Well, it's finally done: This is the finished
transcript of the talkshow I had to produce for my Producing 1
class. The show I chose: The Daily Show, with guests Trey Parker
and Matt Stone. I realize I made one small mistake here: Jon
Stewart is impossible to write for. So i basically gave up on
that, but I do think I managed to capture the spirit of Parker and
Stone. And so, for your reading enjoyment:
Show Transcript (Intro
& 10 Questions)
Intro: Welcome back
to the program. With the election just
days away and more and more celebrities voicing their well-thought-out
opinions, the nation is left asking, “Who gives a f[bleep]?” Here tonight to express some of their own
well-thought-out opinions are two television and filmmakers who are no
strangers to Comedy Central. Makers of BASEketball, Orgazmo and the hit television series South Park, their
most recent creation is “Team America:
World Police.”
[insert clip from Team
America]
Please give a warm welcome to Comedy Central’s own dynamic
duo: Trey Parker & Matt Stone.
[Enter Trey Parker and Matt Stone]
Parker: Thanks
for mentioning our best works…I mean BASEketball
and Orgasmo? WTF mate?
Stone: Yea, I
mean you don’t see us mentioning you in Big
Daddy or The Faculty?
Stewart: …Touché…Moving
on, would you say this is a political film?
Parker: No, not
really.
Stewart: Really?
Stone: Well, we both have strong political opinions,
but I don’t think that’s what the film’s about.
We definitely did not start out with a political agenda.
Parker: Right,
I’d say it’s really more about America
then politics. You, know what Americans
are feeling after 9/11. Should we be
proud? Ashamed? Not necessarily “who
should I vote for.” I mean, we don’t
know about politics, so we’re not going to make a movie about politics. We know comedy – so we were just out to make
a funny movie.
Stone: And
puppets fighting terrorism is funny – damn funny.
Stewart: So you
wouldn’t call this an “Anti-Bush” movie?
Parker: Oh no,
Anti-Actor maybe, but not Anti-Bush, he’s not even in it. Like Trey said, we didn’t set out to make a
movie to change anyone’s vote. We just
wanted to make a funny movie about the emotions that everyday Americans have
been feeling for the past three years.
We don’t know about the world. So
it’s not our place to comment on what we as a country should be doing. But we do know how we feel as Americans.
Stone: And if any
of our personal politics made it into the film, I think it’s pretty well
balanced. I mean, some people might have
the wrong idea that this is an
Anti-Bush or a “blame-America” movie but if you look at the members of Team America there all good guys, they
might not be right all the time, but there just trying to deal with the world
we’re all in.
Stewart: There’s
no Bush puppet, but did you ever think of having one?
Parker: We did, actually, for maybe a few weeks.
Stone: But whenever
we tried to write him into a scene, it seemed like we lost our
credibility. If Bush were in the film,
it would it seem as if the movie were about him, or politicians in general –
since if we had Bush we’d have Kerry too – but we wanted this movie to be about
Americans, not politicians.
Stewart: And the
fact that the movie’s coming out just days before the election…?
Parker: Is a complete coincidence. Really, it was supposed to be out earlier
like, September? [looks at Stone]
Stone: Yea, it just took so long to do anything and
everything.
Parker: Yea, we
were getting about 6 to 8 shots done a day and there’s something like 1,500
shots in a normal movie. And every one
of those was a challenge. Every shot had
some big problem with what we wanted to do.
Basically anything we wanted to do with the puppets was impossible.
Stone: It’s kinda
funny, obviously we’ve both seen Thunderbirds
and we always thought “This would be great if they just did more. You know? Why don’t they move?” Well, now we know.
Stewart: So where
did the idea for this film come from?
[Stone & Parker look and point at each other and
simultaneously say]
Both: Him
Parker: Seriously
though, we’ve had an idea to do a marionette puppet movie for a while…and not
just any marionette puppet movie, a Jerry Brockheimer action movie – with
puppets.
Stone: And
explosions, lots of explosions.
Parker: Basically
anytime we had a question about were to go with the film, we’d look to Jerry –
sort of like those “What Would Jesus Do?” bracelets – “What Would Jerry
Do?” And more often than not the answer
was: blow stuff up.
Stewart: Why use
puppets? Why not clay-mation or whatever you use to make South Park
- what is that, construction paper?
Parker: Well,
actually [in pretentious voice] we use computers now…to simulate construction
paper.
Stone: Basically,
what Trey said earlier, we wanted to make a funny movie. And we had this idea to do a shitty little
puppet movie and have them act out absurdly serious scenarios. And then we also wanted to do a spoof of The Day After Tomorrow, but there were
problems with that, so we just kinda rolled the two into one, and boom! There you have it, Team America. Of course we
had no idea that little puppet movie would turn into this – this - this
monstrosity.
Parker: And man, clay-mation? Do you have any idea how tedious that is? We didn’t want to completely f*ck
ourselves. Puppets were bad enough.
Stewart: Have you
gotten any responses to the film? - anything from any of the actors you had in
the film?
Parker: Not
really, I think most of them understood what we were saying with Team America. I mean we like George Clooney, but there he
was on Moveon.org. So we had to have
him. We had to nail him.
Stone: Of course
there was Sean Penn …and his memo, and the White House…and their memo. They basically both told us that we’re
laughing at things we shouldn’t be. Of
course we couldn’t think of better publicity if we tried.
Parker: Yes,
thank you Sean and that anonymous “staffer” at the White House. Although I’ll tell you who I’d really like to
hear from –
Stewart: And who
would that be?
Parker: Kim
Jung-Il; I’d be interested to hear what he thinks.
Stewart: So was
there anyone that got left out of the film, or that you’d add in, if you had the
chance?
Stone: hmm…P.
Diddy, definitely P. Diddy.
Parker: Yea,
“Vote or Die?” What’s with that? That’s
like pointing a gun at some poor know-nothing 18-year-old and saying “Choose,
sucka.” It is someone’s right not to vote.
They like to say that unless you vote, you have no right to complain
about anything, they seem to be forgetting this is America; I can complain all I want, regardless of
whether I voted or not.
Stewart: Do you
think it’s wrong to be laughing at the war on terror? I mean, that’s kinda, oh I don’t
know…serious?
Stone: I hope
not.
Parker: No, and
you know, we hear that all the time- that this is too serious, that we are
doing people disrespect. But what I
think these people are missing is that our laughter means much more than just
“we think this is stupid.” I think humor
is a great way of dealing with anything.
So we think that everything’s funny, not just Bush, not just the war on
terror – Everything.
Stewart: So is
there going to be a sequel?
Parker: Dear God
no. Don’t even joke about that.
Stone: I don’t
think there’s anything in this world that could compel us to do another puppet
movie.
Stewart: Not even
another four years of Bush?
Parker: No, we’d
just find easier ways to laugh at him. | 
