Somebody in the forums at South Park Studios transcribed an interview with Trey Parker and Matt Stone from Hollywood, Interruped, on their avowed hatred for celebrities. I think Matt Stone might be a little soft on Janeane Garofalo, Sean Penn et al.
When Hollywood, Interrupted met up with Stone and Parker at their Marina Del Rey studio, there was no Pellegrino water offered to us and no tales of a recent soul-searching trip to a Third World country. Instead, the two irreverent satirists laid out a serious set of grievances against the self-satisfied Hollywood establishment. Apparently, Comedy Central doesn’t do background checks.
Trey Parker (TP): When we started out, we didn’t know anything about political correctness. We were just two guys from Colorado, and it was because we didn’t know any better that we did the kind of humor we did. We like being rebellious, and we like flying in the face of what people think we should say.
Hollywood, Interrupted (HI): Much of the anti-PC material out there is in the form of cartoons created by those outside of the Hollywood elite.
Matt Stone (MS): It takes someone like Matt Groening, who’s from Washington, or Mike Judge, who grew up in Albuquerque. The really creative sh*t always comes from the middle of the country. People in Hollywood are surprised it’s all a smash hit, but the shows represent the view of most of the country – just not here. Hollywood keeps coming out with these sitcoms with two gay Jewish guys in New York. Where we’re from, no one’s interested in that sh*t. That’s been done to death, and it’s just not funny.
HI: How do you think Hollywood feels about its audience, the regular people in the country?
TP: People in the middle of the country do not matter AT ALL to the entertainment people in LA or New York. People in the entertainment industry are by and large whore-chasing drug-addict f*ck-ups, right? But they still believe they’re better than the guy in Wyoming who really loves his wife and takes care of his kids and is a good, outstanding, wholesome person. Hollywood views regular people as children, and they think they’re the smart ones who need to tell the idiots out there how to be.
HI: PC Hollywood treats regular people like children, but also doesn’t believe they can understand or appreciate smart jokes or irony.
MS: We see that all the time. Early on in ‘South Park’, we would have Cartman say, ‘Shut up Kyle, you’re a dirty Jew.’ Cartman is a little racist, and he just heard that someplace. Kyle always tells him to f*ck off. In the beginning we were told you can’t do that because there would be a lot of people out there that would repeat it without irony. That somehow they’ll think it’s okay to say, ‘You’re a dirty Jew.’ And we’d say, no they’re smart in the middle of the country, they get it. In Hollywood, there’s a whole feeling that they have to protect Middle America from itself. We can all laugh at Jew jokes and gay jokes, and I can make a black joke because I’m enlightened here in Hollywood, but don’t put that on TV because when people in Nebraska hear it, they’re going to yell the ‘N word’ at the next black person. Political correctness started from there, with the idea that the middle of the country can’t handle sophisticated jokes. And that’s why ‘South Park’ was a big hit up front, because it doesn’t treat the viewer like a f*cking retard.
HI: Hollywood uses political correctness as a tool to save and heal the unenlightened masses.
MS: And PC Hollywood feels the need to pass laws because the rest of us can’t take care of ourselves. The smoking ban is a perfect example. It’s bad to smoke, but that’s irrelevant. If people want to do it to themselves, then that’s fine. If you don’t want to go in that bar with the smoke, don’t go in that bar. Rob Reiner is like one of the most evil people on the earth. That guy’s completely evil in his intentions if you look at the way he’s passed the cigarette taxes, which are the most aggressive taxes in the world. Let’s punish the poor people. He always sells it on the back of some children’s program, which is f*cking bullsh*t. He just hates smoke. Somebody blew smoke in his face one time, and he f*cking hates it, and he has to start using his celebrity power. When Rob Reiner needs to take a break, he can go to some f*cking spa in Arizona for five days, but your average Joe may only have his cigarette. He’s probably got a f*cking hard job that’s sh*tty and thankless, and at the end of the day, he wants to hang out with his friends and have cigarettes. And Rob Reiner is saying, ‘I hate that.’ The guy probably hasn’t been in a bar in 10 years, but he’s telling everyone what to do. Whoopie or Billy Crystal or Rob Reiner, they talk about all that stuff, but they’re the last people in the world who would want to be around any of the people they’re trying to save. Do you think f*cking big Rob Reiner wants to hang out with anybody regular?
HI: Political correctness has now infected comedy. ‘Comedy Relief’ tried to use comedy as a means to enlighten America and preach a cause, instead of simply making people laugh.
MS: Comedy should be observational, but its job is not to preach to people or make some important statement. Usually our statement is ‘Go f*ck yourselves, all of you.’ That’s basically the end of every show, but people in Hollywood think it’s amazing satire. People thought it so brave we did a show with Osama bin Laden and people watching CNN right after 9/11. It was six weeks after 9/11, and that’s all we had been thinking about, and we’re supposed to sit down and do a show about something. It has to be about 9/11, our thoughts and feelings about it have to come out. And everyone in Hollywood thought it so brave because they would never touch that. Why not? What’s wrong with you?
HI: ‘South Park’ has always been anti-Hollywood and anti-celebrity.
TP: ‘South Park’ was based on our hatred and loathing for Hollywood, that’s what we were doing when we created it in college. We were in Colorado thinking, ‘f*ck those celebrities, they are big douches and evil.’ Having celebrities on the show was all about the deconstruction of celebrities. Take Winona Ryder. In the South Park movie we did a bit with her and some ping-pong balls. It had nothing to do with the real Winona Ryder. We’ve never met her and have no idea what kind of person she is. It was just the idea of her celebrity. Just ripping on her celebrity, not on her personally. People wonder why we rip on celebrities, when all around there are pages of sh*t glorifying celebrities like Winona Ryder. And celebrities view themselves as the f*cking Mozarts of their time. Even f*cking Ray Romano thinks he is an elightened individual. These people all think they are enlightened artists and therefore speak for the country. But I haven’t met one celebrity who wasn’t a little bit f*cked up. Actors and actresses are the worst, because they are just f*cking monkeys. Half the people in this country can do what they do, but for some reason they think their opinion matters.
HI: A number of celebrities who felt their opinion mattered to the country, like Martin Sheen, Sean Penn and Janeane Garofalo, were compelled to speak out against the Iraq war.
MS: I honestly think that Janeane Garofalo went way overboard with her crusade. She’s well-meaning and believes in what she’s doing and she’s not an evil person, but I think people watched her with the same macabre sense of wonder that they watched Michael Jackson. I think most people watched her with a bit of sadness and not hate, thinking, ‘That poor girl, she really thinks she’s doing the right thing.’ But she’s so out to f*cking lunch. If she is writing jokes about the war, fine, that’s what she’s good at. But the idea of her instantly becoming a real analyst and politico, that is insane. You see a celebrity who has lived in a bubble too long. She is insane to think everyone is going to listen to her talk about the war. I watched Sean Penn on Larry King with my mouth open, wondering whether Penn really thought people were watching him talk about nuclear nonproliferation and listening with any bit of seriousness. Poor f*cking guy. It happened with Alec Baldwin. He started talking sh*t, and no one wants to see him anymore even though he’s a brilliant actor. He’s f*cked up his career. Again, some of it comes from a good place. There were a lot of celebrities who wanted to help after 9/11. They were affected like everyone else, and wanted to help out. But some felt the world’s attention had turned away from them. Whenever anything big happens, celebrities have to get their noses in there because that’s their job. They’re the people on TV, so if there’s a war, they’ve have to be a part of it somehow. But they cannot really be a part of it, so they have to protest it, because they have to be on TV.
HI: Politically correct, liberal celebrities always act like they know what’s right for the country, and always seem fearful of any conservative idea.
TP: We are often asked to speak at anticensorship events, and it’s always the Hollywood liberals because they think right-wing religious leaders like Falwell are trying to stop the show. And it’s not true. We started making a cartoon in college, came out here, and people started throwing money at us. We did a kid in a wheelchair and people threw money at us. We’ve never been told to shut up, and we have only gotten richer the more insane it has become. The left wants to think that the right is out there trying to shut us up, but that pressure is completely nonexistent. The Clinton administration put much more pressure on Hollywood than Bush. The only time we hear about people being oppressed is from the political correctness-conscious left: ‘Hey, you can’t make a black joke like that. You can’t make a gay joke like that!’ Rob Reiner, wanting to make it so if there is any smoking in a movie, it’s rated R. He actually submitted that to the MPAA. Jack Valenti shot it down, luckily, but that’s insane. That’s control from Rob Reiner.
