Pauly Shore Punch Out Hoax(?)

After Pauly Shore’s weekend set in Odessa, Texas at the 8th Street Comedy Club, a video started spreading around the internet featuring Pauly getting punched out by a cowboy-hatted heckler. Some folks called fake immediately and there was an even an early clue that it was just an act from a comment on the comedy club owner’s myspace page, but after I read some insistence by comic Joe Rogan on his message board that it was 100% real, I thought I’d post about it sometime today. Here’s the clip if you haven’t seen it yet:

But TMZ has just revealed a police statement that an off-duty office was asked to participate in “a skit” where they were pretend to cart away the assailant after he appeared to hit Pauly Shore. Apparently, everyone in the audience ended up in on the joke too, because Pauly Shore did an autograph session with the man he dubs “Hoss” in the video prior to (not) getting punched in the face. Defamer even reports that they received an anonymous email that the punch was rehearsed for the final show. That seems even more obvious now, due to fact that everybody in the club was laughing after the punch - strange behavior for people who are supposedly not in on the joke. (In old Andy Kaufman clips, you can definitely feel the room change after something like this.)

It’s an obvious attempt to get press after the Michael Richards fiasco and, much of the mainstream media didn’t bite (or perhaps didn’t have time to bite). I get why someone would try something like this but stunts aren’t going to make any of us reconsider Pauly Shore as Andy Kaufman. Many will just find him pathetic.

But there definitely can be real ugliness in comedy clubs today. A couple of weekends ago, I saw the aforementioned Rogan at Caroline’s and after the show, a brawl broke out among patrons (Caroline’s staff were great about getting in there immediately to contain it).

Update: Pauly Shore later posted a video showing the making of the hoax.