"South Park"'s Evil Geniuses and the Triumph of No-Brow Humor
By David Wild
It was Trey Parker's big slab of meat that first attracted Matt Stone. (A juvenile lead, sure, but did you catch the talking turd on the Christmas show?)
All poofed up like some long-lost members of Slaughter, Parker and Stone, the creators and executive producers of "South Park", are sitting in the back of a black stretch limousine, talking about the origins of their suddenly successful union. The limo -- packed with pals, colleagues and girlfriends past and present -- is heading from Westwood, Calif., to the NBC studios in Burbank, where the duo will make its mass celebrity debut -- its first-ever Tonight Show appearance.
Stone, 26, wearing tight black leather pants, is tall and rock-star skinny, with a dark, slightly wild 'fro -- he's the inspiration for Kyle, one of "South Park"'s few Jews. The 28-year-old Parker -- who inspired "South Park" group leader Stan -- is more solidly built, blond and mildly leading-mannish.
The duo first met back in the early '90s, making student films at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Stone would responsibly graduate with a degree in math and film. Parker, the more artistically driven of the two, got booted out for missing too many classes; he was already directing his first feature, 1994's Cannibal: The Musical, a $125,000 production whose budget he scrounged from friends and family.
"My film was called Giant Beaver of Southern Sri Lanka," Parker says, recalling the film he was making when he met Stone. "It was sort of a Godzilla thing, but with a huge beaver. I had a little girl dressed in a beaver costume rampaging a town."
This is where that aforementioned slab of meat enters their misty memories.
"I went over to Trey's apartment, and there was this huge roast on the counter," recalls Stone as his friends check out the limo beverages. "So Trey starts cutting off big slices of roast and handing me pieces, and I thought, 'This is cool.' Everyone else at college has little dishes of beans and rice, or noodles."
Seven years later they've dazzled Hollywood with scissors and construction paper, creating "South Park", the only TV show from the latter half of 1997 that made a dent critically or commercially. The cable smash instantly upgraded Comedy Central's ratings and, according to the network, has moved more than a million T-shirts and $30 million in merchandise since the show debuted last August. Comedy Central is claiming that the Christmas episode drew a 50 share of 18- to 24-year-olds and that ad rates for "South Park" sell for 6 times the network's standard prime-time rate. ""South Park" is the Michael Jordan of basic-cable series," says Comedy Central president Doug Herzog.
Not too shabby for an uncompromisingly hilarious and curiously affecting show featuring hard-cussing, crudely animated third-graders, flaming flatulence, gay pets, a lusty lunchroom soulman, alien anal probes, a Hitler Halloween costume, a character (Kenny) who dies in almost every episode and, yes, Mr. Hankey, the world's funniest turd. Set in the Colorado county that is the supposed alien-abduction capital of the world, "South Park" is far more scatological than logical. Adults are jerks, Jesus is reduced to hosting a community access show called Jesus and Pals, and Patrick Duffy turns up as one leg of a monster called Scuzzlebutt.
(For the complete story, check out RS 780, on newsstands January 30.)
======================== If a billion people believe in a stupid idea, it is still stupid.
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