TV GUIDE ARTICLE
TV Guide: Tales From the Park Side By Stef McDonald
Picture Beavis and Butt-head in their mid-20s. But smarter. And with, like, really cool jobs. You're thinking of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of the outrageously funny new animated series South Park (Comedy Central, Wednesdays, 10 P.M. ET/PT).
They are hard at work in their Los Angeles office, but by the looks of it, they're hardly working at all. While Stone slouches on a couch playing with a Slinky, Parker sits at a computer working on an upcoming episode of the critically acclaimed show. On the screen, Jesus is duking it out with Satan in a TV pay-per-view event, and the irreverent Parker and Stone are in stiches over their own creation. Heh heh. Heh heh heh.
South Park, Comedy Central's highest-rated original series to date, follows the lives of four third-graders -- Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny -- in a small town nestled in the snowy mountains of Colorado. It's a strange place, this South Park, where aliens subject unsuspecting residents to probes and the school cafeteria chef (voiced by Isaac Hayes) offers advice to the kids in the form of sexually explicit song lyrics. Then there are the kids themselves: They may look as cute and cuddly as the Peanuts gang, but these are raunchy little rascals who are obsessed with bodily functions and who need their mouths washed out with soap. "There's a certain vicarious thrill that people get from watching the show," says Debbie Liebling, a vice president at Comedy Central. "It takes us into a forbidden place where we say, 'Hey I think that's funny too, but I can't believe they're actually saying that.'"
Touted as the first TV toon to warrant a TV-MA rating (for mature audiences only), South Park actually features humor that might better be described as, well, immature and, yes, scatological. It's lowbrow, uninhibited, and hysterical. The show gleefully embraces cartoonish violence (Kenny inexplicably dies a violent death in every episode), harsh language (Cartman favors "butt-hole" and "son of a bitch"), and enough tasteless humor (in a recent episode, an explosive diarrhea epidemic strikes the townsfolk) to shock even the likes of Bart Simpson. "What we're trying to say is, nothing is sacred," says Stone, 26. "You know, it's comedy. We make fun of everything."
And that's just part of what makes it so refreshing; somehow the show, which was recently nominated for a CableAce Award for Best Animated Series and has already been renewed for another season, manages to be both sophomoric and sophisticated. "Our aim is to take something that is just totally insane to begin with and then try to make it normal," says 28-year-old Parker, who claims that he "can't stomach" traditional sitcoms. "In the first episode there are aliens mutilating cows and kidnapping people, but to the kids it's all about getting the baby brother back and getting out of school." Adds Stone: "They couldn't care less about the aliens."
The cartoon's bucolic setting is no accident: Both Parker and Stone are Colorado natives (Parker grew up in Conifer, a town in South Park County; Stone in Littleton, a suburb of Denver). They became fast friends at the University of Colorado (Stone studied math and film; Parker focused on music). In 1994, their self-produced live-action student film, "Cannibal: The Musical," impressed then-Fox executive Brian Graden so much that he signed them to develop a TV pilot. But it was an animated video Christmas card called "The Spirit of Christmas" that they made for Graden in 1995 that set them on their way. The five-minute animated short, cheaply made with paper cutouts, featured Jesus in another fight -- this time with Santa Claus -- and quickly became the talk of Hollywood and ultimately led to the deal for South Park.
Parker and Stone are happy to push the envelope but strive to be more than just the bad boys of the animation world. "If you pay attention, they tell good stories about issues, but people think they're watching some naughty cartoon," says Graden, now executive vice president for television at MTV. Some of the issues the duo has touched upon so far include homophobia and euthanasia. "There are some things that are kind of wholesome about South Park," argues Parker. "The bottom line is that as insane as it gets, right always sort of wins."
Which brings us back to the office, where the ultimate fight between good and evil is being waged (hint: Jesus doesn't lose). Parker and Stone resume work on an animatic, the cartoon equivalent of a blueprint, which shows black-and-white sketches of the SouthPark tykes teasing Damien, the new kid in school. Surrounded by walls plastered with Ren & Stimpy posters, Stone is in the sound booth rerecording some dialogue. He voices Kyle and Kenny; Parker does Stan and Cartman.
Since the show's debut in August, celebrity fans have expressed interest in guest-starring on the show. "The Simpsons have guest stars a lot," says Parker, "but there is something cool about the fact that we do almost every voice." Still, they are allowing a few stars to do guest voices. George Clooney, an early fan of "Spirit," has already been heard, voicing Stan's gay dog,Sparky. "It was so great to have George Clooney, this totally A-list star, do nothing but bark," says Stone with a laugh.
One of the show's 35 staffers (which now includes a team of writers) brings in a new construction- paper cutout of Cartman's mom for approval. In keeping with the primitive visual style of the original, the cutout figures are scanned into a computer and then animated. Next, Parker focuses his attention on a rough cut of the Halloween episode (set to air October 29), which features references to "Night of the Living Dead" and "Thriller," one very offensive costume, and a Kenny death to top all previous killings. More doubled-over laughter follows.
These two don't take much seriously, even their careers. Asked how they're affected by their newfound success, Stone is self-effacing. "My parents are stoked," he says. "I have a job. They're like, 'You have a job!'" Indeed, Parker and Stone are among the hottest up-and-comers in Hollywood. Besides South Park, their live-action feature film, "Orgazmo," about a young Mormon's involvement in the porn industry, was recently screened at the Toronto Film Festival; they're in talks with at least one major studio about developing another live-action feature; and they're making plans to record a debut album for their thrash-countryband, DVDA (not surprisingly, it's an X-rated acronym). Juggling their many duties is a tough task: On the night they hosted a South Park premiere party, they played their first gig as a band and never actually got around to screening the episode.
So how long do Parker and Stone hope to make South Park? "As long as we find it funny," says Parker. Adds Stone: "When it turns into Full House, then we'll stop."