Community, the tv show

just watched the 'abed recreates goodfellas with chicken tenders' episode and i really wonder how much it cost them to use 'layla'

iirc their most expensive licence ever was the two-note "dun-dunn" from Law & Order

I wonder how these music licenses are all negotiated. I watched "Palm Springs" over the weekend, and it's packed with music that probably didn't cost *too* much, like John Cale, or Patrick Cowley, or Gene Clark. But then there is a long sequence set to the "The Brazilian," by Genesis, and I thought, huh, how was that worked out? On one hand, it's an instrumental, on the other, it's an instrumental from "Invisible Touch" in a low budget film. Hmm. It seems like there used to be more conflicts with music licensing in TV and movies than there is today. Maybe labels and artists have a little less sway these days, or recognize the value of getting a song placed in a show or movie?

Palm Springs in particular got the biggest signing deal ever at Sundance, so they were probably able to pay any licensing costs after the fact

Freaks and Geeks still probably one of the craziest given how much classic rock was in that show that had to be negotiated for home release

And why it will never be on a streaming service, according to Apatow. Which reminds me, I still need to get the Blu-Ray before that becomes prohibitively expensive.

Wait, I've watched Freaks and Geeks on Netflix Canada.

xxpost Yeah, that's the one I was thinking of in particular. But Palm Springs ... they got a pile of cash after the fact, but you can't just screen a film with unpaid for music in it before you get picked up for distribution, can you? There's that story of Peter Bogdanovich's "Mask," where he included a bunch of Springsteen in it, but apparently there was a misunderstanding and the studio realized the contract wasn't secure, so at the last minute replaced Bruce with Bob Seger, which iirc Bogdanovich only learned of at the premiere. It took over 20 years for those music rights to Springsteen to get resolved, and that was apparently *with* the artist's blessing.

it's a lot easier to negotiate sync licenses as income from recorded music shrinks.

palm springs was an indie film but had a decent-sized budget. there was a making-of article in the ringer last week and it explained that once samberg/lonely island got involved after the script stage, there was a budget increase. probably enough to buy the rights to some songs.

I think it was on Netflix at one point, because I swear I watched an episode years ago, but apparently it's not on any streaming service now and unlikely to be anytime soon:

Judd Apatow is clearing the air about one of his beloved shows, Freaks and Geeks!

Freaks and Geeks is an American teen comedy-drama television series created by Paul Feig and executive-produced by Judd that aired on NBC during the 1999–2000 television season, but it isn’t available for viewing on any streaming service.

It helped launch several of its actors’ careers, such as James Franco, Seth Rogen, Jason Segel and Busy Philipps.

Amy Kaufman, author of the New York Times best seller “Bachelor Nation,” took to Twitter to direct the question to Judd himself: “Is it actually possible that ‘Freaks & Geeks‘ is not streaming anywhere and is also not available for digital purchase anywhere??? @JuddApatow”

Judd responded on Twitter, revealing that the unavailability is due to music copyright: “The music needs to be cleared for Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared. If it isn’t, your DVD will be all there is.”

Oh yeah, it was a few years ago.

xp Josh - speaking from my "professional" experience - the cost to license festival screenings / one-time shows is usually far, far less than for theatrical / tv / home video. Most labels would take that easy money for a short-term license for sure, with the artist's permission.

Huh, thanks, that's sort of what I suspected. Re: budget, supposedly "Palm Springs" cost $5 million. Fwiw, "American Psycho" cost $7 million, and I guess that was enough to cover at least one Genesis song and one Phil Collins song, among other needle drops. That was 2000 money, though, with a pretty big indie backing it.

Anyway, odd that "Community" could afford stuff like "Layla" but "Freaks and Geeks" or "Undeclared" can't. I think Shout Factory owns the rights to F&G, who shelled out for F&G music on DVD, maybe they just don't feel like shelling out again.

To be fair, there's probably a huge difference between one use of "Layla" and almost every single F&G episode having anywhere between 4 and 7 classic rock staples.

the songs used in palm springs are not super well-known, besides maybe **spoilers i guess** 'cloudbusting' and 'the partisan' **spoilers over**, probably could be covered by $500k or less of that budget.

Yeah that's why I specifically cited the song from 'Invisible Touch."

since it's being discussed here, Palm Springs was a decent lil movie. Samberg about as good as Murray in Groundhog Day even as they are referencing it as the most obvious touchstone, Miloti quite good also, some groanworthy bits

Yeah, there's some gags thrown for little more than the sake of just a gag thrown in, imo. Like the fork gag. Vibe reminded me as much of "Eternal Sunshine" and "Groundhog," actually, though nowhere near as good as either. Still good, regardless.

re: song licensing, if the owner of the master recording and the publisher have a favored-nations deal, whatever you pay the owner of the master, you have to pay the publisher. In an instance where a tv show wanted "Who Are You," MCA/Universal said, "OK, we want $150,000," which meant the show would pay out $300,000 total. But they also went to the publisher/Pete Townshend, who said, "eh, gimme $7500," and the show got it for (an apparently dirt-cheap) $15,000.

That said, I seem to remember Dan Harmon saying that "Layla" was a huge outlay that put the season way over-budget.

(and I'm not sure how one would negotiate with or even contact Jim Gordon...or, for that matter, if he even still gets money from "Layla." I assume he doesn't.)

We finished S4 over the weekend - I was ok with the averageness of the season for a while but the last handful of episodes were definitely dire. Especially the weird puppet musical about being lost in the woods

Harmon’s return hasnt made me feel like like it’s a ~massive~ upswing in quality, its not like day/night, but i think the jokes definitely at least seem to land better idk

also i have no memory of s5 at all so far, so maybe i peaced out completely during s4 the first time round

Is the Yahoo series on Netflix? I don't remember if I ever saw any of that...

it is.

That's a big part of what prompted our rewatch, realizing that we had never seen the Yahoo season.

The puppet musical pissed me off so much

Like, just remembering it going back and destroying all the good will my rewatch of Community had rebuilt.

McHale: “How much did it cost to buy this song [“Layla”]?”

Harmon: I don’t know the dollar amount. It’s expensive. You got an episodic budget, you get a music budget. I’ll pull a number out of my butt. If you want a moderately well-known song, you pay $50,000 to put it into your episode, basically.”

We skipped a few episodes of S4 and went to S5, and ... the first couple of episodes of S5 still haven't quite righted the ship. But it does seem to be trying.

XP

That sounds about right. In their early days, Blender did an article about putting a film soundtrack together and their source said that a track from a breaking Rock band would be about $25-50 thou*, well-known Classic Rock songs started at $50 thou, a Bowie or Stones song would be $250 thou, and the Beatles were $500 thou. I imagine those prices haven't changed too much in the ensuing 15+ years.

*This doesn't cover labels actively trying to place new songs, like you see on alot of MTV/VH1 shows or sitcoms like IIRC Malcolm In The Middle.

I read a thing once which said that the Stones price to use their songs in a movie was actually pretty cheap - but they would charge a ton if you wanted to then use it on the actual released soundtrack.

I can believe that. I remember hearing "Neighbors" on an episode of Ed, and wondering how that was swung.

I imagine one factor is whether the recording is controlled by the band or Abkco?

“Neighbors” is on Tattoo You, iirc, so it was long after they’d freed themselves from Allen Klein.

But the Stones still apparently have some say in their Abkco-controlled work, or else they wouldn’t be able to sue Trump for using “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

The puppet musical pissed me off so much

I don't even remember it. Guess i tapped out by then

I wanna know, did the other shoe ever drop in Pierce's rap battle with Vaughn ("he has a big poop breakfast/and a glass of pee").

Vaughn said it wasn't over but i never recall a revenge follow up in credits

xps a friend of mine made a small budget horror in which three Metallica songs were kind of essential as touchstones - the band looked at it and basically let him use them for the legal fees, which was pretty astonishing. No soundtrack released but DVDs etc.

Oh God the puppet musical with Sara Bareilles songs

those songs were straightup garbage

Plus the episode itself was racist

Well now I'm glad i never saw it.

I don't remember it at all, which sounds like a mercy, tbh.

I think Dan Harmon also said that the Abba songs for the Halloween episode were hard to get, because Abba rarely allow their stuff to be used in TV programmes (wouldn't want to Sully the legacy of Mama Mia, after all).

"What is up with that cat?"
"Is someone throwing it?"
Still one of my favourites.

I watched Community from the very beginning and just rewatched season one and half of season two on netflix.

It's easier in retrospect to see the tonal shift that it made after season 1, getting more self-referential and mean. And the way that Britta was turned into a punching bag was disappointing when I watched the show at the time but seeing it within a matter of days made it more conspicuous. Britta was such a great character at the beginning, cool but complicated, clever but ignorant, selfish but performative. Knowing what I know about Dan Harmon now (and the fact that Britta was apparently based on his ex-gf?)I can't help but see her being debased for laughs, rather than it being an attempt to make her character "funnier". I watched 30 Rock at the same time as Community (NBC had a killer lineup back then) and you can definitely see characters like Tracy, Liz and Jenna get progressively wackier after season 1, but it never felt like the show had contempt for them.

BTW apparently the D&D episode was removed from streaming because of Chang's blackface? I didn't remember where it was in the series but in one episode (Pierce in the hospital?) he complained that he wasn't invited to their D&D game so it must have been somewhere in season 2?

re: emerging meanness and reliance on meta humor, that probably helps explain why I was only really into s1, and not even enough to ever revisit

I thought Harmon based Britta partly on himself

tbh I automatically assume that of all Dan Harmon-created characters

which is of course true of all writers but seems....especially true for him lol

The show also gets meaner towards Jeff as it goes. Also the S2-3 Britta was always latent in her character and, frankly, is funnier.

Yeah, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was a little over halfway through season 2. There's been at least one other reference to the D&D game in another episode besides the Pierce hospital one, but I can't remember which other episode. Funnily enough I think having the episode pulled actually works out in the overall tone of the show, considering all the other references to stuff we never saw (ala the clip show with clips that weren't ever in the show).

Knowing what I know about Dan Harmon now (and the fact that Britta was apparently based on his ex-gf?)I can't help but see her being debased for laughs

(though all the group are intended as aspects of his personality, and he had Feelings about Britta being disparaged by real people due to the degree he identified with her)

But Pierce was in the D&D episode, the whole point was that they're all making the guy Jeff insulted feel better and Pierce is just in it for himself (and reads the DM notes iirc?) and wants to 'win'.

There's a second D&D episode where they try and reunite Mike from Breaking Bad with his son?