"...safe, somewhat organic, and guaranteed to improve your life."

February 14, 2015 1:38 PM

Icelandic Ultrablue (nsfw)

David Cross and H. Jon Benjamin Invented the Adult Swim 4AM Infomercial

Let me make it clear – I think the people who had the concepts for TOO MANY COOKS didn't rip us off. I think adult swim was the one who ripped off the idea. And they actually aired it once – it aired at exactly the time I pitched, in that exact way, and they didn't pick up the show, which I guess makes us a couple years ahead of our time?

Previously on MetaFilter: "Too Many Cooks" and "Unedited Footage of a Bear".

posted by tonycpsu (18 comments total)

this is my favorite thing so far this year.
posted by bobdow at 1:49 PM on February 14, 2015

Adult Swim senior executive vice president Mike Lazzo responded to Cross's ripoff accusation in the Reddit AMA ("So fuck Mike Lazzo. He's a thief."):

Dude if you told me to air Icelandic at 4am, congratulations, I might offer you a job in Programming, perhaps even Development. However if you are under the impression that you invented any sort of baffling late night television then I must rescind any offer of a Development staff position. You might be too stupid. Overall, I'm in a good position to hook you up. I've been making unusual television at Turner (TWX!) almost thirty years. When I was much, much younger I remember Bill Tush airing many commercial parodies on WTBS at, let's see, 4am. Uh-oh. I ripped the shit out of that. Late night informercials. Fuck yeah. Original! Steal that shit! My idea!

And now back to your regularly scheduled weirdo programming.
posted by Doktor Zed at 1:52 PM on February 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

Can't tell if comedy concept skit or real life crazy pants.
Gonna need popcorn either way.
posted by daq at 1:55 PM on February 14, 2015

this is my favorite thing so far this year.
posted by bobdow at 4:49 PM on February 14 [+] [!]

Along with Kung Fury.
posted by Fizz at 2:12 PM on February 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

Weird comedy beef is always grade A prime.
posted by infinitewindow at 2:31 PM on February 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

Oh, Kung Fury! Had forgotten about that, but to my intense delight, according to Wikipedia, "On September 17, 2014, Sandberg announced that Kung Fury will see an early 2015 release date.[7] On January 7, 2015, Sandberg announced on the film's Twitter account that the project should be completed by late-February with a March release on YouTube for free"

HACKING TOO MUCH TIME!
posted by Devonian at 2:51 PM on February 14, 2015 [4 favorites]

I'm not nearly high enough to care about this.
posted by clvrmnky at 3:57 PM on February 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

Does anyone else find David Cross to be really unappealingly petty and bitter? I love his tv work but I've long since passed being able to stomach his standup or interviews.
posted by yellowbinder at 4:21 PM on February 14, 2015 [7 favorites]

I gave this more minutes of my time than deserved waiting for the funny. Gave up during the embalming bit. Very disappointing; I expected awesomeness from David Cross. Too Many Cooks actually was way better, so if it was a ripoff of this it improved it considerably in the process of ripping off.
posted by edheil at 4:24 PM on February 14, 2015 [4 favorites]

Huh.
posted by Floydd at 4:41 PM on February 14, 2015

It seems to me that comedy and marketing suffer from this problem more than other fields. It is relatively rare for there to be a big tiff in Computer Science or big sculpture about ripping someone off. (Those are the two fields with which I am familliar). I'm not sure where the difference lies. Maybe there is a lot more money to be had for original ideas in marketing or comedy? There are IP infringement lawsuits in CS, I suppose, but mostly the people who had the idea are pretty distant from owning it or getting pissed off. Perhaps ideas are more plentiful in these places? I don't know.

I also have a half formed thought about the nature of the riff and the three Davids, but it isn't coming to fruition.
posted by poe at 5:20 PM on February 14, 2015

Kentucky Fried Movie did the embalming informercial joke before
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 6:36 PM on February 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

Maybe there is a lot more money to be had for original ideas in marketing or comedy

Bingo. In fact, there's plenty of rip-off controversy in dev circles where real money is involved. You need look no farther than big companies ripping off small developers who write add-ons or utilities for their operating system, or game devs ripping off each other all the time.
posted by smidgen at 8:28 PM on February 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

Worth the thread just for the link to Kung Fury. Thanks Fizz.
posted by anadem at 8:54 PM on February 14, 2015

There are IP infringement lawsuits in CS, I suppose, but mostly the people who had the idea are pretty distant from owning it or getting pissed off.

My experience is mostly the opposite, but I work in non-profit scientific research circles (informatics) where getting credit/authorship right is fairly important to continued funding for the work.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 11:13 PM on February 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

Kentucky Fried Movie

There's your prior art, right there...

Also, everything SCTV ever did including the basic concept.
posted by mikelieman at 9:37 AM on February 15, 2015

yellowbinder: "Does anyone else find David Cross to be really unappealingly petty and bitter? I love his tv work but I've long since passed being able to stomach his standup or interviews."

I think I agree. I actually still like his standup, though. And yes, the TV work is great, but I watched "Getting Doug with High" with him and while I appreciated his point of "wtf is up with all this expensive shit laying around, seriously? Why do you need some $4000 tool to smoke pot?" I think he should've saved it for, I dunno, a standup gig instead of being such a dick in person on a show that should've been about just getting high and having fun. So... yeah. It's a bummer.

I suppose that's part of why he has such a hard time finding a lot of work...

That said, the MLazzo on reddit, reads quite a lot like something Cross would have written, so I honestly don't know how serious to take that as being from Lazzo.
posted by symbioid at 12:49 PM on February 15, 2015

Here's the David Cross on Getting Doug with High...
posted by symbioid at 12:55 PM on February 15, 2015