It’s arduous to think about popular culture with out South Park, the landmark animated sequence that has been on the air for practically 30 years. However again within the ’90s, when it was nonetheless making the rounds on the underground animation pageant circuit, it was thought-about too edgy and excessive for tv.
At one level, nonetheless, Fox was keen to present it a shot, probably planning to air it alongside its beloved first household of animation (and future rival), The Simpsons. One single character, although, stopped that from occurring.
In 1995, Trey Parker and Matt Stone have been college students on the College of Colorado Boulder movie faculty, the place they typically entertained themselves by creating raunchy child characters to make one another giggle. On the finish of the winter semester, when the division showcased pupil movies, the duo determined to submit a skit of their very own.
“I used to be like, ‘There needs to be one thing Christmassy,’ as a result of these screenings have been a number of days earlier than Christmas. I had achieved one even earlier than that, referred to as American Historical past, with development paper cutouts, and I bought a pupil award for it. So Matt and I simply did this little Jesus and Frosty factor,” mentioned Parker in an EW interview.
The outcome was the quick “Jesus vs. Frosty,” also called the primary “Spirit of Christmas” animated quick that will later evolve to change into South Park. It featured the 4 major children in all their foul-mouthed glory, in addition to Jesus battling Santa Claus for the rights of Christmas.
“[The audience reaction] was big,” mentioned Parker. “It was simply the actual fact that there have been little-kid voices and cute animation and that they have been screaming, ‘F—!’ Individuals hadn’t actually seen something like that earlier than.”
After school, the duo confirmed the clip to Fox govt Brian Graden, who was so taken with the manufacturing that he shared it with associates on VHS and requested them to make one other the next yr. When the second Spirit of Christmas quick turned an underground sensation on the pageant circuit and thru pass-along tapes, the pair started taking conferences about turning the toons right into a sequence.
“There was no calculation that thousands and thousands of individuals would see this after which we’d get a TV sequence. I needed to do one thing cool for the Christmas card, and people guys are geniuses,” mentioned Graden. “We did a children’ pilot, in the event you can consider it, for Fox’s sister community. We had began growing South Park based mostly on these characters earlier than [the second video] was made.”
Nevertheless, South Park and Fox have been by no means meant to be, all due to one character: Mr. Hankey.
Comedy Central
“Earlier than South Park began, after we did ‘Spirit of Christmas,’ and other people first talked about doing a sequence, we needed to make a sequence referred to as The Mr. Hankey Present, and mainly the entire thing can be centered round this piece of s**t. And we’d have Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny, however it might all be kind of centered round Mr. Hankey and his view issues,” mentioned Stone within the DVD commentary for the primary season.
“We pitched it to Graden, and he mentioned, ‘I’m not placing poo on my community,’” recalled Stone.
“We got here up with one other strategy to current all of it, which was South Park, and it featured the city quite than the piece of poo, and possibly we deliver the poo into it later. So when Comedy Central [was] , they took us out to dinner mainly to say, ‘We’re who it is best to take this present to,’” continued Stone. “They have been tremendous excited in regards to the present. So we have been out to dinner with them, and we mentioned mainly, ‘We simply must know one factor: Are you open to speaking poo?’”
“And the individual that was there on the time mentioned: ‘Completely.’”
After that, historical past was made as Mr. Hankey mentioned “Howdy-ho!” to Comedy Central.
South Park, Season 27, Wednesdays, 10/9c, Comedy Central