Salon Interviews Team America's Auteurs

Salon does a pre-release Team America q&a with Matt Stone and Trey Parker. Some snippets:

Do you ever feel like you cover your asses too much by taking on targets on opposing sides?

Parker: I don't think so, because we do take somewhat of a stand at the end. I mean, I believe we do make a point at the end of the movie. Some people consider that point to be fairly right-wing, and some people consider it to be fairly left-wing …

What do you think that point is?

Parker: [Laughs] The thing is, obviously, we're not setting out to make a movie going, Look, America, this is how you should run things, this is how it should be. Because then we'd be no better than the fucking actors we hate. But the only thing that we assert is that there's a difference between dicks and assholes. That's the biggest thing that we assert.

Stone: That's such a strong political statement.

Parker: And it really kinda is! Because that's the thing that we realized when we were making the movie. It was always the hardest thing. We wanted to deal with this emotion of being hated as an American. That was the thing that was intriguing to us, and having Gary (the main character) deal with that emotion. And so, him becoming ashamed to be a part of Team America and being ashamed of himself, he comes to realize that, just as he got his brother killed by gorillas -- he didn't kill his brother; he was a dick, he wasn't an asshole -- so too does America have this role in the world as a dick. Cops are dicks, you fucking hate cops, but you need 'em.

Whole thing here (requires sitting through 20 second ad).

Internet Movie Database page here.