The first time I saw this story over on Film Rot I didn’t quite get it. Steely Dan mad at Owen Wilson? Huh? If there are two things in this universe that have no connection to one another, you’d think it would be the Wilson brothers and Steely Dan. There’s just not any connection.

But then Rafe sent me the same story this morning, along with the full letter from Steely Dan to the Wilsons. He thinks we should cover it, because the thing is, Steely Dan has just been jobbed.

Apparently, Owen Wilson’s new movie You, Me, and Dupree rips off a Steely Dan song about a hormonal houseguest named Dupree.

The band addresses their problem with the movie in a letter to Luke Wilson posted on their website. “What we suspect may have happened is this,” they say. “Some hack writer producer or whatever they call themselves in Malibu or Los Felize apparently heard our Grammy winning song “Cousin Dupree” on the radio and thought, hey man, this is a cool idea for a character in a movie or something. OK, so the cousin idea was no doubt eliminated so as not to offend the Fundamentalist ticket buyers in the Flyovers. Nevertheless, they, like, took our character, this real dog sleeping on the couch and all and put him in the middle of some hokey “Down and Out in Beverly Hills” ripoff story and then, when it came time to change the character’s name or whatever so people wouldn’t know what a rip the whole thing was, THEY DIDN’T EVEN BOTHER TO THINK UP A NEW FUCKING NAME FOR THE GUY!”

From the tone of the letter, it’s pretty clear the Steely Dan boys aren’t taking this whole thing too seriously. It’s full of jokes about Owen Wilson’s career and the whole thing’s pretty silly. But they do seem mildly annoyed and demand some sort of compensation. It sounds like the thing that really sticks in their craw is that the movie sucks. They ask that Luke Wilson get his brother Owen to come down to their concert in Irvine and apologize to their fans for “this travesty”. In exchange they’re offering Steely Dan t-shirts, and hey maybe they won’t even call their lawyers. They’ll even let him bring his bongos and sit in.

To read Steely Dan’s full appeal to Owen’s younger (and yet somehow more mature) brother Luke, click here.