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The creators of “South Park” didn’t always know it would become a hit — let alone one of the longest-running shows in the history of television.
Just ask Hollywood veteran David Zucker, who hired Trey Parker and Matt Stone shortly before the duo — and the foul-mouthed kids they created — became household names.
‘They were also unsure of if “South Park” would ever work.’
Zucker — who directed seminal spoof comedy “Airplane!” along with his brother Jerry and the late Jim Abrahams — recalled that when he first met the University of Colorado grads in the mid-1990s, they were still very much struggling filmmakers.
Ride share
“They came to my office and I met with these guys, and Trey didn’t have a car,” Zucker said.
Despite their precarious finances, the duo already had a feature film under their belt — 1993’s “Cannibal! The Musical” — as well as animated short “The Spirit of Christmas,” which would soon land them a deal for “South Park.”
Impressed with their talents, Zucker hired Parker and Stone to do a video for Universal executives commemorating the studio’s recent purchase by Canadian beverage giant Seagram.
The duo turned in “Your Studio and You,” a side-splitting send-up of 1950s industrial videos crammed with cameos by the likes of Steven Spielberg, Sylvester Stallone, and Michael J. Fox.
Hedging their bets
Zucker remembered the young newcomers in 1997 when casting the leads for his longtime passion project, “BASEketball.” By then Parker and Stone had made a second film, “Orgazmo,” a comedy about a Mormon missionary (Parker) turned porn star turned superhero. With a $25 million budget and major studio backing, Zucker’s project represented a major step up.
And while the two were then deep in production on the show that would launch their careers, they assumed it would die a quick death once it aired. So they agreed to star in “BASEketball.”
“They were also unsure of if ‘South Park’ would ever work,” said Zucker. “This was a hedge against, you know, Trey having to get his car fixed.”
Upon premiering in August 1997, “South Park” was an instant hit, requiring Parker and Stone to shoot “BASEketball” while simultaneously maintaining their grueling TV schedule.
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Rookie year
While Zucker had already written a script for “BASEketball” — inspired by an actual sport he and some friends “invented on my driveway” during the 1980s — he relied on his Gen X collaborators to punch it up for the younger “South Park” fan base.
“They probably wrote about a third of it, and you know, a lot of that stuff, because I didn’t know what kind of language went on between … 20-somethings,” Zucker explained. Both the actors were in their late 20s at the time.
One of Parker and Stone’s most significant additions to the script was helping with the “psych-outs” — tasteless insults “baseketball” players hurl at an opponent in hopes of making him miss a shot.
All-star lineup
Such tactics were never used by the real-life players, whom Zucker described as “all these guys who later became, you know, heads of studios and heads of agencies” — a roster including director Peter Farrelly (“There’s Something About Mary” and “Dumb and Dumber”), former CAA head David “Doc” O’Connor, and former Fox Television Group chair Gary Newman.
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1998: “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone star in the movie “BASEketball.” Getty Images
Zucker noted that he is emphasizing the “psych-out” element in a new “BASEketball” pitch: a reality show featuring teams of comedians playing the sport while tearing each other down.
As for his old “BASEketball” buddies, Zucker said he recently visited their office to get a 10-minute preview of their new movie, “Whitney Springs,” a live-action comedy musical starring rapper Kendrick Lamar as a black man working as a slave re-enactor at a living history museum who discovers his white girlfriend’s ancestors “owned” his ancestors.
“They showed me 10 minutes of it, and it looks great,” said Zucker.
