Creators apologise for plagiarism

South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker have admitting ‘stealing’ lines from an online sketch.

They have apologised over uncanny similarities between their latest episode parodying the Inception movie and a skit that appeared on the CollegeHumor website almost three months ago.

In both, characters struggle to explain the convoluted idea of dream spaces to an incredulous woman, with similar dialogue. For instance, in both skits, a character says: ‘Sometimes my thoughts of my dead wife manifest themselves as trains.’

Stone told the New York Times: ‘It’s just because we do the show in six days, and we’re stupid and we just threw it together. But in the end, there are some lines that we had to call and apologise for.’

He said that the plagiarism occurred because South Park writers couldn’t find a cinema showing Inception, or get a copy online.

‘We thought their [CollegeHumor’s] joke was that a lot of those lines were actually in the movie,’ Stone said. ‘That was a mistake, and it was an honest mistake.’

Dan Gurewitch, who wrote the original sketch – called Inception Characters Don't Understand Inception – originally highlighted the similarities on his blog:

He wrote: ‘Well, this is odd. It looks as if South Park essentially plagiarised [the sketch]. I’m conflicted, because I absolutely adore South Park. I admire Trey Parker and Matt Stone more than almost anyone currently working in comedy. To give them the benefit of the doubt, I’d say maybe it’s an homage - I’d be honored - but while our sketch was popular, it wasn’t nearly the national phenomenon it’d have to be for them to parody it.

‘I am very careful about accusations like this, because parallel thinking happens all the time in comedy.And certainly, many people have made fun of Inception’s complicated plot. Even the fact that it’s based on the same scene in the movie, I could ignore. But our sketch is lifted almost line by line.’

But Gurewitch later accepted Stone’s explanation, blogging that he was ‘extremely nice and apologetic’ and adding: ‘All is well, and we’re going to meet up with Matt and Trey when they’re in New York.’

The episode of South Park in question, Insheeption, has its British debut on Comedy Centrtal at 10pm tonight. But here is a clip of the lifted dialogue.

And here is CollegeHumor’s original version:

Published: 24 Oct 2010