6 Days to Air: The Making of South Park Page #3

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"Oh, yeah, Matt and Trey,

and Trey's the director.

"Well, Matt"...

And I got calls for,

like... "Hey, you can"...

I mean, I got offers to

direct studio comedies,

the crap sh*t that I probably

didn't want to do anyway,

but, you know, in my head,

I was just like,

"you really don't know

what you're doing."

Like, don't you know what I mean?

Like, yeah, maybe I could go

fool people for a little bit,

and maybe I might get lucky here

or there with a scene or two,

or I might pull off a little bit,

but it's not in my DNA.

I don't have that

competing skill set,

so whatever I've got

channels through him.

Like, it's just like any

time that you get a band,

you can sit there and be like,

"okay, well,

it's all Eddie Van Halen."

But as soon as David Lee Roth leaves,

you're like, "f*** that band."

You know what I mean?

And it's like...You know,

and Eddie can sit there and say,

"well, I write

everything," and it's like,

"yeah, but you're not Van Halen

without David Lee Roth."

Bring in Matt.

Where I can get in and be tough

is exactly where Trey's not,

and where he can be tough

is exactly where I'm not.

That's helped us in the

business of the whole thing too.

Are we talking to each other?

- You can talk to each other...

- That'd be really weird.

You know,

you won't get in an argument with Trey.

Trey's not gonna argue

with you about something,

and I'll argue about your

everything all the time.

Yeah, it's not gonna feel right.

I'll tell you.

Us talking to each other is not...

We don't talk to

each other like that.

You know what I mean?

I'm not trying to throw

a wrench in your thing.

If you want us to look in the

camera and answer questions,

we can do that.

So this is the camera?

Which one's the camera?

- The middle.

- The middle one. Okay.

Trey and Matt's the band,

and no matter who does what or whatever,

that's the band.

We're trying to find out

exactly what Kyle agreed to.

The...There can't be anything

in that agreement that allows

a company to do what they're

talking about to Kyle.

Oh, nope. Here it is right here.

"By clicking 'agree,' you're

also acknowledging that Apple

"may sew your mouth to the butthole

of another iTunes user."

Really broke.

They broke at a bar, and so I did

this little thing with a paper clip,

and see how it's all swirly?

People think it's a

fashion statement.

I was renting a studio apartment,

and I had a little futon on the floor,

and Matt slept...

Would kind of get all his

dirty clothes together

at the end of the day

and sleep on those.

Any money we had was to live

or get our own thing going.

We created this thing called

The Spirit of Christmas on VHS.

People started copying and copying,

and that became this,

like, viral video,

but before the Internet.

It's crazy now to look back

at Spirit of Christmas.

You're like,

"what the f*** is that piece of sh*t?"

- It's crazy.

- So shitty.

Tomorrow is my birthday,

yet all is not right.

Your birthday is on Christmas?

That sucks, dude.

I must find a place

called "The Mall."

Well, we can take you

to the mall, Jesus.

Yeah, it's over this way.

We'd have people call us and say,

"dude, you got to see this thing.

I'm gonna send you this thing."

And we're like, "that's ours."

And then we had people...

'Cause we didn't put our names on it.

That was another thing

that drove people nuts.

We found out people were getting jobs

saying that they did it.

Dudes were getting directing jobs,

commercial jobs, and we just,

like, had no job...

They're like, "we got the guys

that made Spirit of Christmas."

And we're like,

"we made f***ing Spirit of Christmas."

They're like, "yeah, yeah."

We pitched it to FOX,

and we actually made

these big things with

construction paper on 'em,

and I was so proud of it.

It was like a school project.

The woman at fox at the time was like,

"yeah, no.

"You know,

what people want to see in animation is,

"they don't want to see kids.

They want to see families."

And we're like, "well,

we can get into the family.

"You know, we've got...

Each boy could have their family,

and that's"...

And she was like, "no, yeah,

it's just not gonna work."

We went to Comedy Central with it.

Music from Primus opens South Park,

and from there,

four eight-year-old boys

and other crudely drawn

characters will rock your world.

Oh, my God! They killed Kenny!

You bastard!

The highest-rated

television show on cable

for more than a month...

You go to hell!

You go to hell and you die!

South Park on Comedy Central,

an instant cult hit

and cultural icon.

Screw you guys. I'm going home.

Good, you deserve to die,

you little bastard!

Hi, my name is Leslie.

I'll be your genius.

This is all for the pilot.

So they'd put this mouth on,

and then they'd shoot, you know,

two frames of film,

and then they would take that mouth off,

and then, like,

they would dab it like that.

That's how sometimes they'd

get coffee on the teeth.

It took the guys two to

three hours to do one shot,

and it took pretty much

all summer to do the pilot.

No, kitty.

This is my pot pie.

No, kitty. You bad kitty.

No, kitty, it's my pot pie!

Mom!

This is where Cartman

gets the anal probe,

and it's when that bright

blue light comes in.

You know,

he's laying in his bed right here.

It's mostly Trey's style

from high school and drawing.

The style comes from his

passion of Monty Python

and the style that Terry Gilliam

did in Monty Python.

You know, it was still animated,

but you didn't have

to draw every frame.

He'd just draw our characters,

and some of the comedy

comes from the crudeness

of the animation.

Wow, this is great.

Boy, those look shitty.

Like, this is our original

panning shot for the cafeteria.

Yeah, so the frame would be like that,

you know,

so we'd pull the camera way in.

Depending on what was taped down

and what wasn't taped down

on the animation side of it,

that would bring these

characters to life.

Like, 'cause as you're,

you know, changing the mouths

or putting on different eyes,

your character would have

a slightly different bump

and a little jiggle to it.

It's still stop-motion animation.

It's still someone moving

Cartman over and going,

"key frame."

It's still just frame by frame

and a bunch of really talented

people looking at every piece

of visual art and

doing it really fast.

Oh, what should I do on my iPad next?

So instead of coming from back here,

start him here, side view.

And he's like, "Kyle,

what should I do next?"

And he's still doing his thing.

"Kyle, wow, what should I do next?

"Oh, man.

Should I email some friends?

Or maybe I should buy some apps."

Then turns and then goes this way.

So he'll have a little bit of

front view where he's like...

"Oh, wow. This is totally awesome."

Tap, tap, tap.

There a season where you

made the decision, like,

"we're gonna start turning

it over in a week?"

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