Stone We wanted Primus to do the theme song, and then we needed a change.
More than anything, it was just an excuse for us to go into the studio and start experimenting. At the time, Primus had just gotten a new drummer, so I said, “Let’s have Primus do it.” We had watched their Christmas thing that was going around, and we realized these guys were pretty clever, but there was no way in hell that they were going to be able to get something like that on television. They were a couple of college kids who were fans of the band, and I guess they approached me to do the theme song. We got a call years ago that these guys were working on this little animated pilot for Comedy Central. The lead singer of Primus composed the show’s jangly theme song. Like, that’s all we did that summer - us just sitting there in the dark. Graden It was an arduous process because every time there was a note from the network, that meant Matt and Trey had to cut out more construction paper and reanimate five minutes of video, which can take five days. It was summer, so they just gave us the keys and we camped out there. Every day we would be in Celluloid Studios in Denver - it was a slow time there. Matt Stone We shot the pilot for 60 or 70 days in Colorado. Then Comedy Central made an offer, so I left Fox in the spring of 1996 to start the pilot of South Park. I remember saying, “Hey, we need to be in business with these guys.” I also remember thinking, “I’m not sure we can put that on TV.”īrian Graden I knew all my friends in Hollywood had seen the video, but I had no sense that anyone else in America had. We never met him until he finally came by the studio to do a voice for the South Park movie.ĭoug Herzog Everything was VHS then, so people were making VHS copies. When he did the voice of Sparky, Stan’s gay dog, he did the voice remotely. 'South Park' First Episode: THR's 1997 Reviewīefore we even began working on the series, the fact that George Clooney had made hundreds of VHS copies of The Spirit of Christmas and sent them out to all his friends was already the stuff of Hollywood history. The results: THR‘s extremely oral history of TV’s most subversive cartoon. 14 - The Hollywood Reporter spoke with Parker and Stone, still very much involved in every aspect of the series, at their studio in L.A.’s Marina del Rey and more than 15 others involved in South Park‘s early development and production. To tell the tale of the show - on the eve of its 20th season, premiering Sept. Hankey plushies to Cheesy Poofs (in a deal with Frito-Lay during season 15).
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It has been translated into 30 languages and shown in 130 countries, nominated for 18 Emmys (winning five), made into a movie (1999’s Bigger, Longer & Uncut, which grossed $83.1 million worldwide) and has spawned a merchandising industry generating hundreds of millions of dollars with everything from Mr. Over the last 20 years - and 267 episodes - South Park has been a pillar of the network, remaining one of Comedy Central’s highest-rated shows (watched by more than 8 million viewers a week).
“In those days, there was no context for it at all.” Just The Simpsons - but none of those characters went as Hitler on Halloween (like Cartman) or gave themselves testicular cancer in order to get medical marijuana (like Stan’s dad, Randy).
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“There was nothing like it on TV,” says Doug Herzog, the Comedy Central executive who greenlighted the series and ushered its first episode on the air in August 1997. But the two college pals’ very first endeavor - a dementedly brilliant twist on Peanuts, in which each week the tiny tykes of South Park, Colo., spout obscenities (in one episode, the word “shit” is uttered 162 times) and commit blasphemy on everyone from the Virgin Mary to Tom Cruise - likely will remain their greatest artistic achievement. In the years since, Stone, 45, and Parker, 46, have collaborated on many projects, including a smash Broadway hit ( Book of Mormon) and a classic cult movie ( Team America: World Police). The animation in that first film was primitive, even by Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s lenient standards, but the contours of South Park were all there: A bunch of F-bomb-dropping grade-schoolers bring a demonic snowman to life and ask Jesus for help (“Oh my God, Frosty killed Kenny!”). Back in 1992, two classmates at the University of Colorado took a stack of construction paper, some scissors and an old 8mm camera and pasted together a five-minute stop-motion movie that would launch a cartoon empire.