Steely Dan and Owen Wilson have beef! Well not exactly. It looks like it was all a prank by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen of Steely Dan. But it was hilarious.

Becker and Fagen wrote an open letter to Owen’s brother Luke on July 17th expressing outrage at what they perceived as Owen’s blatant rip-off of their 2000 hit Cousin Dupree about a couch surfing bum of a cousin. The rip-off, of course is Owen’s You, Me, and Dupree starring Matt Dillon, Kate Hudson, and Owen Wilson. Seeking an apology, they wrote the letter to Luke presuming that he could bring some older brother pressure to bear on Owen. Fagen and Becker mistakenly believed that Luke was the older brother. Upon learning that Luke was in fact younger, the duo remarked, “We’re now seeing that according to Wikipedia, Owen is older than you are. But you seem a lot more mature somehow… don’t you?”

After making their case and asking Luke to get Owen to apologize at one of their concerts, Becker and Fagen resort to some pretty awesome threats:

Otherwise, if this business goes unresolved, there are some pretty heavy people who are upset about this whole thing and we can’t guarantee what kind of heat little Owen may be bringing down on himself. When negative energy like this attaches itself to someone because they allow themselves to get involved in stuff that is not spiritually aligned for them on all levels, there can sometimes be some very harsh trips that go down. Your bro might be creating an extremely retrograde reality matrix for himself with his whole sellout moviestar game and there may be some righteous dues to pay, amen.

For example, there’s this guy that works for us sometimes, he’s not necessarily the kind of folks you want to know or hang with, but, if you happen to get in a bar fight or some kind of hassle in a foreign country, he’s your best fucking friend in the world. You guys must go to the movies a lot - you know what a Navy Seal is, right? Well, this dude’s like that, only he’s Russian. This particular guy - of course, he’s a big fan of ours, but he may not have ven heard of “Bottle Rocket” - hardly anybody has - I mean one time we saw this guy, WITH HIS BARE HANDS, do something so unspeakable that - but, hey man, let’s not even get that way, you know? Let’s just help Owen C. do what’s right…

Extremely retrograde reality matrix?

Owen’s response was equally funny. Through his publicist, Owen Wilson said:

I have never heard the song Cousin Dupree and I don’t even know who this gentleman, Mr. Steely Dan, is. I hope this helps to clear things up and I can get back to concentrating on my new movie, HEY 19.

On a side note, I am a huge Steely Dan fan but had no idea they were still making records. Cousin Dupree won a Grammy for best pop performance by a duo or group in 2001. The album that it was on, Two Against Nature, won album of the year.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 30th, 2006 at 4:07 pm and is filed under Government, Humor, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.