Every now and again (okay, maybe more often than that) Saturday Night Live will unleash a sketch so damn strange that we can’t help but wonder how that seed of a notion could have possibly materialized. The founders of one comedy troupe claim to have an inkling of an idea when it comes to two of the late night show’s oddball shorts.
Variety reported today on plagiarism allegations involving an SNL sketch from last October, titled “The Pumpkin Patch,” which appeared in an episode hosted by comedian and Crazy Rich Asians star Awkwafina. The plot is super complicated: A group of pumpkin patch employees get busted for fornicating with the pumpkins. Yes, it’s a thinker.
According to Nick Ruggia and Ryan Hoffman, the founders of the sketch comedy troupe Temple Horses, the idea was a rip-off of their 2014 sketch “Not Trying To Fuck This Pumpkin,” which has lived on YouTube for years. Please insert a clever “not safe for work” warning here.
They also cite similarities between their 2011 sketch “Pet Blinders” and SNL’s “Pound Puppy,”—aired during Don Cheadle’s episode in February—both of which are about shielding pets from watching their owners have any and all forms of sex. The dialogue and execution in both sets of sketches are definitely different; however, the Ruggia and Hoffman are claiming that the SNL writers lifted the concepts.
“This is not ‘parallel construction’: Two separate instances of wholesale lifting of concept, setting, characters, plot, and outcome in the same season do not happen by coincidence,” a legal representative for the Temple Horses creators wrote in a letter to SNL dated February 27. “Someone(s) at SNL is plagiarizing material.”
Per Variety, SNL’s legal team is currently working on a formal response to the independent creators. This is following an earlier verbal response from the major comedy institution, who claimed to have performed an internal investigation that yielded no evidence of plagiarism. We hope that all parties eventually find some resolve. Everyone should be able to have their (weird, but generally harmless) work and the labor behind it respected.
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The writers clearly felt this sketch was unfunny enough to be featured on SNL! What an honor!
Wait, so I’m not sure what the concept is that they’re claiming is stolen here….that people want to fuck pumpkins?As, they certainly didn’t INVENT that.The entire premise of the sketches are separate, other than the act of fornicating a pumpkin, and the setting of a pumpkin patch;1. SNL’s sketch is an employer confronting employees about have fucked pumpkins and having to explain how it happened.2. TH’s sketch is a group of people looking to buy pumpkins at a pumpkin patch, and arguing on the sexual merit of pumpkins, while never accepting that they WOULD (and reminds me a lot of It’s Always Sunny more than SNL).The heck am I missing here?To be clear, the SNL one is the less funny of the two.
Neither are particularily funny, but the “original” was so bad I had to stop after a minute. The SNL one was at least somewhat watchable.
I mostly agree, except for the comparison to Always Sunny. Always Sunny is a consistently creative and funny show. I couldn’t even watch the TH sketch through until the end, it was so incredibly bad.
Oh I wholeheartedly agreed, Always Sunny is superior in all ways.I guess a lot of this sketch reminded me of Dennis and “the implication”.Which is classic.
SNL has been ordered to pay the Youtube sketch group 150,000 “thumbs up.”
Reportedly they were also ordered to smash that subscribe button.
‘Be sure to smash that LIKE BUTTON, my dudes!’
How about wire-transferring month’s worth of SNL’s drug monies budgeted for cast & crew to settle the plagiarism claims. Or did that kinda stuff die years ago?
The Temple Horse’s sketch is so deeply unfunny, and has little to do with the SNL sketch other than the concept of people fucking a pumpkin, which is probably just a riff on the American Pie scene.
There is never anything funny about a sketch with a high concept that is immediately undercut by one of the parties being completely disgusted and having to constantly express their disgust and displeasure at the notion. It’s a total scene ruiner for me. Like, that’s the conceit of fucking a pumpkin, it’s not normal. I don’t need some guy telling me it’s not normal. That’s not funny.
The SNL one was better, it just had no outstandingly funny moment. Just a funny concept that was a flatline the whole way through.
They’re delusional if they think these ideas were so original the SNL writers couldn’t have come up with them on their own.
A classic. A great tracking shot too.
I’ll concede that this is a really funny sketch feaaturing a character being disgusted, but it’s not only shorter than the TH scketch, but has a great central performance. He sells the power of ass pennies and doesn’t have to bring in other characters to join in on the importance of sticking pennies up their ass for confidence.
Plus a great tracking shot.
We’ll call it the exception that proves the rule. 😉
One of the best skits EVER!! UCB ruled!
Aren’t there real people who have sex with melons? I’d guess it’s closer to that.
These Melon farmers they keep mentioning in the Samuel L. Jackson movies I watch on TV.
I’ve seen a few funny cat videos in my time, and then SNL had a series of sketches about Toonces, a cat that could drive (almost)
That Temple’s Horse sketch is fucking dire. If I were SNL, I would countersue for damages to its reputation by insisting they ripped off something that awful.
You can’t plagiarise an idea or concept.
And that’s why SNL will get away with it, but it’s pretty clear to me someone at SNL sifted that turd from YouTube and polished it up real nice for NBC. It’s far too specific and stupid an idea for two people to come up with it independently.
Ummmmm fucking pumpkins squashes and what have is a really old, really common and not particularly funny joke concept. And the whole isn’t it weird to have sex in front of pets thing is so common that network sitcoms have gone there.
There’s nothing specific about any of those idea (I’ll give you stupid), and aside from both these sketches taking place at pumpkin patches. There’s nothing in common between the two in terms of execution.
I grew up in rural Alabama where it was apparently a thing to fuck watermelons. I opted for “Playboy.”
Not at the dinner table, surely?
But the fucking pumpkins thing has been around for a while, funny or die did a bit on it, some other sites did it too. Its not strange that people in the northeats think about this during pumpkin season. This takes away from. The actual stolen bits, like tig notaros clown bit.
Didn’t Newton and Leibniz develop calculus independently?
And that’s why SNL will get away with it, but it’s pretty clear to me someone at SNL sifted that turd from YouTube and polished it up real nice for NBC. It’s far too specific and stupid an idea for two people to come up with it independently.
you comment > all versions of all sketches mentioned in article
That’s enough for me, folks. Have a great weekend.
I’m not so sure. Here’s a sketch called “Pumpkin Fucker” that predates the Temple Horses one by a solid year. The group is The Midnight Show, and one of the writers on this team, Heather Anne Campbell, is now an SNL writer.
“A” concept, or a couple, no. But enough together would. For example, if Shakespeare’s estate still had a copyright on Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story would likely have been found to infringe. Not making any claims about these sketches as I am not going to sit here and watch them.
Shakespeare is a bad example for a copyright argument because most of his plays, including Romeo and Juliet, were sourced from earlier works. West Side Story also would almost certainly be considered transformative enough that it wouldn’t stand up to a claim – for example, Romeo and Juliet famously ends with the lovers committing suicide, while West Side Story ends with one lover being murdered and the other surviving. A better example would be an actual case: John Carpenter successfully sued Luc Besson in a European court on the claim that Lock-Out plagiarized Escape From New York (Source). People were pretty shocked at the reach of that opinion, though.
West Side Story would almost certainly not be transformative enough to not be considered copyright infringement. When it comes to fiction, a certain level of abstraction is allowed. Of course, if the entity attempting to enforce the copyright has already lifted the relevant story elements from another party, then you are right. One of the multiple reasons Apple lost their case against Microsoft when Windows came out.
Plagiarism covers taking someone else’s work and passing it off as one’s own. This is relatively obvious with recordings and writing. But ideas and concepts are abstractions by nature, so while you can say someone stole your ideas, if they’ve made something new with them then it’s not your work, eg. Ants vs A Bug’s Life, Babylon 5 vs DS9, Sinatra vs Buble, etc.
With fiction, a certain level of abstraction is allowed. You can’t be so abstract as to just include generic and well-worn dramatic elements, but at a certain level of specificity, it would be considered copyright infringement legally, even if not a word was the same.
Perhaps, but what you’re describing seems to be so rare as to not affect the majority of perceived plagiarism examples.
My definition of plagiarism seems to reflect reality more.
I am talking more specifically copyright infringement as opposed to plagiarism, but it happens more often than you would think and claimed much more often, especially when a successful Hollywood adaptation comes out.
Ok, can you provide a few examples?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substantial_similarity has a more eloquent description of what I was attempting to say. Learned Hand’s case (which I believe did the copyright holder ultimately lost) Nichols v. Universal Pictures is an easy opinion to digest explaining the necessity of the abstraction process.
I’m aware of the standard, and from my research it’s rarely claimed, successfully prosecuted even less, and even avoided for these reasons.
Yeah, like Ruggia and Hoffman are the first guys in the history of mankind who ever thought of humpin a pumpkin or felt unease at the presence of a pet while they were getting their groove on. It’s way too generic a claim to have any standing in court.
I’m surprised the AV Club bothered to cover this. It’s so transparently not plagiarism. Nobody saw the original videos, they weren’t funny, and the SNL sketches were very different. There have been some SNL sketches that seemed close to rip offs. These were not.
Pumpkins are a hell of a drug, I mean, let’s face it.
That sketch stretches out one unfunny joke for five minutes. GUILTY
I won’t believe that SNL stole this skit until they do at least 12 slight variations on it in the coming months and come up with a catch-phrase.
It wasn’t funny either time, so bravo!
SNL lifts stuff all the time, especially in an age where 24 hour Twitter spreads jokes and funny takes better and faster than any writers’ room. One of the best sketches last year with Clare Foy, extremely funny and well done, “The War In Words” was completely stolen and re-polished from an earlier Comedy Central show whose name I am forgetting at the mo. Still very funny! But shamelessly shoplifted.
That was Maya and Marty from 2016 – the sketch was set in the Civil War originally. Lorne Michaels ran that show too, so maybe he maintains some intellectual property rights that he can carry into other works? Both incarnations are pretty great.
ooo, now i get where they get the bad ideas for their … etc.SNL – where comedy goes to die.come at me, bro.
Here’s a sketch called “Pumpkin Fucker” that predates the Temple Horses one by a solid year. The group is The Midnight Show, and one of the writers on this team, Heather Anne Campbell, is now an SNL writer.
The most astonishing thing about this is that anyone actually wants credit for the original sketch. That shit is unfunny by amateur improv standards.
The pumpkin sketches are pretty different… I haven’t watched the pet ones but it seems like a publicity attempt for Temple Horses to me.
If someone at SNL is plagiarizing material, it’s definitely Jost.
We hope that all parties eventually find some resolve.Do you mean “resolution”?
And that’s why you don’t post your shit online without monetizing it.
I’m in a sketch group called Damage Control Comedy and we made a music video called “Pumpkin Lover (f#$ker)“ in 2013. This was a full year before either of these. I don’t think anyone ripped anyone off. F#cking pumpkins is just funny. It’s an obvious joke that has been around for a long time.
The Temple Horses’ sketch is…much worse.
This is following an earlier verbal response from the major comedy institution, who claimed to have performed an internal investigation . . . .
Wait, isn’t that the whole reason why SNL’s allegedly in trouble in the first place?
Roberto Benigni did this better in the 1991 film “Night on Earth” directed by Jim Jarmusch.
The whole northeast region is infamous for its ripoff comedy artists. For years, during the early days of The View, Joy Behar was ripping off material from a radio show in Hartford, CT and this theft was absurdly consistently done the day after the radio show aired for months. And back in the 80’s, it wasn’t uncommon to find that 3 or 4 or more comedians in the NYC area were running with virtually identical material at comedy clubs across the region. I am far more shocked to hear “We’re suing SNL” than hearing SNL was ripping off material to begin with.
Is ‘what if someone, like, fucked a pumpkin and it was, like, weird’ really a distinctive idea worthy of legal protection.
Pie fucking is my original concept. Where’s my money?