Fire Me Boy!
07-17-2006, 01:00 PM
This may be a repeat, but there was some comments about another episode (and Family Guy) that made me laugh (last paragraph)...
http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2006-07-13-south-park_x.htm
'South Park' reopening that 'Closet'
PASADENA, Calif. — The South Park boys are putting Tom Cruise back in the closet.
"Trapped in the Closet," a November episode mocking Cruise and Scientology, was scheduled to repeat in March but was pulled at the last minute. In response, Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker threatened to sever their ties with Comedy Central and Viacom.
Apparently all is forgiven: The Emmy-nominated episode will repeat Wednesday, and Parker and Stone are laying out plans for a new seven-episode Park run starting Oct. 4. Would they really have quit? "I don't know if we would have totally not worked on South Park ever again," Stone told TV writers at their semiannual gathering. "But we have a couple of movies with Viacom, and it's tough to go work for people you think may be holding one of your episodes hostage. But that's sort of water under the bridge now."
To be fair, official word from Comedy Central is that Closet was not pulled, it just didn't make it into the repeat rotation. Stone and Parker say they believe Viacom yanked the episode under pressure from Cruise, star of the company's Mission: Impossible franchise. "We can't think of any other reason," Parker says. Cruise has denied it.
This was not the only controversy to strike Park this season, or even the one they care about most. As a comment on the riots over the Danish cartoon caricatures of Mohammed, they did a two-part April episode, "Cartoon Wars," that used the Islamic prophet's image. Comedy Central forced them to obscure it.
What's odd, Stone says, is that they did an episode in 2001 that portrayed Mohammed as a superhero who can turn himself into a beaver. It's out on DVD and runs in syndication, he says, "and no one even notices. ... We watched a new taboo being created out of nothing, and we all sat by."
Still, there was one upside to "Cartoon Wars": The spoof also attacked Fox's Family Guy, which was shown as being written by manatees that use floating balls to make random combinations of jokes and topics. "The day that episode aired," Parker says, "we got flowers from The Simpsons. We got calls from King of the Hill saying we were doing God's work."
http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2006-07-13-south-park_x.htm
'South Park' reopening that 'Closet'
PASADENA, Calif. — The South Park boys are putting Tom Cruise back in the closet.
"Trapped in the Closet," a November episode mocking Cruise and Scientology, was scheduled to repeat in March but was pulled at the last minute. In response, Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker threatened to sever their ties with Comedy Central and Viacom.
Apparently all is forgiven: The Emmy-nominated episode will repeat Wednesday, and Parker and Stone are laying out plans for a new seven-episode Park run starting Oct. 4. Would they really have quit? "I don't know if we would have totally not worked on South Park ever again," Stone told TV writers at their semiannual gathering. "But we have a couple of movies with Viacom, and it's tough to go work for people you think may be holding one of your episodes hostage. But that's sort of water under the bridge now."
To be fair, official word from Comedy Central is that Closet was not pulled, it just didn't make it into the repeat rotation. Stone and Parker say they believe Viacom yanked the episode under pressure from Cruise, star of the company's Mission: Impossible franchise. "We can't think of any other reason," Parker says. Cruise has denied it.
This was not the only controversy to strike Park this season, or even the one they care about most. As a comment on the riots over the Danish cartoon caricatures of Mohammed, they did a two-part April episode, "Cartoon Wars," that used the Islamic prophet's image. Comedy Central forced them to obscure it.
What's odd, Stone says, is that they did an episode in 2001 that portrayed Mohammed as a superhero who can turn himself into a beaver. It's out on DVD and runs in syndication, he says, "and no one even notices. ... We watched a new taboo being created out of nothing, and we all sat by."
Still, there was one upside to "Cartoon Wars": The spoof also attacked Fox's Family Guy, which was shown as being written by manatees that use floating balls to make random combinations of jokes and topics. "The day that episode aired," Parker says, "we got flowers from The Simpsons. We got calls from King of the Hill saying we were doing God's work."