This is just the beginning of a long article in todays NY Times Magazine Go to, http://www.nytimes.com/partners/aol/mag/article2.html for complete story and photos.
Long before "South Park" became the national phenomenon that it is today, David Zucker had approached its creators -- Trey Parker and Matt Stone -- with "Baseketball," the first film he had written in seven years. Back in 1980, Zucker and his brother Jerry, outsiders in Hollywood, had become something of a sensation with their first movie, "Airplane!" -- a classic, with its memorably offensive one-liners and ridiculous sight gags. Over the years since, Zucker had grown frustrated by a climate that seemed increasingly afraid of the outrageous, taboo-busting humor that made "Airplane!" so fresh and funny. He sat out much of the 90's before finally writing "Baseketball," a goofy comedy that aspired to be a satire about our national sports culture. "I think the best thing that happened to me," says Zucker, "was to have Matt and Trey come along and say, 'Well, you know, "Baseketball" is a great idea for a movie, but it's tame.' I just went bananas. I was so embarrassed." "We went to a couple of read-throughs," says Stone, "and we peppered a few lines with our humor, and it would get a big laugh. We felt we had nothing to lose, so Trey and I started going off: 'This is a guy's movie. It's a sports parody. This is what every guy lives through -- the whole sports, buddy, triumph-glory bull -- and we're making fun of a lot of that, and this is the way guys talk." Zucker, who was a fan of Parker and Stone's student films and had worked with them on a couple of shorts, had originally wanted Parker to direct "Baseketball," but he turned it down because he was in the midst of starting work on "South Park." One day, when Zucker and a producer were casting the film -- looking through a pile of head shots -- the producer said, "What about Trey Parker?" Zucker thought it was an inspired idea, not realizing that the producer meant the other Trey Parker -- a modestly successful character actor. No matter. The mixup had turned on a light: Zucker could hire Parker and Stone to play the two buddies around whom the film turns and, for the same price, exploit the spontaneous shenanigans that lie at the heart of the Parker-Stone bond. Because the two know each other and their idiosyncrasies so well, Parker, 28, and Stone, 27, suggested things that no one else could have thought of, things that predictably racheted up the gross-and-shocking quotient. In one scene, for example, the two of them are talking in the dugout and Parker is chewing a chaw of tobacco. It was his idea to give it to Stone, who puts the tobacco in his mouth and keeps right on chewing. Jenny McCarthy, the former star of MTV's "Singled Out," plays a sort of young Zsa Zsa Gabor in "Baseketball." No stranger to grossness herself, McCarthy once posed for a shoe ad sitting on the toilet reading a newspaper. "They're kind of like any guy next door -- just with a whole lot of talent," she says. "We try to battle each other who can talk the most disgusting. They're so in line with my kind of humor, which is where I hope comedy is going. They did a lot of improv in 'Baseketball.' It has a lot of 'South Park' touches to it." If "Baseketball," which opens July 31, is a hit, it will be in no small part because of Parker and Stone, who are in the odd, perhaps unprecedented, position of being famous unknowns. "They come to it with the aura of their success," says Zucker. "They have all that cachet because they're the authors of 'South Park.' People are already set to cheer for them. But they're behind-the-scenes guys." Shortly before the release of 'Baseketball,' I ask Stone if he's looking forward to becoming a movie star. "I'm totally unprepared," he says. "I hate the fact that I can't walk down the street already without people looking at me. I went to this cheesy bar last night and no 21-year-old Hollywood person was coming up and going: 'Heeey! Matt Stone!' I had the best time just sinking into obscurity again, which is especially hard to do in L.A." He heaves a big sigh. "We're going to Las Vegas this weekend, and I know it's just going to be awful, walking around with everyone yelling: 'Hey! South Park! Can we get a picture?"'