Family Guy Composer Sued
 

Law Blog - WSJ.com : The Family Guy: I Need a Lawyer

I'd love to see Family Guy get shitcanned, canceled, shot out of a canon and into another canon full of male on male rape for anything, even something as silly as this.

Word up. I'll never get the fanbase behind this lackluster series.

It only took them what, 7 or 8 years, to decide to sue them on this?

Also
Why don't you just, uh, not watch it, like the rest of the people who have functioning brains.

Not only that, but I don't think this is the first time anyone got sued for that particular episode.

Some people have such soft skin, I'm surprised they even venture outdoors and run the risk of being eviscerated by a cloud of pollen.

Being still in my mid-twenties, a lot of my friends (and their friends) find the show entertaining and engaging. I suspect that some of these people would laugh at watching the kitchen linolium curl on a hot summer day.

Be that as it may - its more or less shoved down my throat and I've been beleaugered more than once by someone asking me how dare I dislike the show.

Equally, I'm confused by why pop culture references automatically make people laugh. Can I make a pile of cash by standing on a street corner, screaming things I remember from the 1980s?

I'm afraid that I have to admit to liking the show, though I rarely watch new episodes on TV and simply pirate them later, so it balances out. I won't bother wasting anyone's time trying to defend it, but it's not a horrible show. Worse shows have stayed on TV and better ones have been canceled. "Live with it" would be my recommendation.

(If I ever saw someone pull a bucket out of a well, but the bucket had a yellow jacket on it, and the person yelled, "ANDY! YOU GOONIE!" and I laughed, I think I would be obligated to hand them at least $10.)

Though I don't want to get into a long drawn out argument over whose opinion is more valid, Family Guy is a great fucking show. I find it funny. That's all. No more no less. I don't quite understand how someone might make the case that its original, in any of its properties, but since when does originality make something funny in and of itself?

Making references to pop culture is fine. It doesn't bug me as much it does some people. Its how that sense of culture is referenced that I consider humorous. I find that its easy for people to dislike something on account of its popularity...

Anyways, I am not surprised something like this would happen. Walter Murphy is a very good composer but there are obvious quotations from many films and series in the family guy musical framework. I always assumed that Fox would pay for the licensing to utilize these quotations, so not very good thinking on using "When you wish upon a star" without expressed written consent.

Of what I call the Big 4 satirical cartoons (I say satirical, FG doesn't satirise anything, it just pulls stuff out of it's ass) it's only slightly better than the Simpsons, the other two being Futurama and South Park.

1. Simpsons until season 9
2. Futurama
3. Family Guy
4. South Park
5. Simpsons after season 9

And yeah, what Russ said.

Precisely. 'Just turn over then', the favourite argument of stupid Big Brother fans, simply doesn't work as an argument because we then have to go the extra step of ignoring all other media references to the show as well as discussions about the show among people you might know (your friends, work colleagues) and people you don't know (internet). For my next trick I will walk down the street taking special care not to step on the cracks.

I wonder if you understand what satire is ?

I would pay to see that because there's something inherently funny about the retardedness of that. (Oh, and that's why I like FG. It's retarded and pointless.)

Still not as good as Stella.

The thing is, sometimes Family Guy uses music note-for-note ripped from the original, yet "I Need a Jew" changed a few notes, making it obviously parody.

Maybe they're just fighting over the number of similar notes it takes before you can sue? Geez, MadTV and SNL make music parodies all the time, you don't see the RIAA coming down on them for that.

Its not the RIAA, its the rights holder for the song.

It's because some people can't have a sense of humor and have to ruin it for everyone else because they need to be the one that'll keep the airwaves decent, OH PRAISE THE LORD HALLELUJAH!

Go do something real for humanity and stick your head in an industrial blender.

Ridiculing, mocking or otherwise deriding something. Was there something in my comment you particularly disagree with?

Is there something wrong with that? =/ I wish I could be amused by something like that. I'll never understand people who fight laughter...

I can't be held accountable for other people's bad sense of humor. Is it too much to ask that people write their own jokes without it being in reference to some media blitz from the late 70s and on?

Quoting something doesn't mean you understand its function. You can tell me what a schwarschild wormhole is by looking it up in Wikipedia or on Google - but can you use it in a credible mathmatical or scientific explaination? Similarly, just because you can quote the definition of "satire" doesn't mean you understand how to use that particular skill.

Absolutely. All the jokes are the same type (cut-away) and they all reference things that are already pop culture. While I don't care for South Park, their analogy towards the Family Guy writing staff was spot on.

I think there's a sub-audience out there that likes Family Guy because it's unpretentious. It knows exactly what it wants to do, which is to get cheap laughs. I don't think they ever claimed they wanted to change the world via Peter's fart noises.

The joke material may be simplistic, but like with anything, the delivery can make or break the material. There's a reason no one watches SNL anymore, right?

You realize, of course, that for people to watch a show for that reason, they have to be pretentious to even think that...?

I never said that I can use it and I never said that Family Guy can use it, I said it can't use it at all. I merely stated that of the big 4 shows considered satirical it's only slightly better than the Simpsons and way behind South Park and Futurama.

Oh for the love of Benji, man, liking things because they're straightforward doesn't make anyone pretentious. Stop playing word games.

Umm, bad sense of humor according to who, you? You expect me to take YOU seriously as the authority on sense of humor? You seem like the kind of anal fuckstick that wouldn't crack a smile if a female clown were tickling your taint with a french tickler, 3 midgets rode by on unicycles, and Technoviking came by and pointed at you. AND YES all that is fucking funny!

Humor is parallel to aesthetics, asshole.

(Forgot about this thread...)