Amish Paradise: Why was Coolio so mad?

[Subway_Prophet]

@mobo85

Weird Al is a fan of the Zucker/Abrams/Zucker films (he even appeared in all three Naked Gun movies)

Not! Now I gotta go watch them all over again.

What parts should I watch for?

[Leaper]

The only appearance of his I remember is in 33 1/3, which is probably the most prominent (appearing at the Oscars with Vanna White).

[GuanoLad]

In one of them Al is getting off a plane, with hundreds of adoring fans, but Drebin thinks the fans are there for him.

[Bosstone]

He also did the theme song that plays during the opening credits for Spy Hard, though he doesn’t appear anywhere else in the movie.

Likewise, he did a video of the song This Is The Life for the movie Johnny Dangerously. Although it’s not a ZAZ movie, it’s very similar in terms of sight gags.

[rjung]

I’m sure Al was also the “mad gunman holding cops hostage” in one of the Naked Gun movies. Can’t remember which one, though.

[mobo85]

GuanoLad is thinking of the first film, and rjung is thinking of the second.

[Arnold_Winkelried]

I’m not well-versed enough in legal matters to understand (or care about) the difference, but from a website mentioned in another thread today ( beatallica.org - from what I understand, a band that does Beatles songs Metallica style ? )

http://www.beatallica.org/faq.html

Q: Why did they [Sony] go after you anyway? Aren’t these songs parodies, and thus protected as “fair use”? Are they going to sue Weird Al next?

A: It turns out to be a lot more complicated than that. The legal notion of “parody” is different from the way you and I understand it. In order for a song to be a parody, it has to directly criticize or comment on the original artist or song. In other words, you can make a parody of a song by The Beatles that makes fun of The Beatles, and that’s protected as “fair use”; the “2 Live Crew” case is an example of this.

If you use someone’s work to make fun of someone else, that’s not always protected. It’s considered “satire,” not “parody.” A good example of this is the “Cat NOT in the Hat” case. So what this seems to mean is that most of Weird Al Yankovic’s songs are not technically parodies. He doesn’t have to worry about litigation though; he always asks permission to release his satirical songs (because he can afford to). Notice that Weird Al has never released a Beatles parody.

“Fair use” is a very fuzzy part of copyright law, decided on a case-by-case basis, so unfortunately the only way you can prove that what you’re doing qualifies as fair use is to go to court.

[mobo85]

That is basically what Campbell v. Acuff-Rose said- if the parody is criticizing the original work, then it’s considered fair use. The case they mention involves a Cat in the Hat parody involving the O.J Simpson trial. The publisher was sued by the estate of Dr. Seuss and not allowed to release the book- the court ruled that the Dr. Seuss satire added nothing to the theme of the book.