How did two guys making cartoons out of construction paper become icons of modern satire? South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s no-fear approach to topics as squiffy as Elian Gonzalez and Terry Schiavo have earned them scores of uncomfortable fans. Their latest movie, Team America: World Police, tackled U.S. foreign policy and celebrity punditry in the guise of a puppet action movie – complete with a gratuitous sex scene.

As the puppet film comes to DVD in an unrated version, Parker and Stone sat down for drinks at a Santa Monica hotel bar to discuss the new version of the film. But since the movie was well covered during its theatrical run, the subject quickly changed to more important matters.

The Wave: Who’s on your celebrity sh-t list this week?
Matt Stone: No one’s on our sh-t list. We’re on everyone else’s sh-t list. I went to a couple Academy Awards parties and I was definitely like, “Whoa, no one will talk to me.”
Trey Parker: I think by now, after nine years of South Park and after this movie, we’re on just about everybody’s sh-t list.

TW: Are you surprised that you’ve become icons for satire?
MS: The first time I ever heard the word satire was somebody saying, “Oh, you guys do satire,” and I was like, “What’s that?” Since, we’ve discovered what it is.
TP: We’ve never considered ourselves satirists, but because we’re on Comedy Central and because we’re South Park on Comedy Central, we can do any topic we want. There is nothing we can’t do. So it’s just the fact that we’re doing topics like that that other people, especially network TV, won’t touch, that [makes us] satirists.
MS: I think we feel like it’s a whole big fertile ground that other people should be exploiting, but they just don’t. And we keep thinking those people are going to figure it out. You know what I mean? It’s right there. You guys can make fun of it, too. But just no one else will. I kind of feel lucky.

TW: Would you ever do something PG-13?
TP: My fear is that as soon as I get married and have kids, I’ll sort of do what a lot of people do: “Now I’m gonna make films for kids!” I really hope I don’t do that. If I do that, kick me out of this town, will you?

TW: Would you let kids watch your current shows and movies?
TP: I would let my kids watch this stuff way before I’d let them watch something like Full House that I think would make them stupid.

TW: How do you think up your hilarious songs?
TP: Writing musicals is the hardest thing in the world. When the South Park movie came out, there were some critics that said, “Well, it’s obvious that in order to get it to be 90 minutes they filled some time with music.” MS: Time fillers. TP: It was just like, that is by far the hardest thing to do. It’s got to be funny, and not only that, but you want it to move the story forward or tell you something. There’s a lot of movies that try to do the music, like a Michael Bay thing, where it’s just like, “Here now we’re just going to do this MTV sequence for a bit and play this cool song.” And it really doesn’t have a lot to do with the movie. The trick to doing a good musical is that, if you take that music number out, there’s less to the movie there. You would miss it.

TW: What is your favorite musical?
TP: My favorite musical changes all the time. I’m just diehard, totally old school. If they are re-doing Oklahoma in New York, I will be the first one there. I don’t think that’s my favorite. I’m totally cheesy, too. I love Les Miserables. I’ll say it. There I said it, it’s on tape. MS: I think the South Park movie. Although, you know what, actually I have to say Avenue Q is about one of the best things I’ve ever seen. I think Avenue Q is totally brilliant.

TW: You’ve been doing your own movies for years now. Did you ever audition in Hollywood?
TP: No, we never considered ourselves actors. And even, honestly, in Team America, Matt can tell you, I didn’t want to do any voices in Team America. Once we decided Kim Jong Il would be in it, we thought I should do it, but I didn’t want to be Gary. We auditioned people for Gary. And just like everything else we do, it’s not out of a desire to act. It’s out of necessity because the only way we can change everything at the last minute is to do it ourselves. We don’t want to have to be going, “Okay, call the actor in. We’ll change this line, we’ll do this.” It needs to be us so that we can change sh-t on the fly.

[ source: WAVE ]