South Park: Matt and Trey Speak Out
Part 1: The South Park creators talk about Tom Cruise, Family Guy and constantly creating controversy.
by Eric Goldman
July 17, 2006 - Running for nearly three weeks straight, the TCA (Television Critics Association) summer press tour is a major endeavor, where nearly all the biggest channels -- from the broadcast networks to popular cable stations -- have presentations and panels discussing their upcoming programming, including new and returning series.
One of the most interesting events during the first week of the TCAs was a press conference given by South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker. This was quite a notable and controversial year for the pair: Their Tom Cruise/Scientology parody episode "Trapped in the Closet" led to cast member Isaac Hayes quitting the show, and was subsequently pulled from reruns by Comedy Central. And on the "Cartoon Wars" two-parter, they lost a battle with Comedy Central to portray an image of Mohammed. On the heels of an Emmy nomination for "Trapped in the Closet", and the recent decision by Comedy Central to allow the episode to finally re-air, Matt and Trey had plenty to say about everything that occurred this past year, in their typically blunt way.
Trey started the press conference off by saying, "So first of all, there can't be any questions about Tom Cruise or Scientology or South Park." The first question, naturally, was regarding how much of a struggle it was to get an episode on the air that tackles Scientology and Tom Cruise. Matt remarked, "Did he just say that?" Trey deadpanned, "Since that pertains to South Park, we can't answer the question."
The duo eventually stopped joking for a bit, and Matt gave a serious answer to the question. "Getting that episode on the air was no problem at all. We were actually really surprised. We kind of avoided doing one for a long time because of Scientology's reputation for taking you to court. And when we ran the idea past Comedy Central, the lawyers at least, they said, 'Yeah, that's cool.' So getting it on the air wasn't really a big deal. It was kind of after it aired that the shit hit the fan, so to speak."
Trey said, "It's kind of nice because, since we do a show basically the week of, it was really the Wednesday before that show aired was the day that we said, 'Let's do a Scientology show.' And so rather than doing a show and people start hearing we're going to do a Scientology show and, you know, lawyers have time to start talking… It's pretty much, the way our show is, by the time it got to be, you know, Thursday, Friday, the show was going and it was going to be on the air in four days. So it was kind of like nobody knew about it until it came out."
Matt added, "If we did a normal show, if the show sat on the shelf, so to speak, for a couple months before it went on the air, I don't think it would have ever made it to air. So we kind of lucked out that we do the show like we do."
Matt and Trey were asked if they're going to take on the topic of North Korea this season. Trey replied, "We have no thoughts about what's going on there. We kind of so did that in Team America. We talked about if we could actually have Kim Jong-il on South Park now, but it would sort of be the exact same character."
Trey talked a little more about South Park's short development cycle and why that makes it difficult to talk about future episode topics. "But it's really funny because even at an event like this, we would love to be able to sit and say, 'Oh, these are the things we're thinking about,' but we've never done a South Park season where we even think about what we're going to do more than a month ahead of time. And you know, the [new] shows don't air until October, which means we'll start working on them -- I'm not kidding -- September 10th-ish. We'll go to the office and what happens -- it's pretty interesting because after doing it for ten years, it just happens every single time. We come back and we really over-think things, and we spend, like, three weeks trying to make the first episode. And then by the time we're in the fourth, fifth episode, it's just like athletics or anything, where you just get to the point where you're in that groove. And for the first month, we just second-guess ourselves too much. And so we've learned to not even talk about the show. This is the first time we've talked about the show at all since [the last season ended]."
Matt and Trey are both surprised that South Park has made it to ten seasons. Trey remarked, "We were surprised it made it to seven episodes." Matt added, "We got six episodes in the very beginning. For us, that was a big deal. Just to get a show on television was a huge deal. Really we never thought it would get past that first six. So yeah, we're totally surprised."
Matt and Trey were next asked if they've heard from the Scientologists about the "Trapped in the Closet" episode, and if they were serious about not doing business with Comedy Central if they didn't re-air the episode. Trey replied, "In terms of the Scientologists, they're actually extremely happy with us. Everything that we've heard, they're actually, like, really supportive, really, like, 'You go, guys!' And I'll let Matt answer the second half."
"I think Scientology has this reputation for intimidating people," Matt replied, "and, you know, throwing dead animals over your fence and putting notes on your cars and bricks through your windows. I think it's all bullshit. I think the press has made that monster. I think Scientology enjoys that reputation because it keeps everyone from doing anything about it. Since we've done the episode, we haven't had any contact from them at all. I'm sure they're not happy with us, but I think that's a reputation that doesn't even really [come from reality]. And as far as not working, yeah, I don't know if we would have totally not worked on South Park ever again, but it's hard… You know, we have a couple of movies with Viacom, and it's tough to go to work for people that you think maybe are holding one of your episodes hostage. But that's kind of water under the bridge now because it's going back on the air."
A journalist stated that most animated shows, like The Simpsons, take a year from the inception of the idea until it's on screen. Matt and Trey were asked how they produce a South Park episode so quickly. Trey replied, "It's a very different animal in that Matt and I still do everything with the show. So we do all the voices, all the directing, all the writing, for every single episode. So it's like we don't have to say, 'Oh, let's change this line. Get a writer in here, and then bring the actors in and we'll record them.' We can do all of that in ten minutes. So, you know, that's the main reason why it's such a different animal. But we basically have a big retreat right before the season where we hang out with friends and we come up with a lot of the broad ideas. But then really we start Thursday morning. We get into our writers' room, and we're like, 'What do we do this week?'
"It's really way more like a live show," Trey continued, "from what we've seen, because we're always just counting down to Wednesday morning, when we have to deliver the show. So we get there Thursday, and we're like, 'What do we do this week? How about this? Oh, that's a good idea.' We'll run through a bunch of stuff, and then Thursday I'll just start writing. We'll go in and voice stuff. The whole week, we're kind of sculpting the episode. And what's so great about it is we've also, over the last ten years, like, made this machine that is sort of unlike anything here, where we've literally had times on Tuesday night where we'll watch something and say, 'Man, the whole middle part is really not that good.' And we'll change five minutes of the show on Tuesday, completely different storyline, all different lines, everything, get it all animated and out on the air the next day."
Matt added, "You know, The Simpsons, they take a year to do an episode, but they also do 26 in a year. So they have 26 kind of going at once. And so I think at the end of the day, we probably put as much time into each of our episodes as The Simpsons because, nine months of that, they're just out of the country. They're working -- the animation is happening in Korea or wherever they do it. So we just do one at a time. Most shows have multiples going at once."
Trey said, "I also heard that The Simpsons basically spend one week just on the script, you know. They spend one week on each script. And that's basically exactly what we do, except that we're actually able to make the show while we're doing the script and changing the script. We're able to just change the show as we change the script. So that's pretty much why."
Matt and Trey were asked what their favorite episodes are. Trey replied, "The favorite episodes thing is easy because Comedy Central just had us do 'our ten favorite episodes' for a DVD that's going to come out for the tenth anniversary. It was really actually hard to choose the ten, but it was interesting because our ten favorite episodes all came from the last, like, four seasons probably.
"Because for us," Trey continued, "having done the show for ten years too and because we've done it all ourselves, now we look back at what we did in Season 1, 2, and 3, and we're like, 'Oh, man, we thought that was funny?' We've definitely learned how to write as the show has gone along. So all our favorite stuff -- which I think is actually good. It's healthy for us anyway -- is the latest stuff. And they're all on that tenth-anniversary [DVD]."
Matt and Trey were asked if there's another film in the works now that the show is more popular than ever. Matt replied, "We have no plans to do a movie. If we came up with a really good idea, maybe we'd do it. But I don't know. What would happen is if we said, 'Oh, we're going to do a movie,' it would be announced, and everyone would ask us, 'Where's the movie?' And then we'd get all stressed out, and we just don't want to get stressed."
Trey added, "We've really honestly learned TV is so much better than movies. I mean, even making movies; especially in the comedy world, where something is funny and then a year and a half later you're still working on that idea and you're like, 'This is so not funny.'"
Matt emphasized, "By the time you're shooting a movie or editing a move, you've lived with a joke for two years. And we live with jokes for one week, and we're already bored with them. So the creative turnaround in TV is where we're most comfortable." Trey added, "And the people are a lot nicer in TV."
Matt and Trey's fast-paced process for developing episodes is definitely unique. Trey commented, "It's an interesting thing, because now we've gotten to the point where we're kind of teaching sometimes and being asked by schools to talk to writing classes and stuff. And I've really learned, what it does is it doesn't allow you to second-guess yourself, which is, as doing any kind of art, you're constantly going, 'Oh, is this crap? This might be crap.' And as we know, you have to have deadlines, or else you wouldn't get anything done. And it just forces this deadline on you. That's why that first show takes a month and the other shows take five days, because it's basically like, 'Well, should it be this, or should it be that?' And it's like, 'It's going to be this. Just go.' And you make it as good as you can. Then you can change it a little bit, but it really is all about taking out that. And it's like I think that the condensed time, that's the best part about it. You just have to do it. You can't think about it too much. You know, there's a lot of great comedy shows out there, but some of the bad ones, you can just feel the committee, you can see the writers' room, and you can see that a joke has been gone over and gone over, and all the weirdness is kind of out of it."
"We didn't think of that. We were just bad procrastinators at first." Matt added. "We just procrastinated, and then we just had to get it done. But we kind of lucked into this system that seems to keep it fresh.
Matt and Trey both fear that they'll lose their edge. "That's a constant fear for anybody," Matt said, "any band or any comedian. I'm 36. It's hard to be the old guy at the club after a while, you know? You worry about that. But I don't know. I think the last year we've had good shows, and maybe we're overcompensating."
Trey added, "It's a matter of we don't want to lose our edge, but we also want to grow old gracefully. You know what I mean? It's fun for us to watch the ten years because you can see how we've changed, even politically how we've changed and sort of where our attitudes are at. I think we're still doing really fucked-up shit, but I also think that different things are important to us now; just in the matter of, you know, now we do care if a script is good! We care if the story is really good and things like that. So I think we're losing our edge, but hopefully we're gaining something else."
Matt and Trey were asked how they keep the show subversive. Matt replied, "When we started out, I don't think we knew what 'subversive' meant or anything. I think we've lucked out, because I've thought about it too. It's like I think we're just normally attracted to ideas that other people don't want to do or are fundamentally bad ideas, like a puppet movie, you know, or like an R-rated animated musical. Those are subversive formats, to start with, but we weren't drawn to those because of that. We were just drawn to them because it was a really bad idea. It's the same thing with the show still. It's, like, we want to see that on TV because we've never seen that. Like the Scientology episode, you know. We wanted to see it, really."
Trey added, "Like in this last season -- I remember it was January in between seasons, and we turned on the TV, and it said 'cartoon wars' at the bottom. And I remember I just turned on the TV, and there was a bunch of people in the Middle East rioting. And it says, 'Cartoon wars' -- 'Breaking news: Cartoon wars. Muslims angered over cartoon.' I was like, 'Oh, they just fucking saw it! They just figured it out.' Because we did Mohammed, like, three years ago. And we had Mohammed in South Park three or four years ago, and I really was like, 'Oh, my God, they're mad at us.' When we heard that whole thing that was going down, it was like so no one can show Mohammed now. No one can do that. We're like, 'Okay… so we're doing that!'"
Matt said, "It wasn't even a question. I mean, it's cartoon wars. Like who doesn't want do a show about that? This is how stupid we are. When we came up with the idea to do Team America, like a "Thunderbirds" thing, whole movie with marionettes, we're like, 'We can't fucking tell anybody because this is a million-dollar idea. People are going to steal this idea!' [Audience Laughs] We did. We were like, 'Don't tell everybody. We have to announce it as soon as we can.' We have these dumb ideas for movies, and we always think someone is going to steal it. Of course no one's going to do that movie."
Matt and Trey were asked if they'd heard any from Seth McFarlane or anyone from Family Guy over the jokes at their expense in the episode, "Cartoon Wars." Matt replied, We haven't heard anything. I think they're just swimming around in their [tank]." Trey said, "I think he's a Scientologist, actually."
Regarding if Matt and Trey hold the same opinion of Family Guy as Cartman does, Trey commented, "What I can tell you that was pretty interesting, was the day after that episode aired, we got flowers from The Simpsons. We got calls from King of the Hill, saying we were doing God's work. It's not just our opinion."
Matt and Trey were asked what they think it says when they can put Mohammed on smashing TV sets and people don't get too angry, but when they put on Tom Cruise, it becomes the most controversial issue yet. Trey replied, "That's what we were saying. During the run we were like, 'So there's two things we can't do on Comedy Central: Show Mohammed or Tom Cruise.'"
Matt said, "Those are the two images we couldn't show on Comedy Central for a while. We went to England last month, and we were doing a talk there. And it's like the first time we've talked to anybody since all of that went down, because we didn't do any press this last run when the whole thing was going down with Tom Cruise and pulling the episode and everything, mostly because we were busy. We had to work, and we had to stay funny and do the show, but also because it just felt like every time we're in a headline, it's, like, Tom Cruise and then us in a headline. You start to get that Tom Cruise stink on you. I don't even like to see it. It's like we did one show about Tom Cruise, like that was all we were ever going to do.
"That's what we love about South Park," Matt continued," is we just do something new and then something else; we just leave it, and we're off to something else. So anyway, that's why we didn't do any press. We're like, 'You know what? We're just going to get this big pissing war with Tom Cruise, and I don't even want to be in the same article as that guy,' right? So then we go to England, and we really have this, like, very strong political and philosophical position about the Mohammed cartoon controversy, and no one wants to talk about that. Everyone just wants to talk about Tom Cruise. So we just picked the wrong guy, I guess, to parody because I have a feeling we'll be asked about Tom Cruise for the next two years."
Matt and Trey talked a little more about their favorite episodes that'll be on the 10th anniversary DVD. Trey said, "One I know is on there offhand is called 'Return of the Lord of the Rings to the Two Towers.' You know, everyone says that South Park is satire and political satire and whatever, but really when you look at a season, there's rarely more than a couple episodes per season that are political satire. And a lot of times our favorite episodes are just kids being kids. It's just a little episode where the kids get their hands accidentally on a porno tape, and they're all dressing up like Lord of the Rings characters. And the entire episode they're playing Lord of the Rings. And there's just something about it -- there's times for us when South Park really hits on that's exactly what it was like to be a kid in the third grade in America. And those are actually some of our favorite episodes."
Matt added, "On that ten best I think eight of them are those kind of episodes. Our favorite episodes are not the overly political ones."
Part 2: The South Park creators on Isaac Hayes quitting, George Clooney, and Comedy Central not allowing them to show Mohammed.
July 18, 2006 - Yesterday, we brought you Part One of the recent TCA (Television Critics Association) discussion with Matt Stone and Trey Parker. As we continue our look at Matt & Trey's talk with the press about South Park, the conversation veers between everything from Isaac Hayes to the question of going too far with the comedy on the show.
Several executives from Comedy Central were present during the event, and as you'll see, at one point Comedy Central president Doug Herzog became involved in the conversation, giving his side of the story on the cable channel's decision to censor the image of Mohammed on the "Cartoon Wars" episode.
Matt and Trey were asked if they ever get scared about taking on topics. Trey replied, "We're always afraid, but it's always 'Oh, my God, are we going to finish by Tuesday?' And again, you don't even have time to second-guess yourself with what you're doing because, honestly, even though we do do an episode starting Thursday and we put it on the air Wednesday, it ain't easy. It's super hard, and we're all super stressed out. And we, almost every single week, think we're not going to make it. And every week we're about to call Comedy Central and go, 'We didn't get a show done this week.' And it's never happened so far, but we've come so close."
Matt added, "We're not concerned about the psycho, that random psycho that killed Kenny, if you're asking about people reacting really strongly, like our safety being threatened or something. We're much more concerned with how the fans are -- if they're going to like it or not."
Trey pointed out, "It was really hard, like with the Mohammed episode, and we fought and we fought and we fought, and the network was just like, 'We're not going to show Mohammed.' And that was really hard to figure out how do we do this in a way that the audience knows we meant to show Mohammed and the network isn't showing Mohammed."
Getting across the point that a portion of the episode is actually serious has been a bit of a struggle for the duo. Matt said, "You know, we've done it a couple times; even Scientology, that part of the Scientology episode where it says, 'This is actually what they believe' at the bottom. If you don't put that on there, people will think it's a joke. We did it once where we did an episode on NAMBLA, which actually exists. You have to make sure, when you're doing that kind of subject matter, you want people to know what you're doing is a joke and then what really is real, you know, you're trying to make fun of. So that's the pressure."
Matt and Trey were next asked about their opinion on "Trapped in the Closet" getting an Emmy nomination. Trey replied, "Well, you know, every year we're asked to pick an episode to nominate. Shows always sort of pick their one that they want to submit as the official submission to be nominated. And so for us, it was kind of this thing of, we didn't know if Comedy Central was going to air it again, and there had been talk about 'Can we put it on DVD right now?' Like, 'We're not going to put it on DVD.' We're like, 'Okay, let's nominate that one for an Emmy.'"
Matt and Trey both admitted that they wouldn't have submitted the episode if it hadn't been pulled from air, as Trey stated, "I don't think it was our best show of last year, by any means. But it was definitely the most controversial." Matt added, "We just did it to be dicks, really."
With the boom of comedy and animation currently online, Matt and Trey were asked their thoughts on the Internet being the future of comedy, considering South Park's origins as a short that many first saw online. Trey replied, "It certainly made South Park what it is. It was right when the Internet was becoming something that people used, that we had that first 'Spirit of Christmas.' And that's how it got around. And then the pilot episode, that's how a lot of people saw it, was on the Internet."
Matt said, "People still download off iTunes and illegally off tons of sites. And although that's probably not as big as, like, millions of people who watch it [on TV] every week, it's still how a lot of people still see the show. There's something really cool about that."
Trey pointed out, "There's something that's great -- South Park is sort of made for iTunes. I hadn't really gotten into iTunes video until six months ago. Then I saw that we were always on the top-ten list. It was, like, us and Lost. And so I downloaded an episode just to watch it on an iPod, and I was like, it's South Park. It doesn't lose anything. It's not like you're waiting for the kick-ass visuals and the surround sound or anything. So on an iPod -- it's a perfect iPod thing. So I think it's great."
Matt and Trey were next asked how the Isaac Hayes controversy began, and what their relationship is currently like with the former voice of Chef. "Well, it started because we did the Scientology episode," Matt replied. "Isaac came to our office the next week to see us, and I had about a two-hour meeting with him. And he was really upset because, as you know by now, he's a Scientologist. So he was really upset -- and he was actually really upset -- he wasn't doing anything underhanded. He really loves Scientology, and he really loves South Park, and those two things were at odds. This was right after it aired in November, the show. He asked us to pull the episode off the air, to go to the network and pull the episode off the air, don't ever have it made into DVDs. We said, 'No, we're not going to do that.' He said, 'Okay,' and he left. And then we didn't hear anything. And then that was really our last contact with him. And then everything else has been anything else you've read…"
Trey continued, "And what happened was, we were at the office, and we heard Isaac's quitting. They got a letter from his lawyer, and he's quitting. We're like, well, you know, we kind of honestly thought that might happen when we made the episode. But we didn't want to be hypocrites. We always say, 'Hey, it's all okay to make fun of, or none of it is. Everything has got to be okay.' So when we had this good idea for a Scientology episode, we're like, 'You know what? This could piss Isaac off.' And we're like, 'Yeah, but you know what? We're hypocrites if we don't make it for that reason.' So we knew he might quit. So then we got this letter, and we're like, 'Okay, he quit.' And to be honest, Chef hasn't been a big part of the show for five years. So it wasn't like a devastating blow or anything. We were bummed out, but you know, it was, 'Okay, he has totally a right to do that, and that's great,' and that was sort of going to be the end of it. But then this press release came out where -- it was sent by Isaac's people or Isaac. But it said, 'Isaac has left the show. I can no longer tolerate' -- you know, 'Trey and Matt are bigots' and all this stuff. It was so crazy because we got along so well. And that's where we were like, 'Wow, you really thought the show was fine until we did your religion, and now we're bigots.' So that's why we were like, 'Okay, game on, mother fucker.' And we did that first episode."
Matt and Trey were next asked if there's anything they've done in an episode that they wished you hadn't. Matt replied, "We had this one episode where Jared gets AIDS. The Jared from Subway Sandwiches, and he gets aides. And it was a stupid play on words, obviously he had assistants, not AIDS. And then at the end, we wanted that message to be, like, it's okay to laugh about AIDS finally, like comedy is tragedy plus time, and it's been long enough. But the way it came off was, AIDS is finally funny."
Trey said, "We said in the show what it was. It's, like, from a tragedy plus 12 years, now you can make jokes about it, but there's always that 12-year window. And it came off that AIDS was funny."
Matt Stone explained, "Mr. Garrison comes out and says, 'Hey, everybody, AIDS is finally funny.' And I guess we would have said…" Trey interjected, "'…AIDS is finally okay…'" Matt continued, "'…to laugh about.' Those are the kind of arguments we have. That's one of the only ones we've ever been like, 'Maybe we…'"
Matt and Trey also said that they had held off the Christopher Reeve parody for a while, in which Reeve was sucking the stem cells out of fetuses. Trey said, "For a long time we're like, 'You know what? Maybe that's not cool.' So that was one of the few shows where we came up with the idea and spent a whole season not doing it. And then the next season where, you know, we're like, 'We're out of ideas, we're out of ideas,' we're like, 'We've got the 'Christopher Reeve sucking stem cells' idea.' 'No, that's really too brutal.' And it just so happened that he was on Larry King that night. And actually, Anne Garefino, our producer, is, a lot of times, our sounding board, because she seriously goes to church every Sunday morning. She's the one that's always going, 'You guys, no, no, no.' And that's when we know we're onto something good. But then we had seen him on Larry King, and we're like, 'You know what? fuck him. He really is taking up this cause of 'Everyone needs to help me out.'' Right before he died, I think he started going a little crazy, but he started getting really weird about it. And then Anne saw him on Larry King and was like, 'Yeah, you know what? fuck him.'"
Matt and Trey also discussed an idea they've put off for a while that they said might show up this season. Matt explained, "We've wanted to do this for a couple of runs, but we haven't figured out how to make it work right and funny. But just to give you an idea, Stan's mom gets breast cancer and has a double mastectomy, but she gets prosthetics, but when you reveal the prosthetics, they're those little hook things." Trey added, "Those hook things you get for your hands."
Matt and Trey were next asked how instrumental George Clooney was in getting South Park on the air, since the story goes that he distributed "The Spirit of Christmas" to a lot of his friends as a Christmas card. Matt said, "I think it's great. It's like a legend [that's] partly true. I heard that he made, like, 700 copies. And I think that's true. He went into a dub house and had a bunch of dubs made and sent it around. But he was one of many people that were copying it, and it was spreading through a lot of people. It wasn't just George, I don't think."
Trey pointed out, "It shows how long the show has been on, because when 'The Spirit of Christmas' came out, it was on a VHS. And he had to go take a VHS to a dubbing house and make 700 VHS tapes. And that's what he did. So that was, obviously, a big help. But it wasn't like he then helped us bridge the Hollywood thing and helped us get it on TV at all. He didn't do any of that."
The pair next discussed George Clooney's Oscar speech, which they eviscerated in last season's "Smug Alert" episode. Trey said they haven't heard from Clooney since just after Team America, when "he definitely was not as nice to me as he was in the past. I mean, you know, he's George, so he's going to always play it cool. But that speech was pretty smug, you've got to admit, that he gave. That was pretty smuggy."
Matt wondered aloud, "How many people George has around him that, when he comes off the stage, they go, 'George, come on. That was kind of smug.' Does he have anybody like that? You start to wonder, you know. When you're in that privileged position, you don't have anybody telling you, 'Dude, what are you doing?' you know."
This past season brought about the bizarre Towelie/Oprah's Vagina episode, "A Million Little Fibers". IGN TV asked about that episode's origins. Matt replied, "Yeah, boy, that was a weird episode." Trey concurred, "That was a weird episode. And ironically, that wasn't a last-minute episode. That was like -- we really thought that one through! See what I mean? Like we can't be allowed to think shit through, or it starts to get really weird." Matt concluded, "If we work on something too long, it just turns into Oprah's vagina."
Matt, Trey, and Comedy Central President Doug Herzog next discussed the ramifications of showing or not showing Mohammed. Trey said that if they had shown Mohammed and anyone had gotten hurt or killed, "We would have felt super shitty, but we would have absolutely believed in what we did, for that exact reason. And that's what we said to them, was, 'This is South Park, and we rip on absolutely everyone in really horrible, terrible ways. And if you're saying that this is the one thing we can't do, besides Tom Cruise, because they're threatening violence, well, then, I guess that's what everyone should do. Then if the Catholics don't want us ripping on Jesus anymore, they should just threaten you with violence, and they'll get their way.' That's why it is such a slippery slope and such a dangerous path to go down."
Matt added, "I think, too, it was a disappointment because, like Trey said, when that thing flared up in January -- we'd actually talked about doing the Mohammed cartoon episode before because those [cartoons] were about a year ago that came out in Denmark. So we'd actually talked about it before it hit the fan in January. When it did, we had this idea where we wanted to show Mohammed's image, but completely not offensive, just a guy standing there. And that was going to be the point. Basically, just an image, and it's harmless. I was absolutely sure, I was a hundred percent sure that Comedy Central would have let us do that because of our track record, because of all the other things we had done, because of the way we were going to do it. And we have tackled a lot of shit. We've been through a lot of things, like from, you know, retarded kids to Christianity to 'Passion of the Jew,' celebrities. You name it, we've done it all. And we were totally sure that we had figured out a way to do something cool, you know, to do it in a cool way.
"And Comedy Central was going to be our teammate on this," Matt continued. "You know, they may have the answers for you, but it really wasn't their decision. It was the very high levels of Viacom. And it was really, beyond creatively disappointing, it was just kind of disappointing because we thought we could do something really important. And instead, in Harper's, two months later, they showed all the cartoons -- I don't know if you all saw about three issues ago in Harper's, and Art Spiegelman wrote a big essay about it. They asked us for the uncensored image [from 'Cartoon Wars']. Comedy Central wouldn't approve that either. And Harper's is in every Barnes & Noble, every Borders in the country now. I saw it in the airport. It has all the Danish cartoons, and nothing happened. The risks were totally overestimated, I thought, but we don't run a media company; they do."
Doug Herzog stated, "I don't feel unlike Matt and Trey to a certain degree. You feel bad, but it's a big judgment call made on behalf of, as Matt said, a big media company. The ramifications are Matt and Trey being pissed at you and Matt calling you a coward in Daily Variety." Matt clarified, "I said the decision was cowardly." Herzong continued, "I've now challenged him to a duel, which is what you do when something like that happens. But you know, it's just a tough [situation]. Did we over react? For sure. And I think history will probably show that, we hope. We'd like to think. And in a perfect world we would have liked to have done it -- [It was] a judgment call; one of the very few, although there seem to have been a lot over the last six months. Matt and Trey enjoy, I think, a very fair amount of creative freedom. But it really just comes down to a judgment call. And like I said, I think history might show we overreacted, but we're willing to live like that."
Herzog was asked if the episode will appear on a DVD anytime soon as Matt and Trey hoped it would. He replied, "Probably not, although I said to the guys at the time, "I look forward to a day,' I mean, the image is there. It's underneath -- the whole screen was covered. But there's an image there, and as I said, I look forward to the day when we can uncover it."
Trey pointed out, "What's interesting, by the way, is that as we speak, the episode from four years ago which featured Mohammed, who was a superhero that could turn himself into a beaver is actually airing on Comedy Central and in syndication."
Matt added, "It was on [Los Angeles station] KCAL 9, like, a month ago. And no one even notices. All deference to Doug, because he was put in a tight situation -- it was like we all witnessed and we all sat by and we watched a new taboo be created out of literally almost nothing. And everyone just kind of sat by and went, 'Okay, you're right, we won't touch that.' It's so opposite of the way it's supposed to work. I don't know. We thought we had figured out a way to just get in there and, like, kind of let the air out of that. But, you know, we couldn't."
Matt and Trey learned the ridiculous reality that they can show Jesus defecating on George Bush, but they can't show Mohammed. Matt said, "That's the point. It's open season on Jesus." Trey added, "Yeah. You can do anything you want to Jesus."
Matt and Trey were asked if there's any kind of disaster or situation that they feel they want to wait a little bit after. Trey replied, "We'll, of course, talk about it because that's what we do. When 9/11 happened, we needed to be around each other. And we were talking about it, and if we had kind of a point that we're like, 'This is a good point to make, and this is something that might be a pressure valve and might make people feel okay,' then we'll do it. South Park has never been a cynical show and a show where we just want to throw gas on the fire and 'fuck all you.' It's never been that. It's always been trying to lighten things up. And that's what we hope we'll keep doing with the show."
Matt said, "I went back the other day and saw on YouTube Jon Stewart's first show back after 9/11. And it's moving to see what he had to say. Before he could go make jokes again, he had to say something. How could we just start a show after 9/11 and just be like, 'Oh, look, I found a porno tape'? You had to do it. You had to do that show."
South Park's Matt Stone
The series co-creator talks more about recent controversy and having to alter episodes.
by Eric Goldman
August 17, 2006 - Recently South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker took part in a very informative Q&A at the TCA (Television Critics Association) Press Tour which IGN was present for. Afterwards, we were among a smaller group of journalists Stone spoke to, as he commented on what has been a very notable year for the long running show.
Last year South Park began running in syndication, and Stone was asked if they had to make many dramatic alterations to the often controversial series. "We had to cut them a little bit," Stone replied. "You can't say goddamn it; we have to say damn it, so we have to cut the 'god's' out. We have to make 'Jesus Christ' into 'jeez,' and there's a few other little cuts like that. At first we were like, 'I don't know if this is gonna work, we're gonna have to massacre the shows.' And then we got this woman who I work with who does the [syndicated] shows, and she does an awesome job, and we're very pleased."
Stone mentioned how interesting it was to rewatch the early episodes, noting, "If you look at the first season of South Park, what was getting us on the cover of Newsweek, on the cover of Rolling Stone - like, this is the end of democracy, this show - and if you watch those first seasons [now], they are so tame, even for network now, even for network television. Now the syndication, our syndication, is late night; you know, we're on at 10:30. So it's a little bit different than prime time. But it's amazing how much more liberal or looser stuff's gotten today."
Asked if he felt at the time that the show he and Parker were creating was tame, Stone replied, "No, not tame. But just the show's evolution has gone along with the standards of television I think. I'm just saying [that] what people were freaking out about in those first seasons, because you remember the hoopla… Go watch them. You'll be like, 'Really? This is [it]? What's the big deal?'"
Stone and Parker recently chose their ten favorite South Park episodes for a new DVD collection. Asked if the "Cartoon Wars" episode, which featured the Family Guy Mohammed storyline, would be part of the collection, Stone said, "No, it's not. I mean I love it, but it's not one of our ten favorites." As to whether the episode will continue to be censored in reruns, with Comedy Central refusing to show the scene with Mohammed, Stone noted, "Yeah. That's the show as it lives right now. We can't force them to put it on the air, you know. I wish we could."
Stone and Parker had said that if Comedy Central had continued to refuse to rerun their Scientology/Tom Cruise parody episode "Trapped in the Closet," they would have had serious issues about doing other projects with Comedy Central's parent company Viacom, including any future movies. Clarifying, Stone revealed, "We don't have any South Park movies in the works. [But] we're working on a couple of movies that we have ideas for," though unfortunately he didn't reveal any more details on these projects.
Commenting on the battles he and Parker sometimes face with the show, Stone said, "The truth is, we have two sides to us. We fight tooth and nail for that stuff, for what we believe in for the show, because we're artists. But the same time, you have to pick your battles. We have 150 episodes and like [Comedy Central President Doug Herzog] said, we've had the most amazing creative freedom of all time, you know what I mean?"
This past year has seen some of the biggest and most public battles Parker and Stone have had with the network over the show, mostly centered around "Trapped in the Closet" and "Cartoon Wars". When this was brought up, and the question was raised as to whether he and Parker were feeling more pressure overall recently, Stone replied, "The thing is, if it was a concerted kind of conspiracy, I'd agree, but I think it was a perfect storm of different… They were all just different things. One was a corporate programming decision; the Tom Cruise thing. One was the Mohammed cartoons, which, to give Comedy Central some credit, no one would have run it."
Stone added, "You can't single Comedy Central out and say Comedy Central were craven or cowardly, because no one ran those. I mean, no media company did. We thought Comedy Central might, because we had faith in them. But to be fair, no one did and no one would have."
Recently Harper's published the Danish cartoons which featured Mohammed, that caused the real life controversy and outrage Parker and Stone were parodying on "Cartoon Wars." The U.S. publication of these cartoons has led to no real controversy or outbreaks of violence, which raised the question of whether Comedy Central might now think it's okay to show the uncensored episode. "That's my conversation with Doug, yeah," Stone said. "I haven't had it yet! I agree though." As to whether he and Parker had considered seeking another outlet for "Cartoon Wars," Stone explained, "Everything we do with South Park is owned by Comedy Central, so ultimately we can't do that."
