Here's your unexpected outcome story of the day. Honda produces an ad that features a CR-V driving through a mysterious vortex in the middle of the house. The result? They get sued by artists who made an actual house with a mysterious vortex in it. Whaaaaa?
This is the ad in question, which was filmed in Vancouver and aired on TV and the web last fall. It shows a CR-V driver who pilots his giant beigemobile into house at the end of the block. Instead of crashing through it and killing several people inside, the house opens up into a magical vortex that carries him off to some other dimension.
Or maybe he did in fact crash it into the house and he was just on DMT or mushrooms. I've never experienced this particular hallucination so I can't say.
Anyway, the house built for that ad — pictured above — bears a strong resemblance to an art project in the Montrose area of Houston, reports the real estate blog Swamplot (which is a hilarious name if you know anything about Houston.)
The makers of the Honda ad, Rogue Films and the Mill Group, knew this, so they sent their mockups to artists Dan Havel and Dean Ruck down in Texas. The artists signed off on it, saying it didn't look too much like their project, and they also turned down compensation from Honda.
But then Havel and Ruck saw a preview of the ad and decided it did, in fact, rip off what they had done. So they decided to sue Honda for copyright infringement.
Ridiculous, right? Who knows how this matter will be resolved, but the lesson here is to really make sure that someone else's vortex house isn't copying your vortex house.
Also, don't drive into houses. That one's always good advice.
Photo credit architecturegeek
Hat tip to Creative Accidents!