This Is What It Was Like to Work As A Writer for Trey Parker and Matt Stone During the First Season of ‘South Park’
South Park may have two creators, but the vast majority of its 300-plus episodes are written and directed by Trey Parker with very little exception. As co-creator Matt Stone put it in the documentary 6 Days to Air: The Making of South Park, “Even though we’re a partnership — and I really do feel that way, that we each bring something different to the table, and that’s what made us survive — the way the stories are expressed is completely through Trey. Trey’s the chef.”
That way of working, however, took a few years for Parker and Stone to figure out. Early on — and particularly during South Park’s first season — Comedy Central set up South Park to operate more like a traditional show with staff writers. Most of those writers, however, would end up getting let go before Season Two.
Still, they did contribute to the ideas and success of that first season, which became a cultural phenomenon pretty much overnight. As such, I got a few of those Season One writers together via Zoom to hear what it was like writing for South Park in the early days when finding inventive ways to kill Kenny was still a top priority and before anyone could have imagined that a singing piece of shit could become a genuine holiday icon.
Don’t Miss
To kick things off, can each of you explain how you came to work on South Park?
Dave Polsky: My manager at the time, Larry Schuman, had a connection to South Park producer Brian Graden, and I met with Brian and pitched him some ideas. Then he said, “Work on those.” I came back with those fleshed out into crazy long outlines, and based on the outlines, they said, “Go meet with Trey and Matt.” I basically pitched them two full outlines, and they liked them.
Phil Stark: I started out there as a P.A., and when they were putting together the writing staff, I asked them if they had a writer’s assistant and they didn’t. So then, I sort of was a writer’s assistant. At some point, I was driving Trey somewhere and he was talking about a script he needed to finish and that I had the notes and that I could finish it. I don’t think I really got to be on the staff, but I got to write that script. I was basically a P.A., a writer’s assistant and a writer all at the same time.
Dan Sterling: My friend Matt Selman, who’s been an executive producer at The Simpsons for decades at this point, was going to meet on South Park for a writer’s job, but he instead got offered the job on The Simpsons. He recommended that they take a look at my spec for 3rd Rock from the Sun. Brian read that, then he had me meet with Trey and Matt and they hired me. I think I was the first person they hired because when we went on the writers’ retreat, it was just me, them and Pam Brady, who wasn’t on the staff. She was consulting with them at that time.
What was the South Park writers’ room like back then?
Stark: Dave, Dan, were both of you guys at the retreat in Big Bear with the hot tub?
Polsky: Yeah.
Sterling: Oh yeah.
Stark: Okay, good. Because I’ve told these stories so many times over my life, but I need somebody who was there to corroborate some of this stuff. I remember a writers’ retreat in Big Bear in a hot tub where all the writers and Matt and Trey were talking about scheisse films and going on a big run about that. The writers were looking at each other, like, “Okay, do we pitch on this? How long do I need to stay in this hot tub?”
Sterling: That hot tub was ground zero for a lot of career inflection points.
So, there was a writers’ room, and there were several writers’ retreats. The first retreat was just me, the guys, Brian Graden and Pam Brady, and that was at the Inn of the Seventh Ray. They were playing a lot of Enya, and the guys were laughing about it. In an early episode, there’s a moment where Stan’s grandpa is trying to kill himself constantly and nobody is sympathizing with him. They don’t understand why he wants to die. And finally, he locks Stan in a closet with Enya playing, and he’s like, “This is what it feels like to be my age.” Then they got it, and they let him kill himself, although I guess maybe he’s still around.
The next retreat was in Palm Springs, and then there was one in Big Bear. Trey had brought some women up. Things had gotten a little bit bigger, and there was a bit of an entourage. It was just me, Dave and Carol Watson, who is no longer with us, that were officially on the writing staff, and Pam Brady as a consultant. Anyway, Trey had brought some women along, and there was a point at which it would’ve been better for me to have gone back to the hotel. But I was so in love with these guys and so in awe of them that I wanted to be part of the action and part of the partying.
I got into that hot tub, and it was clear that I felt superfluous. But I wasn’t taking the hint that it was time to go. I was trying to match Trey and some of the new, dirty lingo that I had learned from him. I had learned the term “cum dumpster” from him, but it didn’t occur to me that maybe while he was trying to charm these women I shouldn’t use the term cum dumpster. I don’t know that I would have survived very long on that show even under the best of circumstances, but I feel like that might have accelerated the timeline for my firing.
What were they like to work for?
Polsky: I didn’t know enough to know how odd this was, but we met once a week for a few hours. We’d be told what time and we showed up for that time, but we didn’t see a lot of them. There was no rhythm to it. I found it hard to get my footing socially. I envied you, Phil, because you seemed to have more of an opportunity to develop a rapport with them.
Stark: I was just thinking about that because I wanted to develop a rapport, but as far as how it was to work with them, they aren’t the kind of guys who walk in and say, “Hey, how’s your weekend?” Matt a little bit more, but Trey definitely isn’t. I did get to be around when, for instance, they’d be getting notes calls from Comedy Central. Their thing would always be, “Fuck that! Fuck that guy! They say we can’t do that? Fuck them!” And that was the spirit of almost all the pitches that ended up happening. It would turn into an episode about it. The takeaway was, it was really inspirational to see them with that work ethic, but it was like you were watching a play and you didn’t get to really interact with the main characters who were doing their thing.
Sterling: I’m having flashbacks. I tended to come in even when they didn’t call me in, because I wanted to be around there and use the office space, and I might have had a crush on one of the animators. I knew I felt better when Matt was farting on me on a regular basis. You don’t do that to somebody if you’re not happy with what they’re up to. So Matt would come up and just fart directly on me. It might as well have been a back rub for me.
But it was stressful because I wanted more engagement, more feedback. I was so in awe of those guys, and I wanted to be included more. It was my first writing job that I’d ever had so I had no idea how to be on the staff and how to know if you’re doing well, and they had absolutely no interest in nurturing you or giving feedback. I mean, they were in the middle of being overnight stars at age 25 or 26, and it wasn’t like a regular WGA show where there’s some mentoring. You were just flailing. I found it hard.
Stark: Comedy Central was like, “Do a traditional staff,” and they did it, but moving on, they didn’t have a traditional setup. They brought in people on the fly who they liked so they could hang in the way that they needed them to.
Polsky: Which makes more sense for them.
Stark: On a typical show, you come in with pitches and you pitch your take, then the showrunners maybe pick a couple that they like and they do them. With Matt and Trey, we all came in and pitched our takes then Matt and Trey were like, “You know what I want to do an episode about? My family’s Christmas shit legend.” They didn’t develop the staff’s ideas, and the show didn’t become the voice of a group of people in the way that most network shows do.
Sterling: It was a singular vision like few shows are.
So Comedy Central told them to hire writers and they did, but—
Sterling: But they didn’t really want them.
What were you guys able to contribute?
Sterling: I wrote a couple of scripts. I wrote a script called “An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig.” And then, at that Big Bear retreat, Mr. Hankey was brought up by Trey; it was something from his toilet training. I was assigned to write the first script that existed for Mr. Hankey, which turned out to not be the way things went down. I wrote a script about Mr. Hankey in a film festival in South Park that was later produced in Season Two, but they put somebody else’s name on it: Nancy Pimental. They gave her the credit for writing that script, but I wrote the first draft of it.
Polsky: I remember, Dan, one of the meetings where we had gone over the script you wrote. I remember an image of Mr. Hankey at an organ playing in the sewers, and I remember Trey particularly loving that and him saying something like, “Man, you really brought it,” which didn’t happen a lot.
Sterling: I can’t believe you remember that. I remember him saying that too. He said it in a way that seemed almost like he couldn’t make sense of it. To get a compliment from Trey at that time was—
Stark: Just to get a direct statement and a look, that would be pretty amazing.
Dave, what were you able to contribute?
Polsky: Oh gosh. I don’t know if I can claim very much. I think my name’s on two episodes, “Damien” and “Pink Eye.” I can’t recall the specific gags that I got in, but Trey and Matt did an interview saying that “Damien” was sort of a pivotal episode for the show because of the way we were able to connect the kids’ story with the big hook story and that was my contribution. That was the one thing that I could do because my way of working is very much through structure. I find my way into things through structure more than gags, which wasn’t a source of success for me on the show.
Phil?
Stark: Well, I ended up with a couple of credits. The first was when I finished up the Halloween script. Then I got to pitch and that episode ended up being “Mecha-Streisand.” I was really into Godzilla and Mechagodzilla, and I pitched something in that area. I think I pitched Barbara, but from there, it probably took on a whole life of its own in terms of what was mine and what was the guys’. It all ends up being the guys’ at a certain point anyway.
All of these episodes are interesting to go back to and look at now with a view for what it became, because you can really see the roots. Like, when they go after somebody, there’s no holding back, and you’re like, “I can’t believe they said that.”
None of you ended up going onto Season Two. Do you mind sharing why?
Sterling: For me, they were too threatened by my talent. (Laughs)
Stark: Clearly, it was all downhill ever since we left.
Sterling: I don’t think there’s any way to sugarcoat it: I wasn’t sufficiently useful. On top of that, I don’t think I ever recovered from my performance in the hot tub. I don’t think I was contributing either creatively or socially over there.
Stark: I was very disappointed not to come back for the second season. But we all got credits on the hottest fucking show in the universe. Because of that, we got jobs where you have Guild minimums and offices and all of that. Then, getting on a more conventional writing staff, you’re like, “Okay, this is how Comedy Central was trying to get them to do it, but clearly Matt and Trey are a different situation.” I can’t say I’m jealous or resentful at all. It was a wonderful credit.
It sounds like they didn’t know how to use a writing staff no matter who it was.
Stark: Well, I think they did, but they just said, “We don’t want to do it like this.”
Polsky: I think that’s right. A few of us were let go at the same time. They had me come into the office, and they told me. It was nice that they did it in person. I was stunned, but I could tell that, like Dan was saying, I wasn’t contributing creatively or socially. Very quickly afterwards, I realized they were finding their way with how they wanted to do it, and God bless them. They should do it the way they want to do it. And like Phil said, I was very glad to have the credit. I could see right away what a powerful credit it was, and it got me meetings galore — even after the purge.
Sterling: Yeah, the purge, I’m still working it out. Maybe once a year, I have a dream: They reach back out to me after all these decades having seen what I’ve done, and they want to do something with me. And in my dream, of course, I always fuck it up with them.
Source link
