Tig Notaro Thinks SNL Sketch a Little Too Familiar

Saturday Night Live ran a funny sketch in its last show in which Louis CK plays a down-in-the-dumps guy who hires a clown to put on a show solely for him. One person not laughing is fellow comedian Tig Notaro—because she used the premise first in her short film Clown Service. You can see the SNL sketch here and Notaro's 13-minute video here. "While I don’t know how all this actually happened, I did find it extremely disappointing," says Notaro in a statement released to Entertainment Weekly. She doesn't appear to be blaming Louis CK, saying that a "writer/director" who was aware of Clown Service—it's been out for a year and is currently part of her national tour—worked on the SNL sketch.

"I never gave anyone permission to use anything from my film," says Notaro. While she and Louis CK have long ties—he hosted her standup on his website and is an executive producer of her show One Mississippi, notes Jezebel—she says they have not communicated in any way in more than a year. "I hesitated to even address any of this, but I think it is only right to defend my work," she writes. No word yet from Louis CK, who was in a famous tiff with comedian Dane Cook over alleged plagiarism years ago. After Cook was accused of stealing Louis CK's material, the incident made it into an episode of his show Louie. (More Saturday Night Live stories.)