Parker and Stone Try Not to Punk Out

By Joel Stein

You can only take a punk for so long. Eventually he's going to chew on your roll of tinfoil, and your love affair will end. South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, TV's only true punks, have done something to irk almost everyone. After their blistering success with South Park two years ago, the duo did the following: concluded a heavily promoted South Park cliffhanger with farting stick figures in place of the regular characters; directed a short movie starring Stone's dancing penis; produced a news show staffed by people with Down syndrome; released Orgazmo, a movie about a Mormon porn star; starred in the flop BASEketball; argued that they should be co-presidents of Comedy Central; and refused to make South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, due out on June 30, into a PG-13 film. Iggy Pop didn't have that kind of arsenal.

"There's something about when an idea comes up that just shouldn't be done, it's more exciting to me," says Stone. "That's probably a character flaw of ours. Sometimes it pays off huge, and sometimes it backfires." The angry public reaction to the first season's cliffhanger episode, which foreshadowed the second's sagging ratings, shocked them both. "We thought what everyone loved is that the show was a middle finger to convention. We were in a daze wondering how we could be so wrong about our own audience," says Parker. Adds Stone: "Basically, you can play jokes whenever you want, but you can't play one on your audience. TV is a vicarious experience and not an interactive one."

They seem just as thoughtful about most of their transgressions, all of which, except perhaps BASEketball, they still find funny. Orgazmo, which was written before South Park, they say is funny if thought of as a guerrilla film to be shown at Sundance to annoy local Mormons. The Down syndrome tape, which was recently purchased by the BBC, is funny, they say, not because of the newscasters but because of the uncomfortable reactions people have when dealing with the disabled. And the dancing penises? It's just that they still think dancing penises are funny.

As for the ratings board and Paramount executives, with whom they have fought over the upcoming film, they admit they refuse to compromise. "It's not that we don't care about our careers. We're just not insane about our careers like some people here are," says Parker. "We know this is going to end. I don't want to be 55 and doing South Park."

In the meantime, their bosses continue to cheer them on. "They're like the Sex Pistols," says Doug Herzog, the president of Fox, who used to run Comedy Central. "They're the closest thing to rock stars I've encountered in the television business." Perhaps their ultimate punk statement is their next project: the prequel to Dumb and Dumber. "That," says Parker, "was pretty much just for the money."

--By Joel Stein