You, Me and (Cousin) Dupree
Posted in Steely Dan on July 19th 2006 by Randy Reichardt.: Owen Wilson’s current stinkbomb, You, Me & Dupree, has garnered the attention of our boys Don and Walt over at Steely Dan Inc. Seems that they are concerned about the obvious parallels between the premise of the movie (relative comes home and spends time on the couch) and their 2000 Grammy Award winning song, Cousin Dupree. In a hilarious open letter to Owen’s brother, Luke, they write:
Hey Luke –
Hey man – it’s, like, Don and Walt, we’re the guys from Steely Dan, the group, we won those Grammies that time, maybe you recall? You know. “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number”?
“Reelin’ in the Years?” “Hey Nineteen”? “Babylon Sisters”? Right, that’s us. So how’s it going?
After some further prelim discussion and explanations, they go on to say:
What we suspect happened is this: some hack writer or producer or whatever they call themselves in Malibu, or Los Feliz apparently heard our Grammy winning song “Cousin Dupree” on the radio and thought, hey, man, this is a cool idea for a character in a movie or something. OK, so the “cousin” idea was no doubt eliminated so as not to offend the Fundamentalist ticket buyers in the Flyovers. Nevertheless, they, like, took our character, this real dog sleeping on the couch and all and put him in the middle of some hokey “Down and Out in Beverly Hills” ripoff story and then, when it cam time to change the character’s name or whatever so people wouldn’t know what a rip the whole thing was, THEY DIDN’T EVEN BOTHER TO THINK UP A NEW F*CK*NG NAME FOR THE GUY!”
The letter goes on and on – read it and have a good laugh. It ends with:
P.P.S We’re now seeing that according to Wikipedia, Owen older than you are. But you seem a lot more mature somehow…don’t you?”
Can’t wait to see the boys perform on Long Island on August 17.
.: I am in Winnipeg. I arrived last night around 0045 hrs in the morning, after a long and uneventful drive.
