Steely Dan rips “Butterscotch Stallion” a new one

By M&C News Jul 21, 2006, 18:57 GMT

Fox 411 reporter Roger Friedman has recently posted that the group, Steely Dan, has some issues with Owen “Butterscotch Stallion” Wilson’s recent film and a certain Steely Dan song, Cousin Dupree.

Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, aka Steely Dan, have posted an open letter on their Web site (www.steelydan.com) to actor Luke Wilson, brother of “Dupree” star Owen Wilson.

Cousin Dupree was on the group’s 2001 Grammy winning comeback album, Two against Nature.  The lyrics are about a dicey musician who returns home to find his younger female cousin “all grown up.”

In the film, You, Me and Dupree, written by Mike LeSieur and directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, Owen Wilson's character Randy Dupree is fired from his job and loses his place to live because he attends the wedding of his best friend played by Matt Dillon.

From Steely Dan’s website, Letter to Luke Wilson dated July 17, 2006:

“...It’s your little brother Owen C. that’s the problem.  We realize what a drag it is for you to have people coming to you about his lameness all the time and we’re really sorry to be doing the same thing – believe us, usually that’s not what we’re all about.  But it so happens that your brother has gotten himself mixed up with some pretty bad Hollywood shlockmeisters and that he may be doing, like, permanent damage to his good creds (SIC) and whatever reputation for coolness he may still have – let’s face it, “Bottle Rocket” was a ways back already.

What we suspect may have 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, he man, this is a cool idea for a character in a movie or something.  O.K., 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” rip off story and then, when it came time to change the characters name or whatever so people wouldn’t know what a rip the whole f***ing thing was, THEY DIDN’T EVEN BOTHER TO THINK UP A NEW F***ING NAME FOR THE GUY”