On this day in 1997, the world was first graced with the depiction of four foul mouthed boys from South Park, Colorado in their very first television outing, Cartman Gets an Anal Probe. But how did such a crass and puerile cartoon manage to make it onto the air to begin with? Well read on, folks, because we've got all the info you need.
Prior to the show's inception, Matt and Trey were just two twenty-somethings trying to find work in the entertainment industry, and one of the little projects they put out was a stop-frame animation by the name of Jesus Vs. Frosty, which featured early prototypes of the four main boys witnessing an intense throw-down between a snowman and the almighty. The short made its rounds in Hollywood, and caught the attention of a Fox executive, who contact the duo and offered to pay then $1,000 to make another festive short in a similar vein for him to send around as a Christmas eCard, which would become known Jesus Vs. Santa, or The Spirit of Christmas. The follow-up short was just as popular and quickly found its way to the masses over the internet, which led to someone working on EA's Tiger Woods '99 sneaking the short onto the game's disc for players to find as an Easter Egg.
Impressed at the potential of the shorts based off of its internet buzz, the execs at the then baby-faced Comedy Central were next to contact the two, but this time with a keen interest in expanding the shorts into a full series for their channel. This led to the creation of the pilot episode Cartman Gets an Anal Probe, which fleshed out the basics of what South Park was now to become, but still with some elements of the original shorts. Matt and Trey both decided to throw in as much foul language as possible to align it with what they felt had made the original shorts so popular, and they opted to animate the whole thing with construction paper as they'd done with the shorts, resulting in scenes added later using computer animation for the TV air date standing out against the cruder paper animation.
All in all, this original episode $300,000 to produce, and took six months to finish. Some of the neat tricks they used for the pilot included creating a starry night sky by poking holes into back construction paper and shining a light from behind, creating Kenny's oozing blood by dotting the paper with a red felt tip frame by frame. As a neat bonus, you can actually see one of the animators' hand present in a shot of chef as he starts to sing to the boys.
Both Matt and Trey based a lot of the town and its inhabitants on people and experiences from their own lives, often making little attempt to hide this. Firstly, Stan and Kyles' parents both share the names of Matt and Trey's actual parents, and the idea of Kenny came from an actual kid Trey knew, who was said to always be seen in an orange coat, was hard to understand, and was incredibly poor. This Kenny kid would also be continually off school, with kids in his class having a running joke that he'd died, and thus the premise for Kenny McCormick was born. Mr Mackey was also based on Trey's high school councillor Mr Lackey who had a tendency to say "M'kay", and Chef is based on a canteen worker from the University of Colorado.
Most famously of all though is the basis of Liane Cartman, Eric Cartman's promiscuous but loving mother. See years ago Trey was engaged to his high school sweetheart, a woman named Liane Adamo, who left him for an acapella singer and allegedly cheated on him. In response, Trey created Liane Cartman in her honour. He also used Liane as a basis for Wendy Testaburger, whose unfortunate ability to make Stan vomit upon being kissed was based on Trey's reaction to when they first kissed. Liane had also been referenced in a less than favourable light in the duo's college film Cannibal! The Musical, in which her name is bestowed upon a "well ridden horse".
For the voice work, rather than attempting to mimic the boys' high-pitched childish voices, Trey and Matt opted instead to pitch up the kids' voices by three semitones, while Terrence and Philip by four and female characters by two. During the early run of the series however they rarely did female voices, as most of the female voice-work went to the highly renowned Mary Kay Bergman, who voices such characters as Wendy, Liane, Mayor McDaniels, Sheila Broflovski, and many more. Tragically however, Bergman committed suicide in 1999, with some of her last work going towards the South Park movie. Since her death, voice talents have been split between two later female voice actors to join the cast, Mona Marshall and April Stewart.
Unsurprisingly, this crude and profanity riddled pilot did not go over well with test audiences, which cast some doubt over the Comedy Central execs as to whether they'd push forward with an order of additional episodes. However with the buzz from the shorts still on-going, they agreed to pay the duo to create one more episode, which became Weight Gain 4000. With this episode the duo hoped to outline how each episode will differ, and with a far higher praise response, they then agreed to order a full season from the guys. They did however request they shorten their episodes, as they had originally made the pilot too long and hadn't taken into consideration ad breaks. This led to certain scenes to be cut, such as a scene featuring Cartman's father and sister, and scenes involving Pip, which were later re-used (albeit jarringly) in the episode An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig.
One of the big changes for this second episode was that it was animated entirely digitally. This came about when a dude brought into Comedy Central to do some CG animation tests, Terrence Masson, was asked to tackle the show, to which he brought in some neat little details to give it that crude paper style - he used ray-tracing for shadows, added film grain, and opted to animate it at 24fps. His ten second test which was one of the scenes added into the pilot was a great success, however he never stayed on for the series as he was then offered a job on the Star Wars Special Edition Trilogy, but his efforts landed him the honour of having his name used for one of the flatulent TV Canadians, Terrance and Phillip.
Something else Matt and Trey picked up in this time was their new stream-lined method of making episodes, as this new method of animation saved them mountains of time, and where most animated shows take 6 months to produce, a single episode of South Park could be written, animated, and recorded within a week. This would later prove to be a very counter-productive method of working when the duo turned their attention to feature films as well as the show, with the two claiming they have no recollection of making the episode Sexual Harassment Panda, which aired whilst they were in production of the South Park film. It has also led to one instance where an episode didn't air on time, after a power-cut at the studios meant they were unable to transfer it for broadcast. It has proven beneficial in other ways however, such as episodes remaining extremely topical to current events, and episodes can be edited mere hours before airing.
Of course as we know, once the show hit the air, it became an instant hit, for better or for worse. Controversies and questions of taste aside, South Park became a cultural phenomenon from which it is still riding high on today, resulting in a film, videogames, merchandise, album releases, and even a Christmas number one hit in the UK. It also holds the Guinness World Record for featuring "the most swearing in an animated series", which is an incredible feat, really.
So there you have it folks, the history of South Park's creation. Just as one final fact to close on, there are actual lyrics to Kenny's segment of the Primus-written theme song, which for seasons 1-2 was as followed: "I like girls with big fat titties, I like girls with deep vaginas."
Tremendous stuff. Happy birthday, South Park.
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