When offered the chance to sit with Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the DVD release of Team America: World Police, I opened the floodgates from my 8 years of knowledge on the guys. I’d covered Team America in depth upon theatrical release, so after getting the post-release perspectives from the guys, I resorted to the well of minutiae.

I think I scared Matt Stone. He called me superfan but I think that was his polite way of saying I knew too much. Of course, I saw The Spirit of Christmas in college before South Park even existed, so once I saw these guys creating more ballsy satire, I kept up.

Even my wife doesn’t understand why I remember little details about South Park episodes or the what the name of Parker and Stone’s band stands for.

I can’t say for sure, but I think it’s just that good satire engages me and sticks in my mind as I wade through the rest of the mediocrity throughout the year. So I can’t think of a better way to spend an afternoon than sharing a slice of Team America cake and chatting with Trey Parker and Matt Stone over mojitos in a Santa Monica hotel bar.
Do you still have no interest in doing another South Park movie?

TP: Well, no.

MS: If we had an idea.

TP: Everything’s idea based. We just promised ourselves we’d never make a movie for the sake of making a movie, which is why we never took a multi-picture deal or anything. If we have a great idea, we’ll go, “Oh, this could be a cool movie.” Or really for us, it’s more like, “Oh, this is a really bad idea. Let’s do this. This seems really stupid.”

Have people given up on responding to things you do on episodes, like Terry Schiavo?

MS: We got positive response from that because of the timeliness. No, I think we’ve kind of marked our territory. I mean, it’s amazing when we go back and look at the first season which is now nine years ago, which got us on the cover of Newsweek. All this stuff was like, “Oh my God, it’s the end of civilization, here comes South Park.” And now those episodes are so tame by comparison.

You don’t hear as much of people’s outrage anymore.

MS: They know. If you get mad at South Park, people go, “Oh, whatever, South Park.” We’ve marked our space and you stay away from it if you’re sensitive to it. If you’re into it, then you’re into it.

How often do you cancel an episode to do something timely?

TP: It happened with the Terry Schiavo [episode]. We had an idea, and it ended up being the last show of the run which was Jimmy getting an erection for the first time. And we were going on that, and I remember I came to the table and said, “This thing is huge. We have this idea, the Jimmy thing, to fall back on. But let’s spend an hour and a half of this meeting - because this is Thursday, the show’s going on the air Wednesday - let’s spend an hour and a half, see if we can’t come up with a sweet idea for the Terry Schiavo thing.” And it just sort of all came out. Within an hour and a half, we were like, “This is a great idea. We’ve got to do this.”

MS: You could really do that every week but we try to just do it when it’s really big.

TP: But it was pretty brutal. Then we went out to the animators, the lead animators like, “We’re going to do the battle between heaven and hell.” And they’re like, “What?”

Was there already a PSP Heaven and Hell element?

TP: No.

MS: It all came out of just combining things. It also is like you have to make an episode that is viewable in five years too. As much as we try to make it timely, we also try to make a story that if you didn’t know who Terry Schiavo was, it would be a cool episode to watch. I mean, the really timely stuff is more the Letterman/Leno, that’s more their territory. We try to just take something that’s going on and make this whole thing. I think that’s kind of what makes those things impressive is like, “Wow, that looks like something that could come out anytime and it just happens to do with this week.” It’s not just like Terry Schiavo jokes like Late Night in an animated form.

If you were on a season right now, would you do an episode on the runaway bride?

TP: Maybe. Just like anything, we’d have to sit around and talk about it for two hours and see if there’s anything there.

MS: I don't know if that’s a big enough story. We try to always do things that are huge.

Was there really going to be a Lemmywinks episode or was that a joke?
TP: There really was a Lemmywinks debacle. There’s been many times we tried to fall back on it. We started this Lemmywinks thing.

MS: We keep thinking Lemmywinks is going to be the best episode ever. We keep starting it.

TP: We got into it. We created all these other characters. It was going to be an Easter episode actually, a year ago. And it was gonna be that the Easter Bunny had been found dead with his balls stuffed down his throat. So all the critters of the forest got together and said, “We need a new critter to be the new Easter critter” and they voted on the Gerbil King and they go to find the gerbil king and we’re like, “This is great…”

MS: This entire mythology figured out and everything.

TP: The badger prince was, of course, the backhanded one going, “You’ll never make it Lemmywinks,” but Lemmywinks was never doing anything, just sitting there being a gerbil. And we started animating it and it’s just one of those shows that happens. You start animating it and you get to Friday and you get to Saturday and you go, “This is not funny, like we haven’t figured something out, scrap it.” What actually ended up happening is we scrapped it and said, “Okay, oh my God, it’s Saturday, now we’re really screwed. We’ve got four days to come up with an episode. Let’s just do something simple on, like, Michael Jackson.” And we did a Michael Jackson episode that people ended up totally loving.

MS: Luckily, Michael Jackson molested those boys so we had some good fodder. Luckily. That was fortunate for us.

That could be a good DVD extra, the half of a Lemmywinks episode.

TP: Believe me, we still have it in the computer to fall back on at some point. It actually sort of became this other idea that we did last Fall. It became Critter Christmas.

Why does Trey always direct?

MS: Because he’s the director. You would not want to see a movie I directed.

TP: The way that Matt and I have done stuff from the beginning is, whether there’ll be different people involved in South Park or whatever, in terms of directing/producing, it’s really been sort of a director/producer relationship in terms of that side of it. In terms of the creative side of it, where you come up with the funny stuff is usually at a bar or out talking to people or whatever. And then we’ll sit around and talk about it because that’s where it’s really come about it. Talk about it, talk about it, and then I physically go write it and come up with the dialogue, and come up with the structure of the scene.

MS: And then we change it. And then you write it again, and you change it and you write it again, you change it and write it again. But to us, it’s always made sense because when we came into town, we’ve always been this way. You just get it done. So a lot of times it’s a co-writer kind of relationship. A lot of it is a producer/director relationship. But always Trey’s the director basically. It’s not some weird backroom deal.

Why do you come out in these weird five and six episode segments and what denotes a season?

TP: Now, it makes sense.

MS: It’s just Comedy Central. Now we do seven or eight episodes in the Spring and seven or eight episodes in the Winter. You know, it’s been pretty regular for three years and it will be that way for the future. That’s just Comedy Central.

TP: But it was also, we structured it. We used to do runs where it was like a spurt of four and then five and whatever. Now we have this very structured thing because two years ago we went to Comedy Central and said, “We need big blocks of time in the summer to go make a movie” because we wanted to make this puppet movie, so we needed a big, huge chunk and now we have that chunk open every year to go make something else if we want. Or to go hang out in Europe and drink.

Are you surprised which South Park characters took off like Butters and Jimmy and which fell by the wayside like Pip and Tweek?

TS: No, not at all.

MS: There’s good characters and bad characters.

TS: It’s been a fascinating thing because we didn’t really know how to write when we started South Park at all. It’s been like, we’ve just sort of grown up a bit and it’s amazing to just see how, if you take Butters and Cartman and put them in any scene, it works. It’s this simple law, which every writer knows, of taking two opposites and putting them in a room together. I love anything with Cartman and Butters at the same time, it’s great.

How often does DVDA get up and play together?

MS: You’re like a super fan, huh? You know everything, sh*t.

TP: It’s been a long time.

MS: It’s been about five years. Maybe some day we should get that band back together.

TP: Bullsh*t man. Our band is falling apart.

Has there ever been any plans to put together a set of the South Park episode music?

TP: Yeah, actually, there may be one next Christmas actually. Just because, right after the South Park movie, we did this Christmas album that was called Mr. Hankey’s Christmas Classics and we really loved that album. We made this really dumb decision to put on the cover nothing from South Park but just a real life photo of a piece of poo dressed up like Mr. Hankey, and a lot of people didn’t even know what it was. So we really feel like there’s some great songs on there that should be heard by all. So we’re considering doing a new Christmas album, because there’s been new Christmas episodes since then, and maybe finally do the version of “The Most Offensive Song Ever” with lyrics intact.

Who is supposed to be the special celebrity guest on “Lonely Jew” on that album?

TP: Neil Diamond.

What is Dian Bachar up to?

TS: I think he’s working at a video store.

MS: Sleeping on a couch, being weird and creepy.

Do you have any ideas for the upcoming season of South Park or is this too early?

TP: Dude, that’s like October. We don’t even, we have no idea…

MS: I don’t even know if I’ll be alive then.

TP: Yeah.

You don’t have any ideas that you end up pushing off?

TP: Never. October 1st we’ll have ideas for that season. Hopefully, if we’re lucky.

When did you give up ideas for a That’s My Bush movie?

TP: When we realized no one would make it.

MS: It was a futile waste of time, I don’t know.

TP: George Bush and the Legend of the Glass Tiger.

How do you know Kevin Smith and Weird Al?

MS: Our friend and producing partner, Jason McHugh, he really put that DVD together. He did a great job actually. There is a lot of stuff on that. Weird Al is a friend.

TP: Kevin Smith is just someone we’ve run into from time to time again and we always end up talking and having a great time because we have very similar tastes.

Why does my wife like Team America but not South Park?

TP: That’s strange.

MS: That is strange because to me South Park is so much more accessible.

TP: We always get people that loved Orgazmo but hate South Park, or a portion of the people that love Baseketball but hate South Park. But usually Team America and South Park are pretty similar things.

MS: Yeah, because they’re us. That’s weird.

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