From The Comic's Comic

Matt Pavich Finds Himself Cut Out of Handsome Dancer’s “Coincidance” Residuals, While His Former Partner and Best Friend, James Manzello, Disappears From Social Media?!

This photo and these two guys in it may not look familiar to you, but their audio for the sketch this photo comes from definitely has become an earworm for millions of you. Especially if you’re on TikTok.

They are James Manzello (left) and Matt Pavich (right), comedians and actors whose music video, “Coincidance,” has clocked more than 16.8 million views since they published it to YouTube on June 30, 2015, and accounted for 1.2 million TikTok lip-sync tribute dances in the past two years.

On Thursday night, however, Pavich took to his own Instagram (and TikTok, too) to level the amazing claim that serves as the headline for this post.

“How to make a viral video and not make a dime. Step One. Start a YouTube channel called Handsome Dancer with your best friend. Step Two: You’re gonna wanna make a viral video called Coincidence. Step Three: Very important. Make sure the video goes viral in Taiwan and you shoot a car commercial in Taipei. Next, this is very important: You’re gonna wanna have a manic episode and end up in a psych ward. When you get out of the psych ward, you’re gonna make sure your best friend locks you out of the gmail and doesn’t show you any of the residual money. Then you’re gonna make sure that he takes down any shred of evidence that you two were a duo. Now just sit back and watch it absolutely explode on TikTok. Heh heh. Then make sure everywhere you look, you can’t escape it. It’s lit. That’s how you make a viral video and not make a dime.”

In the comments on his IG Reel, other comedians and content creators also claimed that Manzello had taken credit for their collaborative efforts, and that he’d wiped his social media profiles once they complained publicly about it. Manzello’s Twitter is no longer active, according to old Tweets with broken links to his handle. The Handsome Dancer Instagram handle cited in at least one YouTube video also is no longer in service.

Pavich himself also noted in his IG comments: “Full disclosure I did make money off the Taiwan car commercial. That was before all this BS started.”

So let’s go back and trace the public history of Handsome Dancer’s partnership between Manzello and Pavich.

At the 2014 New York Television Festival, they won the festival’s Audience Award in the annual Independent Pilot Competition for their sitcom, “The Neighborhood,” credited as Starring/Created by James Manzello & Matt Pavich.

Their biggest hit came the following summer when they performed, produced and released “Coincidance.”

That same year, they both booked gigs performing on a new MTV2 comedy show, Joking Off, hosted by DeRay Davis. You can see Manzello’s head behind Pavich and Liza Treyger, with Chris DiStefano also making the official cast photo. Desus and Mero wrote and performed on this show, too, and didn’t even make the photo — just to show you how much has changed in six years.

Anyhow.

Manzello also started showing up that year as an improviser on ABC’s primetime news hybrid, What Would You Do? The duo made some more shorts, often with Manzello fronting them.

The summer of 2017 saw them get New Faces at Just For Montreal in the new Creators division, in a crew that also included Brandon Rogers and Quinta Brunson.

Later that year, they appeared in an Taiwanese ad for the car maker Skoda that also went pretty viral, with 4.4 million YouTube views.

Somewhere between then and the pandemic came Pavich’s aforementioned “manic episode,” and his discovery afterward that Manzello had frozen him out of the Handsome Dancer email account and future residual payments.

And then came TikTok. Dancing With The Stars star Derek Hough made not three different versions of “Coincidance” that trafficked big likes and views, perhaps none more public than his duet with Jennifer Lopez.

Here’s a behind-the-scenes video of them rehearsing their TikTok Coincidance during their reality competition, World Of Dance.

That animated clip in Pavich’s reel from Thursday night? That’s from an October teaser for Netflix’s Back to the Outback.

So yeah, Pavich’s original work with Manzello has continued to captivate viewers and inspire dancers all over the world. Only without Pavich getting any credit or payment for it.

If Manzello wants to re-emerge on social media or offer his side of the story, we’re all ears. I’m sure Colin J. Miller might also be interested to hear from him, too, since he designed a new home page for Manzello that’s also curiously missing from the Internet?

I wonder how many similar stories content creators could tell like this about their own collaborative splits that left them high and dry. I’m sure there are too many.