http://pitchfork.com/features/interview ... att-stone/"South Park"'s Matt Stone
by Tom Breihan, posted April 12, 2010
Trey Parker and Matt Stone laid the foundations for an animated empire with "The Spirit of Christmas", an incredibly crude animated short they made with pieces of cut-out construction paper in 1995. Out of that came the Comedy Central show "South Park", which debuted in 1997 and which is now the longest-running and highest-rated show in the history of Comedy Central. Even more remarkable than the show's ratings success has been its durability; in 14 seasons, it's never fallen off.
A huge part of the show's success has always been the music. Parker and Stone have written insane numbers of songs for "South Park", and their songs almost always achieve three very difficult things: They're consistently crudely and absurdly funny, they're almost always catchy enough to get stuck in your head, and they always move the plots of their episodes forward. Pitchfork recently spoke with Stone about his favorite musical moments in the show's history, as well as what it was like to work with Radiohead, Isaac Hayes, and Primus.
Pitchfork: Do you know how many songs you've written for the show over the years?
Matt Stone: We've had musical stuff in the show forever. That's mostly because Trey's a big musical fan, and he's a great songwriter. He's been writing songs his whole life. So since the beginning, we've always put a lot of musical moments. The movie [South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut] is a good example of taking it and making a whole musical.
Pitchfork: What are some of your favorite songs from the course of the show?
MS: [Laughs] Man, that is hard. There are so many. One of my favorites we did recently was from last season. I don't know if you saw the pee in the water park episode, but "Not My Water Park" is so fucking great. It has the perfect tone; it's kind of sarcastic but kind of not. I think Trey writes that really well. The best musical moments are when, like "Not My Water Park", it really isn't just a joke of a song; it really pushes the story forward. That's a deeply emotionally significant moment for Cartman, the death of his water park and all these minorities coming in. So I like that one. Man, I should've looked beforehand. I know there's so many.
One I really like is at the end of Team America. [At] the very end, if you watch the entire credits, we did a song called "You Are Worthless, Alec Baldwin". It's sung by Kim Jong-Il, and it was this last-minute addition to the movie. A lot of people don't know about it because you have to stick to the end, but it's this crazy song that fills you in on the entire backstory of Kim Jong-Il's relationship with Alec Baldwin. I think it's pretty funny, and we recorded it at 4 a.m. We might have been... we weren't high on any illicit drugs, but it was like we were high on DayQuil and coffee and everything else we were taking to stay up.
But let's get back to "South Park". Probably the best one from the early years, one good enough to be in a real musical, was "The Lonely Jew on Christmas". Trey can write songs you can't dismiss out of hand, [and this] wasn't a spoof. It was a real song about a real little kid, and it just had a great concept. That was one of those early songs that pointed out to us that, "Oh, wow, there can actually be quality songs on this kind of show." It's a really touching song, and I kind of know how it was because I was a Jewish boy growing up in Colorado [laughs].
Pitchfork: And if you hadn't had that song, it would've been tough to get that sentiment across at the beginning of the episode in a way that wasn't trite.
MS: Having a character get driven to an emotional point where they have to open their mouths and actually sing something... it kind of lands in a way that a film moment doesn't. That's one of the things that I've learned throughout this process, that I love to musicalize things. You do employ a whole level of gravity. You use the emotional heft of music.
We did an episode about this Mormon family that moves to town. And through them telling the story of Joseph Smith and the first Mormons, we flash back, and the whole thing is musicalized, [sings] "Joseph Smith he lived in New York/ Dum dum dum dum dum!" And Trey actually sings, "dum dum dum dum dum." So the whole thing is telling the story, like [sings] "He said God did speak to him now/ Dum dum dum dum dum!" And you just sit there and go, "These stories from the beginning of the Mormon church are just dumb! They're just on their face dumb." And it's not even saying that they're not true or questioning the veracity of them; they're just not very good stories.
There's one part at the end [when Lucy Harris] decides to pull one on Joseph Smith. This is what the Mormons say happened: He comes home with the plates he said God gave him-- he looked at these shitty plates and translated them into something. And [Harris] said, "If these are really from God"-- she takes his translation and hides it, and she said-- "You should be able to translate it word for word again." And so then it goes, [sings] "Lucy Harris, she hid them from him/ Smart smart smart smart smart!" It goes on this whole other trip where she's smart and he's dumb. You couldn't do it any other way than with music.
Pitchfork: You got Primus to do the show's theme song, and that's probably by far the most-heard song they've ever done now. How did you decide to give it to them? It made Primus' song the sort of equivalent of the Danny Elfman "Simpsons" theme.
MS: It wasn't that well thought out. We got the pilot, I was probably 25 years old, and I was a humongous Primus fan in college. I went to see them every time they went to Colorado and thought they were great. We literally got a copy of Frizzle Fry or one of their albums, opened it up, looked in the back, and saw "David Lefkowitz Management." We looked up David Lefkowitz Management in the San Francisco Yellow Pages, because we knew they were Bay Area. We got a number and an address and typed out a letter on a typewriter, and put it in a white envelope. We sent "The Spirit of Christmas", the original tape we did, with it. And we said, "We're doing a pilot for Comedy Central, and we'd love for you to do the song."
Two or three weeks later, I get this call. We're in the office, cutting out our stupid little construction paper and trying to do the show, and I get this call. It was like, "Matt, Les Claypool's on line one." He was my hero at the time. I was so into the guy. And he was on the phone like, "What are you guys looking for? What do you guys need?" He was looking for some direction, and my direction was idiotic. It was like, "Oh just do whatever you want to do, do whatever you want to do. It's a small town in Colorado." That's about how much I gave him. And he came back with that song. It's great. It's such a perfect encapsulation of "South Park".
Pitchfork: Along the same lines, things eventually fell apart between you, but you got Isaac Hayes to play a huge role on the show early on. And you not only got him, but you got him to lampoon this persona that he'd been building up for decades.
MS: He was game! He was game right off the bat. Look, Isaac had been through the real shit-- racial stuff [in] the 1960s, the Black Power movement, Stax Records. That character just doesn't fit in a white Colorado town, and we were having fun with that. He was never offended by anything we ever did in the slightest until we did the thing about Scientology. The first time we met him, we were more nervous than he was. We were going to tell him what we wanted him to do. That first conversation: "OK, the only black guy in this town" [laughs]. And he was like [Isaac Hayes voice] "OK, that sounds good." "And you'll sing soul songs." And he was like [Isaac Hayes voice] "OK." He thought it was funny. We always got along. Even after we did the Scientology thing, he came over and asked us to take it off the air, and we had this very direct but not uncivil conversation about it. We always got along fine. We always had a good time. I feel like maybe one day we would've been able to make amends, but then unfortunately he died.
Pitchfork: And you kind of gave him a late career lift. He had a hit with "Chocolate Salty Balls".
MS: That went to #1 in England. I think he appreciated that, too. Honestly, when we first approached him to do the show, I don't think he was in the best financial shape. The first time we got him to do the voice, I think he did it for the cash, to tell you the truth. But I think he got into it after a while. That first time he showed up, he was doing it well. Didn't he lose all of his publishing rights? He was one of those dudes who bought houses and cars, went broke, and then had to climb his way back.
Pitchfork: You had Radiohead guest star on "Scott Tenorman Must Die". What was it like, first off, to wrangle them onto the show? They were this mysterious band that never did anything that they didn't feel like doing.
MS: I don't know how we did that. I can't remember. I think I met a couple of them at a party, and we just started talking and hanging out. The idea just came up, and we said, "Yeah, let's do the show." I mean, what's great is that they were in one of the most notorious episodes. It was one of our better episodes. I hope they like the show.
What's funny is they're not really even the point of the episode. If you're working with a band and you really want to work them into the episode, you've got to say to them, "Look, we need you around every day and on Tuesday night all night because we need you to do voices as we're changing stuff." We do the show so quickly, and you just can't get bands to do that. It's not really fair. So we worked them in at a point where you can make it so they're in the show but not where you have to produce the show around them.
We recorded them in Santa Barbara. They were on tour, and I drove up to Santa Barbara to direct them. Again, in this adventure of making "South Park", there's these moments, and one was telling Isaac, "You're the only black guy in this white town." Trey made me do it, and Trey went to the bathroom conspicuously at that point because he didn't want to be in the room when I told him this. Then the other one was when I drove up to Santa Barbara to direct Radiohead. Voice-acting in animation, you know, you can't just talk normally. Even the way we're talking now, everything has to be kind of exaggerated. It just doesn't work to talk normally. There's been a few cartoons that try it, and it just doesn't work.
Pitchfork: Like "Dr. Katz"?
MS: With "Dr. Katz", that was the whole concept behind it, so maybe it worked a little better in that. But even in something like "King of the Hill", where it seems more normal, they really are kind of over-emoting and overacting. And I remember having to sit there while Thom Yorke's in a booth. I'm like, "OK, say this line," and he starts to talk. And I kind of had to say, "No, man, you need to, like, really emote." It's such a funny line to give some guy who's such a brilliant singer and who's so brilliant at emoting perfectly, exactly, in such a complex and beautiful way. I'm just trying to get him to do this dumb line, and I have to say, "Hey man, you've got to put some feeling into it!"
Pitchfork: Did they know, at the time, what exactly was going on in that episode? Did they know the kid in the episode was eating his parents?
MS: Probably not. I don't think so. I don't think we'd come up with that yet. We didn't not tell them; we told them everything. We just weren't done with the episode.
Pitchfork: Did you ever hear back from them after they saw it?
MS: Oh yeah, I talked to them after. They liked it.
Pitchfork: You've done a few shows where music is the central part of the plotline. The one I think the most interesting and the funniest was the Moop episode, where Cartman becomes a Christian rock star. It also becomes about music downloading and how that debate was taking over conversations around music at the time. And you practically came out and said, "No, you guys are being greedy. Be happy that people want to hear your songs." Is that still how you feel about it?
MS: It's a really complicated issue. In "South Park", for one thing, we've got to be funny. So it's not like we're being prescriptive, like "Hey, this is the way it should work." We have to be funny, and we're working at the emotions behind the stuff. Yeah, the funny scene of them going, "Look, Britney Spears only has one jet"-- it's like you're making fun of rich people suffering from downloading. But on the other hand, it's not just the rich celebrities who are hurt. There's a full industry, all sorts of people, affected by downloading. And eventually there will be new business models and new kinds of ways to make money, but no one wants to be Lars Ulrich again. No celebrity or rock star, anybody, wants to come out again and take the beating that that guy took, because he sounded very selfish. But I think an underlying point he was trying to make-- or maybe he was just being selfish-- but there is an entire industry of people. That's what you see with, for instance, the WGA strike in film and TV. That was all about the Internet money.
Pitchfork: You also skewered that.
MS: We skewered that, too, but that internet money is going to be there someday. There's new business architecture, and the music industry's actually gotten decimated. But in a way, it's kind of starting over. There are new institutions and new magazines that are going to take over the old ones. There'll be a transitional period. But I don't think people shouldn't care about how to make money off of music. You have to not be so tone-deaf when you talk about it. You have to keep it in perspective.
For us, as artists, we always like when people see our stuff. But at the same time, I've got a house payment and a car payment and so does everybody who works for me at "South Park". There has to be a way to make money off of it. I feel like the Internet trolls, the Internet goblins, all these people demand-- like it's a civil right-- that they be able to get everything for free without watching any ads. It's like, "OK dude, you might be able to do that with your favorite show now. But you won't have any favorite shows in five years." The person who does that and thinks they should be able to download everything they want for free with no ads without any repercussions are being as unreasonable and tone-deaf as Lars Ulrich.
Pitchfork: Lars Ulrich just made himself a huge target, too. He was almost daring you to make that episode.
MS: He really went out. Conceptually, there's a conversation there, though. It's not an open-and-shut case, but you have to know what you sound like when you're saying that stuff. Some basketball star-- Latrell Sprewell, I think-- they offered him $30 million. And literally, without trying to be funny, he said, "$30 million? But I have to try and feed my kids." You know, it was one of those quotes. It's like, "OK dude, you've got to know what the fuck is going on when you talk about this stuff."
Pitchfork: You also did the Kanye episode.
MS: The Kanye episode has a great song in it! The end song, the "Gay Fish" one!
Pitchfork: That's a really great parody of what Kanye was doing musically at that moment.
MS: [laughs] That's funny. Trey kind of had to learn how to sing in Auto-Tune. The thing is that Trey is actually a pretty good singer and can hold a tune. If you do that, it doesn't do quite what you want it to do with those step-ups where it jumps from note to note robotically. Sometimes it can be pretty cool-sounding, but if you're actually a good singer, you can't get it to do that. So Trey had to learn how to sing kind of shitty to make it sound right [laughs]. I love that song. It's so funny. And it does really sound like stuff that Kanye would do. It sounds pretty authentic.
Pitchfork: Did you see Kanye's response on his blog after the episode aired?
MS: Yeah, I did. [laughs] His all-caps response? That was the last thing we expected. These days, we rip on people on "South Park", and they send us letters of thanks. And Kanye's like, "Yeah, I've got to work on myself and be a better person." It's such a weird reaction people are having lately. Maybe it's like we're losing our sting, but maybe people have realized that you should just say, "Yeah, yeah, you're right," and move on.
Pitchfork: I think it's because you're an institution at this point. You're kind of untouchable. If somebody's going to bitch about how they come across on "South Park", they're just going to seem ridiculous. And a lot of the time, the things you're lampooning about these people are pretty clear-cut.
MS: Right. I mean we're like, "Kanye, you are humorless. You do need to grow a sense of humor." Yeah, so that was not what we expected to have happen, to have him thank us. [laughs] I thought we were going to need a bodyguard, you know?
Pitchfork: In one interview, you said you thought that was the moment where you would start getting death threats.
MS: Yeah. I mean, I don't think about that stuff that much. But I was like, "Oh dude, these hip-hop guys, they don't like to fuck around. Especially with homophobia." I think Kanye's actually been on the right side of that. He's been pretty open-minded about gay stuff. But hip-hop's not super gay friendly in general. So the idea that you'd call a guy a gay fish and he'd be like, "Thank you"-- it's pretty weird.
Pitchfork: The only time you guys have done an episode with a billion guest stars was "Chef Aid". Did you achieve what you were going for there? Did you really want to do the "Simpsons" thing where you would try to get as many famous people as possible?
MS: I don't know. I can't remember the thought process behind it-- that was so long ago. A little bit was to launch the album, to come up with a concept. Because we did The South Park Album and everyone wanted to be on The South Park Album, but we wanted to do more as just a Chef album. But of course it wasn't going to sell any records; people wanted to hear Kid Rock and Ozzy and Puffy and shit. Again, this sounds like kind of ancient history because that's the way the record industry was in 1998. We were getting a lot of pressure, "Dude, South Park Album. 'South Park' is big; you've got to do the big thing." I think the "Chef Aid" episode came from us trying to come up with a concept that at least would look like we had a greater thought process behind having a lot of stars on the record. We came up with the concept of a Chef Aid, to help him and his taxes or whatever.
Pitchfork: Who was your favorite person to work with for that episode?
MS: We watched Elton John record, which was a total dream for Trey because he grew up and learned to play piano listening to Elton John. That was amazing. We worked with Ween, with Primus, all these great bands.
The one I completely remember being blown away with was Perry Farrell, who came in and did "Hot Lava". Perry, I live in the same part of L.A. as he does, and we'd met a few times. So I'd actually known him enough to say hi. And I went over and asked him if he wanted to be on the album, and he said, "Yeah, I'll do it." But he didn't know what song it was; he had no idea what he was doing when he showed up to the studio. "So you're going to sing 'Hot Lava'. We want you to sing it." Trey had sung a scratch track: "Well, it's kind of like this, and here are the lyrics." We had the lyrics printed out. Perry listened to it a couple of times. And you know that stereotype; you're thinking, "Oh, he's going to be fucked up. We'll have to do a hundred takes, and he'll make us put it together on Pro-Tools." That was what I thought was going to happen, and Perry is really nice and soft-spoken and cool and stuff. And then he gets into the booth, and then he just unleashes, like fucking... You should listen to the tapes.
He did two takes. I think we only recorded the second take. The first take was great, we were just like, "Let's just get another one, just because you're here." And he belted out another take, and then we just mixed those two takes together, in and out of each other a couple times. Watching somebody just instantly, completely inhabit the song-- I don't know how else to say it. It was really stunning. It was really an amazing moment. It's not the best song in the world. We wrote it; it was based on a stupid fucking song on "South Park". But the performance itself and how quickly he did it-- I was blown away. Goddamn, that guy is really fucking talented. Just the emotion of going from nothing, just sitting in a studio at 3 p.m. in the Valley, to just full-bore, instantly-- he just fucking did it.
Pitchfork: Every once in a while you have Cartman singing actual popular songs. I don't know how that's still funny after however many years it's been since he did "O Holy Night", but it's still funny every single time.
MS: With the Lady Gaga thing, you mean?
Pitchfork: Yeah.
MS: Cartman is just a great character. You bring a lot of that emotional baggage about him to the song. And frankly, Trey's a fucking great singer and performer himself, and he's really great when he's disguising himself as a character because he's not as vulnerable as a personal singer. And I don't know. We had to hear him do Lady Gaga.
Pitchfork: When a new song comes on the radio, do you imagine how it would sound if Cartman sang it?
MS: No, really not very often. That was kind of a one-off. It's always weird songs like "Come Sail Away" or "O Holy Night". But I think we could pretty much just do a Cartman song every couple of months, and I would like to listen to it.
I bolded the Perry / Hot Lava related portion of the interview.
What's funny is the episode where Chef sings Hot Lava was just on the tube last night.
Poor Denver!
