... the sincerest form of flattery.
The creators of “South Park,” the animated Comedy Central series, apologized on Friday to the creators of a Web comedy video satirizing the summer blockbuster “Inception,” saying that they had used dialogue from a video on the Web site CollegeHumor.com.
“It’s just because we do the show in six days, and we’re stupid and we just threw it together,” Matt Stone, who created “South Park” with Trey Parker, said Friday in a telephone interview. “But in the end, there are some lines that we had to call and apologize for.” ...
Hey. It could happen to anybody. Even people who aren't millionaires.
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6 comments:
"and we’re stupid"
The operative words. Would be nice if they shelled out some dough for using someone elses dialogue.
CollegeHumor, on some of their best days, IS starting to become competition for some of South Park's best truth-in-tactlessness...Which can make SP's job difficult keeping cable edginess ahead of the rise of Internet-tube edginess after thirteen years.
A similar post-Alice jab at Tim Burton was also lifted almost part-and-parcel from a CH sketch, except for SP managing to slip in their own patented trademark, ie. the obligatory gay-sex reference. ;)
Since they've already admitted guilt it should be a fairly simple lawsuit judgement headed their way. I'm guessing their lawyers are agreeing that Stone and Parker really are stupid.
Well, as Stone and Parker pointed out, they thought that the CH online parody used lines that came directly from the movie, and THOSE were what Stone and Parker used for their parody, since they were unable to view the actual film themselves. S & P didn't realize that those lines were in fact *not* dialogue from the movie, but jokes written by the CH crew. So I don't think the situation can really be classified as a deliberate "lift". It was a mistake, nothing more.
As said above, the two lines used sounded like the were from the movie (“We need to move to the next dream level before these projections kill us”) so SP thought they were quoting the movie, not another satirical skit. It wasn't deliberate copy, just a misquote. Heck, I didn't realize that line wasn't in the movie and I've seen it a few too many times already.
In the end SP apologized, CH accepted, and it is now non-news. Although, I'm sure both parties love the extra publicity they are getting.
They make the show in six days? Sweatshop much?
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