A quick archaeological dig reveals the creative truth

I was blown away when I first saw Corey Vidal’s “Star Wars” tribute video a couple of days ago. What impressed me so much was not just how funny and clever a video it was – a sort of “Forbidden Broadway“-style parody for the sci-fi movie crowd - but how much skill it seemed to have taken for this one guy to have composed the words and the music and then sung all the parts himself, especially because he appeared to have about a five-octave range.

I mean, take a look at this thing:

I should have wondered a little harder about that basso-to-first-tenor tessitura because, on checking around You Tube to learn more about this musical prodigy, I discovered that Vidal didn’t write or sing the piece at all. Instead, he acted and lip-synced to an existing song by the musical-comedy group Moosebutter.

A couple of additional mouse clicks revealed a video that Moosebutter itself had made in response to Vidal’s:

And it’s even funnier than the first one, right? By this time, what I had begun to wonder was how big and messy a lawsuit this situation was going to spawn, because Vidal’s video had become a nominee for a 35th Annual People’s Choice Award. So I went looking for Moosebutter’s web site and found the following:

FAQ About Star Wars – there’s a lot of confusion about the origin of the Star Wars song, since many people are attributing it solely to Corey Vidal. Here is information to clear up the misinformation, which we have little hope that the people who need it will read it.

  Music is from 6 different not-Star Wars movies, all written by John Williams.

• Words are paraphrased or directly from the original Star Wars trilogy, by George Lucas, et al.
• Song was arranged spring 1999 by Josh Slagowski and Bryant Smith, original members of moosebutter, in Salt Lake City, UT. Parts were re-arranged later by Mister Tim (Tim Y. Jones)
• Song was recorded in 2000 by Josh, Bryant, and Tim, and re-recorded in 2002 by Tim, Chris, Glen, and Weston, the new cast of moosebutter.
• There have been almost 50 different cast members of moosebutter since 1999, including subs and special guests. About half of those have sung Star Wars.
• Corey Vidal contacted us in summer 2008 to ask permission to produce his video. We said yes.
• WHAM BAM internet explosion.
• Corey is lip-synching to the 2002 studio recording of moosebutter. It was recorded at June Audio, Provo, UT. Corey filmed his video in his kitchen.
• moosebutter filmed their response video in November 2008. Corey was the most vocal supporter of us producing the new video, and he graciously posted it to his popular YouTube channel to generate more views.
• At the time of posting, Corey’s video has more than 3.2 million more views than moosebutter’s. That’s because Corey is cuter, and smells better.

So nobody’s suing anybody, apparently. Which is amazing and great, because this is how creativity is supposed to happen: Someone gets an idea from someone else’s picture or play or song or book and does his or her own take on it, using it in degrees that range from subliminal inspiration to big recognizable chunks embellished or twisted or inverted in some way.

And no person gets bent out of shape about it, including the “original” artist. I use quotation marks in deference to my fellow Geniocity blogger, Peter Friedman (see his Colbert-themed blogs for Jan. 13 and 14), who frequently writes about how pointless many copyright-infringement suits are because every creative person borrows in some way from those who came before. 

It’s true in this case, too - the Moosebutter guys of course boosted the “Star Wars” lines from George Lucas and the music from John Williams (neither of whom evidently raised a fuss); both Lucas and Williams famously reference earlier works in their own, including Frank Herbert’s “Dune” series, the operas (and leitmotivs) of Richard Wagner and scads of others. And those guys borrowed from earlier guys ad infinitum.         

You can’t stop creative people from being influenced by each other’s inventions and turning them into something of their own, because that’s what creativity is, whether it’s artistic, entrepreneurial or scientific. Talented actor-videographer Corey Vidal did this the right way, by asking permission first and giving credit afterward; talented musician-parodists Moosebutter did it the right way by graciously giving permission first and humorously one-upping Vidal afterward. Turns out both Vidal and Moosebutter were nominated for that People’s Choice Award.

Score: Lawrence Lessig , Peter Friedman and artists, 3; Stephen Colbert, a goose egg as big as his mouth