Trey Parker and Matt Stone Burns That Were Oddly Personal
It’s not exactly a secret that Trey Parker and Matt Stone are pretty ruthless when it comes to mocking celebrities, as evidenced by how they depicted Barbra Streisand as a robotic Kaiju abomination and casually ruined Matt Damon’s life purely because of a botched puppet.
Most of the time, Parker and Stone’s satirical takedowns are motivated by current events and public discourse, but occasionally, their put-downs have had surprisingly personal motives, such as how…
They Blew Up Michael Moore in ‘Team America’ Because of Matt Stone’s Experience With ‘Bowling for Columbine’
Team America: World Police is chock-full of insulting caricatures of famous people, but the film’s harshest portrayal of a celebrity not named “Matt Damon” was clearly Michael Moore, who becomes a literal suicide bomber who can’t not have a slice of pizza in one hand at all times.
“We have a very specific beef with Michael Moore,” Stone said at the time. He had done an interview for Moore’s documentary Bowling for Columbine but didn’t like that his segment was followed by a distinctly South Park-esque animated sequence. According to Stone, “He didn’t mischaracterize me or anything I said in the movie. But what he did do was put this cartoon right after me that made it look like we did that cartoon.”
They Turned ‘Spin’s Dumb Article into Fodder for a ‘South Park’ Conspiracy
After Spin published an article that somehow completely missed the point of a joke in which Randy unconvincingly pretends to be Lorde at a party, Parker and Stone were clearly miffed and quickly introduced a new character; an old-timey, pavement-pounding Spin reporter hellbent on exposing that Randy Marsh is, in fact, Lorde.
Trey Parker Named His ‘Cannibal! The Musical’ Horse and Cartman’s Mom After an Ex
On the (drunken) commentary for Cannibal! The Musical, Parker revealed that his character’s horse, Liane, was named after the ex-fiancée who cheated on him. “I was engaged to this girl, Liane,” Parker said between shots (and before bailing on the commentary altogether to go to a strip club). “We were sorta high school sweethearts. About a month before the wedding, she decided to start sleeping with this guy in an a cappella group. And I really wrote this movie for her. Just so I could ridicule her, basically.”
He would later reuse the name for Eric Cartman’s mom, who has seemingly slept with the entire state of Colorado, including the Denver Broncos.
Russell Crowe’s Drunken ‘South Park’ Role Was Inspired by an Awkward Party
Much of the South Park episode “The New Terrance and Phillip Movie Trailer” is made up of clips of Russell Crowe’s sadly fictional TV show Russell Crowe’s Fightin’ Around the World, in which the Cinderella Man star travels the globe, beating the crap out of strangers — with the help of Tugger the tugboat, who eventually shoots himself in the head as soon as Crowe pulls out a guitar and attempts to sing.
According to Parker and Stone, this depiction of Crowe was motivated partly by stories of him drunkenly assaulting people in various countries but also by their own awkward personal history with the actor. Apparently, they befriended Crowe while on the award show circuit for South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, and he invited them to a listening party for his band’s new album, which Parker described as a mix between “Bon Jovi and Hepatitis B.”
Thinking that they should offer feedback on the unfinished album, Parker made a suggestion to improve the mix, and Crowe was pissed. They ended up having to listen to his album in full three times. Unfortunately for Crowe, the listening party incident happened “right around” the time the pair needed to develop a new South Park idea. As for the moment where Tugger takes his own life, as Parker later said, “That’s sorta how we felt … listening to his music.”
Fair.
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