South Park, the hilarious and boundaries-pushing animated sitcom, first started airing on Comedy Central in 1997. But where did the idea come from? What led up to the premiere of the controversial Emmy and Peabody Award-winning sitcom?
The Story of A Silly Short Film By Two College Students Spawning The Comedy Central Treasure
First, let’s not forget that creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s beloved show isn’t going anywhere. In August,it was announced that the two masterminds signed a massive deal with ViacomCBS that will keep South Park on the Comedy Central network through 2027.
Now, back the backstory. Trey Parker and Matt Stone met in film class at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1992. As they worked on fellow students’ films, Parker and Stone would do funny voices simply to amuse each other. Though Stone was a math major and Parker was a music major, they got along great and found they had the same sense of humor. Let’s look at where it went from there.
&When they first met in undergrad, Trey Parker was already working on a film called Giant Beavers of Southern Sri Lanka. “It was sort of a Godzilla thing,” Parker told Rolling Stone in 1998. “But with a huge beaver. I had a little girl dressed in a beaver costume rampaging a town.”
Once Parker grew close to Stone, they came up with a seemingly better idea. And with just some construction paper, scissors, glue and an old camera, they created a four-minute short called The Spirit of Christmas. The crudely-animated work shows four foul-mouthed kids (sound familiar?) in Colorado inadvertently bringing a violent snowman to life and enlisting Jesus into battle it.
Many staples of South Park were established here: The kids live in a snowy environment, they swear nonstop, Kenny dies and there’s a moral to the story in the end. Parker and Stone premiered The Spirit of Christmas at their school in December 1992 but would then turn their attention to their debut movie, Cannibal! The Musical&. Then in 1995, Fox executive Brian Graden paid the duo $2,000 to redo The Spirit of Christmas as an animated video he could send to his pals.
This time around, Jesus battled Santa Claus, and it became a hit that soon found its way into Hollywood. Before they knew it, Parker and Stone had inked a deal with Comedy Central that would ultimately make their cartoon comedy a multi-million dollar industrial complex.
In addition to a pair of films coming soon, South Park fans can expect a feature-length film that they’re directing together. While it remains unclear when the rest of season 24 will release, the pertinent Pandemic Special and Vaccination Special episodes are currently available to stream. And they’re a hoot.
Source: movieweb.com