South Park Libertarians

Trey Parker and Matt Stone on liberals, conservatives, censorship, and religion.

Nick Gillespie & Jesse Walker from the December 2006 issue

(Page 4 of 4)

This was on a Wednesday. The rerun was supposed to air that night. So we bitched and moaned and yelled at them on the phone, and they said, “You may be mad about that, but what you’re really going to be mad about is we don’t want you to go to the press and say anything.” That was really tough, because that felt like we were playing along with this, to me, fundamentally immoral organization like Scientology. But then we realized —and luckily it came true—that you can’t just pull an episode off the air anymore. People are going to find out. Sure enough, it was all over the press. The Internet makes those backroom deals a lot harder to do.

Reason: You have a money-making franchise, and you’re built into a large multinational corporation’s distribution channel. Do you feel more worried when you do something that might rock the boat?

Parker: This last year has been a really amazing year. We’ve suddenly found ourselves back in the headlines again because of the shows we were doing. It wasn’t an intentional thing. It was just that we’ve reached that level now where we’re very comfortable saying, “You know what? We’re done. We’ve made all the money we need, and we both have always had dreams of doing other things.” As soon as they say, “We’re not going to let you do a Muhammad episode,” we can say, “All right, well, we’re not going to do any more shows for you this season.”

Stone: They were really bummed out when we called them and said we’re going to do a Muhammad episode. They’re like, “Ahh, fuck. Oh my God, you guys.” Because they can’t tell us no. A smaller show, they would’ve just said, “No, you can’t do it. End of story.” And a bigger show like The Simpsons wouldn’t dare risk their franchise. It’s such a stupid political move, but we’re just stupid enough to do it.

Reason: This is a bizarre time to be alive. You have places like YouTube, where you can create whatever you want and disseminate it. At the same time, you have lawsuits, and you have people literally being killed. So what’s the state of free expression?

Stone: We obviously have a very one-sided view of it. Basically all we’ve ever done is said what we wanted to say, and people have just thrown money at us. We would love to be very Michael Moore and go out there and go, “Yeah, they’re trying to quiet us.” Because that immediately gets people on your side.

Comments

|11.12.09 @ 9:47PM|#

Thanks for doing this interview! South Park is so hilarious! Matt and Trey are geniuses!