South Park written by Beth Halverson and David Weiner
Remember Mr. Bill? Not twenty years ago on Saturday Night Live, Mr. Bill subtly changed the face of late night television by skewing the way we think about kiddie television. A savagely sophomoric take on children's shows, Mr. Bill mischievously created warped adult humor by lampooning the happy-faced world of children's television.
Taking minimalist clay animation to its most outrageous limits, Mr. Bill clearly paved the way for The Simpsons, Ren and Stimpy, and of course, Beavis and Butthead. Now comes Comedy Central's sleeper hit South Park.
Following the exploits of a dysfunctional group of endearingly vulgar third-graders in the snowbound town of South Park, this new animated weekly series may just find its place at the top of the outrageous animated TV comedy heap.
The Spirit of Christmas Much like the chubby misfit Cartman yelling "No kitty, my chick'n pot pie!" to keep his begging cat at bay, so legions of South Park fans have long tried to keep their knowledge of the underground animated short The Spirit of Christmas on a strictly need-to-know basis.
The film was a crudely hilarious private video Christmas "card" created by U of Colorado film grads Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Wanting to one-up his friends in the annual battle for best Hollywood holiday greeting, FOX executive Brian Graden paid the duo to put the piece together.
The resulting cut-n-paste animated short stars four foul-mouthed, irreverent third-graders (Stan, Kenny, Kyle and Cartman) who witness a fight to the finish between Santa Claus and Jesus over who best embodies the Christmas spirit.
The tape became an instant underground hit in the Hollywood community. ER's George Clooney, describing the short "Care Bears on acid", distributed over a hundred copies to his friends (Clooney was subsequently invited to provide the voice for Sparky the homosexual dog).
Eileen Katz, senior VP of programming at Comedy Central, recalls the first time she saw The Spirit of Christmas, "It was a cloudy day in New York, and I put the tape in, and as I watched, the clouds cleared and the angels began to sing, and there was music."
The "music" was the smell of money and Parker and Stone were swiftly bombarded with offers. They ultimately decided on Comedy Central, which ordered up 13 episodes for the 1997-98 season. The show premiered Wednesday, Aug. 13 '97 with an MA for "mature" rating. South Park is the first national cartoon show about third graders that is only suitable for audiences over 16.
The inspiration for South Park comes straight from the childhood hometown of its creators. Says Parker, "South Park is a real place in Colorado...right in the middle of the Rocky Mountains. And because of that, there's, like, the most UFO sightings and cattle mutilations and Bigfoot sightings. And it's just, you know, sort of the place where..."
Chimes in Stone, "It looks like a big UFO landing pad."
In the fictional version of South Park U.S.A., aliens are more than sighted, giving Carman a particularly troubling "anal probe" and turning cows inside out. But rest assured, whether battling folks from outer space or thwarting assassination attempts on Kathy Lee Gifford, the kids of South Park do it all with irresistibly funny trash mouths and in-your-face observation.
So just how do these guys hope to maintain this raunchy sophomoric sensibility over 13 episodes? "Well, the truth is when we first started getting approached by people to do a show, we immediately realized that a show where a bunch of kids just swear at each other is funny, but it's going to get old real fast," confesses Parker.
"And so we realized that in order to sustain a series, we had to be edgy in different ways. It forces you to be more creative when you can't just pop out of a scene or get out of a scene using the "f" word -and in a way, too, like with The Spirit of Christmas because this is cable, less goes further..."
But Can Anyone Here Draw? Though Stone and Parker are toning down the language a little for the series, the show's animation remains "cutting edge". That's because it's fabricated from construction-paper cut outs. Not only is South Park about third graders, but it looks like a third grader could have made it.
And it's no nostalgia trip either Parker explains apologetically, "I draw everything and I'm not really an artist, so this is what you get. And there's nothing conscious about, you know, retro or anything like that...it's just the way I draw."
For the show to meet the production demands of a regular season series, Parker and Stone have graduated to a team of 35 people and are employing computer animation while retaining the look and feel of the original short film. Now Parker and Stone are snipping out an episode every three weeks.
Oh, the Life of a Third Grader... South Park is a thematic sense memory that takes you back to when you were eight years old and saying "dildo" was a big deal, when having a crush on a girl made you want to puke in her presence, and when the skewed world of cracked adults was becoming clear for the first time.
Parker explains, "In every episode (the characters are) dealing with everything that third graders have to deal with, like trying to get out of school and worrying about, you know, hygiene problems and stuff ." He continues, "But also worrying about aliens and Bigfoot."
South Park debuted with the best ratings ever for Comedy Central for an original series, almost eclipsing their number one show, Absolutely Fabulous.
What's Next? With little time beyond Nintendo game breaks, Parker and Stone are just beginning to enjoy the perks of their newfound popularity while finding time to play in their band, DVDA (Stone plays drums, Parker plays keyboards and sings) and promote their first feature film, Orgazmo, about an innocent guy who moves to LA and gets caught up in the adult film scene.
Despite their strong outing and heady success, Parker and Stone have a hard time visualizing themselves at the helm of South Park five years from now without it losing its steam, citing Mike Judge's burnout on Beavis and Butthead as their barometer. But with such a brash and hilarious vision, we hope Parker and Stone change their minds and keep those chicken pot pies coming.
======================== If a billion people believe in a stupid idea, it is still stupid.
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