Exclusive: Co-Creator Matt Stone tells us how they completed their post-election episode less than 24 hours after the winner was known.

IGN TV: First and foremost, I want to ask you: how did you get this episode finished in time?

Matt Stone: We talked about doing an election episode for a couple of months. Usually we start talking about these things when we start talking about the whole run, about a month ago. So we started talking about what episodes we'd like to do. When we started talking about the election, we were like "That's on a Tuesday. Wednesday is the next day... We could have a whole episode!"

So we started talking about stories that would be neutral to who won. And that's when we came up with the whole diamond heist thing. We were going to produce a couple of different shows, but we don't do the show that far in advance. So as it got closer, in the last few weeks �?it was so obvious that Obama was going to win that we just produced the Obama show. We just did it and assumed the polls would be right.

IGN: Is it three weeks that is your typical turnaround?

Stone: Well, really it's about a week

 

IGN: Okay, wow.

Stone: So we didn't really start in earnest on this show until one week ago. For the speeches we had a blank space in there, with the acceptance and concession speeches in there. That only takes us a couple hours to do. It's a very easy animation. The main thing was waiting until they gave the speeches so we could get the backdrops and see what it looked like. Then we copied down the speech and put it in there.

What was funny is that we'd written placeholder crap and put it in there. It was "I want to thank my fellow Americans and blah blah blah" and "Change is going to come.." We just wrote some junk to put in there as temp, and it was amazing how much the temporary stuff matched the boilerplate in there. We then took a few things that people would remember, like Obama promising his kids the dog. We copied the words and put that in, but that was easy for us because we do the show so quick. We were here all night, but we usually are on Tuesday finishing the show.

IGN: So you didn't deliver it late to the network?

Stone: Well, we always deliver it late. [Laughs] We can't get any later than we do! We're delivering it right up against the wire every single week. We can't do it any later or it won't make the air. Trey and I got home at 10:30 yesterday morning. We're there for 24 hours. It sucks, I f***ing hate it! It's physically a challenge and kind of a torment, but it's really the only way we know how to do the show.

IGN: So when you were breaking this episode, how did you decide which characters would be on which side of the political spectrum?

Stone: Well, Randy is funny when he gets drunk. It was more the circumstances for what we needed to make the story work. Like we knew Kyle's brother was going to get hurt, so his family had to be out drunk and partying. And Garrison, it's funny that he's a republican because he's this total self-hating gay man. It was pretty arbitrary to tell you the truth. It isn't even really that political of an episode, really. The Obama supporters partying in the street, you knew that when he won people would party in the street. And every election the other side is devastated and convinced it's the end of the world. At least the ones I can remember.

IGN: The timing of this is so perfect. You get to call it "about last night" and mean it literally. Now you guys are a mystery, politically. You're always confusing people as to which side you fall �?which is certainly good for comedians. In this case, you seem to come up out of the chaos of this election and say "Ok everyone, calm down."

Stone: Yeah. Well, first of all we wanted it to be funny. Unfortunately you get into this thing where you go "I want to say this!" or "I have fire in my belly about this today!" and you end up saying to yourself �?being me or Trey �?"Okay, settle down. What would actually be funny?" So even though you have your own personal or political things you're thinking about you go, "but that's not funny." You have to do that. It was important for us to make something funny that said �?"You're a little over the top, and you're a little over the top." But ultimately we didn't want to make something super cynical.

If there's any criticism that gets me…and mostly I don't really care about criticism. I mean, you can't do the kind of comedy we do without having some people really mad and some really happy about it. If you make something that everyone likes, it's pretty milquetoast. The one that we do get, that I think people misunderstand us, is that we make fun of people who care about something. I've heard "oh they just don't care about anything. They just sit there smugly and say, 'Well, look at you, you care and we don't care about anything!'" We got that criticism on Team America too. And we don't feel that way. We've never thought about the show as ultimately cynical. We actually think about that part of it, that we don't want to make a cynical show. Maybe that's because we're actually so cynical that something kind of cynical seems not cynical to us.

Even the Obama supporters in this episode. Yeah, we're kind of making fun of it, but Randy is obviously drunk and out of control. He's punching his boss and taking it to this retarded level. And that's just his story. We're not saying all Obama supporters are a**holes for being happy that day. It's satire, you have to push it a little bit. That's the criticism where we go "No, that's not true �?we do care about this stuff!" We stayed up 30 hours straight to get it on the air, so we do care about it.
IGN: There's a great moment in this episode where one McCain supporter watches other McCain supporters start beating each other up to get into the "Ark." And he says "Look, society is falling apart and Obama's only been elected for four hours!" But of course, it's only them that they're talking about. I thought that was a great comment on the echo chamber that forms around the devotees on either side.

Stone: It does. And to be fair, it happened the last time Bush was elected too. I had friends who cried for two days. On one hand, campaigns are emotional so we don't fault people for getting emotional about them. But it just seems like our job is to have fun with it. If you just read what McCain supporters were writing before the election, you would think that when Obama wins…They're saying "it'll be the end of the world, oh my God!" And I'm reading this thinking "You know he's going to be elected, right? Why are you writing this like it's only a possibility?

So, let's say you're Rush Limbaugh. You can't say "Obama is probably going to win." You have to basically lie and go "Oh no, it's really close!" And if you're a regular person you actually believe it. And in fact, it's decided a while ago. Well, not decided because elections are always that day �?but you should have been ready for this. And the other side is sort of the same, but I guess you can't really get ready for the moment a black man is elected president. That's just crazy and kind of trippy. So yeah, we put it all on black by producing the Obama episode but I mean…the whole wheel was pretty black except for maybe one red. It was a highly slanted board.

IGN: What was your contingency plan if McCain managed to pull this out?

Stone: If there was some miracle, we had one plan where we were going to finish the show and then at about seven in the morning, Trey and I were going to get really drunk and play the show and do our own Mystery Science Theater 3000 over the top of it, where we would badly dub in lines. You would have watched the scene where everyone was happy about Obama being president �?but we would have badly and purposefully badly dubbed over the top "Oh my God! He didn't win, we're going to riot!"

And the McCain supporters would have locked themselves into the ark to protect themselves from the rioting. And we would have dubbed in a couple of lines where McCain would have won, not Obama �?but they're still working to take the diamond, so that's all that matters. That was our one really s***y solution. There was a really stressful fifteen minutes there where we thought "Oh man, what if we're wrong?" We really banked on it.

IGN: Now when Obama goes to the White House a question popped into my head. Because I've noticed that you guys seem to stray away from ever doing Bush jokes, for the most part.

Stone: Right.
IGN: I was thinking "Are they going to have a moment with Bush �?will he be there?" And he isn't. So, to the end of his Presidency, you guys seem to be still avoiding him. Is that because of the sitcom [Stone and Parker produced That's My Bush] or what is it?

Stone: It is a little bit. Some comedians were born during the Bush era, and some comedians died. And the ones that died got fixated on a single person to me. We did the sitcom �?and he was kind of a loveable guy in that, which was funny to us. He never even came up in this episode. He seems kind of a dead man walking at this point. I mean, what do you joke about the guy, he's irrelevant. He's President for a few more months. Actually, we had this one storyline where Bush was going to show up at the end and take the blame �?like Batman does in Dark Knight. Because people need someone to hate. And we'd make him this heroic figure who takes the blame, because that would just f*** with people.

But mostly, I'm tired of Bush jokes. I was tired of them about a year after he was elected. It's not a political thing. When is the last time you heard a good Bush joke that really made you laugh? It's just tiring. And it's been done. We like to find, for the most part �?we try to find virgin territory to stamp around in and pee in. Bush has just been done.

IGN: The Sarah Palin joke reminded me a bit of that old SNL bit where Reagan turned out to be the mastermind of Iran Contra.

Stone: You know, a friend said the same thing and I sort of remember that. And it works because she's so obviously not that.

IGN: And you give her a British accent.

Stone: Right, we give her the accent to make her seem super smart. And we had to fit the Ocean's Eleven model. We're much more reverent of movies �?even something as cheesy as Ocean's Eleven. It's not the greatest movie of all time, but you look at it and say "There's some skillful things in that movie." I mean, we cared about it fitting Ocean's Eleven, so we didn't give a f*** about Sarah Palin. It is really more important that we get the movie right then any political statement.

We purposely stay politically confusing. We play the spectrum from doing things that are either not political at all or spot on. And some work better than others. I mean, we've been around for 10 years and I don't like everything we've done. We've experimented and learned. I think stuff that works the best is not when we talk about the politics, like "If he takes Pennsylvania, he can win the whole thing!" It's more the emotions behind the politics, and why do people feel this way. And admitting we're all human beings.

Yes there are policy things you can make a show about, but ultimately it's "Well, people like this guy." So we want to focus on that, the emotional side of it. And then we can sit down and watch a show and we'll even go "Oh, I guess we kind of said this�? I think that's when we succeed, and again �?I think we've done it with varying degrees of success, but that works more than "let's say this about this political issue."

Besides, there are really smart shows, like actually smart -- like The Daily Show and Colbert -- they do that really, really well. And I don't think we could compete with that.
IGN: The way I took this episode was, with the Ocean's Eleven story, you're kind of saying "all politicians are crooks."

Stone: We thought about that. That it could be taken that way.

IGN: But then you have this one guy, who just maybe, maybe this time - and this is the opposite of cynical �?maybe he'll hang up his crook hat and make a change.

Stone: Now see, you saw it that way. But maybe a total republican would say "Look, they made him a crook!" So it's a bit of a Rorschach.

IGN: Right. I mean, you have that one McCain supporter who says "Maybe he won't be so terrible." But of course his first appointment they'll go back to being enemies. But I think you guys capture that one moment where everyone thinks "maybe this is gonna work."

Stone: Yeah. And I think what frustrated liberals �?or self described liberals �?about us, and we've gotten some over the years... Especially with Team America, my God…But we really are optimistic. I'm a hot head and I can drive around and get pissed off about America or society or Los Angeles, where we live. But ultimately we've been optimistic since we started doing the show. Since the Clinton administration we've always been on that side of, on a fundamental level, we think tomorrow will be better than today. I feel that's Trey and I's operating attitude. We do ends of shows that are really dark, sometimes as an anti-ending. But we always consider everything we've done �?even Team America - as optimistic. But a lot of people haven't seen that from us.

IGN: Okay, one last question and I'll let you go.

Stone: Yeah �?we've still got to figure out what the f*** we're going to do next week. We're all just sitting around here so beat and we have no idea what we're doing next week.
IGN: Then here it is: I know, as a fan of the show if something big happens I'm always thinking, "I wonder if South Park will do something about this." And a lot of people are the same. Do ever feel that pressure of being this prism for cultural moments?

Stone: Yeah, we do a little bit. Sometimes we do. It's a blessing and a curse. It's a curse, because sometimes we're like "Now we have to do something on this." But in general if it's something like an election or something that's big -- like Katrina or something like that -- You almost want to say something. But before the actual election we didn't want any part of the whole mess. We thought it would be funny to do it the day after, whereas some people expected us to do something the first episode back. And then right before the election, we're doing the guinea pig episode and people are like "what the f*** are you doing?!" And that's just what we wanted to do. It depends on what days you ask me. Somedays I feel it's a horrible curse and we hate feeling it some times. On the other hand, it's a cool position to be in where if we say this �?millions of people will see it. So I can't deny that sometimes you can get drunk with power.

IGN: Like you think "Maybe "Manbearpig" is why Al Gore didn't run�?

Stone: Right. "Maybe it was us!" But we don't really think that about ourselves, that we can actually affect something. But right now, we've got to think of an episode for next week and we're sitting here thinking "What the f*** do we do?" So I wish we had some huge issue that was obvious that we needed to do. So absent a worldwide issue that everyone is thinking about, we have to actually not be derivative and come up with our s**t.

IGN: Well maybe it'll happen tomorrow morning.

Stone: We bank on that! We'll go home and watch the news hoping we get something. And we get a lot of attention for these episodes, but there's probably two, three, four max that are like this. And the rest are guinea pigs and s**t like that. So that's mostly what we try and do, is come up with stuff like that.

Elementary School Musical 

Sweet, another movie spoof! Although I have to say, this one I thoroughly enjoyed. Most likely that’s because I can relate to the boys�?baffling “This is what’s cool now?�?appraisal of the High School Musical “phenomenon,�?which is apparently a real thing and not, as I have long suspected, some conspiratorial ruse perpetrated by the Disney corporation, People magazine, Wal-Mart, and Access Hollywood. According to IMDB, HSM 3: Contractual Obligation has already pulled in more than $60 million and climbing domestically, and seeing those numbers—not to mention the fact that something called a “Zac Efron�?(which I believe is some sort of Aryan/Shetland pony hybrid) is advertised on my TV nearly every hour on the hour—really makes me identify with Cartman’s sentiment: “If this is what’s cool now, I no longer have any connection to the real world.�?(Of course, I also feel that way whenever I look at the Nielsen ratings and Billboard Hot 100, and have yet to try offing myself.)

Seriously, I don’t get the “musical revival�?thing. There’s probably some smarty-pants Slate article out there that draws a correlation between a downward-trending economy and rising demand for big, splashy fantasy worlds where problems are solved with an old-fashioned song and dance, but it’s late and I’m too lazy to find it. All I know is I’m not on board with this whole razzle-dazzle renaissance—and I never have been, actually. That’s probably because I grew up in a theatre household; my mother has been active as a stage manager, props designer, and occasional actress since I was a kid, so over the years I’ve been dragged to every goddamn Andrew Lloyd Webber musical you can name, as well as some by playwrights who aren’t nearly so subtle and nuanced. As a result, I’m incurably infected with musical theater. I loathe the fact that I know the words to half of A Chorus Line, I can’t stand the sound of Michael Crawford’s voice, and just the opening bars of Rent’s “Seasons Of Love�?are enough to send me into a flying fit of rage. (Albeit one full of tolerance and understanding, especially for HIV-ridden street musicians.) As far as I’m concerned, if The Who didn’t do the soundtrack, it’s not that one episode of Buffy, or it doesn’t have Rick Moranis and a giant, man-eating plant, then go on and sing out, Louise—right the fuck out into heavy traffic.

Anyway, so yeah�?I’m very, very grateful I’m not stuck in school right now dealing with High School Musical mania, which is where the boys suddenly find themselves in this episode, with all of the other students around them suddenly bursting into up-tempo pop numbers about “being special in your own way.�?Leading the pack is the new third-grader, Bryden, whom all the girls dig—so much so that Stan starts to worry that he’s going to lose Wendy to him because he can sing and dance better than anyone. Ironically, Bryden doesn’t even want to sing: He’d rather play basketball, but his abusive father won’t let him. Meanwhile, the boys�?inability to get with the choreographed program causes their already fragile social standing to slip considerably, to the point where they’re hanging out with a heretofore unseen lisping diabetic named Scott Malkinson. Despite making a pact to never give in to HSM peer pressure, Stan finally convinces them that they’ve hit rock bottom (“Right now everyone thinks Butters is cooler than any of you�?, and the guys study up for their big closing number. Of course, by then it’s totally moot: Bryden has officially given up performing for sports (his dad was apparently swayed by the awesome “jock jam�?power of Gary Glitter and Queen) and it turns out that nobody cared much about the singing in the first place. Everyone just liked Bryden for Bryden, which just goes to prove the old saw that being yourself is always the best way to win friends, as long as you’re super cool and good looking.

All in all, a simple, very straightforward little satire of one of the more ridiculous artforms known to man—albeit one that was a bit disingenuous, considering how often South Park characters have broken into song. I especially enjoyed Stan finally trying to join in with his ever-present backing chorus and only coming up with snatches of “I’ve Been Working On The Railroad�?and “Happy Birthday,�?as well as any of Cartman’s “Oh God, shut up!�?reactions—which is exactly how I always feel. And while I’m sure that had I actually seen HSM, I might have appreciated all the specific allusions more (feel free to out yourself in the comments if you like), something tells me I’ll live just fine without. Add to that a funny, albeit honkingly obvious closing song (“Do what you want to do / Just make sure what you’re doing is popular with everyone else�? and you pretty much have an A episode�?

Except then South Park had to pull one of its old “run an already sub-par joke into the ground�?tricks and have Bryden’s dad Mr. Queermo (Get it? He likes theater and is thus ultra super mega gay!) be an over-the-top swishy stereotype doling out limp-wristed slaps to everyone, including his wife, the school basketball coach, and two intervening officers from Child Protective Services. Not particularly funny the first couple of times, even less so the last dozen. Overall Mr. Queermo just felt like lazy, sophomoric shorthand—although I suppose one could argue that this was “meta-commentary�?on the kind of shallowly sketched archetypes you usually find in musicals. Eh. Yeah, still not funny, though, and it dumbed down an otherwise silly-smart episode that nevertheless ranks as one of the standouts from what's proven to be a very hit-or-miss season.

Grade: B+

Stray observations:

- This is yet another episode where the boys learn that, beyond their tiny clique, not very many people at school like them. Is this building to something?

- The writers have been crazy with the continuity callbacks lately—first with the allusion to Indy getting raped two episodes ago, and now Clyde’s response to, “Where have you guys been?�?(“Peru.�?

- “Go right back to your room and sing a ballad, mister!�?

The Ungroundable

It’s the end of another South Park season, and thus probably a good time to ask this question: What are we looking for in the show? I’m not sure what the answer is, but I have to say this: There was no episode in this season that really blew me away, which is fine—I still like South Park. It makes me chuckle consistently, and occasionally actually laugh at something insightful. But I’ve never really surprised anymore, and that’s a little bit of a dangerous place for a show like this to be.

Anyway, enough of that and onto “The Ungroundable,�?which had a headstart on laughs for me when I got a Comedy Central e-mail today that said it was about Goths and vampires. After the episode, I’m pretty tickled: It was a good one to end the season on—remarkably free of most SP conventions, and full of non-main characters, which is so often a good sign.

The only scene that wasn’t really connected directly to the main storyline (and actually included the four “stars�? was the computer lab, with Mr. Mackey trying to make sense of a manual and the kids just blasting away—I imagine this is actually what school computer labs are like now, and it makes me think I was born about 15 years too early. (In my day, we had an extra classroom full of Apple IIes, and a great treat was playing Oregon Trail or that weird pirate game—on a green-only monitor, of course.)

But then it was onto the A-plot, which was terrifically Butters-centric. The other boys send him off on a mission to spy on the new subculture at school—vampires—he takes the mission seriously. The vampires were pretty damn funny, and though I have no idea what’s happening in elementary schools these days (seriously, Mr. parole officer, no idea), I’m guessing that the Twilight phenomenon is actually making it “cool�?for kids to get all vamp-y.

And there’s no doubt in my mind that this is pissing off Goth kids, because the Goth kids love to find things to be pissed about. And damn, the four Goth kids on SP are pretty damn great, I think. The one who flips his hair back all the time has the greatest voice, as does the girl in the black fishnets. (Is “the midget�?supposed to be a guy or a girl?) More on them later. First, of course, Butters—who’s hectored at home by his overbearing dad—so he becomes a vampire. He got a couple of great moments, especially when he hissed at his dad and puked on Cartman’s floor.

I was waiting after about five minutes for the first Hot Topic joke to come along, and the episode didn’t disappoint. Those of us who were sentient when goth actually was a slightly weird, definitely marginalized subculture still find the store fascinating—it’s the most blatant co-option of a “rebellious�?style that’s ever happened, and I’m including Urban Outfitters selling pre-distressed Ramones T-shirts.

I actually loved that the solution the goth kids came up with to defeat the preppy vampires was to simply walk in and burn the place down. Yeah, real goth kids probably would’ve just stayed in the basement and bitched about it (and listened to Trey and Matt’s awesome goth parody songs), but it was fitting. You can tell that Parker and Stone relate to the goth kids, even as they make fun of them. (And damn, the lead one has a cane. I forgot how much I loved that.)

When things return to normal—Butters reconciles with his parents, of course—the goth kids get a chance to make a stand and tell their side of the story, which was awfully John Hughes-like, except without the lessons. “Anyone who thinks they’re actually a vampire is freaking retarded,�?says one. “Fuck all of you,�?says the other. Amen.

And here’s what it made me think about South Park overall: I want to see the rest of the town more. I’m a little/lot sick of Kenny, Kyle, Cartman, and Stan. I want to know what the goth kids are up to. I want to see the rest of the school a little more. I miss Chef. I want Butters to freak out. I’ll take a whole Tweak episode. Give me Towelie, dammit, if that’s where the funny is.

Grade: B

Stray observations:

-- Cartman: “You got pwned baby!�?BR>

-- I laughed pretty much every time the lead vampire said “per se.�?BR>

-- “I think I would make a really good vampire if you’d just give me the opportunity.�?BR>

-- There’s nothing more true than the stereotype of goth kids drinking coffee in an all-night diner.