you didn't commit murder.
You just ----ing stole some jokes.
What would make somebody not admit
to taking the joke is very interesting.
I think it's preservation and a fear because
you don't want to be taken down.
After the heights of fame he reached,
it's easy to forget how unlikely Carlos Mencia's
success as a comic was to begin with.
When you're young and you are told,
"You're not gonna make it, what are you doing"?
You begin to get a chip on your shoulder,
and you have to, I had to.
Because there's no way that I could go on stage with
all that weight of, "You're not gonna make it."
I think what made Carlos have that negative energy
is coming from poverty.
When you're a kid and you're hungry,
that's what makes you fight.
He's developed that mean ass character 'cause
he's fighting for little Carlos, little hungry Carlos.
♪
I grew up in the projects.
If somebody there said to me, "Hey homes,
where you from"?
The answer might get us into a fight,
might get us shot, might get us stabbed.
And so, I...
put on this demeanour of,
"Don't talk to me, and if we do,
let's kill each other." That kind of an attitude.
I think on some level, if he apologizes, it's like,
"I should have never stayed with my family.
It's justified that they gave me away, it's justified.
I don't belong to anyone." You know,
"There's something wrong with me, ultimately."
And he doesn't get that if he apologizes
the world now opens up for him.
He's a human being,
and human beings make mistakes.
We just want you to own up to them.
I was driven by my competitive nature as
a human being, but it was never personal.
And yet I look back and go,
"I wish I was different.
I wish I could have seen it.
I wish I could have understood it."
But I didn't.
But in the years since Mencia's peak,
his legacy of stealing jokes has largely eclipsed
the main reasons for his success.
Stealing people's jokes doesn't necessarily
negate that he's an amazing comedian.
You cannot destroy the room with a
bunch of other people's material.
He got to that level in spite of the fact that
he may have taken people's stuff.
One thing about the narrative of today
that really bothers me is the assumption
that I take so much from comedy.
He's a guy who in LA, you know,
broke into The Comedy Store and opened the doors for
other comics to be able to come in and
be seen as mainstream.
You know, guys that do real crimes, you know,
don't get put away for 15 years.
So to me, the punishment had to fit the crime.
You don't see him in the major cities like
LA and New York comedy clubs.
He's, he's banned.
He's fallen from grace of doing theatres and arenas
to being down to, you know, B, C level clubs
trying to make a living.
Sometimes, in a dream world,
I wish I could fake my own death.
I wish that I was at The Comedy Store,
watching people talk about the effect that I had on them
the day that I pass away, because on that day,
they'll tell some truths that they have never told before.
It's taken me 10 years to deal
with the negativity and have it not affect me
in a way that it did on that night.
It took me...
not selling out shows to go, "Wait a minute,
am I gonna give importance to the empty seats?
Or am I gonna give importance to those
that took the time to be here?"
And that's when everything began to change
comedically on stage for me.
That's when I began to form
this new person that
sees the beauty in it, that sees the joy in it,
that not selling out a show doesn't mean
I'm not successful or anything.
When he had success it came too fast,
and I think he's paying for his behaviour now,
but he's staying in the game.
You're never out 'til you decide you're out.
That's my feeling about Carlos.
He's still in the game, man.