USA TODAY ARTICLE (june 30th, 1998)
'South Park' creator protests film's rating
PARK CITY, Utah - Trey Parker, co-creator of Comedy Central's hit series South Park, has temporarily put away thoughts of Mr. Hankey and those nasty little third-graders to take on one of the film industry's most established and powerful institutions: the Motion Picture Association of America.
He is incensed that Orgazmo, a film he wrote, directed, edited and starred in, has just received an NC-17 rating from the film board.
Parker considers the rating excessively harsh for his over-the-top spoof about an innocent Mormon lad who gets roped into starring in an "action-adventure porn film" as an avenging superhero.
The film, which premiered at midnight Friday at the Sundance Film Festival to a packed theater, has no explicit sex scenes, limited nudity and only cartoonish violence.
"It's actually tamer than South Park, Parker says at his hotel at the film festival. "I've been told to shut up about it, but I just can't. . . . I want to fight it - it's just so unfair."
At the premiere of Orgazmo before an enthusiastic audience, Parker encouraged his fans to protest the rating. "Write your congressman," he told the crowd.
Parker was informed that the rating could be softened to an R if he excised some footage. He may do a bit more editing, because "you can always use more time," but he vows to cut only scenes that would not be remotely objectionable, such as head shots.
It could be that the MPAA is bothered by the way Parker pokes fun at religion, particularly Mormonism. Among the religious references is a surprise visit from a white-robed Jesus who gives Parker's character a big thumbs up. To explain his real calling, Parker's mild-mannered Joe Young (his none too subtle porn name is Joe Hung) proclaims, "I'm not a superhero - I'm a latter-day saint."
"That sums up the movie to me," Parker says. "A lot of people think I'm out to Mormon-bash; I'm definitely not. I grew up in Colorado, and my first three girlfriends were Mormons. I was always sort of infatuated with their religion.
"The movie is about a Mormon guy who wins, and he never stops being Mormon. It's sort of pro-Mormon, actually."
There are some uncanny similarities to last year's Boogie Nights, but Parker made his movie a year before Boogie was released. In fact, he made Orgazmo before South Park made its debut.
"A friend of mine showed me the script (of Boogie Nights). There are so many parallels . . . I was just cracking up. I was thinking, 'If these movies come out at the same time, it's going to look like we did a parody.' It's so ironic, but we were pitching the movie three years ago."
Parker, 28, is a big kid having a great time. "I have such a great life," he says.
In addition to Orgazmo, which is distributed by October Films and is due in theaters in May, Parker and his South Park partner, Matt Stone, are the stars of BASEketball, a new movie by David and Jerry Zucker (Airplane!, Naked Gun). Also starring: Jenny McCarthy and Yasmine Bleeth. Parker and Stone play two slacker pals who invent a game in their driveway, a hybrid of baseball and basketball that becomes all the rage and catapults them into stardom. Not unlike their own experience with fame as a result of South Park's success.
"I still don't really know how it happened. All of a sudden, we're actors in this huge movie for Universal," Parker says.
Parker and Stone also are in early discussions for a feature film based on South Park, they announced Monday at the winter meeting of TV critics in Pasadena, Calif. "We're psyched to do it," Parker says.
The team is insisting on an R rating. "We want to do something that takes it to another level," says Stone, "and not just (do) a big long episode of the show."
Parker is also in an alternative rock band, DVDA, and he's involved in making a South Park album.
Long before he and Stone became hot commodities, Parker made a movie called Cannibal: The Musical for about $120,000. Rejected by Sundance in 1994, Parker set up his own screening in a small banquet room in a Park City hotel, where he showed it to about 20 people.
He has come back to the festival every year since, sometimes just to lend support to filmmaker friends. This year, he returned as a conquering hero. Fans and revelers packed a party thrown for the movie's premiere, and crowds were turned away at the midnight screening. Parker got a rock star's welcome when he came out to introduce the film.
But the next morning, he seemed to take it all in stride: "With a life this fast, you can only crash and burn."
By Claudia Puig, USA TODAY