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South Park's creators on how the series has evolved
- ars 10y agoAnswer: Plan nothing, and simply be really good at it. There is nothing there that someone else can learn from. Some people simply have a talent at doing certain things.
- paulcole 10y agoSimilarly, Ricky Gervais on how to have a career in comedy: "Fuck around til you're 39 then make the most successful British sitcom of all time."
- andy_ppp 10y agoI have 5 years to go then!
- the_watcher 10y agoYup. The answer is to just be really, really funny. And only hire other really, really funny people (Bill Hader)
- caminante 10y agoThey have talent. More importantly, they have UNRIVALED work ethic.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6_Days_to_Air https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6_Days_to_Air
- dsr_ 10y agoNote, especially, that they aren't recreating their toolchain, tweaking the character design, or trying out new ways of making the show every six days: they've got all that settled, or change it between seasons.
- dynofuz 10y ago"While you’re doing the first episode, you go, “Oh, this is really working. Let’s let this be the thing that slides through to the next episode.” So we’re reacting to what is working the week before, instead of having some grand design. And then later on, the design starts to reveal itself a little bit." Is that what makes big companies fail? They plan too much?
- ArkyBeagle 10y agoIt can be. More likely, it's mainly that once you have the plate spinning on the stick, it takes intense focus to keep it there.
- dave_sullivan 10y agoThis kind of reminds me of something Louis CK said during this talk about George Carlin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R37zkizucPU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R37zkizucPU He talks about how he got good at standup after 15 years of doing the same thing. He threw away all his material (material he'd been working on for 15 years) and just started trying different things. Then he started throwing away his material every year and creating new material. He noticed that he got better and better by doing this. This also reminded me of another anecdote I'd heard somewhere where you have a pottery class with 20 students. The class was split: 10 students would make a new sculpture every day while the other 10 would have to produce only 1 sculpture for the class (which of course would represent all the extra planning and execution that went into the solo sculpture). At the end of the quarter, the 10 people who made something new every day and then threw it away were far better at sculpting, while everyone in the other group made something kind of shitty and spent a lot of time doing it. So maybe it's not "lack of planning" quite so much as willingness to kill your darlings, again and again.
- blowski 10y agoThis is probably true for going from novice to mediocre in many things, and there might be some skills where you can become great by constantly starting again. But in software development, the most valuable skills you learn are not those you pick up when throwing a quick CRUD app together, but those you learn when debugging, refactoring and optimising legacy code. I see too many junior devs get frustrated with something, throw it away, only to rebuild it with very similar problems because they didn't really understand the root cause in the first place.
- flanbiscuit 10y agoHaving both worked in startup/tech companies and ad agencies, one of the most valuable skills I've learned is being able to decipher and debug someone else's spaghetti code. Clients shift agencies all the time and sometimes you're just given the entire codebase for site, with no documentation and no help offered from the previous agency, and you have to make an update to it or learn how some vital part of it works so you can recreate it in the new site. That's happened to me quite a few times and it made me a better debugger and coder.
- dudul 10y agoDamn, can't believe South Park has been around for 20 years! Feels like I was watching the 1st seasons as a kid yesterday. At first, I just thought it was funny to hear "motherfucker" and "asshole" on TV. Then I understood that SP is actually much deeper than that.
- the_mitsuhiko 10y agoIts shocking how much South Park affected my life. No other show that long lasting I watched all episodes of and because the focus of the chaacters shifts from the children to the adults it also stays relevant with me as i get older.
- strictnein 10y agoIf you enjoy South Park and you haven't seen "6 Days to Air" you really need to. I had no idea that the entirety of the episode was created within a week. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6_Days_to_Air https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6_Days_to_Air One of the keys for South Park is that it can quickly address really current topics because of its production schedule.
- michaelbuckbee 10y agoI really enjoyed this as well. It's often said that creativity comes from "embracing constraints" and I think it probably really helps the show that they've forced themselves to condense the process so much.
- fullshark 10y agoIt's also why so many late episodes seem half baked unfortunately
- DalekBaldwin 10y agoAnd yet, when it comes to cartoons that have been on the air for multiple decades, they almost always create something more entertaining with a production schedule of six days than The Simpsons can create with a production schedule of six months.
- fullshark 10y agoYeah I still love the show, and even half baked South Park has a lot of laughs and meat to chew on. It's just a shame that a lot of the time it feels like potential was squandered or the episodes resolution is completely out of nowhere.
- syphilis2 10y agoIs South Park (still) cool? I'm not sure what the best way to judge that is. https://www.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=South%20park https://www.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=South%20par...
- Analemma_ 10y agoYMMV, but I don't think it is. It's still running and probably gets decent ratings, but it's not water cooler talk like it used to be, it's not must-see TV among teenagers and twenty-somethings like it used to be, and in many years there haven't been any episodes that were the focus of national attention (like "Best Friends Forever" or "Trapped in the Closet").
- jessaustin 10y agoThe recent "PC Principal" arc is among the best they've done. Coolness doesn't really correlate with what is talked about on e.g. "The Today Show". Compare "South Park" to shows that have really jumped the shark like "The Simpsons".
- Analemma_ 10y agoI grant that "coolness" is tricky to define, but (if you're not restricting the domain of discourse to a particular group or subculture), I think it has to include either popularity or "outsider-ness". i.e., you can be cool either by being popular or by being controversial enough to get everyone talking about you, even in a negative way. I don't think South Park meets either of these criteria anymore. It's not a pop culture locus like it used to be, and even their controversial episodes are ignored. Part of this isn't their fault- it's probably the continued fractalization of culture where we have ever-fewer shared experiences- but I also think it's hard to keep anything fresh for 20 years, especially something trying to be "edgy". Note that that doesn't make it "bad", and it doesn't mean you can't still like it. But I think "coolness" can only be defined in terms of broad opinion.
- sorenjan 10y agoRegarding the PC Principal arc, I feel like they took an idea for one or two episodes and made it into a season. I didn't really enjoy how the episodes blended together either, but I know a lot of people seems to like it.
- gavanwoolery 10y agoMy first exposure to Southpark was before it was even a show. A video file (below) was circulating on my brother's network at college. It is still strange to me to have witnessed the birth of such a huge hit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T_RZOoVlzc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T_RZOoVlzc
- beamatronic 10y agoThis is even older than the first one I saw which was "Jesus vs. Santa Claus", in 1997
- rplst8 10y agoI was unaware of this too until the other night when I looked it up. Apparently the first one was made as an entry into a student film festival. Then a producer saw it and asked them to make another as a gag gift for a friend. That was the birth of the Jesus vs. Santa episode. In the original, the character that looks like Cartman is referred to as "Kenny". He "dies" just like Kenny always did in later episodes.
- rabidrat 10y agoSame here. Small footnote: I was the one who made the transcription of 1997's Spirit of Xmas (soxmas) which was going around our university at the time. A classmate digitized the videotape we had gotten.
- emmelaich 10y agoNot my first exposure, but a good story, soon after. I was working at an investment bank in Europe and my boss/colleague got a call from his brother during a serious meeting. Execs and everything. His brother worked at a television studio and they had just bought rights to South Park. He said he you have to listen to this. Investment banker begs off but TV brother insists and after a bit of back and forth he stops mid meeting to listen to South Park and of course could barely contain himself. It was probably S1E1 - Cartman gets an anal probe; but may have been S2E13 "Cow Days" where Cartman gets amnesia and thinks he is a Vietnamese prostitute. Way off the wall stuff.
- djschnei 10y agoLove how these guys call out the left and the right for their bullshit. Pretty rare nowadays...
- unimpressive 10y agoI remember this being my exact thought while watching it. It always seems to manage a sucker punch in for either 'side' of things. Anything which does that is sufficiently rare at this point that it's notable.
- Retra 10y agoAt what point? Right now? Because this election season in the US has been nothing but that, and it was trite from day 1.
- Quanttek 10y agoWhich results basically in "Horseshoe-Theory - The Show". Where the middle way is always the golden way and, by-accident, is aligned with their neo-conservative/libertarian ideals
- dcposch 10y agoLibertarian yes. They are not neocons at all. Where do you see that in the show? Edit: I just remembered that Matt and Trey made Team America World Police back in 2004--back when even Democrats like Clinton were gung ho about Iraq. In it, they did a thorough job mocking the neocons, their enablers across the aisle, and their shared appetite for "preemptive" war.
- rl3 10y agoThese are the guys who created Team America: World Police in 2004, and you're trying to say that they're neo-conservatives?
- fullshark 10y agoI think you can make the case Team America ultimately supports American intervention in foreign affairs. See the dicks/pussies/assholes speech with America being the dicks, and ultimately in the right despite some issues.
- Quanttek 10y agoYeah South Park evolved from a neo-con/libertarian "the solution is the middle way between to over caricaturized extremes" paradise, to a neo-reactionary shitfest. Just watch the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-zJL9JuOLQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-zJL9JuOLQ Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TttI60-mjQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TttI60-mjQ
- xiaoma 10y ago>"South Park evolved from a neo-con/libertarian [...] paradise, to a neo-reactionary shitfest." That's possibly the least charitable summary of the show I've heard since I had the misfortune of discussing it with a Scientologist. Libertarians are generally pretty strongly opposed to neo-cons and were even moreso when neo-cons were in power 15 years ago. As for neo-reactionary bit, since when has that been a term to describe those supporting criminal justice / police reform, liberal drug laws and gay marriage since at least a decade before it was the popular position? Clearly you have come across some issues where you disagree with the creators but simply labeling the show as a "neo-reactionary shitfest" isn't very intellectually honest or conducive to a productive discussion.
- pessimizer 10y agoCops never get you back your stuff. They do give you a report that you can give to your insurance company, though.
- kinghajj 10y agoNever say never. My wallet was stolen from work a couple months back, but the city PD somehow found and mailed by driver's license back to me.
- meowface 10y agoYes, the show is preachy and often tries to feel superior by shitting on both sides of a debate. But how in the world are they neo-conservative? Or worse, neo-reactionary? The show has never come across as trying to push neo-con or neo-reactionary ideals. Libertarian, yes, but neo-reaction directly contradicts libertarianism and neo-conservatism (many reactionaries actually see themselves as reacting against what they perceive as lukewarm conservatism). Libertarianism is compatible with some facets of neo-conservatism, but not most of it. It sounds like you're just haphazardly listing the names of political philosophies you don't like.
- avar 10y ago> On South Park, nothing is off limits. The opening line of this article is a lie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park_controversies#Censorship_of_the_depiction_of_Muhammad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park_controversies#Censo...
- serge2k 10y agoThey wanted to do it, Comedy Central refused. IIRC they chose not to really fight because the whole "we might literally get bombed or shot at for this" was a pretty solid argument at the time.
- jdmichal 10y agoThe section of the article you link to seems to indicate that the network (Comedy Central), rather than the show, performed the censorship. If that is true, I see no incongruity in the quoted statement.
- sevenless 10y agoI don't like the show - it's devolved into lazy one-sided caricaturing of 'progressive' causes - but the Make Love Not Warcraft episode still holds up as one of the funniest things I've ever seen.
- jhanschoo 10y agoAre you sure that's not a bias speaking? That season was also making fun of Donald Trump, Whole Foods and college jocks. Season before took a gander at Lorde. And so much else.
- Ericson2314 10y agoUm, Whole Foods and Lorde are of the cultural Left? They call it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park_Republican https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park_Republican for a reason.
- theseoafs 10y agoI don't know how much of the last season you watched, but the show's writers certainly seem to be of the opinion that progressive ideas are preferable to Trumpism.
- sevenless 10y agoAlso an opinion held by many conservatives. But what else could they say - would anyone air an openly pro-Trump cartoon show on US TV? I don't dislike the show because it's conservative - King of the Hill is an example of a good, funny and politically conservative series - but because it's moved away from having character-driven plots, and become low-effort and predictable in who it satirizes.
- ewheeler 10y agoIf you haven't watched Season 19 (which includes the serial saga with P.C. Principal mentioned in the article) I'd highly recommend it. It really embodies South Park's unique ability to be simultaneously mature and immature. And its ability to be hilariously relevant after all these years while delivering thoughtful social commentary. I watched plenty of South Park when it came out, but hadn't watched it in many many years. I checked out Season 19 after I saw it mentioned as one of the best South Park seasons yet--and I have to agree. Most seasons have a few brilliant episodes and many average ones. Season 19 is great throughout--its foray into serialization means more thorough criticism of big topics and is able to weave several issues together over the course of the season that would seem forced within a single episode.
- overcast 10y agoI can't believe it's been twenty years, that's insane. Just recently finished The Stick of Truth on PC. Such an enjoyable little RPG. Really felt like you were living in their world.
- jonrx 10y agoIt's one of the first game I really got into. Ended up finishing it in a little under a week. It is really is a walk down memory lane.